"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with these thoughts, an independent chamber of his mind was engaged in admiring the address with which the girl was recovering from what must have been, what plainly had been, a staggering shock. Already she had begun to grapple with the situation, to take herself in hand and dissemble; already her face was regaining its accustomed cast of self-confidence, composure, and intelligent animation. Throughout she pursued without a break the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... cheer after him; they thought they had beaten him off. But Dodd knew better. He was but retiring a little way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he would soon wear, and cross the Agra's defenceless bows, to rake her fore and aft at pistol-shot distance; or grapple, and board the enfeebled ship two ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... for which Germany has been preparing for twenty years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will happen if she conquers? Canada ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... encounter of thoughts across the distance of ages and the distance of races! The meditation of this young French soldier, in face of the enemy who is to attack on the morrow, resumes the strange ecstasy in which was rapt the warrior of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies coming to the grapple. He, too, sees the turbulence of mankind as a dream that seems to veil the higher order and the Divine unity. He, too, puts his faith in that 'which knows neither birth nor death,' which is 'not born, is indestructible, is not slain when this body is slain.' This is the perpetual life that moves ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... August was at hand this unseen soldier, who had only shared her thoughts before, took complete and utter control. Why tell the old, old story in its every stage? It was with a new, wild fear at heart she heard of Stonewall Jackson's leap for the Rapidan, of the grapple at Cedar Mountain where the Massachusetts men fought sternly and met with cruel loss. Her father raged with anxiety when the news came of the withdrawal from the Peninsula, the triumphant rush of Lee and Longstreet on Jackson's trail, of the ill-starred but heroic struggle made by Pope along ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... peaceful night—and as it became evident gradually that there was serious damage to the ship, the fear that came with the knowledge was largely destroyed as it came. There was no sudden overwhelming sense of danger that passed through thought so quickly that it was difficult to catch up and grapple with it—no need for the warning to "be not afraid of sudden fear," such as might have been present had we collided head-on with a crash and a shock that flung everyone out of his bunk to the floor. Everyone ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... most timid animals will fight desperately under the stimulus of sex-passion. Hares and moles battle to the death in some cases; squirrels and beavers wound each other severely. Seals grapple with tooth and claw; bulls, deer and stallions have violent encounters, and goats use their curved horns with deadly effect.[53] The elephant, pacific by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. Thus, the Sanskrit poems frequently use the simile of the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... was strong to do and dare: If a host had withstood him there, He had braved a host with little care In his lusty youth and his pride, Tough to grapple though weak to snare. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils. This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere management ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the dark, ready to shoot. He tried again to find the pistol, and then with an effort pulled himself together. The next move might draw a shot, but he must risk that and not lie there helpless. Besides, if the fellow missed, he might grapple with and disarm him, and he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... by those who are wise, For if we give up and concede Immortality, There's nothing to check its wide Universality. The toad-stool and thistle, the donkey and bear Must live on forever,—the Lord knows where. I tell you, dear sir, that Science must wake up And grapple these spooks to crush them, and break up This world of delusion of Phil. D's and D.D's, Who are all in the dark, as dear Huxley agrees, Proud Huxley's "The Prince of Agnostics," you see, And Huxley and I ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... utterly hopeless, and beyond the reach or even conception of any but a Minister conscious of occupying an impregnable position in the confidence of the country: we allude to his reconstruction of our entire commercial system, as represented by his new Tariff. What courage was requisite to grapple with this giant difficulty! What practical skill; what patience and resolution; what exact yet extensive acquaintance with mercantile affairs; what a comprehensive discernment of consequences; what firm impartiality in deciding between vast conflicting interests, were here evinced! And observe—all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... very small a portion of the human race think much, or think with any clearness when it does become the subject of their passing thoughts at all. We too well know our own ignorance to venture on dogmas which it has probably been intended that the mind of man should not yet grapple with and comprehend. To return ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... find it necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... therefore, is bound to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:—Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived from one another by gradual modification, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... they strained every nerve to exclude the English from our trade, and to secure it to the Irish—while they introduced the Statute of Frauds, and many other sound laws, and thus showed their zeal for the peaceful and permanent welfare of the People, they were not unfit to grapple with the great military crisis. They voted large supplies; they endeavoured to make a war-navy; the leading members allowed nothing but their Parliamentary duties to interfere with their recruiting, arming, and training of troops. They were no timorous pedants, who shook and made homilies when ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... several years, and was, because of it, to some extent acquainted with the grim realities of life. She did not know that while there are certainly hard men in Canada, the small farmers and ranchers of the West—and, perhaps above all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant trees in the forests of the Pacific slope—are, as a rule, distinguished by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is very seldom turned away. Still, watching her companion covertly, she understood that this man whom she had seen ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... they had been able to see very plainly how the Persian and Greek fleets lay of old, to imagine the narrow strait once more choked with upturned keels, and fighting or flying triremes, to picture Greeks leaping into the sea in full armour to swim to Psyttaleia and grapple with the Persians who paced the beach in insolent assurance. The wind whistled in their ears, freighted, as it seemed to them, with the full-throated shout which, according to the AEschylean story, rang ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... survey from his cloudless calm the darkness and the gloom of the lower world. A fortune, by Jove! Seven thousand pounds sterling a year! Hard cash! Why, the thing fairly took my breath away. I sat down to grapple with the stupendous thought. Aha! where would the duns be now? What would those miserable devils say now, that had been badgering him with lawyers' letters? Wouldn't they all haul off? Methought they would. Methought! why, meknew ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... think about it, then. The case is bad enough as it stands, Heaven knows, and we've got to grapple with it as soon as we get home. We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, unless something has happened to him. I wonder if anything can have been good enough to happen to ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... that I shall grapple with the sterility argument till my return home; I have tried once or twice and it has made my stomach feel as if it had been placed in a vice. Your paper has driven three of my children half-mad—one sat up to twelve o'clock ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and through the largest, and in its fall the wounded monster turned and bit savagely at the fore leg of a companion. The bone cracked as a rotten branch snaps underfoot, and in another moment the two animals were rolling over and over, locked together in the death grapple. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... The cancers of the orchid grow. Silent as in the listed ring Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling, Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side The suffocating captives died: So hushed the woodland warfare goes Unceasing; and the silent foes Grapple and smother, strain and clasp Without a cry, without a gasp. Here also sound Thy fans, O God, Here too Thy banners move abroad: Forest and city, sea and shore, And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor! The drums ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must, nevertheless, not forget the weakness when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel. Magnanimity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... ponder his next move. At midnight eight fire hulks, "spurting flames and their ordnance exploding," were borne by wind and tide full upon the crowded Spanish fleet. Fearful of maquinas de minas such as had wrought destruction a year before at the siege of Antwerp, the Spanish made no effort to grapple the peril but slipped or cut cables and in ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time. But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea! Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly altitudes about With the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... conspicuously vituperative. Even his attack on the political character of the notorious Non-Juror is bitter without being really scurrilous. But like his betters Congreve and Vanbrugh, D'Urfey both missed the opportunity to grapple with the real issues of the controversy and misjudged the temper of the public. Had that public been, as all the playwrights seem to have assumed, ready to side with them against Collier, there might have been some ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... for not allowing divorces: the same, O horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophias pasaes aphroditae kai lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would have scorned to drop a pen-full of ink against so base ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... moment was in my heart, as in every other heart there. It was a horrid, oppressive fear. I retired to a quiet corner to grapple with it. I was not given to weeping, but I must think things out in words. I repeated to myself that the trouble was all about money. Somebody wanted money from our tenant, who had none to give. Our furniture was going to be sold to make this money. It was a mistake, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... inability to deal with her perplexities deepened his realization of the ignorance and superficiality he had so long masked even from himself beneath the tricks and pretensions of a gay scepticism. He went away fully resolved to grapple with the entire Hostel question, and he put the patched and tortured manuscript of the new novel aside with a certain satisfaction to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fought in my youth," he said, "and now once more will I, the guardian of my people, seek the combat. I would not bear any sword or other weapon against the dragon if I thought that I could grapple with him as I did with the monster Grendel. But I fear that I shall not be able to approach so close to this foe, for he will send forth hot, raging fire and venomous breath. Yet am I resolute in mood, fearless and resolved ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... of the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless. The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld by the great body of the native whites ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... public, but it was not until 1865 that another effort to lay the cable could be made. The "Great Eastern," the largest ship in the world, was secured, and began paying out the cable; but twelve hundred miles from shore the cable parted and could not be regained, although every effort was made to grapple it. So the vessel had to put back to England, and Field was confronted with the heart-breaking task of raising even more money. He succeeded in doing so, and in 1866, another expedition started out with a new cable. This time, it met with no serious misadventure, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... upon the raked arena Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, While seried thousands gazed—strangers from Caucasus, Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, To see me grapple with the counterpart Of that I had been—the raptorial jaws, The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, The eyes that glared vindictive.—Fallen there, Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists And whelm the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... boats touched. Let that be a lesson to you, captain. When you are on the lookout for a canoe, at night, lie in among the bushes. It must pass between you and the light, then, and as they can't see you, you can either grapple or shoot, just ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... affections would now expire with her misguided opinions. They therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. But oh! they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions, and leave her to grapple in ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... with one of the subjects nearest her heart, and that she published a novel of the same kind, added nothing to her fame. She was wholly an orator with an instinctive knowledge of the way to play on the emotions of her listeners. Her faults were the faults of an intense nature too early obliged to grapple with hard problems; her virtues were those of a strong, independent, unselfish nature. It has been said that she rose to fame on the crest of three waves: the negro wave, the war wave, and the woman wave. If that is so, then was her success as a public speaker something of which ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... first to one side and then to the other. Assaults and counter-assaults were the order of the day. From Ostend, on the North Sea, now in the hands of the Germans, to the southern extremity of Alsace-Lorraine, the mighty hosts were locked in a death grapple; but, in spite of the fearful execution of the weapons of modern warfare, there had been no really decisive engagement. Neither side ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... cried; "it is nobly said: yet, after all, these are ties that owe their force to the souls they bind. How often have such bonds round human hearts proved ropes of sand! They grapple YOU like hooks of steel; because you are steel yourself to the backbone. I admire you, Jacintha. Such women as you have a great ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... dread of the words he had come to utter; a wild hope sprang in him that he might yet win her in other ways; he used language recklessly, half believing that his arguments would seem of force. His passion was in the death-grapple ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... could; nor was he behindhand with her in his endeavours, but happily the darkness of the night befriended her. She then cried she was a woman; but Adams answered, she was rather the devil, and if she was he would grapple with him; and, being again irritated by another stroke on his chops, he gave her such a remembrance in the guts, that she began to roar loud enough to be heard all over the house. Adams then, seizing her by the hair (for her double-clout had fallen off in the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... might be by instinct. The proas tacked, too, and, laying up much nearer to the wind than we did, appeared as if about to close on our lee-bow. The question was, now, whether we could pass them or not before they got near enough to grapple. If the pirates got on board us, we were hopelessly gone; and everything depended on coolness and judgment. The captain behaved perfectly well in this critical instant, commanding a dead silence, and the closest attention ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... sterility of Attica was the great safety of her people in their early history. "It drove them abroad; it filled them with a spirit of activity, which loved to grapple with danger and difficulty; it told them that, if they would maintain themselves in the dignity which became them, they must regard the resources of their own land as nothing, and those of other countries as their own." Added to this, the situation of Attica marked it out in an eminent ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... denudation: and these fossiliferous strata belong to the early part of the Cretaceous system. Late, therefore, in a geological sense, as must be the age of the main part of the red granite, I can conceive nothing more impressive than the eastern view of this great range, as forcing the mind to grapple with the idea of the thousands of thousands of years requisite for the denudation of the strata which originally encased it,—for that the fluidified granite was once encased, its mineralogical composition and structure, and the bold conical shape of the mountain-masses, ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... a deadly one, for it was aimed with judgment, and Gyt was a bold and powerful man; but it did not prove effectual so as to save Gyt's life, for the enraged lion, striving in his death agonies to grapple with Gyt,—held at arm's length by the strength of desperation on the part of the boor,—so dreadfully lacerated with his talons the breast and arms of poor Gyt, that his bones were ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... lecture by John Cairns on 'Rationalism, Ritualism, and Pure Religion,' or some such title, and have read it with interest, attention, and a good deal of admiration of its ability and, on the whole, of its spirit. But I can see from it that he is not the man to grapple with the scepticism of the age. He has not sufficient sympathy with it, he has not lived in its atmosphere, he has not visited its profoundest or tossed in its stormiest depths. Intellectually and logically he understands it as he understands most other matters, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... dormant; the rage of the fever, and the violent remedies to which it had been necessary to have recourse, had so exhausted her, that she had not energy enough to think. All that she felt was a strange indefinite conviction that some occurrence had taken place with which her memory could not grapple. But as her strength returned, and as she gradually resumed her usual health, by proportionate though almost invisible degrees her memory returned to her, and her intelligence. She clearly recollected and comprehended what had taken place. She recalled the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... thousands, till all the immense arch of heaven was strewn with glittering points, and every point a world! Here was a glorious sight by which man might well measure his own insignificance! Soon I gave up thinking about it, for the mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce His purpose from His works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of mine, and me made up our minds what to do, and we made a rush for a small gate that there was in the stockade, just opposite where the Injuns came in. We got through safe enough, but they had left men all round. Jack Robins he was shot dead. Bill and I kept straight on. We had a grapple with some of the redskins; two or three on 'em went down, and Bill and I got through and had a race for it till we got fairly into the forest. Bill had a ball in the shoulder, and I had a clip across ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... poetic expression, surely no age need or can be destitute of theirs—need or can be called unpoetical. But the misfortune is, that men will not look at the essential poetry which is lying around them, and under their feet. They suppose their age to be unpoetical, merely because they grapple not with its great excitements, nor will venture to sail upon its "mighty stream of tendency." They overlook the volcano in the next mountain—while admiring or deploring those which have been extinct for centuries, or which are a thousand miles away. They are ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... this moment up came the famous Dr. Traill, the Admirable Crichton of Ireland, and with my usual thirst for knowledge, I ventured to suggest that the mathematical intellect of the Trinity College Examiner might possibly grapple with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... You shall you shall! I hate your uncle, and you too!" But that was only half true, even then while he was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him say; ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... is not always easy to understand either what was done, or what was meant to be done, during that early sail era; but two things appear quite certainly. There is still shown the vehemence and determination of action which characterized galley fighting, visible constantly in the fierce effort to grapple the enemy, to break his ranks, to confuse and crush him; and further there is clear indication of tactical plan on the grand scale, broad in outline and combination, involving different—but not independent—action by the various great divisions of the fleet, each ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the growth of the Protestants, Henry II was just preparing, after the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, to grapple with them more earnestly than ever, when he died of a wound accidentally received in a tournament. [Sidenote: July 10, 1559] His death, hailed by Calvin as a merciful dispensation of Providence, conveniently marks the ending of one ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... succession to such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were "assisting the Empire to grapple with seriouspolitical contingencies." In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... breaking dawn, of a coming period, is wont to strike with its rays, to be then reflected on the silent and sleeping valleys. The men who hold to-day the pen or draughting pencil in the university are the men who will handle the levers of the world's intricate machinery. There they grapple with the various problems of the scientifical, economic and political world and their views, later on, will gradually influence the whole mental attitude of the masses, who, in their daily life, are ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... again!" yelled Paul, still more excited—"see our sailors getting to their boats! They are going to row out and grapple those flaming monsters. See if it be not so. They are drifting down a little too near our few ships. You will see now for yourself, Corinne, the stuff of which our mariners ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... they did in flying, and just now they had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and their long necks writhed, and how the soft mud rose in clouds and shut out the dim light! But the harder they fought the more tightly did the net grapple them, winding itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing their wings down against their sides. Expert divers though they were, the loons were drowning. There was a ringing in their ears and a roaring in their heads, and the very last atoms of ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... snakes, and they charge and charge again. A pause, and the company of "greys" on our right, throwing itself into open order, flits past us like so many vultures to precipitate itself with a wild, whistling cry on an opposing body which rushed to meet it. They join issue, they grapple; on them swoops another company, then another and another, until nothing is to be distinguished except a mass of wild faces heaving; of changing forms rolling and writhing, twisting and turning, and, to all appearances, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... upon him all the bravest of the enemy, He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his ship: he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard: he sunk three fireships, which endeavored to grapple with him: and though his vessel was torn in pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained, near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fireship, more fortunate than ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... headfirst to grapple with him, there was a sharp report, a lurid gleam of flame in the darkness, and Mohammed Beyd rolled over and over upon the floor to come to a final rest beside the bed of the woman ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... between their teeth, and I seized the boat-hook. We were all aware that if they succeeded in intercepting us they would practise upon us the manoeuvre which has proved so fatal to many a boat's crew in these seas. They would grapple the oars, and seizing hold of the gunwhale, capsize the boat, and then we should be entirely ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... question, that of Rome, was the most thorny, the most complicated, that ever a statesman had to grapple with. Though Cavour's death makes it impossible to say what measure of success would have attended his plans for resolving it, it must be always interesting to study his attitude in approaching the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... his nigh approaches made, And darts and arrows spit against his foes, As ships are wont in fight, so it assayed With the strong wall to grapple and to close, The Pagans on each side the piece invade, And all their force against this mass oppose, Sometimes the wheels, sometimes the battlement With timber, logs and stones, they ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... neighbour than from another. Besides, people who, like the Athenians in the present instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours, usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea, at the time ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the Boulevard du Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the office between four and five o'clock. Hector Merlin would doubtless be there. Lousteau was right. The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien; for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits which strengthen her hold. Lucien was thirsting already for enjoyment; he was in love with the easy, luxurious, and expensive life which ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a man's hand ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... substantially reduced over the past 15 years, and a strong social safety net has been put into place. Foreign investors remain attracted by the country's political stability and high education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. The government continues to grapple with its large internal and external deficits and sizable internal debt. The reduction of inflation remains a difficult problem because of rising import prices, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. The country also needs to reform its tax system and its pattern of public ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... questions with which the legal intellect of my Sheldon may best grapple. For myself, I can only drift with the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... scale," continued Mr. Fyshe, "it's the same sort of thing. As for the difficulties of it, I needn't remind you of the much greater difficulties we had to grapple with in the rum merger. There, you remember, a number of the women held out as a matter of principle. It was not mere business with them. Church union is different. In fact it is one of the ideas of the day and everyone admits that what is needed is the application ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... parting vengeance. Far and wide the waters of the solitary lake were instantly dyed red with blood and gore; here rode a party of savage Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the swathes fall before the mower's scythe; there stood unarmed Kalmucks in a death-grapple with their detested foes, both up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking together below the surface, from weakness, or from struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did the Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the sake of giving impetus to the assault? Thither were ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... mere bit of pulp,—that amoeba has grandsons today who read Kant and play symphonies. Will those grandsons in turn have descendants who will sail through the void, discover the foci of forces, the means to control them, and learn how to marshal the planets and grapple with space? Would it after all be any more startling than our ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... brought Jane humiliation and despair. All he thought of was the injustice of Jane's sufferings. Added to this was an overpowering desire to reach her side before her misery should continue another moment; to fold her in his arms, stand between her and the world; help her to grapple with the horror which was slowly crushing out her life. That it was past her hour for retiring, and that there might be no one to answer his summons, made no difference to him. He must see her at all hazards before he closed ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I would rather see them droop and even die, than that they should live to rebel against Thee, and shut themselves out of Thy kingdom. O my God, on my knees, I present them all to Thee. Bless them with grace and understanding, and save them for ever.—I have had to grapple with rheumatism. It is painful, but what in duration, when compared with eternity? Nothing. May my soul, evermore fly upward. What need in health to prepare for sickness! There is then plenty to do to hold fast whereunto we have attained.—Cousin John Stables has exchanged ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... followed us, and we did find the sunken motor boat, couldn't they grapple for the box of silver images, and steal them?" ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... not this doctrine, while it accords with the instructions of the Holy Ghost and the practice of primitive times, also a dictate of common sense? Would you choose weak men to penetrate into the very midst of the enemy, and to grapple with the Anaks of the land, and keep those who are strong in a garrison at home? Would you select indifferent statesmen to settle the affairs of revolutionary France, or to reduce to order the chaotic mass of the South American states; and employ the able, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... when to let alone. Unfortunately, through very peculiar circumstances, I was removed from the immediate care and superintendence of both parents rather early in life; and, at an age the most dangerous, was left to grapple nearly alone with the wide world and the beings in it, with little of either parental guidance. It was then I saw the immense importance and advantage of early impressions. To me they were of incalculable benefit, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... higher faculties with which man has been endowed through his gradual development from the lowest phases of living creatures to the highest. In assuming the Devil to be something absolute and positive, and not something relative and negative, man hoped to be better able to grapple with him. Mephistopheles is nothing personal; he can, like the Creator himself, be only traced in his works. The Devil lurks beneath the venerable broadcloth of an intolerant and ignorant priest; he uses the seducing smiles of a wicked beauty; he stirs the blood of the covetous ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the water the light is lighted automatically. In connection with this invention the life-savers in Paris use a grappling-hook which we illustrate. This has an electric light near the end in the oval space; this light makes it possible to grapple for persons who may have gone down beneath ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Than sands are whirled about the wintering beach When storms have swoln the rivers, and their blasts Have breached the broad sea-banks with stress of sea, That waves of inland and the main make war As men that mix and grapple; though his ranks Were more to number than all wildwood leaves The wind waves on the hills of all the world, Yet should the heart not faint, the head not fall, The breath not fail of Athens. Say, the Gods 740 From lips that have ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and half-blinded with the blood that poured down over his right eye. He clapped his hand, with a soldier's instinct, to the place where his sword-hilt was not, and then staggered, rather than rushed, at his assailant, to grapple him with his naked hands. Offitt struck him once more, and he fell headlong on the floor, in the blaze of a myriad lights that flashed all at once into ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... I had fixed my resolve, but I would not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr. John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears, while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the front rank of English poets. But the writer of English rhymed measures is in a very different position as regards improvisatorial efforts from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures. He has to grapple with the metrical structure—to seize the form by the throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous wealth at the English poet’s command. Fine as is the ‘Prince’s Progress,’ for instance (and it would be hard to find its superior in regard to poetic material in the whole compass ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... not fear Transley. She believed in him. She believed in his ability to grapple with anything that stood in his way; to thrust it aside, and press on. She respected the judgment of her father and her mother, and both of them believed in Transley. He would succeed; he would seize the opportunities this young country afforded ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... memory,[1] See thou Character.[2] Giue thy thoughts no tongue, [Sidenote: Looke thou] Nor any vnproportion'd[3] thought his Act: Be thou familiar; but by no meanes vulgar:[4] The friends thou hast, and their adoption tride,[5] [Sidenote: Those friends] Grapple them to thy Soule, with hoopes of Steele: [Sidenote: unto] But doe not dull thy palme, with entertainment Of each vnhatch't, vnfledg'd Comrade.[6] Beware [Sidenote: each new hatcht unfledgd courage,] Of entrance to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is there in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance? It is truly a mystery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... was it that was holding them apart? What was the nature of this barrier beyond all surmounting? The man in him rebelled at having so spectral an adversary; he longed to fight it out in the open, to grapple with flesh and blood. In spite of promise, his heart ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... tail and very powerful claws on its fore feet. It walks on the sides of its fore feet with these claws curved in under the foot. The claws are used in digging out ant-hills; but the beast has courage, and in a grapple is a rather unpleasant enemy, in spite of its toothless mouth, for it can strike a formidable blow with these claws. It sometimes hugs a foe, gripping him tight; but its ordinary method of defending itself ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... without a man, even if I have to hire one from a feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... back, when the ice would be firm and hard, and they could renew their wild winter warfare, whilst during the earlier months of the winter there was no certainty of carrying on any successful operations. Heavy rain and soft snow were too much even for the hardy Rangers to grapple with. They were practically useless now till the frost came and fastened its firm grip ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose he ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him—clinging for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it all took place. He was too ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... took him and killed him, and Thorliek claimed as his and his father's own all the money the freedman had made. Hrut heard this, and he and his sons liked it very ill. They were most of them grown up, and the band of kinsmen was deemed a most forbidding one to grapple with. Hrut fell back on the law as to how this ought to turn out, and when the matter was searched into by lawyers, Hrut and his son stood at but little advantage, for it was held a matter of great weight that Hrut ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony of the eyes ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest were talking. She is a delightful girl—so impulsive, so sensible, so entirely unaffected. She confided in me. She said: 'One of our miseries is that we can't find a gentleman who will grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.' Of course I soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and he shall grapple immediately.'—'Oh heavens! who is he?'—'Mr. Francis Clare.'—'And where is he?'—'In the house at this moment.'—'Will you be so very ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... worse," Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; sing ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... best, or the billow to breast, Or the race prize to wrest, were but effort in vain; On the message of death pours an Egypt of wrath,[127] The fever's hot breath, the dart-shot of pain. Ah, desolate eld! the wretch that is held By thy grapple, must yield thee his dearest supplies; The friends of our love at thy call must remove,— What boots how they strove from thy bands to arise? They leave us, deplore as it wills us,—our store, Our strength at the core, and our vigour of mind; Remembrance forsakes us, distraction o'ertakes us, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was symptomatic, is the most fundamental aspect of the political situation in Italy to-day, even as it is in that of France. During more than a generation the grouping of parties and factions has been such as to preclude the formation of a compact and disciplined majority able and willing to grapple with the great social questions which successive ministries have inscribed in their programmes. But it seems not impossible that a working entente among the groups of the Left may in time produce the legislative stability requisite for systematic ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... conciliate and harmonize the whole North, we are to suffer a tremendous disorder to spring up and make mischief without end! Can we never get over this silly dread of worn-out political abuse and grapple fairly with the truth? Are we really so much afraid of being falsely called abolitionists and negro-lovers that we can not act and think like men! Here we are frightened at names, dilly-dallying and quarreling over ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... blackened reputation; but I should not trouble either of you so much above and beyond the petty scandal making and loving herd; but it is very wearying and wearing to me; I sometimes think I should leave you on account of it, and grapple with this difficulty at once and forever;" the moisture was in Vaura's eyes as he looked at her wearily with a long ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains,—that is to my mind wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring; fitted to grapple with difficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, fuse together; wedge, rabbet, mortise, miter, jam, dovetail, enchase^; graft, ingraft^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... replied loftily, as if no problem was so difficult that he could not grapple with it. "I'd probably get some kind of an idea in time to save the situation. Leave everything ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... utmost; but still when I looked before me, my very heart would sink within me at the inevitable approach of misery and want. Oh let none read this part without seriously reflecting on the circumstances of a desolate state, and how they would grapple with mere want of friends and want of bread; it will certainly make them think not of sparing what they have only, but of looking up to heaven for support, and of the wise man's prayer, 'Give me not poverty, lest ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... years, but no Province was in so dreadful a condition as this unhappy land of Brittany. In Normandy or Picardy the inroads of the English were periodical with intervals of rest between; but Brittany was torn asunder by constant civil war apart from the grapple of the two great combatants, so that there was no surcease of her sufferings. The struggle had begun in 1341 through the rival claims of Montfort and of Blois to the vacant dukedom. England had taken the part of Montfort, France that of Blois. Neither faction was strong ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fate. He was fate to thousands of loyal men, whom he placed at will as coolly as if they had been the pieces on a chessboard. He was fate to the Confederacy, upon whose throat he placed his iron grasp, never relaxed until life was extinct. In May, 1864, he quietly crossed the Rapidan for the death-grapple. He took the most direct route for Richmond, ignoring all obstacles and the fate of his predecessors. To think that General Grant wished to fight the battle of the Wilderness is pure idiocy. One would almost as soon choose the Dismal Swamp for a battleground. It was undoubtedly his hope to ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... re-modelled after the example of the bee, let us conclude with drawing a picture of the state of our beloved country, so modified. Imprimis, all our working people would be females, wearing swords, never marrying, and occasionally making queens. They would grapple with their work in a prodigious manner, and make a great noise. Secondly, our aristocracy would be all males, never working, never marrying, (except when sent for,) always eating or sleeping, and annually having ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... the real way to hope to get at the mass of heathens at home, the need of a different education in some respects for the clergy, &c. But I have already by the time I begin to write taken too much out of myself in other ways to grapple with such subjects, and so I merely spin out a yarn about my own special difficulties ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intelligence there is person. The attributes of personality belong to intelligence, and they belong to nothing else. If you have an intelligent essence, it is, of a logical and scientific necessity, a person. Let some Pantheistic "wiseacre" grapple with this thought. ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... enthusiasm that expresses itself in oaths and shouts had given way to the deep, voiceless rage of men in a death grapple. The Rebel line was a rolling torrent of flame, their bullets shrieked angrily as they flew past, they struck the snow in front of us, and threw its cold flakes in faces that were white with the fires of consuming hate; they buried themselves with a dull thud in the quivering bodies ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a single bone, sees what kind of animal the whole must have been, so the metaphysician, according to Hegel, sees, from any one piece of reality, what the whole of reality must be—at least in its large outlines. Every apparently separate piece of reality has, as it were, hooks which grapple it to the next piece; the next piece, in turn, has fresh hooks, and so on, until the whole universe is reconstructed. This essential incompleteness appears, according to Hegel, equally in the world of thought and in the world of things. In the world of thought, if we take any idea which is abstract ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... Kosciuszko issued all through the course of the Rising there is not only the note of the trumpet-call, bidding the people grapple with a task that their leader promises them will be no easy one; there is something more—a hint of the things that are beyond, an undercurrent of the Polish spirituality that confer upon these national proclamations their peculiarly Polish quality, emanating ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... such as these should learn how experience, even under cramped conditions, may be finely and beautifully interpreted, and made rich by renewed intention. Because the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not welter helplessly below it. And the cramped and restricted life is all the grander for this, that it gives us ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... take even those English authors whom we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect whether his hero was sliding ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sword in his hand. They sped up the wide road. Goemon stepped out, to follow at a distance this flight and pursuit. At the icho[u] tree the fugitives were overtaken. The woman was the first to be cut down. Kyuzo[u] turned to grapple with the assailant. Unarmed his fate soon overtook him. He fell severed from shoulder to pap. Having finished his victims Imaizumi seated himself at the foot of the tree, and cut open his belly. "Long ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... never in the majority, that for one woman whose feet turn aside from the paths of rectitude that there are thousands of feet that never stray into forbidden paths, and today I believe there is virtue enough in society to confront its vice, and intelligence enough to grapple with ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... most difficult and heroic task within the limits of human endeavor. It is comparatively easy to run a tilt against a fellow-mortal, or an external evil; but to set our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... that if marriage meant compromise, it also meant responsibility; that having been goaded into decisive speech, he stood pledged to decisive action, for her sake, even more than for his own. Yet, at the moment, he felt physically and mentally unfit to grapple with the complex situation, hampered as he was by the experience of all that may spring from one false move, one instant of unguarded speech; and the knowledge that his insight, his judgment, were clouded by the insomnia, grinding headache, and renewed wrestling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the fire a plan slowly took shape in McElroy's mind. They were unbound as they had been for many days, the silent guard proving sufficient surety for their retention, and they were two to one in the wild confusion of the growing excitement. What easier than a swift grapple in the dusk, one man locked in combat with the sentinel and one lost in the forest and the night? It was a desperate chance, but they were desperate men with the post, the hatchet, and the matete before them. As the thought grew it took on proportions of possibility and the factor threw up ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... of them. The excitement of the animals was intense. Several managed to get into the water, and the muzzles they were wearing did not prevent some hot fights. Two dogs which had contrived to slip their muzzles fought themselves into an icy pool and were hauled out still locked in a grapple. However, men and dogs enjoyed the exercise. A sounding gave a depth of 2400 fathoms, with a blue mud bottom. The wind freshened from the west early the next morning, and we started to skirt the northern edge of the solid pack in an easterly direction under ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... coast wrote as follows: "One of my lasting remembrances of Battle Harbour will be the dreadful dogs. The Mission team were on an island far removed, but there were a number of settlers' dogs which delighted in making the nights hideous. Never before have I seen dogs stand up like men and grapple with each other in a fight, and when made to move on, renew the battle round ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive strength and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the Roman emperors ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... each other across it. Is Tamdka's dark face in the light of the flickering flames of the camp fire. They have plotted red murder by night, and securely contemplate their victims. But wary and armed to the teeth are the resolute Frenchmen and ready, If need be, to grapple with death, and to die hand to hand in the desert. Yet skilled in the arts and the wiles of the cunning and crafty Algonkins, They cover their hearts with their smiles, and hide their suspicions of evil. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... in their marriage institutions; agreeing only in the propriety of adopting and enforcing some regulations. So essentially has this matter been bound up with the moral code of every society, that a proposed criterion of morality unable to grapple with it, would be discarded as worthless. Yet there is no intuitive sentiment that can be of any avail in the question of marriage with a ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... dread of such miscreants had been instilled into Anastasia Joliffe by her aunt. It was, moreover, a standing rule of the house that no strange men were to be admitted on any pretence, unless there was some man-lodger at home, to grapple with them if occasion arose. But the glance was sufficient to confirm her first verdict—he was a gentleman; there surely could not be such things as gentlemen-tramps. So she answered "Oh, certainly," and showed him into Mr Sharnall's room, because ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... neighbouring clergy for having such a man, and not being exposed to all the vagaries of a young schoolmaster, or, perhaps, still worse, schoolmistress, with all the latest musical fancies of the training colleges. Neither had he to grapple with the tyranny of the leading bass nor the conceit and touchiness that seems inseparable from the tenor voice, since Mr Robins kept a firm and sensible hand on the reins, and drove that generally unmanageable team, a village choir, ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... we have already seen, he had plenty of self-reliance, the feeling that he could do anything that could be done, and the determination to make the most of himself. Then he was ready-witted, and able to grapple with unexpected emergencies. This will be seen in an incident which took place when he was a boy ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... or four of them do not hesitate to grapple with the largest baleen whale; and, as described by Dr. Murie, "the latter often, paralysed through fear, lie helpless and at their mercy. The killers, like a pack of hounds, cluster about the animal's head, breach over it, seize it by ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of rapids and the howlings of storm do not frighten them. Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle joyously with it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is red and strong. Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves up to the skies. Yet they are simple as children, and when they are afraid, it is ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... eccentricity of his habits, the indolence of his mind, and his vacillating and uncertain disposition. He was, however, occasionally capable of intense application, and competent to make himself master of any subject he thought fit to grapple with; his mind was reflecting, combining, and argumentative, but he had no imagination, and to passion, 'the sanguine credulity of youth, and the fervent glow of enthusiasm' he was an entire stranger. He never had any taste for society, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... loom and the anvil—he should have said the awl—and renegades from the lowest handicraft employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... chieftains, bravest warriors and the best, Leagued they came to grapple Arjun and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... has been prevalent over virtue, at least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary of my heart,—never, never to be torn from thence, but with those holds that grapple it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sheriff's officer attempted to serve it: "Madame Lola, ever ready for the fray, retired to her cabin and sent word that she was quite naked, but that the sheriff could come and take her if he wanted to." An embarrassing predicament; and, unprepared to grapple with it, "Poor Mr. Brown blushed and retired amid roars ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Eli," I thought, so I made my way toward the Irish Lady as fast as I was able. I had just reached a part of the cliff where it was safe to descend to the beach when I saw a dark object creeping toward me. I was about to rush toward it and grapple with it when ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... not diminish, and the wise Sully had still to lament the prevalence of an evil which menaced society with utter disorganization. In the succeeding reign the practice prevailed, if possible, to a still greater extent, until the Cardinal de Richelieu, better able to grapple with it than Sully had been, made some severe examples in the very highest classes. Lord Herbert, the English ambassador at the court of Louis XIII repeats, in his letters, an observation that had been previously made in the reign of Henry IV, that it was rare to find a Frenchman moving in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... which should try his strength. This called up all his resources, and we may infer that he possessed them in large degree, from his quiet forbearance and deliberation, even when he became fully sensible of the insolence of the person with whom he felt about to grapple. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... owing to his surprise at the fury of the assault, so ineffectually that he fell under Hatteraick, the back part of his neck coming full upon the iron bar with stunning violence. The death-grapple continued. The room immediately below the condemned ward, being that of Glossin, was, of course, empty; but the inmates of the second apartment beneath felt the shock of Glossin's heavy fall, and heard a noise as of struggling and of groans. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mouth, skulkingly slow gait, slouched hat, and a large grizzly-coloured dog at his heels, in a dark, narrow lane, on a starlight night, is not a pleasant state of things for a timid and nervous man to grapple with; nevertheless this is one side of a Gipsy's life as he goes prowling about in quest of his prey, and as such it is seen by those who know something ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at the clock and proposed that they should play cards. He would sooner have gone off to the library by himself, but Jake might speculate about this and so long as they were occupied he need not talk. The others would go to bed soon, and then he could grapple with an awkward situation. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... was taken, he uncovered his head and thanked God, but soon after, learning that the centre had been repulsed, he put himself at the head of the Smaland cavalry and charged the Imperial cuirassiers, the "black lads," with whom he had just before told Stalhaske to grapple. Piccolomini hastened to support the cuirassiers; and the Swedes, being overmatched, retreated without perceiving—the fog having again come over—that they had left the King in the midst of the enemy. A pistol-ball now broke his arm; and as the Duke of Lauenburg was supporting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... pinnacles, upon the golden fanes. And yet this man-born structure of theology, with aisles and pillars fretting and crumbling under the hand of reason, needs such eternal propping, restoring and repairing, that priestly tinkers, masons, hod-carriers are solely occupied with it. They grapple and fight for the poor shadows of dogma by which they live, and, so engaged, the spirit and substance of religion is by them altogether lost. None of the Christian churches will ever be overcrowded with men who possess brain-power worthy the name. Mediocrity and ignorance may starve, but ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... in no mood for praying; and putting forth his slabs of arms like the paws of an alligator, he tried to grapple his foe by the throat. The cries of the mother now mingled with those of the child as he put out his little arms to shield his black protector. The ruffian, foiled in his purpose, with baffled rage evaded the negro by stepping ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... result is a wholesome quickening of the better nature of this poor man—that its chief accomplishment is to send him back to his home kinder, truer, and stronger, thru either the relaxation or the instruction, to grapple with the difficulties of life. I greatly fear that, as usually conducted, its influence upon the adult is at best but the temporary slaking of an unhealthy and never-satisfied thirst, and that upon the child and the adolescent ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... doughty giants close and grapple together in the wrestle for life and death. The red giant had the advantage in height, if not in weight; the black giant in strength of muscle, if not in suppleness of limbs. Again, though not so good a wrestler, the red was better breathed, while the black, though fighting in a better cause, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with his gun; it had then closed with him, knocking the gun out of his hand, so that he was forced to use his knife. It charged him on all fours, but in the grapple, when it had failed to throw him down, it raised itself on its hind legs, clasping him across the shoulders with its fore-paws. Apparently it had no intention of hugging, but merely sought to draw him within reach of his jaws. He fought ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... saved me much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me from reading, romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of which I carried to great excess, having an inborn impulse to be always doing something. That I did not grapple with life as a real thing, or with prosaic college studies or society, was, I can now see, a disease, for which, as my peculiar tastes had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian evil influences, I was not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... boom that told us one of the German bombs had landed. Particles of shrapnel began falling in the garden beneath the windows of our ward and we could hear the rattle of the pieces on the slate roof of a pavilion there. It is most unpleasant, it goes without saying, to lie helpless on one's back and grapple with the realisation that directly over your head—right straight above your eyes and face—is an enemy airplane loaded with bombs. Many of us knew that those bombs contained, some of them, more than two hundred pounds of melilite and some of us had witnessed the terrific havoc they wrought ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... in statesmanship when he was called to the Presidency. He had only a few years of service in the State Legislature of Illinois, and a single term in Congress ending twelve years before he became President, but he had to grapple with the gravest problems ever presented to the statesmanship of the nation for solution, and he met each and all of them in turn with the most consistent mastery, and settled them so successfully that all ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... sure you have that! No amount of learning will stand you in its stead. No matter how you may have stored your mind with the riches of the past, or tutored it to grapple with the mysteries of the present, unless you know Him, it will all amount to nothing. But if you know Him who is life, that is life eternal. Knowledge without God is like a man learned in all the great mysteries of light and ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... the servant had gone he sat down in the armchair, and still continued to talk about his affairs, while I thought of something else. When we are not able to defend ourselves from a great misfortune, there is one safety-valve,—we may be able to grapple with some of its details. I was now mainly busy with the thought whether Kromitzki would go with us to Gastein or not. Therefore after some time ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
