"Pluck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breathlessly, stared at his face with her former intensity as if she would pluck the thought that followed from his brain. But he only moved closer to her, passed his arm over her shoulders with a movement so natural and protecting that it had a certain dignity in it, and, looking down upon her bent head with eyes brimming with ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... said. But prithee, maid, Why thus your garden fill When ev'ry field the same flowers yield To pluck them as you will?" ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... long-suffering nature would have carried him nobly through such an ordeal. He was a man who would have acted up to the spirit of the Gospel command 'to pluck out the offending eye, or to cut off the right hand;' there would have been no parleying, no ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "I never knowed the stars to turn their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings—they all look about alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that craves sheltering. I reckon I made ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... flower he thought he was cultivating in secluded sweetness under glass had taken root of its own accord in the midst of young New York's great, gay parterre. Aware of the possibilities of this soil to produce over-stimulated growth, he could think of nothing better than to pluck it up and, temporarily at least, transplant it elsewhere. Having come to the decision overnight, he made the proposition when they met at breakfast ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he was placed with a designer and painter of ikons. But "here he could not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed him. This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on board one of the ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... fetters is commonly loose (For he has the pluck to withstand her), I take it that what is correct for the goose Will not be amiss for the gander; And I have a suit that for comfort and ease I'd always elect to be dressed in; The trousers have dear little bags where my knees Have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... I lost my pluck, and didn't think to humble her any more, but just told her how things was, and how I'd stood the blessed day, and never got a bid. She never asked no questions, but I see her eyes twinkle when I spoke ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... but after the latter began to come and the cottages to open, it was on in earnest. John Keith helped to give it its first big start. Mrs. Wyeth wrote him of Mary's leaving her school work to go to the rescue of Shadrach and Zoeth, and the girl's pluck and uncomplaining acceptance of the task she considered set for her made Keith's eyes twinkle with admiration as he read the letter. The family came early to South Harniss and this year he came with them. One of his first acts after arrival was to stroll down to the village and enter Hamilton ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... spring and summer several skirmishes between the Indians and United States soldiers occurred, in which the Indians and their black allies fought with remarkable pluck, perseverance, ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... enamoured of General Jacko, a celebrated monkey, at Astley's. But the possessor was so exorbitant in his demand for Jacko, that the General did not change proprietors. Another monkey was soon heard of, who had been brought up by a cook in a kitchen, where he had learned to pluck fowls with inimitable dexterity. This accomplished pet was bought and presented to Madame, who accepted him. The first time she went out, the two animals were locked up in her bed-chamber. When the lady returned, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... of Alexander, And some of Hercules, And of many a great commander As glorious as these; If you want to know a hero Of genuine pluck and pith, It's perfectly clear that none come near The full ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... occasionally a tongue of flame seemed to reach for him. But Gummy Carringford possessed a good deal of pluck, and he was strong and wary for so young a boy. Shielding his face as best he could from the heat and smoke, he began to cast double handfuls of salt into ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... didn't give him much, did it, poor devil, so don't let's speak ill of him," answered Leo, who had thrown himself exhausted to the ground. "Perhaps he was all right before they made him mad. At any rate he had pluck, for I don't want to ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... to live and die alone on that island—to die without a friend to close his eyes, or to soothe his pillow. Horrible as the fate might seem, he was reconciled. No human hand would give him Christian burial, and the vultures which soared about the island might pluck out his eyes even before life was extinct. With this dread on his mind, he shot the vultures whenever he saw them, and almost drove ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... knew that the errand was a dangerous one. All of them knew that it would be better if they were armed. But no one said any thing of the kind. In fact, they felt such confidence in their own pluck and resolution that they had no ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... had had to do, without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings in his head, and little besides for baggage: "Muscle and pluck!—Muscle and pluck!" and "Go ahead for ever!" That was the sort of thing to be done when a man or a woman had not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as yet it is day: While the sweet sunlight is warm on the brae! Hark to the lark singing lay upon lay, While the brown squirrel eats nuts on the spray And in the apple-leaves chatters the jay! Play, play, even as they! What though the cowslips ye pluck will decay, What though the grass will be presently hay? What though the noise that ye make should dismay Old Mrs. Clutterbuck over the way? Play, play, for your locks will grow gray; Even the marbles ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... streets, and nobody the wiser. But now that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille, Mayenne dares not kill him there, by foul play or by law—the Duke of St. Quentin's son. No; all Mayenne can do is to confine him at his good pleasure. Whence presently we will pluck him out at King Henry's ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... scarcely plunged into the first grove of trees when a large bird took wing from among the branches, and, raising his rifle, he succeeded in bringing it to the ground. It proved to be a brush-turkey, which he forthwith proceeded to pluck and prepare for the spit; lighting a fire meanwhile, so that it might burn well up and be in a fit state for cooking when wanted. The turkey was cooked—after a fashion—and if it was not as well done as the engineer could have wished, it was still sufficiently so to ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... that had departed, and to one like Gordon, who had a keen sense of humour, it must have sounded ridiculous in the extreme. The army consisted of about 3000 Chinese, with 150 officers, the latter being principally foreigners. The officers were by no means wanting in pluck, nor deficient in military skill, but there appears to have been a great want of discipline among them, to say nothing of the existence of keen jealousies of one another. The fact that in one month eleven officers died of delirium tremens speaks volumes as to their character. ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... in clothes was always a strong point with him, and he resented the barbarism of his present get-up acutely. "If I wanted a job at teaching manners, I could find one in your boat, that's certain," was his prompt retort. "And when I'd finished with that, I could give some of you a lesson in pluck without much harm being done. I wonder if you call yourselves white men to let a crowd of niggers clear you out of your ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... satin dress with its silver flashings Lies on a chair Beside a black mantle and a black mask. Yellow and black, Gorgeous—barbaric. The lady reads her letter, And the leaves drift slowly Past the long windows. "How silly you look, my dear Abate, With that great brown leaf in your wig. Pluck it off, I beg you, Or ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... usually short, it is too often fatal to themselves and their victims. I coolly commenced descending the rigging, whilst the blackest thoughts crowded in distinct and blood-stained array upon my brain. I bethought me from whence I could the most readily pluck a weapon, but the idea was but instantaneous, and I dismissed it with a mighty effort. At length I reached the deck, whilst the infuriated captain stood mute with surprise at my outrageously insubordinate conduct. The men were still at their quarters, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... he will get them when he wants them. And that is exactly what the Psalmist does here. He deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of One who will take care of it. The great Hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it. It closes, and 'no man is able to pluck them out of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... luck) Is always shot for showing pluck (That is, if others can be found With pluck enough to fire ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... her soul, and, if the necklace was taken off and worn by someone else, the Princess would die. The Rajah gave her on her birthday a pair of slippers with ornaments of gold and gems upon them. The princess went out upon a mountain to gather flowers, and whilst stooping there to pluck the flowers, one of her slippers fell into the forest below. A Prince, who was hunting, picked up the slipper, and was so charmed with it that he said he would make the wearer his wife. He made his wish ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... ponderous tomes labeled "Burke's Speeches." No person ever seems to read them, but he is now regarded as being in his day a great speaker, because now no one has pluck enough to read his speeches. Why, for thirty years Burke was known in Parliament as the "Dinner Bell"—whenever he rose to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... after the "glorious" sad days of July, Alencon discovered that the chevalier's nightly winnings amounted to about one hundred and fifty francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman had had the pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without resources. Many of his friends (he was by that time dead, you will please remark) have contested ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of their own—how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, in depicting the public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. The truth, the strength, the free vigor, the kind humor, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man. What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their wings desperately against her head. Here, indeed, was a situation to try the pluck of a highly civilized young lady. What should she do? What should she say? What tone should she take? In the end ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... did not possess the power of restraining his followers or of holding them in hand, and the result was, that instead of being their leader he became their instrument. Fond of applause, ambitious of distinction, timid by nature, destitute of pluck, and of that rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin, to avoid the imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the foreground, but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the plot in which he was mixed up ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtain it, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of little ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only for the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in swallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without making one ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... These are [20] its inspiring tones from the lips of our Master, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." He is but "an hireling" who fleeth when he [25] seeth ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Round veered the wind to the east again. And west they drave, and long they ran Till they saw a land was white and wan. "Yea," Snbiorn said, "my home it is, Ye bear a man shall have no bliss. Far off beside the Greekish sea The maidens pluck the grapes in glee. Green groweth the wheat in the English land, And the honey-bee flieth on every hand. In Norway by the cheaping town The laden beasts go up and down. In Iceland many a mead they mow And Hallgerd's grave grows green enow. But these are Gunnbiorn's skerries wan, Meet harbour for ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now From my high nest of penance here proclaim That Pontius and Iscariot by my side Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay, A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my sleeve; [5] Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again. In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest: They flapp'd my light out as I read: I saw Their ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... time of need, and hast as happy a manner of reconciling a man's conscience with his necessities, as might set up a score of casuists; but beware, my most zealous counsellor and confessor, how you drive the nail too far—I promise you some of the chaffing you are at just now rather abates my pluck.—Well—give me your scroll—I will to Clara with it—though I would rather meet the best shot in Britain, with ten paces of green sod betwixt us." So saying, he left ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... friends, you, who write me of "there being a serious lack of vitality" in your system and hence your inability to grapple with the occult. No such thing. Fact is you lack courage and initiative, pluck and "go" and you are labouring under the hypnotism of weakening thoughts. Just change your thoughts, and your reserve forces will rush out into activity and you will be a changed man ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... steadily along, Mr. Anderson showing wonderful pluck, considering the pain he must be suffering all the while from ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... wrath should crush The audacious slave who stole his sovereign's daughter? No, princess, no! I can excuse the youth, Nor look from mortals for divine forbearance. A fairer fruit than ever dragon guarded, Courting his hand and hung within his grasp, He could not choose but pluck it. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... that in the Essence of God there is only one person . . . and that by no means can there be more persons in that Essence, and that many persons in one essence is a pernicious opinion, which doth easily pluck up and destroy the belief of ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... quickly down the valley, never pausing to look back, even when Rufus stopped to pluck a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... want you to understand, my admiration for the game does not extend to the cat family. I always turn my back and walk away when I see Beatty walk into a cage of tigers, leopards, lions, or cougars. I admire his pluck but condemn his judgment. I cannot join the general public in admiring the sinuous majesty of the cats. I was always glad to hear the final slam of the gate and to wonder if the latch ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... "is to blame but me. It was my doing, my own pig-headed folly. The boy told me that the horse was a brute, and I—I said that he—if he hadn't the pluck to try and break him in—I would find someone who would. I am his murderess!" her ladyship cried tragically. "Yes, Marjorie, look at me—look at the murderess of the man ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... dreams be after she had tasted the bitter-sweet of living and learned what it was that she missed; the tug of strong emotions, the hopes and fears and heartaches that are the fruits of the great Tree of Life? She wanted to pluck the fruits, be they bitter or sweet, and drain the world's wine to the dregs; and then, if life went ill, she could return to her House with something about which to dream. But now she only sighed and Wunpost took her hand and drew her down beside ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... they could not kill, disable, or make prisoners. But not a man refused to go to sea again, even when his last ship had been torpedoed and his chums been killed. That is the first glory of the Mercantile Marine. But there are many more. And not the least is the pluck with which the British, who did most and lost most, started the race for oversea trade again, though at an enormous disadvantage compared with those who did least and ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... this manner. They know that a life depending on hunting and fishing means poverty, dirt, and ignorance; and they don't mean to go back to this. We don't wish to un-Indianize them altogether, we would not overcurb their free spirit; we would not pluck the feather from their cap or the sash from their waist or the moccasin from their foot. They are a proud, grand nation in their way. An Indian was never a slave any more than a Briton. An Indian has no words of profanity in his language. An Indian is noted for his loyalty ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... prepared his friend Muir beforehand for Morely's coming. He had written to him how "the Lord had most surely given him this brand to pluck from the burning,—this poor soul to save from the roaring lion that goeth about seeking whom he may devour;" and, reading it, his friend never doubted that Stephen's words were the words of Stephen's Master; and from the moment that Morely stood before him, pale and weary, and shivering ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... care a rap, and if he had been attacked, he would have defended himself with a will. It did not occur to me then, nor did it, I think, occur to anyone else, what an amazing bit of physical and moral courage it was. No one, then or after, had the slightest feeling of admiration for his pluck. "Did you ever see such a brute as P— looked?" was the only ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... listing. By such speeches was the herdsman made curious, and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid so carefully their feet, and whether these were otherwise shapen than men's feet. When, therefore, the next year, summer again came, and the season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries, and bear them into the garner, the herdsman took a sackful of ashes, which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning, with daybreak, he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten, and he saw beneath in the ashes the print of many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... suppose they learn much about the forms of ordinary life. What puzzles me is the stupidity of one or two other people, who might have let me know in time, if they had had their wits about them. I've a crow to pluck with your Mr. Heron on that ground," concluded Mr. Colquhoun, never dreaming that he was ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the cloth, shows you the mango tree in leaf. Covers it again—plays again. Takes away the cloth, and shows you the mango-tree in fruit, real fruit; but they never let you have the fruit for love or money. Rather than let any one have it, they pluck it and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... vulgar. All women are like me in this respect; and all men more or less like you. That is, after all, the text of my sermon. Compared with us, it has always seemed to me that you are arrant cowards,—that we alone are brave. To be sociable, you must have a great deal of pluck. You are too fine a gentleman. Go and teach school, or open a corner grocery, or sit in a law-office all day, waiting for clients: then you will be sociable. As yet, you are only agreeable. It is your own fault, if people don't care for you. You don't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... negligently from between the bars. No one would have believed that it would make a sudden snake-like rush at the German's breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out: Hans stepped back unconcernedly, to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... has now come to pluck up courage and begin to talk and write soberly about the war. At first the mere horror of it stunned the more thoughtful of us; and even now only those who are not in actual contact with or bereaved relation ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... you wonder—quite below a man of his pluck; but the fact was, a sweetheart of his was longing for a feather-bed, and Jack determined to get it. Well, he marched into a house, the door of which he found open, and went up-stairs, and took the best feather-bed in the house, tied it up in the best quilt, crammed some caps and ribbons ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... diving is the possession of plenty of pluck and self-confidence. One need not be an expert swimmer to be a good diver. In fact, some persons can dive very well and at the same time are mediocre swimmers. As in ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... captain stumped the next man off a leg-shooter, and bowled small cobs to old Mr. Aislabie, who came in for the last wicket; how the Lord's men were out by half-past twelve o'clock for ninety-eight runs; how the captain of the School eleven went in first to give his men pluck, and scored twenty-five in beautiful style; how Rugby was only four behind in the first innings; what a glorious dinner they had in the fourth-form school; and how the cover-point hitter sang the most topping comic songs, and old ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... 'but who shall dare to scrutinize my thoughts—who shall dare to pluck out my opinion? God only is his judge, and to that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... faint or goes off into hysterics, she storms, or bustles about, or holds on like a game terrier, according to the work on hand. She will fly at any man who annoys her, and bears herself as equal to the biggest and strongest fellow of her acquaintance. In general she does it all by sheer pluck, and is not notorious for subtlety or craft. Had Delilah been a little woman she would never have taken the trouble to shear Samson's locks. She would have defied him with all his strength untouched on ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... stranger to a Dalberg, and least of all in the presence of the Dalberg King," he said. Then the smile came again. "But, by the Lord, sir, I admire your pluck—to kiss the Princess Royal of Valeria ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... I covet to ascend, The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up heart, let's neither faint nor fear; Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... to go only in good weather. By three o'clock I noticed that the pointer on the aneroid barometer, that instrument that has a kind of spiritual fineness of feeling, had moved a tenth of an inch upward. I gave the order to start. The other parties said, "Good for your pluck! Bon voyage, gute reise," and went to bed. In an hour we had ascended one thousand feet and down again to the glacier. The sky was brilliant. Hopes were high. The glacier with its vast medial moraines, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only man who knew he was innocent. I could have saved him, and—and—well, you know how the town was wrought up—I hadn't the pluck to do it. It would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean; ut I didn't dare; I hadn't the manliness ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... unable to enjoy anything as it ought to be enjoyed. Next year, maybe, she will look back on the experience and tell her friends that it was "fun"; but oh, the pity of it, not to gather the flowers of the Present, to let them wither, and never pluck them till they are dried wrecks ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... pale; thou hast feared for thy mate amidst all these tidings of war, and still fearest for him. But pluck up a heart; for the man is a deft warrior for all his fair face, which thou lovest as a woman should, and his hands may yet save his head. And if he be slain, yet are there other men of the kindred, and the earth will not be a desert to thee ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Jove's mysterious road, Pass to Saturn's realm of rest— Happy isle, that holds the blest; Where sea-born breezes gently blow O'er blooms of gold that round them glow, Which Nature, boon from stream or strand Or goodly tree, profusely showers; Whence pluck they many a fragrant band, And braid their locks with never-fading flowers. —Trans. by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... republican," said Santerre, "or why would he come here? Take a glass of wine, friend Denot, and pluck up your courage," and Santerre passed the wine-bottle to him. "If you are true to us, you need ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... none came nigh you, being dead, Who were in life so thronged about and pressed, One hand at least would duly pluck you flowers, One hand at least would strew them on your grave. Sleep now, and I will charm ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... After marriage she found Albert to be just the man she had known him to be in other years. He was kind to a fault; free-hearted and generous; ready always to answer the call of friendship; and prone to pluck the flowers that bloom to-day, regardless of what may be ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... experience, but Santos-Dumont could not be deterred from continuing his experiments. The night of the very day which witnessed his fearful fall and the destruction of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for "Santos-Dumont No. 6." It showed the pluck and determination of the man as nothing ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... useless, merely because you yourself have never made use of an aeroplane? Or a pig useless, merely because you yourself do not eat pork?" There would be a great wagging of heads among the opponents, after which a third would pluck up courage to say: "But, surely, Socrates, nettles as we know them to-day are simply noxious plants that fulfil no function but to sting our children?" Socrates would say, after a moment's pause: "That certainly ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... was now come when man would find it absolutely in his power to stand on that 90th of latitude, and plant an impious right foot on the head of the earth—just as it had been given into the absolute power of Adam to stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of Knowledge; but, said he—his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of awful augury—just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one case by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the entire race to look out thenceforth ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... I said once more, wriggling to my feet. "You may think I'm a jolly noodle; just as you please. But your aunt has been civil to me and all that, and I don't believe a word you say about her, that's all, and never did. Every fellow's a bit off his pluck at night, and you may think it a fine sport to try your rubbish on me. I heard your aunt come upstairs before I fell asleep. And I'll bet you a level tanner she's in bed now. What's more, you can keep your blessed ghosts to yourself. It's a guilty ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... as of trouble he would not show. "The rascal has been doing something wrong," he said to himself; "he is afraid of being found out! And found out he is sure to be; he has not the brains to hide a thing! It's not murder—he ain't got the pluck for that; but it may be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... And believe me, that if thou art called unto my fiery ordeal, Christ will give thee grace and strength equal unto thy need. It is not much for them who love Christ, if they see Him stand beyond a little fire, to pluck up heart and go through the fire to Him. O good husband, take these as my dying words, and teach them to the child for the same, 'Christ without everything is an hundredfold better than everything without Christ!'" Those last ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... day's hunting ended. Tagrag and the rest declared I showed great pluck, and wanted me to try again; but "No," says I, "I ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Harry, on the other hand, thrashed Simpkins Minor thoroughly and scientifically on the first opportunity; but he did not thrash him extravagantly: he tempered pluck with mercy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... garden, watching Brodrick as he went his slow and happy rounds. Now and then he paused and straightened a border, or propped some untended plant, top-heavy with bloom, or pinned back some wild arm of a climbing rose flung out to pluck at him as he went by. He could not but be aware that since Gertrude Collett left there had been confusion and disorder in the place she ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... progressing by trenches, and were only 80 yards from the second Grivitza redoubt. 'Their fighting spirit and cheerful endurance of hardships are admirable,' we hear. And again, on the 26th: 'The Roumanians are pushing forward their works against the second redoubt with a perseverance and pluck worthy all praise, and which is the more remarkable as the Russians are doing absolutely nothing on their side.'[190] This contrast comes from the pen of the chronicler who told the story of the twenty Roumanians being ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... show them was not merely a man perched on a lofty wheel, as if riding on a soap-bubble; but he was also a perpetual object-lesson in what Holmes calls "genuine, solid old Teutonic pluck." When the soldier rides into danger he has comrades by his side, his country's cause to defend, his uniform to vindicate, and the bugle to cheer him on; but this solitary rider had neither military station, nor an ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ordinary pluck for a batsman to stand up to fast bowling and show good form after having been badly hit. For a time a great deal of determination, and the exercise of a considerable amount of will power, are necessary to conquer the natural inclination ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Christmas tree, And gems for the fair and gay; The lettered page for the mind bears he, And robes for the wintry day. And there are toys for the girls and boys; And eyes that years bedim Grow strangely bright, with a youthful light, As they pluck from the pendant limb. ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... king was as ready as any to believe it, so that when she came near him he avoided her, which made a very ridiculous scene. Leander, then leaving the chamber, went into the garden, and there, assuming his own shape, he boldly began to pluck the queen's cherries, apricots, strawberries, and flowers, though he knew she set such a high value on them, that it was as much as a man's life was worth to touch one. The gardeners, all amazed, came and told their majesties that Prince Leander was making havoc of all the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... renders men crusty and quarrelsome when hungry, is completely pacified, silenced, and put to rest; whereupon a host of honest, good-fellow qualities and kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm—disposing their possessor to laughter, good humor, and a thousand ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... sweet she is. In yond' carnation go and seek, There thou shalt find her lip and cheek; In that enamell'd pansy by, There thou shalt have her curious eye; In bloom of peach and rose's bud, There waves the streamer of her blood. —'Tis true, said I; and thereupon I went to pluck them one by one, To make of parts an union; But on a sudden all were gone. At which I stopp'd; Said Love, these be The true resemblances of thee; For as these flowers, thy joys must die; And in the turning of an eye; And all thy hopes of her must wither, Like ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... the silent understanding between it and himself. They now had races of all sorts and daily. Hurdles had given place to great hedges and ditches, which most of the animals distinguished themselves in leaping. Monty was still the hindmost in everything, yet showed his pluck in sticking to his saddle at all risks, ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... after finishing my number—ahem!—to write you a line, and to report myself (thank God) brown, well, robust, vigorous, open to fight any man in England of my weight, and growing a moustache. Any person of undoubted pluck, in want of a customer, may hear of me at the bar of Bleak House, where my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... he may; but now as I look at him, I wonder where the deuce the little fellow got his pluck from! Where did you, my little man, eh?" inquired the old sailor, turning bluffly ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... my companion, taking advantage of a pause, when I stopped to recover breath and to take a glass of wine, which he had just poured out—"that, sir, craving your pardon, is not owing to any want of old English pluck. It is the effect of this cursed system of banking. People do not travel with bags of gold as they did formerly. They have post notes and drafts on bankers. To rob a coach is like catching a crow; where you have ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... was not perfect: he had borne till it was impossible to bear more, and then, with his anger surging up, he had fought as a down-trodden English boy will sometimes fight; and in this case with the pluck and steadiness learned in many a school encounter, unknown to Mr Sibery or Mr Hippetts, the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... mystery of his "destruction" reveals itself completely in his formula, "The Contract solves all problems." The mystery of his "aedificatio" is in the strength of the social and political bourgeois reality with which he reconciled himself, the more readily in that he never managed to pluck from it any ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... even supposing you do, now and then, find the inexorable daily half-hour stand in the way of something else,—shall not the very thought of Him whose Voice you have deliberately resolved to hear daily at that fixed time, make you full amends? Shall you resolve to pluck so freely of the Tree of Knowledge, and yet begrudge the approach once a day to the Tree of Life, which grows in the midst of the Paradise of GOD? Shall ample time be found for works of fiction,—for the Review, and the Magazine, and the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... determination to get on, which, in my opinion, is the best capital a man can have. Money may be eaten through, but you don't eat through your determination. Why, what had I? The will to get on, and plenty of pluck. At this day du Tillet is a match for the greatest folks; little Popinot, the richest druggist of the Rue des Lombards, became a deputy, now he is in office.—Well, one of these free lances, as we say on the stock market, of the pen, or of the brush, is the only man in Paris ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... long enough to pluck from the backs of the fallen birds the long, silky plumes, which they carefully placed in a stiff leather valise, then hastened on to another part of the island where the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... ["Let us pluck life's sweets, 'tis for them we live: by and by we shall be ashes, a ghost, a mere subject of talk." —Persius, Sat., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "You'll pluck the spars out of her!" screamed Peters, in a frenzy now as his cherished masts whipped and cracked to the tremendous backward strain. Dolores ignored the crazed man, but a scornful smile wreathed about her lips, and her dark eyes gleamed. "Out with them!" ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... gone. Only the spade remained, and, armed with this, Archie, like a true hero, started to find a good place and build another house. Surely nowhere, save in the histories of the great Boston and Chicago fires, is record to be found of parallel pluck and determination! ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... HIS pluck and enterprise and engineering skill! 'Twas my old husband found the pass behind that big Red Hill. Before the engineer was grown we settled with our stock Behind that great big mountain chain, a line of range and rock — A line that kept us starving there in weary weeks ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... rusty-black, with a red tail. They bite like a little crab. Ants of an inch long are quite common. They do not—like the English ones—run scared away at the sight of a human being—not a bit of it; Australian ants have more PLUCK, and will turn and face you. Nay, more, should you RETREAT, they will run after you with all the impudence imaginable. Often when my organ of destructiveness has tempted me slightly to disturb with the end of my ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey |
