"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exceeded them all. His brain seemed to be in a state of boiling effervescence, and his tongue, with inconceivable rapidity, passed from subject to subject, but with an incoherence that was to me, at least, marvellous. For two hours he poured forth a verbal torrent, which was only suspended by sheer physical exhaustion. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism? ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... looked down, through the tops of the birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden. The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open, row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... during this day's journey, than buying bread and cheese from sheer hunger, at a little wooden tavern by the road-side, whose shelves were covered with glittering rows of bottles of brandy and mezcal. At some of the Indian huts also we bought various branches of pltanos, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked by disease. Cheerful and sociable when in health, they droop quickly when ill, and seem sometimes to die from sheer lack of the will to live. Bright and imaginative almost as the Kelts of Europe, their spirits are easily affected by superstitious dread. Authentic cases are known of a healthy Maori giving up the ghost through believing himself to be ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what they are to avoid. The opinion of the multitude about these matters is worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot be critics of music. 'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive ...
— Laws • Plato
... were timid and shy. They hung to William closely for a while, with hazy notions only of what to do with themselves, and from sheer embarrassment rebuffing the kindly advances of Miss Whimple and the maid. They began to feel more at home when Miss Whimple suggested a tour of the grounds, and a visit to the barn to see the cows, two fine Jerseys, and presently ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... said, many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be made available by a great actor, and fully understood by an acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly, but even of sheer stupidity has he contrived to give a most diverting and entertaining picture. There is also in his pieces a peculiar species of the farcical, which apparently seems to be introduced more arbitrarily, but which, however, is founded on imitation of some actual custom. This is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer behind them, the slow swells of the sea fell at distant intervals with solemn resonance, the only sound that broke the stillness of the night. This surge rising and falling on the land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep voice in the woman's soul, echoing her instinct ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... certain little wayside inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach must have stopt for lunch, and burnished pewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides" athirst with breezy progression. Here we stopt, for sheer admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute the especial purpose of our ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... absorbing work erases restlessness in mind and heart as effectively as a hot iron smooths out a rough-dried cloth. I urged her to further experiments and made a joke of her many mistakes, ofttimes when it was sheer waste of material. But what mattered that? Better to die softheaded, than hardhearted. I wanted the girl to be happy. Rather than be separated, I would let her make a bonfire of every bean, potato and barrel of flour in ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... risk of being pulled to pieces: and it is not so easy for a man to give his neighbour the slip without intending, whereas the scattered fragments of an army are apt to fall foul of one another, and to cause damage or incur it in sheer ignorance." To this Seuthes replied: "You reason well, and I will adopt your custom. I will furnish you with guides chosen from the oldest experts of the country, and I will myself follow with the cavalry ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,—I had spent out of sheer ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Mildmay, checking the exultant cheer which rose to the lips of his companions. "Sheer as close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant assertion, uttered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... piece with these modern ideas, that wretched woman's question! Six months ago Aglaya took a fancy to cut off her magnificent hair. Why, even I, when I was young, had nothing like it! The scissors were in her hand, and I had to go down on my knees and implore her... She did it, I know, from sheer mischief, to spite her mother, for she is a naughty, capricious girl, a real spoiled child spiteful and mischievous to a degree! And then Alexandra wanted to shave her head, not from caprice or mischief, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of sheer military genius and derringdo combined resulted in his all but single-handed winning of the fracas between Continental Hovercraft and Vacuum Tube Transport, and thus inflicting defeat upon none ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... then, someone will protest, this is sheer Unitarianism after all; you do not believe in the Jesus who is the object of the faith of Christendom, but in one who was only a man among men; you do not think of Him as very God of very God. Not so fast; we are busy with names again. Most of us have a tendency to think ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... it with fingers trembling with happy excitement. The coldness that had so often chilled her was all gone now from the dark eyes. Olga understood. Elizabeth had no more voice than a duckling, but she felt just then as if she could sing like a song sparrow from sheer happiness. It was such a wonderful thing to be happy! Elizabeth had never before known ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... with all their claws. We are throned on gold and founded upon marble. Death will some day find me, indeed, but I am young. Sire after sire of mine has died in Barbul-el-Sharnak or in Thek, but has left our dynasty laughing sheer in the face of Time from over ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... himself on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... its work but partially; there remained the itch of something still to be desired, an elevation yet unattained, and Dennis saw no other way up the sheer height than by an appeal to the barman ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... was the Cold Storage Building, where a hundred tons at ice were made daily. Save for the entrance, flanked by windows, and the fifth floor, designed for an ice skating rink, its walls were blank. Four corner towers set off the fifth, which rose from the centre sheer to a height of ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... work. She wrote, she travelled, she enlisted the aid of her numerous friends, she importuned the Executive, Heads of Departments, and members of Congress. She gave herself no rest, she flinched at no privations. She apparently existed by the sheer necessity of living for her object, and in almost total self-abnegation she encountered opposition, paralyzing delays, false promises, made only to be broken, and hypocritical advice, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a show, all right! It was impossible to fight the Earth ship. The enemy had to concentrate four magnetic rays on it to use their electric weapon, and they could only do that by sheer luck! ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... from sheer ignorance that you place yourself in such a position of danger. Sheathe your sword at once, sir, and let his Majesty pass. Do you not know that there are guards here at every turn? My royal master's guests will be well protected ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... turned to negotiation. Unhappily, M. d'Ivoy, in command of the Huguenot garrison, was not proof against the seductive offers made him. Disregarding the remonstrances of his companions in arms, who pointed to the fact that the enemy had from day to day, through discouragement or from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their assaults, he consented (on the thirty-first of August) to surrender Bourges to the army that had so long thundered at its gates. D'Ivoy returned to Orleans, but Conde, accusing him of open perfidy, refused to see him; while the Protestants of Bourges shared the usual ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... they 'killed' Him seems to give. How could death have power over the Prince of Life? That sounds as if, indeed, the 'sun were turned into darkness,' or as if fire became ice. That brief clause 'ye killed the Prince of Life' must have seemed sheer absurdity to the hearers whose hands were still red with the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... less with the events of the Saviour's life than with Redemption as a transaction between God and man; St. Paul and the Old Testament rather than the gospels were its inspiration. Moreover, the material was viewed not as penetrated by and revealing the spiritual, but as sheer impediment blocking out the vision of spiritual things. Hence the extremer Puritans were completely out of touch with the sensuous poetry of Christmas, a festival which, as we shall see, they actually suppressed when ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralyzed by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake, which is not possible. I do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only one which, before reflection, might seem admissible and which, in any case, could be but ephemeral would arise from the sight of the pain and misery that remain on the earth ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... man replied, defensively assuming the burden of all civilization, "we wouldn't abandon it. After all, we hate leaving the world on which we originated. But it's a long haul to Alpha Centauri—you know that—and a tremendously expensive one. Keeping up this place solely out of sentiment would be sheer waste—the people would never ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... down the roughness romantically; because he is writing, or reciting, for people of much the same way of thinking as his heroes, who are fierce chiefs quarrelling over captured women; and the whole plot is developed by sheer pressure of circumstance and character. Then on the Trojan side we have the figure of Hector, the true patriotic hero, who is naturally displeased with Paris for the abduction of Helen, which has brought a disastrous war ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... certain. In South Italy, Hannibal had either detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her population, and money to purchase it from abroad there was none. Instant victory was a matter of life ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... sacrifices, but also because he was supported by a body of the most remarkable men whom America has ever produced. Men who, though doubtless in a numerical minority, taking the country as a whole, by sheer weight of ability and energy, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... past, when she had seen him go down that same walk, and, as she then believed, out of her life. On that dark rainy afternoon of the long ago she had felt only pity as she gazed after his retreating form. She had gone into the house and cried bitterly, out of sheer sorrow of the hurt which she had inflicted upon her childhood's friend. Now all was changed. Devoted love shone through the windows of the clear gray eyes that followed Tom Gray's tall, broad-shouldered ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... difficulty that the men forced their way through the bushes, but they had not gone far when their leader stopped before a sheer wall of earth and stone, covered with densely growing shrubbery. Here he groped in the dim light, feeling his way with his hands before him, while at his heels came his followers. At last he separated a wall of bushes and disappeared within ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tended to give him an excellent opinion of himself,—and that he should possess one of the best and loveliest wives in the world, seemed to him quite in keeping with the usual course of things. The feeling that it was a sheer impossibility for her to ever believe a word against him, rose out of this inward self-satisfaction—this one flaw in his otherwise bright, honest, and lovable character—a flaw of which he himself was not aware. Now, when for the third time his fairy castle of perfect peace ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Sometimes the mortification and rage at a failure so contemptible assured success on a second trial, with apparently less expenditure of exertion than at first. Occasionally, however, I was forced to call for assistance from sheer exhaustion. The bridling was comparatively an easy matter; with his head so closely tied to the manger little scope was left for dodging. In the irritable condition I was now in, the most trifling opposition made ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... began to die down through sheer exhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows were allowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with the water and passed them into the back of the apartment. In this way every one obtained some, but no good effect ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... material; while those a little way off were rather firm, presenting the appearance of trees during heavy rain. Indeed that was the appearance of the whole scene—a country-side being drenched and rendered vague by a heavy downpour; but it was sheer heat that was descending, with never an atom of moisture ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... manner we progressed past Hincaster, Sedgwick, and Natland, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon reached Kendal, where the canal system curiously ends in a sheer wall. We were now practically of our destination, and after carefully bumping the nose of the canoe against the headwall of the canal, we ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... by Bludson and others, now appeared, armed with pistols and cutlasses; but the door leading into the hold was already broken down. Scores of half crazy negroes swarmed into the gangway, bearing back the whites by sheer weight of numbers, notwithstanding the weapons of the crew. Revolver and cutlass played an active part, but the slaves seemed absolutely indifferent ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... nose of a greyhound is thrust out sniffing through a hole. Dickon, the said son, is delighted to undo the padlock for a visitor who is 'square.' In an instant the long hounds leap up, half a dozen at a time, and I stagger backwards, forced by the sheer vigour of their caresses against the doorpost. Dickon cannot quell the uproarious pack: he kicks the door open, and away they scamper round and round the paddock at ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... disgusting things that, unfortunately, were in English this time. Looking at him in the candlelight she felt terrified of him and utterly unable to treat him as a sick man and not a wicked one. As she stood there stiff, unable through sheer disgust to get any nearer to him, he clutched at her nightgown and drew her nearer. She felt frantic; her nails cut into her hands as she gripped them together as if for the comforting feel ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was unlocked, and I alone knew it. The gay-cat and I begged for mercy. I joined in the pleading and wailing out of sheer cussedness, I suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that would have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that sordid money-grasper of a shack. When he became convinced that we didn't have any money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then lingered a moment ...
— The Road • Jack London
... League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were a man of unerring judgment and remarkable restraint, its sense ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... willingness of readers from around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... infliction as an attack of millions of sandflies on a hot sunny day will appreciate my feelings. About one o'clock we got as a diversion from our tormentors a great fright. A boat's crew of a gun-boat lying about a mile distant from our retreat landed, and out of sheer idleness set fire to the grass about a hundred yards from where ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... picturesque village with many schooners and boats of different kinds drawn up on the beach and in every direction fish nets drying. Above and behind towered the ruined castle of Orgueil, rising more than three hundred feet sheer from ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... straight to the issue, thinking that surely Mr. Percy would betray something here; perhaps would refuse to come to Oakley. In such case, Lucian felt that he should be tempted to spring upon and throttle him from sheer desperation. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and happy, we glided along, enjoying, not entranced, comfortable, but not sublime, content to drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tangling each other in silly talk out of mere wantonness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer effervescence of animal delight; falling into periodic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence of which we consulted our maps and our watches in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily accomplished than something would turn ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... philosopher, and friend of a crew of pirates? Bob Singleton himself, who tells the story with a frankness of extraordinary charm, confessing his willingness for evil courses as readily as his later repentance, is no less striking a personality. By sheer imagination the genius of Defoe makes Singleton's adventures, including the impossible journey across Central Africa, real and credible. The book is a model of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... compared to our poor dear Cartref Pellenig, and was made with such rapidity, speed, and neatness, our clerk of the works fell into fits of envy and jealousy. We had visited it very often without being discovered; but the children, from sheer mischief, used to carry off things of all kinds back to our cavern, and we were unable to prevent them, as they almost considered it an act of duty to do so. I would not let them go; besides, we might have been discovered, as, through the loss of different ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Francis. The citadel de Sao Miguel, lately blown up, has been restored; the extensive works of dressed freestone, carefully whitewashed, stand out conspicuously from the dark bush dotting the escarpment top. Here also is the Alto das Cruzes, the great cemetery, and the view from the sheer and far-jutting headland is admirable. A stroll over this cool and comparatively healthy escarpment ended by leaving a card ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... her ill-usage in childhood by the cousin who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly trusted her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told her domestic sorrows ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... castle of the uncourteous baron. His prowess asserted the cause of justice, and he bestowed the domains which he had won upon a nobler lord. For the sake of acquiring military fame he exposed himself to great dangers in the Holy Land, and, during his journey homeward, saved his life by sheer fighting in a tournament at Challon. At his "Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords and ladies "clad all in silk" renewed the faded glories of Arthur's Court, and kept Christmas with great magnificence. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... is Mexico; carrying into the twentieth century the romance of the Middle Ages, tinging her new civilisation still with the strong passions of the old, and refusing—whether unwisely, whether wisely, time shall show—to assimilate the doctrines of sheer commercialism whose votaries are hammering at her gates. But it is time now to review the cities and homes of this ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the books that have been are still extant. This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had not the "cleansing fires" removed mountains of rubbish from our midst, strong destructive measures would have become a necessity from sheer want of space in which to store ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... of marking negroes in the hand, I look upon it as one of the imaginary horrors of the times—delusion like spiritual rappings, got up out of sheer timidity of disposition, though I have heard of burning old women for witches in New England, and placing a scarlet letter on the bosom of some unhappy one, who had already sorrow ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. He baited the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... to quote Carlyle, is a "mountain of misery towering sheer up like a bleak Pisgah, with outlooks only into desolation, sand, salt water, and despair." The camp is in a "Devil's Punchbowl," stiflingly hot during nine months of the year, and subject to alternations of sandstorm and Simum, "without either seed, water, or trees," as ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the mishap to his brother coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning, unnerved Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second was not in anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer chance. The fact remained that it was so, and the fact remained ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... latter, judging from his barking, quite wild with the fun of it. Before the wind this sailing raft made good time, but as the craft refused to tack, the boys lowered the sail and poled back for another try, just as boys clamber up hill in winter for the sheer joy of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... their hulking personalities, bare of all the iridescence of potentiality, which we could have cast about them. Something of this iridescence may cling to unmarried lovers, in spite of themselves, but wedded bliss is a sheer offence. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sufficient to support the interior lining. Now that breech-loading and slow powders have been introduced, these conditions have been changed. The strains, though less severe, and less tending to explosive rupture, last longer, and are more fully transmitted through the body of the gun. Sheer strength of material now tells more, and signs have not been wanting that coils of wrought iron afford insufficient support to the lining. It becomes, therefore, advantageous to thicken the inner tube, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... told of her father's announcement that he had been converted and would have no more stealing done in the interest of the family larder. The fun became so fast and furious that it was obliged to end in sheer exhaustion; so when Tom came in an hour later, he was unable to revive it sufficiently to secure the stolen glass of beer which ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... on that part of the island to which this story refers is bordered by rocks and cliffs. The inland country immediately adjacent to the coast is level, flat, and bleak; it is only where the long stretch of dyke-enclosed fields terminates abruptly in a sheer descent, and the stranger sees the ocean creeping up the sands far below him, that he is aware on how great an elevation he has been. Here and there, as I have said, a cleft in the level land (thus running ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... past the raft, but a few feet from it. The bewildering glare had come from her roaring furnaces; and had not their doors been thrown open just when they were, she would have crashed at full speed into the raft, with such consequences as can easily be imagined. As it was she was barely able to sheer off in time, and a score of voices hurled back angry threats at the supposed crew of the raft, whose neglect to show a lantern had so nearly led ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... who from sheer ignorance add to the difficulties which the boy encounters in going to school. Failure to appreciate very small points may cause unnecessary suffering. To be the only boy in the school to wear combinations is not a distinction ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... cut off his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered "ST. GEORGE;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each shoulder, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the force. The seventy-five Irishmen and Americans made as much noise with their guns as a Boer commando of a thousand men usually did, and the result was that the cavalry wheeled about and returned into Ladysmith. Botha and his men, dropping out of their saddles from sheer exhaustion and hunger, came up from Colenso a short time after the cavalry had been driven back and made their memorable journey to Joubert's new headquarters at Glencoe. It was one of the few instances where the foreigners were of any really great ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... window looked on the little back yard I have before described; there was no ledge without,—nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... way and I in mine. I have not the least intention of throwing up the game, but I know that I am a cripple and shall never be anything else. I thought, a little time ago, that my branches up there would turn into a new crown, but that was sheer folly. They grow and strut and turn green and that is all they do. And then, besides, I feel that ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... was abhorrent to him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it, he found himself blindly distrusting his wife's fidelity, and blindly suspecting Mr. Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror of his own morbid fancy, he determined to take down the number of the house, and the name of the street in which it stood; and then, in justice to his wife, to return at once to the address which she had given him as the address at which ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... legs with my stick from the sheer exuberance of living, and nearly cry out. I behave as though the burden on my back had no weight, taking needless leaps, and overexerting myself a little; but an overexertion to which one is driven by inner content is easy to bear. In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... is a regular lion! After all, you will admit that it is sheer folly to come and attack him in his cage and pull his whiskers through the bars. And that is what you are doing. To be in love with his wife and pay court to her in Paris, when he is a hundred leagues from you, is all very well, but to install yourself in his house, within reach of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Panhandle is remarkably picturesque. The maze of islands, hundreds in number, of the Alexander Archipelago (area about 13,000 sq. m.) are remnants of a submerged mountain system; the islands rise 3000 to 5000 ft. above the sea, with luxuriantly wooded tops and bald, sheer sides scarred with marks of glacial action; the beachless coast is only a narrow ledge between the mountains and the sea, and unlike the coast of Norway, to which in outline it is not dissimilar, is bold, steep and craggy. Through the inner channels, sheltered from the Pacific ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... balloon seemed to climb that sheer, chalky precipice, frightening the sleepy sea-gulls from their nests, but never grazing against the wall, as it seemed as if it inevitably must. Slowly it reached the summit, paused a moment poised over the edge, then swept landward ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to seize the end of the broken rail. It held us for a moment, then gave, and for a moment I hung sheer ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... him and again coiled his rope. The big roan was once more surrounded by a crowd of his fellows, his ears erect, his long neck outstretched, his eyes watchful and distrustful. The man who was beginning to look upon lassoing as a sheer matter of sleight of hand made his loop again carefully, slowly, trying to convince himself that here was an easy matter, and that the next time he should succeed. And even as he began whirling it above his head, one half of both mind and ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed through the greater part ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shouted at the top of my compass; and like lightning the cords slid through our blistering hands, and with a tremendous shock the boat bounded on the sea's back. One mad sheer and plunge, one terrible strain on the tackles as we sunk in the trough of the waves, tugged upon by the towing breaker, and our knives severed the tackle ropes—we hazarded not unhooking the blocks—our oars were out, and the good boat headed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... (taking off his hat with feeling). "God bless ye, sir, and send ye many happy days, and well spent, with the pretty lady I see alongside; asking your pardon, miss, for parting pleasanter company—so I'll sheer off." ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... do so, he related openly before the little congregation, that, having conferred with some ministers on this very same subject of praying to the Saints, which they made out to be sheer idolatry, he had decided on the following Thursday to return to their ranks (he was a recent convert to Catholicism), and to abjure the Catholic religion. But, he added, that the sermon which he had just heard had instructed him so well, and had so fully dispersed all his doubts, that he took ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... perhaps anywhere else, and it is to the home that revival first needs to come. Revival is desperately needed in the church—in the country—in the world, but a revived church with unrevived homes would be sheer hypocrisy. It is the hardest place, the most costly, but the most necessary place ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... went, into the choir loft and then into the belfry itself. There they came to sheer hand to hand struggle. Kennedy tripped on a loose board and would have fallen backwards, if he had not been able to recover himself just in time. The crook, desperate, leaped for the ladder leading further up ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... watched the whole proceeding. He could only hold on to a sail and, by the sheer strength of his hands and arms, save himself from being carried overboard, as sea after sea swept over them. He strained his eyes until it seemed as though they would burst, to follow the movements of that boat on which their lives depended. It seemed but a mere speck on the waves. Suddenly ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... over range beyond range all covered with dark forest, that partly hides the inequalities of the ground, the trees in the hollows growing higher than those on the hills. On this side the rock is a sheer precipice, going down perpendicularly for more than three hundred feet; the face of the cliff all weathered white. The tops of the trees are far below, and as one looking down upon them hears the various cries and whistles of the birds come ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... This was sheer insubordination, no doubt; but he could not help that; it was not in his nature to be obedient. 'I know if I was chief, I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.' Decidedly, he was not afraid to be 'what club men call insubordinate, though, of all ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Peak of Rakata (2623 feet high) had been split from top to bottom, and about one-half of it, with all that part of the island lying to the northward, had been blown away, leaving a wall or almost sheer precipice which presented a ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have won victories for their generals, but mine have invariably got me into scrapes. It is true that they have always fought gallantly and bravely, and have generally got themselves out of their difficulties by sheer pluck." ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... of ordinary courtesies between the two cousins. They now passed each other on the street without recognition. A year previously Mr. Shackford had fallen ill, and Richard, aware of the inefficient domestic arrangements in Welch's Court, had gone to the house out of sheer pity. The old man was in bed, and weak with fever, but at seeing Richard he managed to raise ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... blunders with gratification. Yet the worst historian has a clearer view of the period he studies than the best of us can hope to form of that in which we live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had not men sufficient to fight all the guns, I ran them all over on one side, in order to make the first broadside as formidable as possible. I hoped thus to sink or disable our antagonist, or to make her sheer off. Should she, however, venture to board, I had no fear, as I felt certain that my men would not fear to encounter twice their number. They were full of fight, and the way they went about their preparations gave me every confidence that we should succeed. The brig approached ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... or two as a shot was fired from a revolver, but the Scot and Brierly and two of the Americans joined him and met the first onslaught bravely. The handful of men was forced back against the wall by sheer weight of numbers, but they struck out manfully with their fists, with chairs, and with their feet, with any object that came to hand, and men went down with bleeding heads. Peter was armed but he did not wish to kill any one—his idea being to make a successful retreat to the office, where the telephone ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Their head was like what a Chinese cap without bells would be; you might shake it, but it would not jingle. That which constitutes the essence of talent, the desire to show off one's thoughts to the best advantage, would have seemed to them sheer frivolity, like women's love of dress, which they denounced as a positive sin. This excessive abnegation of self, this too ready disposition to repulse what the world at large likes by an Abrenuntio tibi, Satana, is fatal to literature. It will be said, perhaps, that literature ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... auto' reached Ironwood Springs, where Rimrock had made his old camp, while the sun was still two hours high. From the Springs to the dome, that great "bust-up" of porphyry which stood square-topped and sheer against the sky, there was a single trail full of loose, shaly rocks that mounted up through a notch in the rim. They started up in silence, Rimrock leading the way and Hassayamp puffing along behind; but as they neared the heights, where the shattered base of the butte rose up from the mass ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the adventure would have been one of sheer delight, for who would not have enjoyed exploring unknown land—probably land, too, where only the Indian's foot and the feet of the wild creatures of the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... and bugles, Genappe was abandoned, and nothing thought of but headlong flight. The Prussians, under General Gneisenau, still followed and still slew; nor even when the Prussian infantry stopped in sheer exhaustion, was the pursuit given up. Gneisenau still pushed on with the cavalry; and by an ingenious stratagem, made the French believe that his infantry were still close on them, and scared them from every spot where they ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... A sheer, bald gratuity bestowed either upon States or individuals, based upon no better reason than supports the gift proposed in this bill, has never been claimed to be a provision for the general welfare. More than fifty years ago a surplus of public money in the Treasury was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... and did, forgive the past but she herself could not, and between her and Charley lay a gulf, to be spanned over on earth no more. And yet—how beautiful and stately she looked in her little white widow's cap, her sombre dress, and the frill of sheer white crape at ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... boy in the shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside, come suddenly on the little port with its few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... he said to me: "Come!" I longed to fly to Him with my body, but could not make up my mind to show myself naked. However, I was carried away by a force I could not control, I threw myself on my Saviour's neck, and felt that all was over between the world and me.' From that day, 'by sheer reasoning,' she has understood everything. Previously she thought that the religious life was a renunciation of the joys of marriage and enjoyment generally; now she understands its object. Jesus Christ desires that she should have relations with a priest; he is himself ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... struck me very forcibly. The first was the very large number of Belgian soldiers wounded only in the legs, and, secondly, many of the soldiers seem to have collapsed through sheer exhaustion. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... seeing that Jesus from sheer exhaustion had again fallen, reached him a bottle, saying, "Here, strengthen thyself." Jesus took it, but ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... banks the last part of the road, from Albany, is carried. You are seldom out of sight of the Caatskill range—blue in the distance or dark in the foreground—but the crowning glory of the river are the old cliffs, where the rock soars up sheer from the water's edge, with no more vegetation on its face than will grow in the crevices of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in trouble is to leap the barrier, where he produces a lively moment among the water-carriers and orange-boys and stage-carpenters. I once saw a bull, who had done very little execution in the arena, leap the barrier suddenly and toss an unfortunate carpenter from the gangway sheer into the ring. He picked himself up, laughed, saluted his friends, ran a little distance and fell, and was carried out dying. Fatal accidents are rarely mentioned in the newspapers, and it is considered not quite good form to ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... a third on both. At last, and whether by design or accident, the bows of the Good Hope were liberated; and the ever-ready Lawless, who had maintained his place at the helm through all the hurly-burly by sheer strength of body and a liberal use of the cold steel, instantly clapped her on the proper tack. The ship began to move once more forward on the stormy sea, its scuppers running blood, its deck heaped with fallen men, sprawling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then some of the gentlemen remembered to have heard of cases when dogs addicted to sheep- killing had destroyed whole flocks, as if in sheer wantonness, scarcely deigning to taste a morsel of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... expense of laundry cannot be met financially by saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer personal strength. One department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her position was in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, after a day's standing in the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at home till ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... doing the thing upon which MacKelvey would not count. Besides it was sheer madness to think of spending the night without shelter of any kind and he did not dare go immediately to Wanda's cave. Already he had come to think of that place, high above the treetops and as safely hidden as if it were below the earth's ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... was suppressing her gasp of sheer embarrassment, Sally admitted to herself that he was presentable, very presentable. His manner was altogether free from the self-conscious graciousness of an artist off-duty; moreover, he was very big, very comely, very much stamped ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the place, making him think that the alterations were a matter of taste or of mere personal pleasure, he would probably have given his assent at once, thinking nothing of the money. But all this was sheer display. Then he walked up and saw the flag waving over the Castle, indicating that he, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, was present there on his own soil. That was right. That was as it should be, because the flag was waving in compliance with an acknowledged ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... tried to get some information out of the old Third, but he just chewed and spat. When I asked the Second he says, 'Oh Hell, I can't stop to show ye now. Take a hand-lamp and go and see the run o' the pipes yerself.' I was nearly dropping for sheer sleepiness, but I made up my mind I would not give in. At breakfast time the Chief said we'd missed a tide and couldn't get away till midnight, and I thanked God. But it's a funny thing about a steamer, that the more time you have the more work there is to do. We had stores to get stowed away, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... discovered it. A wall built between it and the north would bar the sand and form a nook, wholly closed on two sides and partly closed at each end by stones. All this made itself plain to the mind of the young sculptor at once. With a laugh of sheer content, he turned to retrace his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... gipsying, or picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded him, by sighing regretfully at her absence,—who had danced with the rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... of the River of Shells—a tongue of land runs toward the sea between two long bays. Where the two bays join their waters, a mountain rises precipitous, its gray limestone rocks soaring sheer upwards, rugged and formidable. Within the shadow of the mountain is hidden a wonderful glen—a long tunnel between cliffs, densely arched over with trees and fringed with ferns; even at midday ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... developed so many more ideas than we could possibly use that the labour of deciding among them was the next thing to be done. Each of us stood out boldly for her own project,—even Francesca clinging, from sheer wilfulness, to her worthless and absurd itineraries,—until, in order to bring the matter to any sort of decision, somebody suggested that we consult Benella; which reminds me that you have not yet the pleasure of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ironical in our Ali Baba's cave to see sheer everydayness and hardness upon the screen, the audience dragged back to the street they have escaped. One of the inventions to bring the twilight of the gathering into brotherhood with the shadows on the screen is a simple thing ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... He was a great wit, and often said startling things. His religion sometimes bordered upon fanaticism. He was fearless and aggressive, and was no respecter of persons. It was not a rare thing for him to descend from the pulpit, and by sheer physical force subdue a disorderly member of his congregation. On one occasion, attending a dinner given by Governor Edwards, he requested the governor to "say grace," observing that the ceremony was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... is compelled to go, the usual course is to write to his wife and tell her that she is free to look out for another husband. Having made up his mind that he will die, I have no doubt that he often dies through sheer funk." (R. Logan JACK, Back Blocks of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... for ballad poetry (Spectators 70, 74, 85) was not a sheer novelty. He had a ringing English precedent in Sidney, whom he quotes. And he may have had one in Jonson; at least he thought he had. He cited Dryden and Dorset as collectors and readers of ballads; and he might have cited others. He found ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... the more influential Socialists anxious to make a clean sweep of private enterprise in industry. It is only the more important and fundamental industries, those which underlie all the processes of manufacturing, or furnish the sheer necessities of the people, that must necessarily be directly controlled by a Socialist society. "It may be granted," says Kautsky, "that small establishments will have a definite position in the future in many branches of industry that produce directly for human consumption, for machines manufacture ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... song of the wave, that rises to fall, Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass That has caught the soul of the moonlight. Caught and prisoned the moon-beams; Its edge is frittered to ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... serve if need be the delicate little old lady who, with her gray skirts fluttering and the little shawl streaming out behind, was coming at her tottering full speed in that direction. In her hand she held carefully a bit of sheer, yellow, old muslin, and her bright eyes were beaming with delight as she met the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Brother Boche, who on the other side of that ring of star-shells is conducting a precisely similar undertaking, is able, with all his perfect organisation and cast-iron methods, to achieve a result in any way superior to that which Thomas Atkins reaches by rule of thumb and sheer force of character. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... dear woman; I must not say another word, in honor. It was a most unfortunate affair—a sheer misunderstanding. He loved her all the time; I knew this, but you know her manner! He did not understand her flippant way; her keen, unsparing, and bitter wit; her devoted, passionate, proud, and breaking heart; and so there ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... uproar of hideous, maimed noises, and a tangle of harness chains, while Salty would sit on the high seat with the sun glare heavy in his eyes, dealing out curses of pacification in a level, uninterested voice until the clamor fell off from sheer exhaustion. There was a line of shallow graves' along that road; they used to count on dropping a man or two of every new gang of coolies brought out in the hot season. But when he lost his swamper, smitten without ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a thought of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... who have reached the highest note in their compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: "It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over—and not the faintest clue to how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... how this quarrel came up," exclaimed Priscilla, "and I don't care to know. But it seems a trumpery quarrel,—as to who should beg each other's pardon first, and all that kind of thing. Sheer and simple nonsense! Ask him to let it all be forgotten. I suppose he ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... herself. If nobody cared about her, what did it matter whether she was a dunce or not? So she said boldly that she had been learning nothing; and then the two Enderby girls lifted up their heads and stared at her in sheer amazement. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... manner. The number of shells—some of which were German make—the enemy wasted on that wood proclaimed an abundant supply of ammunition. To this persistent shelling we had nothing to reply, and at last from sheer exhaustion the enemy fire died down. With darkness he began again, and the feeble reply of three small mountain guns, which we knew were with the Runovka Cossack outpost, indicated that an attack was developing in ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... present time, they could be forgiven much because they were what they were. That is why, perhaps, the altogether fanciful picture of Penrose, propped on his pillows with his telephone at his bedside directing the embattled delegates at Chicago, who in sheer desperation turned to Warren G. Harding, is dwelt upon fondly by a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... against the circumstances which had driven him into outer darkness, of bitterness against his wife for saving her own comfort rather than share his downfall. At times he was not far from that state of sheer distraction which Mrs Edmund Yule preferred to suppose that he had reached. An extraordinary arrogance now and then possessed him; he stood amid his poor surroundings with the sensations of an outraged exile, and laughed aloud in furious ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and out of wildernesses of huge tree-trunks, many of which had great flat buttresses all round, which were difficult to climb over or round, while other trees seemed to be growing with their roots all above ground, green, snaky, twisted and involved roots, that necessitated sheer climbing before they could get by. Now and then they came to an opening where the trees had been burned down by volcanic fires, and here all was light and beauty in the evening sunshine. Again rocky crevices ran through the forest, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... down to the church, but could only move it a very little way; they returned, therefore, and told how they had tracked steps as great as if a cask bottom had been stamped down, leading from the beaten place up to beneath sheer rocks high up the valley, and along the track great stains of blood. From this men thought that the evil wight which had killed Glam had got such wounds as had sufficed for him, but none ever ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... hour after hour, until the future, which had looked so beautiful in the morning, gradually became overcast with clouds, and the poor lad was forced to stop and rest from sheer weariness. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... bridge the Langur monkeys (Semnopithecus entellus) venture out and in spite of vicious snaps secure a share of the booty. This picture of the monkeys securing a footing on the moving mass of turtle-backs is almost a diagram of sheer dexterity. It illustrates the spirit of adventure, the will to experiment, which is, we believe, the main motive-force in ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... he lived not long. Soredamors had such grief thereat that she could not live after him. For sheer grief she died when he died. Alis and Cliges both mourned for them as they were bound; but in time they ceased to mourn. For all mourning must come to an end; all things needs must cease. Ill is it to prolong mourning, for no good can come of it. The mourning has ceased; and for a long time ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... part of the week, people were compelled to be a little more quiet, from sheer exhaustion, but on New Year's Day, when there was a grand dinner at Rich Bar, the excitement broke out, if possible, worse than ever. The same scenes, in a more or less aggravated form, in proportion as the strength of the actors held out, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... more desperate battle with herself than she ever had been called upon to fight before. She did not now believe that they would be rescued, but that did not prevent her keeping up the battle as long as a single vestige of strength remained. It was sheer grit that kept Harriet Burrell afloat during that long, heart-breaking swim among the Atlantic ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... pillar, towering nearly twenty thousand feet into the sky, appeared to be a fairy vision, hanging between earth and heaven, and based upon the clouds. The solemn majesty and beauty of this white peak are together beyond the power of my poor pen to describe. There it rose straight and sheer — a glittering white glory, its crest piercing the very blue of heaven. As I gazed at it with that little girl I felt my whole heart lifted up with an indescribable emotion, and for a moment great ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... and there are times, as in The Snake Charmer when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and colour as to be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost repellent by sheer force of superfluous and elaborate suggestiveness. Last of all, in an epoch trained upon the passionate and subtle cadences of the Laureate and the large-moulded, ample, irresistible melodies of Mr. Swinburne, Dr. Hake chooses to deal in rhythms of the utmost ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were literally starving themselves to death—for starvation is by no means mere deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach is concerned, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... to a person in the sea, if he be struggling do not seize him then, but keep off for a few seconds till he gets quiet, for it is sheer madness to take hold of a man when he is struggling in the water, and if you do you run a ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... mice and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas. People do not like to lose their reputations ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... several miles to travel, most of which was through the gloomy woods; but there was no hesitation on the part of Nellie, who, but for the sturdy teaching of her parents, would have crouched down beside the log and sobbed in terror until she sank into slumber through sheer exhaustion. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... on the ground from sheer exhaustion, but Dick did not sleep long. He was awakened by a fresh burst of firing, and saw that it was still dark. He did not sleep again that night, although Albert failed to awake, and, asking for a rifle, bore a part ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... than given the extra thousand dollars the church insisted on paying him. The demands on him were so urgent, the perfect impossibility of providing men with work and so relieving them had been such a bar to giving help in that direction, that out of sheer necessity, as it seemed to him, Philip had given fully half of the thousand dollars reserved for his own salary. His entire expenses were reduced to the smallest possible amount. Everything above that went where it was absolutely ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... had to stop from sheer want of breath, and on entering the hut Kakaik informed us that it was through the exertions of Manilick that the fiddle had been recovered. He had paid half-a-dozen yards of cotton, the same number of strings ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the work, while she stood around and gave directions. I don't see how she had the strength to do it! When it was all done, she locked the door, walked to the station, took the train for New York, and came to Mrs. Durand." Joyce paused in her recital, from sheer lack of breath, and Cynthia ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... wounded lay along this ridge, which rises like the vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile—dropping sheer down on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and the Salt Lake on ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave |
