"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... army. At the first sound of the Prussian drums and bugles, Genappe was abandoned, and nothing thought of but headlong flight. The Prussians, under General Gneisenau, still followed and still slew; nor even when the Prussian infantry stopped in sheer exhaustion, was the pursuit given up. Gneisenau still pushed on with the cavalry; and by an ingenious stratagem, made the French believe that his infantry were still close on them, and scared them from every spot where they attempted to pause and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... universal stir among all the older occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all directions:—"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer alongside the Neptune!"—"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer alongside the Trident!"—"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation, are to expand and combine ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... partly doubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and partly ambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the Gothic bridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in sheer descent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which shot along the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and bleeding, and half drowned with the water which in their terror and surprise found easy way into their bodies. Casper withdrew satisfied, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... labor, I worked and I liked it. And so did my forefathers for generations before me. It is no job for weaklings, but neither was tree-felling, Indian fighting, road-making and the subduing of a wild continent to the hand of man as was done by the whole tribe of Americans for the sheer joy of ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... stopping her ears caused her inexpressible torture. The words of the young woman entered her mind, slow and plaintive, as an irritating ditty. At first, she fancied the murderers inflicted this kind of torture on her out of sheer diabolical cruelty. Her sole means of defence was to close her eyes, as soon as her niece knelt before her, then although she heard, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... this morning. Don't do it. Women are the devil, whether they marry you or jilt you. Do you realise that women wear black evening dresses that have to be hooked up in a hurry when you are late for the theatre, and that, out of sheer wanton malignity, the hooks and eyes on those dresses are also made ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... to evict us from this packet, then all I got to say is that they're triflin' with death." (Here Mr. Gibney thrust out his superb chest and thumped it with his horny fists, after the fashion of an enraged gorilla. This was sheer bluff, however, for while there was not a drop of craven blood in the Gibney veins, he realized that his footwork, in the event of battle, would be sadly deficient and he hesitated to wage a losing fight.) "I got my ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... over with the sheer joy of living raised their voices in a swelling chorus and flashed their gorgeous colors as they hopped and flitted through the thick foliage bedecked with myriads of drops of water that scintillated like the rarest of gems. Their ranks had been augmented during the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Latin's sweet, abysmal ignorance, his infantile amiability, his artless ambition, and heathenish innocence started the natural gladness of Richling's blood to effervescing anew every time they met, and, through the sheer impossibility of confiding any of his troubles to the Creole, made him think them smaller and lighter than they had just before appeared. The very light of Narcisse's countenance and beauty of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... incoherent, but, although nobody could understand a word, wild cheers greeted him at every pause in his discourse. He let loose a flood of eloquence, which being consistently endorsed by Judge Turner, was applauded until the speaker stopped from sheer exhaustion.[116] ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... a white middy blouse, and her brown, bare forearms flashed pleasantly in the spring sun. Her brown hair was disarranged by the wind that found a passway down the river, and her eyes shone with the sheer, unadorned love of living. Evidently she had just enjoyed a brisk paddle through the still stretches of the river. With sure, steady strokes she pushed the craft close to the little, board landing where Ben stood. She reached up to him, and in an ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... in power from 1720 to 1742 by sheer corruption—there was no other way open to him. He laughed openly at all talk of honesty and purity, and his influence lowered the whole tone of public life.[68] But he kept in touch with the middle classes, was ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... sat was a good instance of his taste. The silver-plate on it was really remarkable. There was a delightful Caroline tankard in the middle, placed there for the sheer pleasure of looking at it; there was a large silver cow with a lid in its back; there were four rat-tail spoons; the china was an extremely cheap Venetian crockery of brilliant designs and thick ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... The path had widened somewhat, and the dreadful sense of sheer depth below her was less insistent. Nevertheless, the way was far from easy, the steps being little more than deep notches in the cliff. It slanted inwards here however, and she set herself to achieve ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. He baited the hook, and whirling the sinker round in the air sent it ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... me in continuous joy, as waters invest a fish. I woke from a high dream. . . . And then, but for the fear of seeming cowardly, I would have extinguished my life as men blow out a candle. Vanity preserved me, sheer vanity!" He shrugged, spreading his hard lean hands. "Belhs Cavaliers, I grudged my enemies the pleasure of seeing me forgetful of valor and noble enterprises. And so, since then, I have served Heaven, in default ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... a perfectly level surface; but it is a term used by shipwrights, implying the area or imaginary surface contained within any particular outlines, as the plane of elevation, or sheer-draught, &c. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... keeps quiet in the spider's web, may for a moment forget its situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent peril. Thus he too "kicked against the pricks," hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience, as something that ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... at last it seemed to him that he had detected the error of his method. 'This,' he reflected, 'is an age of generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears' legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's pyretic saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... after a great debate, been fixed upon at a point in the heart of one of the hills. This was singularly well adapted for defense The hill itself was extremely precipitous on all sides. On one side, it fell sheer down. A goat track ran along the face of this precipice, to a point where the hill fell back, forming a sort of semicircular arena on the very face of the precipice. This plateau was some two acres in extent. Here quantities ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... pumps; but weakened by disease and famine, and overcome with fatigue, they were soon obliged to give up the almost hopeless task. Three days of horror passed away without any ship coming near them, while several of them died from sheer starvation. Fortunately, at last they discovered some gunpowder which, being in tin cases, was not spoilt, and with it they managed to fire the guns which had attracted ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... I laughed aloud from sheer excitement and the relief of finding some tangible thing to go on, for the oculist's argument struck me as ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Otway, of course it is literature, and of a very high order; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn and Southerne are literature; Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as legitimate literary curiosity. But there are depths below this where there is no excuse but sheer collectaneomania. Plays by people who never got into any schedule of English letters that ever was planned, dramatic nonentities, stage innocents massacred in their cradles, if only they were published ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... or perish. Beside the cascade there was a broken angle of the rocks, by which, if she could reach it, she might at least, she thought, climb to the upper part of the gorge. But the nearest foothold she could discover was ten feet above the basin, in sheer ascent. The ledge was dank and slippery with the dashing spray. Gain the top of it, however, she must. She ran up the embankment under the cliff. Here a sapling gave her support; she clung to a crevice or projection there; a drooping bough saved her from falling when the soft earth slid ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... representation in public places of the people and their desires, if public officers are really the servants of the people, and if political promises and professions have any binding force, our failure to give the relief so long awaited will be sheer recreancy. Nothing should intervene to distract our attention or disturb our effort, until this reform is accomplished ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Psmith. "He is now prone on his bed in the dormitory—there a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Jellicoe, the darling of the crew, faithful below he did his duty, but Comrade Dunster has broached him to. I have just been ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... an excellent workman, Mr. J. S. Lamson, at Bordentown, New Jersey. The boat was sharp at each end, and the lines from amidships to stem, and from amidships to stempost, were alike. She possessed that essential characteristic of seaworthiness, abundant sheer. The deck was pierced for a cockpit in the centre, which was six feet long and surrounded by a high combing to keep out water. The builder had done his best to make the Mayeta serve for rowing and sailing — a most difficult combination, and one ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... obtained no reward for his services, nor promise of further employment. No one in authority seemed to consider that he had been sent to sea in a rotten old ship, unfit for the service, and that she had foundered not from any fault of his, but through sheer old age and decrepitude. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... "Now you're talking sheer rubbish," she said lightly. "You remind me of that absurd play, The Chinese Honeymoon, when the bride took her bridesmaids with her." She laughed; she took Christine's hand and dragged her to her feet. "You ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... had no fear. She laughed in sheer happiness when they told her again and again of the beautiful ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... mental science. It may sound strange to say that monotony of its nature becomes novelty. But if any one will try the common experiment of saying some ordinary word such as "moon" or "man" about fifty times, he will find that the expression has become extraordinary by sheer repetition. A man has become a strange animal with a name as queer as that of the gnu; and the moon something monstrous like the moon-calf. Something of this magic of monotony is effected by the monotony ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... I thus attempt of my Oriental dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a killing sense ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... articles were at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation and relentless abuse would be without a rival among ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... her behind, and she could see their very forms no more. Then she cried out in agony, and still, with that power of self-excitement, which her sex possess in an eminent degree, she struggled on and on, beyond her strength till, at last, she fell down from sheer exhaustion, and the snow fell fast upon ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... is sheer rubbish. Stay here, rather, and put such thoughts out of your head. None of what you suppose is true. I can see for myself that it is not. Whatsoever you lack here, you have but to ask me for it. Here you love and are loved, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... parents as the one conducted by Reb Moshe, known by his piety and cabalistic knowledge, the favourite of the Rabbi. It must not be thought that Reb Moshe initiated his scholars into the first steps of learning; this would have been sheer waste of his capabilities—which ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation. A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean demanded, transcended ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... same gathering mist Dimming the eye that would be keen as death; The same fixed longing on the changeless face. Over the edge he vanished—came no more: There, as in childhood's dreams, upon that line, Without a parapet to shield the sense, Voidness went sheer down to oblivion: Over that ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Weakness, especially weakness in high places, is apt to fall back upon cruelty to supply false strength, and a government that found itself face to face with an entire country in arms, absolutely antagonistic to and defiant of its authority, may easily have felt itself driven by sheer despair into some such false and futile exhibitions of power. The chief sufferers by these statutes were not the inhabitants of the wilder districts, who, for the most part, escaped out of reach of its ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... 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
... the British under command of Sir John French. There followed a retreat that for sheer heroism and dogged determination has become one of the great battles of all time. The British, outflanked and outnumbered three to one, fought and marched without cessation for six days and nights. Time after time envelopment and disaster threatened ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a few thousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleep nights for hearing it turn over." He kicked the gravel in sheer impatience. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... a sheer mountain which in the beams of the tractor looked like a silver pyramid painted across ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... strong man made tender as a woman's by a power centering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experience of the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is the varioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathy that she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve to his plea that she promise to marry him when he should return and provide a home for her. Her more cautious mother secured ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... of her impelling presence, let come what might come. He could love her then; he could dare what he had never dared; he could surrender himself to the furious, insistent sweetness of a passion that was sheer bliss in its expression. He could imagine kisses on the red lips that were not ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... girl who was probably going to make a failure of it. He asked himself what could have happened to her. Had she lost courage? Or had her physical strength, not yet fully renewed, given way under the stress? Or had she, in sheer disgust for the turn the affair had been given by that brute Bushwick, thrown up the whole business? He looked round for Mrs. Westangle; she was not there; he conjectured—he could only conjecture—that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He does not propel himself along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow, for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... It was hollow, and within its shelter lived an old Vulture, named Grey-pate, whose hard fortune it was to have lost both eyes and talons. The birds that roosted in the tree made subscriptions from their own store, out of sheer pity for the poor fellow, and by that means he managed to live. One day, when the old birds were gone, Long-ear, the Cat, came there to get a meal of the nestlings; and they, alarmed at perceiving him, set up a chirruping ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the water in the schooner's hold had so far lowered, as to leave a vacant space of quite a foot between the lowest part of the deck and its surface. Toward the two extremities of the vessel this space necessarily was much increased, in consequence of the sheer. Men were now sent into the hatchway with orders to hook on to the flour-barrels—a whip having been rigged in readiness to hoist them on deck. At the same time gangs were sent to the pumps, though Spike still ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasing to me." There was plenty of wit dressed in rags drifting about the London of that day. Men of genius slept on bulkheads and beneath arches, and starved for want of a guinea, or haunted low taverns, or paced St. James's Square all night in impecunious couples for sheer need of a lodging, cheering each other's supperless mood with political conversations and declarations that, let come what might come, they would never desert the Ministry. But Goldsmith unearthed men of genius whose names nobody ever heard ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Miss Warfield; and, landing, he spent the afternoon with others and saw nothing of her. But after dinner was over, he spoke to her, inviting her to walk; and she came, silently. A strange evening promenade that was: they took a path close on the sheer brink of the cliffs, so narrow that one must go behind the other. Pinckney had thought at first she might be frightened, with the rough path, and the steepness of the rocks, and the breakers churning at their base; ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself together. These nervous women have often an ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... presence of objects before he touched them. It was a pleasure to him to rock thus through a world of things, carried on the flood in a sort of blood-prescience. He did not think much or trouble much. So long as he kept this sheer immediacy of blood-contact with the substantial world he was happy, he wanted no intervention of visual consciousness. In this state there was a certain rich positivity, bordering sometimes on rapture. Life seemed to move in him like a tide lapping, and advancing, enveloping all things ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... In sheer mercy to the poor creature, Amelius refused to encourage her delusion. "Even supposing such a thing could happen," he objected, "how am I to know the lost girl? You can't describe her to me; you have not seen her since she was a child. Do you know anything of what happened at the time—I ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... drawn from every hole and corner in the barn and threshing-floor, but only two brown ones—and they were quite young still—and no mice. But, as soon as the rat-catcher had gone, the old tom-cat died of sheer old age and laziness. He was buried in the garden with great pomp and ceremony. But, even before he was committed to the grave, Jens brought a young cat over from the keeper's; and there was every reason to hope that she was of a different sort ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... some nine hundred beds, which were always so full that the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself with extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer necessity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its position in London, and the fact that its school was only just emerging ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... four or five miles when the decision was reached, and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that Andy Green would ride for the ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... shadow: small wonder then if her nature was blighted and her view of life soured. Lady Gore smiled to herself, a little wistfully perhaps, as she tried to put herself in Miss Martin's place—of all mental operations one of the most difficult to achieve successfully. Lady Gore's sheer power of sympathy might enable her to get nearer to it than many people, but still she inevitably reckoned up the balance, after the fashion of our kind, seeing only one side of the scale and not knowing ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... MacRae and I scaled the steep bank at the west end of the cliff and threw ourselves, panting, on the level that ran up to the sheer drop-off. When we had regained the breath we'd lost on that Mansard-roof climb we drew near to the edge, where we could stare into the valley three hundred feet below while we made us a cigarette ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of working-men, including the obstructionists, seemed stupified; they looked at one another with open-eyed and open-mouthed wonder, and whispered their amazement and perplexity. Then the vicar, struck dumb for the moment by sheer astonishment, after exchanging with his brother clergyman on the platform a glance of deep thankfulness, rose, and addressing William Foster, said, "I cannot tell you, my friend, how truly glad I am to find that you have ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... of genius that has been seen for many a day; so good, indeed, that most men are taken by it for the first quarter of an hour at the least. But for real unmistakable genius,—for that glorious fulness of power which knocks a man down at a blow for sheer admiration, and then makes him rush into the arms of the knocker-down, and swear eternal friendship with him for sheer delight; the "Biglow ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... yawned prodigiously where its rock gates stood open to grant the party admission to the sanctum of the hills. Sheer granite walls, austere and frowning, rose in sculptured immensity on either side, but the trail under foot was scored between some scattered wild-peach shrubs, interspersed with occasional bright-green clumps of manzanita. The air was redolent of warmth and fragrance that might ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... be uttered by a poor youth who had gone mad from love. Our misogynist—and may I venture to include the experienced married man?—will probably retort, that all love between young folks is not only folly but sheer madness; and he will be the more confirmed in this opinion when he learns that, according to certain grave Persian writers, Layla was really of a swarthy visage, and far from being the beauty her infatuated ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... addicted to gambling, staking everything they possess, and continuing at it night and day, until compelled to desist by sheer hunger, or by the loss of all. I could not understand their game; we, in fact, used our best endeavours to abolish the pernicious custom, and, to avoid countenancing it, were as seldom present as possible. It is played with a few small sticks, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the city, where everything is manufactured or sold ready-made, a person simply goes to the store and buys whatever he needs. In the country this cannot be done, and one is driven by sheer necessity to devise ways and means of supplying his needs, himself. He simply has to invent or devise a remedy. Necessity is ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... of every citizen. By some strange freak it spared the entire coast north of Santa Barbara. Whether it had some disinclination to approach saltwater—it had been notably slow in its original advance westward—or whether it was sheer accident, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and San Francisco remained untouched as the cities to the south and east were buried under grassy avalanches. This odd mercy raised queer hopes in some: perhaps their town or their ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... a narrow dike which he had walled across with lava blocks, a tunnel beneath this obstruction affording the only exit toward the mountains. On the ocean front he had also built his forts of stone, although the sea boiled five hundred feet below and the plateau ended in an almost sheer precipice. Deep ravines on either side of the stronghold bent around it to the rocky neck, thus making the place almost an island. In these ravines were narrow paths by which his people descended to their boats, secreted on the dark and winding ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... way, hastes night and day through rain and sunlight, careless of vigils or of dangers, but, safe at home and seated before the fire, is seized by extreme lassitude and can hardly drag himself to bed, so France, the widow of Caesar, suddenly felt her wound. She fell through sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into a coma so profound that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped about her a burial shroud. The veterans, their hair whitened in service, returned exhausted, and the hearths of deserted castles ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the stricken poor. The mothers who slept exhausted while I watched beside their darlings' bedsides will never, I like to fancy, think over harshly of the heretic whose hand was as tender and often more skilful than their own. I think Mother Nature meant me for a nurse, for I take a sheer delight in nursing anyone, provided only that there is peril in the sickness, so that there is the strange and solemn feeling of the struggle between the human skill one wields and the supreme enemy, Death. There is a strange fascination in fighting ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... The raider tried to sheer Diablo off closer under the wall, to make the slope where his companion had escaped. But Diablo was uncontrollable. He was running wild, with breaking gait. Closer and closer crept that white, smoothly gliding, beautiful machine ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... is what you see: To mix, and sympathise, and to be free, Is the true sociality. These meet, like marbles mingled in a bag, And the net outcome, friend, is friction, fag, Boredom, and sheer banality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... to be the secret, then?" asked Charley, with a look half abstracted, half quizzical. "Terror—sheer terror. You startled the conscience. You made defects in the circumstantial evidence, the imminent problems of our own salvation. You put us all on trial. We were under the lash of fear. If we parsons could only do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the box away with his foot, and the moment he did this I knew that my strength was not great enough to hold him; but I remembered that he had said I would not fail him, and I put all my grim vigour into my fibres and held by sheer will. Then the soul shouted to me to ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... after long years of arduous preparation, had to be assumed by black men without personal or formal fitness. The stronger and more aggressive natures pushed themselves into these higher callings by sheer force of untutored energy and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... from the English prayer meeting Sabbath evening, February 18th, in that desponding state that sometimes follows intense and protracted desire, when its object is not attained. At such times, the sensibilities seem paralyzed, and emotion dies of sheer exhaustion. The pupils had retired; so also had Miss Rice; and she was left alone. Her thoughts brooded over the state of her charge, but she had no strength to rise and carry those precious souls to Christ. She could not sleep, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... introduced himself as Mr. Smithwick. He was not at all the kind of gentleman I had expected to see. By some perversity he had become fixed in my imagination as a very tall gentleman with fair curled hair. Now this was sheer foolishness, but it had a disastrous effect on the interview. My mind, instead of gathering itself up into an attitude for receiving information about the land question, would go off wool-gathering in speculation ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... fell in with them, and, getting into the midst of them, fired at a Moorish ship which was next him; but the men-of-war, taking the alarm, bore down upon Kid, and, firing upon him, obliged him to sheer off, he not being strong enough to contend with them. Now he had begun hostilities he resolved to go on, and therefore he went and cruised along the coast of Malabar. The first prize he met was a small vessel belonging to Aden; the vessel was Moorish, and ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... and it also involves some temerity. It is like gathering mushrooms; perhaps they are edible, perhaps they are poisonous; for the various fungi look very much alike. If it happens to be right, it is right; if it happens to be wrong, it is sheer disaster. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... frigate we escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. Then we was chased two days and a night by a French privateer, firing between squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That's how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... lightly touched them as the three leaped chamois-like from one precarious foothold to the next. Dizzy and terrifying was the way that Om-at chose across the summit as he led them around the shoulder of a towering crag that rose a sheer two thousand feet of perpendicular rock above a tumbling river. And when at last they stood upon comparatively level ground again Om-at turned and looked at them both intently and especially at Tarzan ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but much of it had an under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field of sheer nonsense. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Mr. Jones," she said sweetly. "It was a sheer accident. He was taken by surprise. In his place I would have emptied ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... "It is sheer fanaticism!" said Mrs. Randolph. "I cannot let her encourage it. If I did, she would not be fit for anything by and by. She is ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the bitch of ruin Unspoken and of voiceless death, kept watch; And she led thee away from the blue shore With lilies sown, to the salt marsh of terror And the sheer precipice of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... and small shot charge him, board him thwart the hawse, on the bow, midships, or, rather than fail, on his quarter; or make fast your grapplings to his close-fights and sheer off' [which would tear his ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... time to see Joe's 'ead disappear. Then I nipped up, and arter I 'ad told 'im part of wot I thought about 'im I gave 'im the letter and told 'im to sheer off. ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... to his men the snarling and snapping of the demon wolves distinctly expressed laughter, derision of the most sinister kind. They were not only threatening him, they were laughing at him, and his bones continued to crumble through sheer weakness and fear. It was not worth while for him to fire at any of the sounds. The bullet might go through a wolf, but it would not hurt him, it would merely increase his ferocity and make him all the more hungry for the blood ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... every night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming. And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable to beat back the suffocating ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... of boat, called traineras, is built especially for taking sardine and anchovy, although in fine weather they often engage in the same fishery as the larger boats. The traineras are light and shapely vessels, with a graceful sheer and curved stem and stern posts. The keel is much cambered, and the bottom is flat and has considerable hollow. The usual dimensions vary between: Length, 38 feet to 42 feet; beam, 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... proceed from the elves' Maypole—an orchestra in itself—and that was my sausage-stick. I never would have believed that so much could have come from it; but much, of course, depended on what hands it fell into. I became very much agitated, and I wept, as a little mouse can weep, from sheer pleasure. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... and others, fourteen. But it were a great pity, that versification so faulty and unsuitable should ever be imitated. About half of the said lines, as they appear in the poet's royal octave, or "the First Complete American, from the Last London Edition," are as sheer prose as can be written, it being quite impossible to read them into any proper rhythm. The poem being designed for children, the measure should have been reduced to iambic trimeter, and made exact at that. The ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... exactly the right moment—before taking the trouble to read vol i. This, I say, is just permissible with a novel, where vol. iii. has a meaning, even for those who have not read the earlier part of the story; but with a scientific book, it is sheer insanity. You will find the latter part hopelessly unintelligible, if you read it before ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height, looked down upon Miss Beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... In sheer desperation he commenced to climb up the wet rocks down which he had tumbled. The ankle hurt not a little, yet in his excitement the youth scarcely noticed the pain. His one thought was to get out of the cave before another ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... glairy creatures pick up this science? We are told that the Mollusc derives from the Worm. One day, the Worm, rendered frisky by the sun, emancipated itself, brandished its tail and twisted it into a corkscrew for sheer glee. There and then the plan of the future ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is a group problem. Considering the mutual interdependence and the diversity of activities in human society, to make the generalization that one sex is superior to the other is on a par with saying that roots and branches are superior to trunks and leaves. It is sheer foolishness. Yet oceans of ink have flowed in attempts to establish one or the other ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the sexes—an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls—the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them. Susan listened with ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... And, being espied by the enemy and pursued, from this danger he was rescued by a strong south wind, which sprang up and raised so high a sea, that the enemy's galleys could make little way. But his own ships were driving before it upon a lee shore of cliffs and rocks running sheer to the water, where there was no hope of escape, when all of a sudden the wind turned about to south-west, and blew from land to the main sea, where Antony, now sailing in security, saw the coast all covered with the wreck of the enemy's fleet. For hither the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stuff," David Linton said. "It's chiefly packing cases, truly, Jim. But we had plenty of time to plane it up and make it look decent. Bob ran an electric light into the workshop and we worked every night. I believe it's kept us from getting influenza from sheer boredom, with all you ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... perseverance, but in our short daily journeys we made but trifling way against it." The effects of severe toil were painfully evident. The men lost the muscular jerk with the oars. Their arms were nerveless, their faces haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly spent. From sheer weariness they fell asleep at the oar. No murmur, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Macias! I'm clean-shaven, eh? Not a hair on my chin? Do you know why? Well, I'll tell you! You see I get mad easy as hell; and when there's nobody to pick on, I pull my hair until my temper passes. If I hadn't pulled my beard hair by hair, I'd have died a long time ago from sheer anger!" ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... such glorious colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a shaduf to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or stony hills on each side. Grand beyond ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... workhouse, to which the honest pauper may have recourse. Hence with tens of thousands it is literally a case of "steal or starve." I suppose that nine-tenths of the thefts and robberies, besides a large proposition of the other crimes committed in India, are prompted by sheer starvation, and until the cause be removed, it will be in vain to look for a diminution of the evil, multiply our police and soldiery ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... steadily he regarded his position, the more was he appalled by the outlook. Why, this meant downright slavery! He had married a woman so horribly like himself in several points that his only hope lay in overcoming her by sheer violence. A thoroughly good and well-meaning woman, an excellent housekeeper, the kind of wife to do him credit and improve his social position; but self-willed, pertinacious, and probably thinking herself his superior in every respect. He had ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... intelligent, he was disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in portions, like soldier's rations, and would have lost courage but for his little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working hard at the rudiments of L'homond's Grammar and Alexandre's Dictionary, to help the child struggle with his 'De Viris'. Unfortunate indeed is he who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification of sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy and would destroy both if ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... George Stokes had snored in that characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by George Stokes' nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... guest. He had grown so indolent, and gave himself so many airs, that Moodie was heartily sick of his company, and gave him many gentle hints to change his quarters; but our guest was determined to take no hint. For some reason best known to himself, perhaps out of sheer contradiction, which formed one great element in his character, he seemed obstinately bent ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... "Better sheer off and give it a wide berth, then," counseled his chum. "If it were the captain or the chief, you would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and had prepared these articles for removal, when a sudden revolution occasioned the disarming of his Indian laborers, who for some time had served for a protection, and all further operations were suspended, as longer residence in that exposed region without arms was sheer madness. It was at that time that Dr. Le Plongeon wrote the following Memorial to the Mexican President, Senor Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, which is given nearly entire, as it makes a statement of his claims ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... soul ached with the futility of his labor. Waking, he never lost faith in the certainty of finding the place. He now knew the tramp well enough to appreciate that the other had not risked his own life and nearly killed one of his pursuers through sheer bravado, or fear, or personal hatred. Something more potent was beneath the tramp's motives—some incentive that was almost a religion. So far, Winthrop was correct. He erred, however, in supposing Overland to be obsessed with a ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... her dainty little white pumps until they were very nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... his eyes wearily, but by sheer strength of will Prince recalled him from the doze ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... dance and dinner lists are made out, there is always some thoughtless hostess—and sometimes a mischievous one; and the chances were that he and Mrs. Jack Ruthven would collide, either through the forgetfulness or malice of somebody or, through sheer hazard, at some large affair where Destiny and Fate work busily together in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... lord, the devil a more nor less, and that the money you see here is no more yours nor it is mine! It belongs to the land it came from. Ay, ay, stamp away, and go red in the face: you must hear the truth, whether you like it or no. The place we're living in is going to rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. There's not a hedge on the estate; there isn't a gate that could be called a gate; the holes the people live in isn't good enough for badgers; there's no water for the mill at the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with wet—we're ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... work, and have just been looking over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But really such things can ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 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 ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... attention to the dictates of conscience and by sheer force of will the Wang school of philosophers succeeded in reaching a standard of attainment that served to make them models for posterity. The integrity of heart preached by his followers in Japan has become a national heritage of which all Japanese are proud. In the West, ethics has become too ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... shouted Mildmay, checking the exultant cheer which rose to the lips of his companions. "Sheer as close alongside the barque as you can go, Sir Reginald, and give me a chance to get our heaving line on board. Then, as soon as I wave my hand, go ahead gently until you have brought a strain upon the hawser, when you may increase the speed to about twelve knots—not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a sheer dry precipice, which connects the American and Horseshoe Falls. Midway between both is a wooden hut, the residence of the guide to the Cave of the Winds, and from the hut a winding staircase, called Biddle's Stair, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the first, definitely. He didn't know he wanted the second. The fact that he didn't know it was Stella Kamps' fault. She had kept his boyhood girlless, year and year, by sheer force of her own love for him, and need of him, and by the charm and magnetism that were hers. She had been deprived of a more legitimate outlet for these emotions. Concentrated on the boy, they had sufficed for him. The Marvin girls ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... that I saw yesterday were remarkably clean and tidy; to be sure, it was Sunday. The whole day, till quite late in the afternoon, the house was surrounded by a crowd of our poor dependents, waiting to catch a glimpse of Mr. ——, myself, or the children; and until, from sheer weariness, I was obliged to shut the doors, an incessant stream poured in and out, whose various modes of salutation, greeting, and welcome were more grotesque and pathetic at the same time than anything you can imagine. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... also he was the master, the conqueror, the proud, free, rich young aristocrat, for whom all the rest of humanity existed. And Jimmie Higgins was a poor little worm of a proletarian, with nothing but his labour-power to sell, trying by sheer force of his will to lift himself out ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... while the ear may be passive to the strokes of a hammer, and even endure them with some degree of equanimity, to music it cannot be passive. The noted author relates having sat through an Italian opera, till, from sheer pain, he rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace himself with sounds which he was not obliged to follow, and thus get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! According ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... self-acknowledgedly for the mere pleasure of grappling with the difficulties they opposed to me. Often, too, in the most terrific tempests, when sea and sky have met in one black and threatening mass, and when the startled fishermen have in vain attempted to dissuade me from my purpose, have I ventured, in sheer bravado, out of sight of land, and unaccompanied by a human soul. Then, when wind and tide have been against me on my return, have I, with my simple sculls alone, caused my faithful bark to leap through the foaming brine as though ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... daughters," returned the superintendent, and the expression of his face changed so swiftly and so strangely that Jessie did not feel that she could make any further comment upon the thought that had stabbed her mind. After all, it seemed like sheer curiosity on her part to ask the man about ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... said, "sheer weakness. But I think it was pardonable. I saw, now that your sister was married, that the days of your old irresponsible flirtations were over, and that you would henceforth regard proposals of marriage as much more serious things than hitherto. Consequently you might marry any day, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... this adventure from sheer lack of purpose. But whither was it leading her? She was a married woman, with her shackles heavy upon her. Yet she walked that night with a stranger, as one who owned her freedom. The silence between them was intimate and wonderful, the silence which only kindred spirits ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine—and you will remember that this was our definition—will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we live ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... on up the ascent, at length coming into open light upon a small plateau marked by huge, rugged, weather-chipped stones. On the eastern side was a rocky promontory, and close to the edge of this cliff, an hundred feet in sheer descent, rose a gnarled, time and tempest-twisted chestnut tree. Here the borderman laid down his rifle and knapsack, and, half-reclining against the tree, settled himself ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... out of sheer naughtiness. But she was not. She did not know that he collected rents. She knew that he was a card, a figure, a celebrity; and that was all. It is strange how the knowledge of even the cleverest woman will confine itself to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... on, an Indian hunter drew near on horseback, but Nakpa did not pause or slacken her pace. On she fled through the long dry grass of the river bottoms, while her babies slept again from sheer exhaustion. Toward sunset, she entered the Sioux camp amid great excitement, for some one had spied her afar off, and the boys and ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... 194, 196. Here again we have followed the early Quartos in reading 'Brook' instead of 'Broome,' the name given by Ff Q3. That the former was the original name is proved by the jest in II. 2. 136, where the Folios make sheer nonsense. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... mountains. Capable (somehow) of bearing that seed, yet oppressed by the energy of Rudra (for Agni is identical with Rudra), she failed to hold that seed longer in consequence of its burning energy. After she had cast it off, through sheer distress, that blazing seed having the splendour of fire, O perpetuator of Bhrigu's race, Agni saw her, and asked that foremost of streams, 'Is it all right with the foetus thou hast cast off? Of what complexion has it been, O goddess? Of what form does it look? With ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... what it all means, sir, and I am not at all astonished. You have wished to do something out of sheer goodness of heart, and you have ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... does not displease him. Lord Cedric says thou shalt talk to him the balance of his days." The maid shrunk further from him in sheer loathing. At the moment Janet entered, and the rough Scot turned upon her, and in ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... worth the living, a poor fame Scarce worth the winning, in a wretched land, Where fear and pain go upon either hand, As toward the end men fare without an aim Unto the dull grey dark from whence they came: Let them alone, the unshadowed sheer rocks stand Over the twilight graves of that poor band, Who count so little ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... was pompous and ponderous, lived in an expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian angel of their frail lives ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... don't pipe your eye and look squally when I sheer off as you used to, and that's a comfort. I like to leave port in fair weather and have a jolly send-off all round. Specially this time, for it will be a year or more before we drop anchor here again,' answered Emil, pushing his cap back, and glancing about him as if he loved ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time, there was no malice in it—just the delight in making a strong man discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to satisfy a hunger ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the moment,—the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I smuggled him into the shed through the alley, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the man in black, 'a dangerous personage; that poem of his cuts both ways; and then there was Pulci, that Morgante of his cuts both ways, or rather one way, and that sheer against us; and then there was Aretino, who dealt so hard with the poveri frati; all writers, at least Italian ones, are not lickspittles. And then in Spain,—'tis true, Lope de Vega and Calderon were most inordinate lickspittles; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... swept along like bubbles in a flood. "Fair play, says we—English fair play—hurrah!" And those inside waved their hands, and those that were outside tossed up their caps, in sheer delight ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... all-consuming war; memories of many a careless hour treasured now as exquisite relics are treasured, of many a good fellow who would never again load his pipe from Paul Mario's capacious, celebrated and hospitable tobacco jar, as he, Don, was doing; of days of sheer indolent joy, of nights of ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the quick-witted salvage in the doing, and wanted to cry out in sheer enthusiasm when it was done. Then, in the light from the furnace doors, she saw the face of the chief actor: it was the face of the man with the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... way; and it presently happened that her lover sued for her, but was too poor for the proud wealthy father, who tauntingly dismissed him till the day when he too should be master of as large herds as the old herdsman. From this time forwards had the old herdsman no luck more, but sheer misfortune. Report ran that a fiery dragon was seen passing o' nights over his grounds; and his substance decayed. The poor swain was now as rich, and again sued for his beloved, whom he obtained. Upon the wedding-day a snake came gliding into the room, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... altitude, 1700 ft.; area, 87 sq. m.; maximum depth, 1020 ft.; mean depth, 660 ft.), are only inhabited by nomad Telenghites or Teleuts. The shores of the lake — reminding a visitor somewhat of the Swiss lake of Lucerne — rise almost sheer to over 6000 ft. and are too wild to accommodate a numerous population. From this lake issues the Biya, which joins the Katun at Biysk, and then meanders through the beautiful prairies of the north-west of the Altai. Farther north the Altai highlands are continued in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... enemy in distress is due was that of a Georgian behind the wall. In one of the first charges made during the day a Federal had fallen, and to protect himself as much as possible from the bullets of his enemies, he had by sheer force of will pulled his body along until he had neared the wall. Then he failed through pure exhaustion. From loss of blood and the exposure of the sun's rays, he called loudly for water. "Oh, somebody bring me a drink of water!—water! water!!" was the piteous appeals heard ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... June 12, and for forty-eight hours there was no disorder. German siege guns were placed on the sheer precipice of East Rock, ranged alongside the grey shaft of the Soldiers' Monument, dominating the city; machine-guns were set up at the four corners of the Green, at points surrounding the college buildings, and at other strategic ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... mis-culture and perversity, which is just as bad or still worse. According to that system the best thing for a man to do is to marry of set purpose out of sheer obligingness and courtesy. And certainly for such folk it must be no less convenient than entertaining, to live out their lives together in a state of mutual contempt. Women especially are capable of acquiring a genuine passion for marriage; and when one of them finds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... all parts of the book is manifest the agony it cost the writers to find two words that would rhyme—-more or less; and so often as this arduous feat is achieved, the poetic athlete appears to pause awhile from sheer exhaustion, panting heavily for breath. Let us now read, for our improvement, a part ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... there are along the neglected walls, and in a corner of one of them, by a brook, a mass of sweet currant which in blossom time makes all that bit of valley a bower of fragrance, I have gone that way often in spring for the sheer joy of the friendly odours I had across the ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... contest for the office, and, being defeated in the court below, appealed to the Supreme Court. He then became very much exercised over his appeal, because I was one of the Justices. There were not wanting persons who, out of sheer malice, or not comprehending any higher motives of conduct than such as governed themselves, represented that I would improve the opportunity to strike him ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... ranks with the sweep of a pivot gun, and then took up again in cutting, chilling, spaced syllables: "I have, in the course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson |
