"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Spur Street, off of 'Orseferry Road, Westminster." This identification is to help Rosalind, as she may not be able to spot this particular doss-house among ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... unseen, but in the effects, remains. Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse, 80 Want as much more to turn it to its use; For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife, 'Tis more to guide than spur the Muse's steed, Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed; The winged courser, like a generous horse, Shows most true mettle ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Channel, the Mediterranean, the Arctic Ocean and even the Baltic, but until challenged were quite unknown to all other vessels of the Allied navies. Theirs was a secret service, performed amidst great hardships, with no popular applause to spur ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... Osborne and Dr. Shower to examine the body; and his anxiety then concerning the nature of the instrument used in the commission of the crime struck me as being a bit unusual. He seemed to dread, apparently, that this would be shown to be something caught up on the spur of the moment, something belonging in the room. Without putting it in so many words, he seemed to insinuate that a regulation weapon, such as might have been brought into the house by an unknown, had been used. In ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... a spur of rock, Patrick Lavelle had laid the clay for his potatoes. He had carried it on his shoulders, every clod, and Moya had gathered the seaweed to fertilise it. She had her small garden there, too, of sea-pinks and the like, which rather encouraged the Islanders in their opinion of her strangeness. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... sort of yell, which came not amiss into his part, started up with his club, and dealt a sound douse or two on each side of him; and then, like a coach-horse pricked by the spur, started off at once into the full career of his address, and by dint of active prompting on the part of Dickie Sludge, delivered, in sounds of gigantic intonation, a speech which may be thus abridged—the reader being to suppose that the first lines were addressed to the throng ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... society on the principles and ideals of Christianity. But in view of the fact that the trend of evolution is towards the elimination of commercial competition, the question which must seriously concern us today is—What in the future shall be the spur of individual initiative? Orthodoxy and even democratic practice have hitherto taken it for granted—in spite of the examples of highly socialized men, benefactors of society—that the average citizen will bestir himself only for material ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bargain, this time, in buying two century old flower-vases for fifty cents. Mrs. Fabian saw an old engraving of "Washington Crossing the Delaware," as it was taken from the wall behind the door, and offered for a quarter. On the spur of the moment she raised the bid five cents and got the picture which later proved to be one of the rare old ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... individual workman in this system is kept life-long at the performance of some task quite petty in itself, and which he soon masters, and having mastered it has nothing more to do but to go on increasing his speed of hand under the spur of competition with his fellows, until he has become the perfect machine which it is his ultimate duty to become, since without attaining to that end he must die or become a pauper. You can well imagine how this glorious invention of division of labour, this complete destruction of individuality ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... through the road; To groan beneath the carrier's load? How feeble are the two-legged kind! What force is in our nerves combined! Shall, then, our nobler jaws submit To foam and champ the galling bit? Shall haughty men my back bestride? Shall the sharp spur provoke my side? Forbid it, heavens! reject the rein, Your shame, your infamy disdain. Let him the Lion first control, And still the Tiger's famished growl! Let us, like them, our freedom claim; And make him tremble ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... manner of my coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce of advantage out of it I can—use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 2nd D.L.I. to the effect that he was established in the stables of the chateau with a few men, and asking that rations and ammunition might be sent up to them. On the left not only was all the ground lost on the 30th July regained, but an important spur north of the Menin Road, which had hitherto been in German occupation, was included in the final position consolidated. Three officers and 124 other ranks were taken prisoners, and over 500 of the enemy were counted ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... polished an ornament, buckle, or pin. The struggle of Aileen to be perfect was, as usual, severe. Her meditations, as to the most becoming gown to wear were trying. Her portrait was on the east wall in the art-gallery, a spur to emulation; she felt as though all society were about to judge her. Theresa Donovan, the local dressmaker, had given some advice; but Aileen decided on a heavy brown velvet constructed by Worth, of Paris—a thing ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... rested his chin on his hands. "Well, your haughty guest touched me with too sharp a spur, perhaps," he said, "but she was right. I do waste my life. I have been thinking of my mother. I believe she might not be pleased with me sometimes. And then I felt mad, and now I must do something to forget. So ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... lets the tortoise pass him on the road. Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen And haunted hollow! Look not where in chains On Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs, A lasting terror! Give thy roan jade spur, And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee, Thou, for the moment, most important man! A sevennight later, when the rider sent To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn Under the creaking of the windy sign, And slipped from saddle with ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... handicap all my life," she said, while she tickled The Fop with a spur in order to check a threatened belligerence. "But I early learned to keep the irritation of it off my nerves and the weight of it off my mind. In fact, I early came to make a function of it and actually to derive enjoyment from it. It was the only way to master a ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... I wonder if he's looked out o' the crib o' him to gather up the bag o' siller. If he hasna done that, it will hae been a braw windfa' for somebody, and I'll be finely flung.—Come, Tarras," said he to his horse, striking him at the same time with his spur, "make mair fit, man; we maun be first on ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... power the greater the responsibility," he answered. "I couldn't say on the spur of the moment. If I were given time, no doubt I should be able ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... married?" said Dame Scratchard. "I don't expect she'll raise a single chick; and there's Gray Cock flirting about, fine as ever. Folks didn't do so when I was young. I'm sure my husband knew what treatment a sitting hen ought to have,—poor old Long Spur! he never minded a peck or so and then. I must say these modern fowls ain't what fowls used ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... intrusted to his trumpeter and squire, Anthony Van Corlear, that man of emergencies, with orders to travel night and day, sparing neither whip nor spur, seeing that he carried the vindication of his patron's fame in his saddle-bags. The loyal Anthony accomplished his mission with great speed and considerable loss of leather. He delivered his missive with becoming ceremony, accompanying it with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... noon hour stop found on mounting his horse that the bronco spirit was still existent, and that bucking was evidently the order of the day. But the policeman was ready. He banged the horse over the head with his hat and used the spur till the unruly animal made a few kangaroo-like leaps and came to a sudden halt at the edge of the hole where the camp fire had left a bed of hot coals. The rider was not disturbed by the shock, but the buckle of his cartridge belt gave way under the strain and the whole thing dropped ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws; the people is more formidable to its conductors; they have reassumed the whip and spur, and you fly. Let civic crowns strew your paths, though we remain; but where shall we find ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... belted a knight, Though his spur be as sharp, and his blade be as bright; Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord, Yet twenty tall yeomen will draw at his word; And the best of our nobles his bonnet will vail, Who at ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... high-peaked hats. Behind them stretched the long line of wagons, the ponderous freighters of the Santa Fe Trail, rolling into Independence from the Spanish towns that lay beyond the burning deserts of the Cimarron. They filed by in slow procession, a vision of faded colors and swarthy faces, jingle of spur and mule bell mingling with salutations ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... all, and at last turned back for want of a casting motive to incline the scale. Tucker gives this as an instance of professional indecision, or of that temper of mind which having been long used to weigh the reasons for things with scrupulous exactness, could not come to any conclusion at all on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave distinction to justify its choice. Louvet in his Narrative tells us, that when several of the Brisotin party were collected at the house of Barbaroux (I think it was) ready to effect their escape from the power of Robespierre, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... into whose blossom we saw the humble-bee poling his head, takes still more care of its pollen-dust. It hides its honey down at the end of its long spur, and only sends out one stamen at a time instead of five like the geranium; and then, when all the stamens have had their turn, the sticky knob comes out last for pollen ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... army in Sicily, which Alkibiades could have raised with the greatest ease, if he had wished to do so. Indeed, the soldiers became disheartened when he left them, and looked forward to long delays and periods of dull inaction under Nikias's command, now that he who used to spur matters on was gone. Lamachus, indeed, was a brave and skilful soldier, but his poverty prevented his opinions ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... to boot, to keep you in mind that you met the Devil's Dick, and to teach you another time to beware how you spoil the sport of any one who wears the flying spur ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... in case to bear thyself like a galliard? Now, cut me a caper—ha! one—two—three—admirable. Again—give him the spur (here a satellite of the Indian gave Oliver a slight touch with his sword). Nay, that is best of all: he sprang like a cat in a gutter. Tender him the nut once more; nay, no compulsion, he has paid forfeit, and deserves ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... lumbering animal, put together anyhow, with a short, thick neck; flat-faced, and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip or spur.'[8] Just think how long I have lived at a distance from you, and how all those temptations you speak of have endeavoured to lure me away, not perhaps without some success, even though I myself may not have observed it. I now see more clearly than ever the necessity ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... all, but thou canst work! My brother, take this belief, that God worketh all in you, for the ground of your confidence, and feel that unless He do all, you can do nothing. Take this conviction, that thou canst work, for the spur and stimulus of thy life, and think, These desires in my soul come from a far deeper source than the little cistern of my own individual life. They are God's gift. Let me cherish them with the awful carefulness which their origin requires, lest I should seem ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sunny vineyards and grey olive orchards beyond the town they followed the winding road, and, as night came on, the weary children saw that they were approaching a ruined castle set high on a spur of the Apennines. The wind swept over the bare hill-top and whistled through the windows of its ruined towers, where hundreds of years before lovely ladies had watched their ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... not shoot yourself, count, for the enemy will not overtake us. Forward! Put spur to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... fortune,—that he, who had in truth taught himself to think that he deserved so much good fortune, should be made the subject of care on behalf of his friend, because of danger between himself and his wife! On the spur of the moment he did not know what answer to make. "He is not a man whom I like myself," ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... volumes which we now lay before the reader, as grave matter of fact, that is not entitled to the most implicit credit. We scorn deception. Lest, however, some cavillers may be found, we will present a few of those reasons which occur to our mind, on the spur of the moment, as tending to show that everything related here might be just as true as Cook's voyages themselves. In the first place, this earth is large, and has sufficient surface to contain, not only all the islands ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... up in the Fruition of his Glory, whilst with an undesigned Sincerity they praised his noble and majestick Mien, his Affability, his Valour, Conduct, and Success in War. How must a Man have his Heart full-blown with Joy in such an Article of Glory as this? What a Spur and Encouragement still to proceed in those Steps which had already brought him to so pure a Taste of the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... motive; for the love of them, and for her own sake, that John might think she had done well that she might presently please and satisfy Alice above all, that her mother's wishes might be answered. This thought, whenever it came, was a spur to her efforts so was each of the others; and Christian feeling added another, and kept all the rest in force. Without this, indolence might have weakened, or temptation surprised her resolution; little Ellen was open to both; but if ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dark," Arizona had promised, "I'll make my start. Have your hoss ready. Be in the saddle, and the minute you see us come down that trail out of Sour Creek, be ready to feed your hoss the spur and join us, because when we come, we'll come fast. Don't make no mistake. If you ride too slow we'll have to ride slow, too, and slow ridin' means gunplay on both sides, and gunplay means dead men, because the evenin' is a pile worse nor the dark for fooling a man's ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... outlook and relief if I clambered alone into some high solitude and thought. I had a crude attractive vision of myself far above the heat and noise, communing with the sky. It was the worst season for climbing, and on the spur of the moment I could do nothing but get up the Rochers de Naye on the wrong side, and try and find some eyrie that was neither slippery nor wet. I did not succeed. In one place I slipped down a wet bank for some yards and held at last by a root; if I had slipped much further ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... mounted rather on an ambling preambling palfrey, than on any determinate charger; curveting and prancing, and rambling and scrambling at his own unmanaged will: scorning the bit and bridle, too hot to bear the spur, careless of listing laws, and wishing rather playfully to show his paces, than ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in two days. We here assume, as in the case of Lagrange's horses, that all the men are exactly equally capable of work. But we assume even more than this. For when three men get together they may waste time in gossip or play; or, on the other hand, a spirit of rivalry may spur them on to greater diligence. We may assume any conditions we like in a problem, provided they be clearly expressed and understood, and the answer will be ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... in a marble case, with a bronze figure on the top; and it was so heavy that she was obliged to hunt for something which she could use as a lever. The thing proved to be not easy to find on the spur of the moment. Having at last laid her hand on what she wanted, she contrived so to lift the clock a few inches and drop it again on the mantelpiece, as to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the road. The remaining three wheeled about, and taking to their heels, went off as if old Nick had been bringing up the rear. Then you might have heard the roar, and seen the dust, which dragoons can raise, when, with whip and spur and wildly rolling eyes, they bend forward from the pursuit of death. My charger being but a heavy brute, was soon distanced. But they could not distance the swift-footed Selim. Rapid as the deadly blast of the desert, he pursued their dusty course, still gathering upon them at every jump. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... came riding along as usual; but the horses, as they arrived at the spot where the magic horse was buried, reared and plunged violently — their nostrils distended with terror — their manes grew erect, and the perspiration ran down their sides in streams. In vain the riders applied the spur — in vain they coaxed or threatened, the animals would not pass the spot. On the following day, their success was no better. They were at length compelled to seek another spot for their exercise, and Thomas Aquinas was left ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... pawed its white hoofs to the spur of its helter-skelter rider, a strong blast from the Eastward, and, giving three cheers from decks, yards, and tops, we crowded all sail on St. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... out a rotten sepulchre, a thing neither commendable in a writer, nor profitable to the reader. But howsoever it be done, I have had an especial eye unto the truth of things, and for the rest, I hope that this foule frizeled Treatise of mine will prove a spur to others better learned to handle the self-same argument, if in my life-time I doo not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... come down their chimney, they could not have seemed more astonished. Not making out what they said, I went down to the house, and learned to my chagrin that we were still on the Mill Brook side, having crossed only a spur of the mountain. We had not borne sufficiently to the left, so that the main range, which, at the point of crossing, suddenly breaks off to the southeast, still intervened between us and the lake. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... to Ruin? Pooh! preacher trite! 'Tis a gallant race, and in glorious flight, With the clinkety-clank of scabbard and spur, O'er moor and meadow, by linden and fir, With the wind of speed blowing brisk in one's face, A Long-Distance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... There was little about his attire which would have attracted attention in a Northern city except, possibly, the wide-brimmed hat and the boots with high heels. He was about thirty years of age. In the shack shone a polished spur—there seemed to be nothing else of cowboy accoutrement. She could not make him out. He seemed taciturn at times and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... for the slaughter, Would let their volley, like fire to holly, Blaze on the usurping traitor. Full many a soldier arming, Is laggard in his spirit, E'er his blood the flag is warming Of the King that should inherit. He may be loon or coward, That spur scarce touch would nearly— The colours shew, he 's in a glow, Like the stubble of the barley. Onward, gallants! onward speed ye, Flower and bulwark of the Gael; Like your flag-silks be ye ruddy, Rosy-red, and do not quail. Fearless, artless, hawk-eyed, courteous, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of Lolita Martin, but the added information concerning her was not ineffective: it operated as a spur; ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... discharged, answered with the loud roarings of great guns rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a man." When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the bearers carried banners. The principal men of the town bore the armor of the deceased, from helmet to spur, and the Governor's horse was led with banners. The funeral-recording Sewall has left us many a picture of the pomp of burial. Colonel Samuel Shrimpton was buried "with Arms" in 1697, "Ten Companies, No Herse nor ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... leisurely volume to itself; perhaps in this way we should have gained, in the laying out and concentration of the narrative, and in what helps to bring it as a whole before our thoughts. But a man's account of himself is never so fresh and natural as when it is called out by the spur and pressure of an accidental and instant necessity, and is directed to a purpose and quickened by feelings which belong to immediate and passing circumstances. The traces of hurried work are of light account when they are the guarantees that a man is not sitting down to draw a picture of himself, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... across the stalls; the men looked at their programmes to see how many acts remained and tentatively felt for their cigarette-cases. He saw George Oakleigh lean towards Barbara, glance at his watch and draw himself slowly to his feet. The movement was a signal and spur for a dozen others. Barbara moved into his place and called a greeting to Deganway who was on the opposite side; he stood up and bent over ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... quarter of a pound of Sugar, and a little Rosewater, with some beaten Spice, and as much Cream as will work it into a Paste, work it very well and beat it, then rowl it as thin as possible, and cut them round with a Spur, such as the Pastry Cooks do use; then fill them with Currans first plumped a little in Rosewater and Sugar, so put another sheet of Paste over them and close them, prick them, and bake them but let not your Oven be too hot; you may colour some of them with Saffron ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... with some little surprise who my friend was. The individual whose courteous salutation had provoked the question was a horseman mounted on a remarkably fine black mare. Whether, in consequence of some little touch with the spur, or whether merely from high condition and high spirits, the animal was curvetting and rearing and dancing about a little as she crossed the piazza, and the perfect ease—and one may say, indeed, elegance—of the rider's seat, and his consummate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... impelled by habit or some small spur of reason, he had risen to go on deck and fallen. He went on vapouring pitifully, gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me understand that his vision received something of my outline, though he would fix his eyes either ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... gone; and a mild and playful image of herself, who bore her name no less than most of those features which had rendered her own youth more than usually attractive, sought, without success, a massive silver spur, of curious and antique workmanship, which she had been permitted to handle until the moment when the family had been ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to fall in with some more burghers round here and have another shot at them." Behind us the British lancers were shouting "Stop, stop, halt you —— Boers!" They fired briskly at us, but our little ponies responded gamely to the spur and, aided by the darkness, we rode on safely. Still the lancers did not abandon the chase, and followed us for a long distance. From time to time we could hear the pitiful cries and entreaties of burghers who were being "finished off," but we could see ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... old friend," I said as I pressed the unnecessary spur into my horse's flank. "Au revoir, and look out for the ghost of the gallant Chevalier Gluck. Tell him, with my compliments, not to play such latter-day tunes as the gavotte ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a shirt, rubbing mud-spots off my boots in the stirrup. It is quite useless to bellow, "That will do, Steggles!"—his ideal is the unattainable perfection, and he persists. I have to escape by giving Sapphira the spur at the risk of knocking Steggles into the mud, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... a 'labourer.' Unhasting, unresting labour was the rule of his life; and the only relaxation, not to say recreation, which he seems to have allowed himself was a change of task or the calls of sleep. This natural activity was partly due to the spur of his genius, and partly to his energetic spirit. For a man of his temperament science is always holding out new problems to solve and fresh promises of triumph. All he did only revealed more work to be done; and many a scheme lies ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Sister Martha? You know what we Hawaiians are. You know what we were half a hundred years ago. Lilolilo was wonderful. I was reckless. Lilolilo of himself could make any woman reckless. I was twice reckless, for I had cold, grey Nahala to spur me on. I knew. I had never a doubt. Never a hope. Divorces in those days were undreamed. The wife of George Castner could never be queen of Hawaii, even if Uncle Robert's prophesied revolutions were delayed, and if ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... rises just when that of others usually fails: without an instant's hesitation she stooped down, and the next moment the high wooden heel of one of her shoes sent the window-pane flying in shivers out upon the road. A touch of the spur at once brought her escort alongside of ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... purification and freedom, and the author makes use of lower things to picture and suggest the higher. The aim of the Heroic Enthusiast is to get at the Truth and to see the Light, and he considers that all the trials and sufferings of this life, are the cords which draw the soul upwards, and the spur which quickens the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... appropriate in name, color, and form. Its name is suggestive of Columbia, and our country is often called by that name. Its botanical name, aquilegia, is derived from aquila (eagle), on account of the spur of the petals resembling the talons, and the blade, the beak, of the eagle, our national bird. Its colors are red, white, and blue, our national colors. The corolla is divided into five points resembling the star used to represent ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... heavy to be held erect. The larger fruit is a trifle more than two inches in diameter. The feature spots are now still more prominent on these apples, the ribs more pronounced, the blush against the sun more warm. Both these fruits, from one spur, will mature; but the smaller one will be blemished, for the apple-scab fungus has established itself on the crown and about the calyx. Already the growth is checked in that area, and the apple looks flattened. There is no evidence in either ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... spiritual sentiment under David and the Psalmists, the more magnificent views of Hezekiah's prophets, finally in the Babylonish captivity the new tenderness assumed by that second Isaiah and the later Psalmists. But ceremonialism more and more encrusted the restored nation; and Jesus was needed to spur and stab the conscience of his contemporaries, and recal them to more spiritual perceptions; to proclaim a coming "kingdom of heaven," in which should be gathered all the children of God that were scattered abroad; where the law of love should reign, and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Casneau I had the constant spur of commendation and assistance as well as affection. I passed all my spare time in the Library of Congress and knew its arrangements at least as well as Mr. Meehan, the librarian, and Robert Kearon, the assistant, much to the surprise ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the stirrups, at the same time pulling down his trousers legs, which had a tendency to hitch up in what seemed to them a most exasperating disregard for form. To their certain knowledge, Mr. Blithers had never started out before without boot and spur; therefore, the suddenness of his present sortie sank into their ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Olympius needed no spur or encouragement. He turned to his guests with the passion and fire of a fanatical leader, of the champion of a great but imperilled cause, and bid them be men and stand by him to resist the foe till death. His voice was husky with excitement as he spoke his brief but vehement call to arms, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of this to any one. I should like to take up the Vida es Sueno too in the same manner; but these plays are more difficult than all the others put together: and I have no spur now. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... not wish to get rid of you; I merely wish to take the shortest and simplest way to relieve you of your more pressing anxieties, and so enable you to give yourself unreservedly to your work. Want may be a wholesome spur to effort at times; but it is difficult to suppose any really sane and well-proportioned work of art can be produced without a sense of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... gaed up, like spur an' whip, Till Fraser brave did fa', man; Then lost his way, ae misty day, In Saratoga shaw, man. Cornwallis fought as lang's he dought, An' did the Buckskins claw, man; But Clinton's glaive frae rust to save, He hung ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... her choosing, if you mean that," said Lord Lufton. They went on walking about the garden for an hour, but they hardly got any farther than the point to which we have now brought them. Mark Robarts could not make up his mind on the spur of the moment; nor, as he said more than once to Lord Lufton, could he be at all sure that Lucy would in any way be guided by him. It was, therefore, at last settled between them that Lord Lufton should come ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... yet our friend does not venture to bear his honors; his wife merely puts 'La Comtesse du Bruel' on her cards. The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold, the Order of Isabella, the cross of Saint-Vladimir, second class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of the Golden Spur,—all the lesser orders, in ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... that he was the inevitable instrument of its desecration; but over the hill, just in sight from the spring, carpenters were putting a new piazza round a cottage that stood remote from the camp, where a spur of the hills descended steeply towards the valley. Arnold took a great interest in this cottage. He was frequently to be seen there in the evening, tramping up and down the new piazza, and offering to the moon, that ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... reporters were supplied with a few grave, not sensational words, suggested by the spur of the moment; they receded into the background, and Marshal Henkel, zealous to do his whole duty, and prevent the escape of an elderly gentleman through locked doors, echoing corridors, and the resistance of half a dozen lusty guards, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... lies through a ravine cut by the Mohawk River through a spur of the Adirondack Mts. The town is picturesquely situated on the sides of the gorge overlooking the rapids and falls. The Mohawk here descends 45 ft. ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... honourable among us, the birds. For instance, among you 'tis a crime to beat your father, but with us 'tis an estimable deed; it's considered fine to run straight at your father and hit him, saying, "Come, lift your spur if you want to fight."(13) The runaway slave, whom you brand, is only a spotted francolin with us.(14) Are you Phrygian like Spintharus?(15) Among us you would be the Phrygian bird, the goldfinch, of the race of Philemon.(16) Are you a slave and a Carian ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... meet this view, and after 1750, all grants were made in fee simple.) He also explained that the obligation to plant a certain number of mulberry trees per acre, or forfeit the land, was intended to spur lazy colonists, and would not be enforced in the case ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... cellars, drew the seigniorial fish-ponds, demolished the castles of the nobles who resisted, and burned the convents. Opposition had inflamed the passions of these rude men; equality no longer satisfied them; they thirsted for blood, and swore to put to death every man who wore a spur. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Imperfect but ridable donkey-trails follow the dry moat around to the Meshed road, which takes a straight course southeastward from the city and is seen in the distance ahead, leading over a sloping pass, a depression in the Doshan Tepe spur of the Elburz range. The road near the city is now in better condition for wheeling than at any other time of the year; the daily swarms of pack-animals bringing produce into Teheran have trodden it smooth and hard during the ten days' continuous fine weather, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... purpose, he could only exercise his own brute will. He did not believe in the least in the education he kept inflicting year after year upon the children. So he must bully, only bully, even while it tortured his strong, wholesome nature with shame like a spur always galling. He was so blind and ugly and out of place. Ursula could not bear it as he stood there. The whole situation ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... scaffold he prayed almost incessantly. There was sufficient spur for prayer in the menacing fortress before him with its hundred tiny windows, and the new scaffold, some five or six feet high, that stood in the foreground. He wondered how the bishop was passing his time ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... one million years ago, but the Rmoahal race came into existence between four and five million years ago, at which period large portions of the great southern continent of Lemuria still existed, while the continent of Atlantis had not assumed the proportions it ultimately attained. It was upon a spur of this Lemurian land that the Rmoahal race was born. Roughly it may be located at latitude 7 deg. north and longitude 5 deg. west, which a reference to any modern atlas will show to lie on the Ashanti coast of to-day. It was ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... crude parody on the "Marseillaise Hymn" (see Chap. 9) is printed in the American Vocalist, among numerous samples of early New England psalmody of untraced authorship. It might have been sung at primitive missionary meetings, to spur the zeal and faith of a Francis Mason or a Harriet Newell. It expresses, at least, the new-kindled evangelical spirit of the long-ago consecrations in American church life that first sent the Christian ambassadors to foreign lands, and followed them ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... received it through the medium of many tears, he fondly and gratefully pressed her to his bosom, uttering his own soul's fervent conviction of a future domestic happiness to them all. Having stood till he saw her re-enter the house from a door on the terrace, he mounted his horse and set off on the spur ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... is becoming almost an industry in itself, and there are those who believe it destined to become the largest industrial spur in the Nation before too ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... that rests with the spur on his heel, As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... always known, sir, that the Service had men; but I had no idea that any one man could possibly do, on the spur of the moment, what you have just done—unless that man happened to be ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... could ride without being instructed, Without any saddle or bridle or spur? Our legs are so long, and so aptly constructed, I'm sure that an accident could not occur. Let us all of a sudden hop down from the table, And hustle downstairs, and each jump on a horse! Shall we try? Shall we ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... underbrush, vanished before she had gone fifty yards; but the little octoroon was no stranger to nocturnal rambles, her keen eyes, and, keener still, her sense of direction, led her unerringly through the shades toward the rearward spur of the granite cliff. Creepers and hanging mosses brushed her face and limbs; alone she might have ignored them; but there was a quality in the sighing and rustling about her that seemed to give ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a little scrambling, you can climb from here up to the last spur of the Jebel Guettor which overlooks the plain—it is crowned by a ruined building, once whitewashed, and easily visible from Gafsa. On its slopes I struck a vein of iron, another of those scientific ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... mouth, with its quick revelation of little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of admiration, and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your eye like a racer under the spur. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which instinctively ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... that dwell beneath the setting sun on the spur of Libya, shudder for dread, even now the Syracusans poise lances in rest, and their arms are burdened by the linden shields. Among them Hiero, like the mighty men of old, girds himself for fight, and the horse-hair ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Parthenissa's robe? Is not the beat of the horse's hoofs as rapid to Angelica pursued as the throbs of her own heart huddling upon one another in terror, while it is slow to Sister Anne, as the pulse that pauses between hope and fear, as she listens on the tower for rescue, and would have the rider "spur, though mounted ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... sometimes the other; and she was as pretty as ever she could be. She was one of those girls, so common in Ireland, whom men, with tastes that way given, feel inclined to take up and devour on the spur of the moment; and when she liked her lion, she had a look about her which seemed to ask to be devoured. There are girls so cold-looking,—pretty girls, too, ladylike, discreet, and armed with all accomplishments,—whom to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... life in early youth might lead him to. The old goldsmiths were indeed the best patrons of ancient art; but for them an important branch of it—ornamental design—would have wanted the constancy of inventive spur, and the art of engraving and printing from incised plates originated in their workshops. They were intimately connected with the artists of their day; and the greatest among them did not disdain to furnish designs for their artisans. Hence the great variety and flow of fancy exhibited in ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung my hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu" (pronounced O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he crossed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... luck than I, or that I am a greater fool than he? Bah!" that was the concluding word by the aid of which D'Artagnan, having become wise, now terminated every thought and every period of his style. Formerly he said, "Mordioux!" which was a prick of the spur, but now he had become older, and he murmured that philosophical "Bah!" which served as a bridle to ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... back with the same ancestral pride to their great progenitor, the friend of God. This has never been the case with any other nation, for the Arabs are not a nation. One can hardly imagine a greater spur to patriotism than this union of pride of descent with pride in one's nation and its institutions. The proudest and poorest Jew shared it together. There was one distinction, and that the most honorable, which belonged ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the piece of copper is made to correspond to the design of the clock. The circular hole in the copper can be cut with the expansive bit by first punching a hole in the center to receive the spur of the bit, placing on a block of wood and boring through a little way. The spur on the cutter will cut out the copper. Fasten the copper to the front with copper nails or ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... mountains sent out two far-reaching spurs of pine-clad ridges between which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Due south, as Lonesome Pete's outstretched finger indicated, lay the road which they were to follow and the headquarters of the Half Moon. There again a thickly timbered spur of the mountains ran down into the plain on each side of a deeply cleft canon from which Lonesome Pete told them that Indian Creek issued, and in which were the main corrals and the range house of ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... this his rider trusted. At the eighth the line was hardly broken, but as the quarter was reached Black Boy had forged a length ahead, and Mosquito was at his flank. Then, like a flash, Essex shot out ahead under whip and spur, his jockey standing straight ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... It was discovered by the Rev. Mr. Ellis, and sent home alive, nearly thirty years ago; but civilized mankind has not yet done wondering at it. The stately growth, the magnificent green-white flowers, command admiration at a glance, but the "tail," or spur, offers a problem of which the thoughtful never tire. It is commonly ten inches long, sometimes fourteen inches, and at home, I have been told, even longer; about the thickness of a goose-quill, hollow, of course, the last inch ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... in mind something much bigger than the slender volume of verse,—an adventure into authorship more suited to his metal,—a story for which an intense personal sympathy would furnish fitting atmosphere, with the final spur to his ambition a letter from the Atlantic even at the moment stowed ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... the silent worship of your nature. When I came the last morning to the cottage, it was to tell, and to ask, all. Since then for a moment your image has never been absent from my consciousness; your picture consecrates my hearth and your approval has been the spur of my career. Do not reject my love; it is deep as your nature, and fervent as my own. Banish those prejudices that have embittered your existence, and if persisted in may wither mine. Deign to retain this hand! If I be a noble I have none of the accidents of nobility: I cannot offer you wealth, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of names to wing the imagination upward into the ethereal regions of beauty, pure art, and lofty emotion! The imperial pianist discourses upon the genius and peculiar gifts of his brother musician. Before us arises a vision of the strong and fiery Hungarian, with clanger of steel, flash of spur, and ring of hoof, compelling his audiences to attention and enthusiastic admiration; and also of the gentle-mannered and suffering, but no less fiery Pole, shrinking from all rude contact, and weaving enchanted melodies and harmonies, teeming with ever-varying pictures of tender love, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... by which now, as then, the royal coffers require to be replenished or the royal purse relieved by the application of a judicious spur to the backward generosity of the subjects of the King of Kings. Still, as described in "Hajji Baba," is the visit of the Sovereign to any of his officials the recognised intimation that a large money equivalent is expected for the unsolicited honour. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... small and slender by the side of the grand animal that was taking easy, swinging strides, apparently without effort and without speed, his tongue lolling at one side. But we could see that the pace was really terrific—that Lieutenant Baldwin was freely using the spur, and that his swift thoroughbred was stretched out like a greyhound, straining every muscle in his effort to keep up. He was riding close to the buffalo on his left, with revolver in his right hand, and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... gain, which was the victorious motive that spurred on the commercial advertisers in these and countless other instances, is to be counted more mighty than the desire to do a service to our fellowmen and to fulfill the duties of our positions—which should spur us on? ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... gripped in his hand. His eyes had become riveted upon a low hill far out across the valley. It looked as though it rose sheer out of the forest below, but the watching man knew full well that it was only a spur of the giant that backed it. It was the summit of this clear-cut hill, and what was visible upon it, that held his fascinated attention. Suddenly a half-whispered word escaped him and Ralph was beside him ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... competence; that 'fatal gift,' as it is called, which encourages idleness in youth by doing away with the necessity for exertion. I never hear the same people inveighing against great inheritances, which are much more open to such objections. The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect. One constantly hears what humiliating things men will do for money, whereas the truth ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... is about a year old, a spur, hard like horn, begins to grow on the inside of each leg. Upon the old cocks these spurs are long and sharp, and he can ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... the spur of ambition to show Alice Yorke and those who surrounded her that he was not a ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... all possible speed. The mayor, with the aldermen and several gentlemen, planted themselves opposite to the prison, and were spectators to this diverting scene, calling out to stop them, not with an intention to do them any prejudice, but only of adding a spur to their speed: however there were some who were ready enough to lay hold on them, and our hero, in a struggle of this nature, left a skirt of his garment behind him, which might be done without much violence, as we may reasonably conclude it to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... to gild the western sky; And now it is about the very hour That Silvia, at Friar Patrick's cell, should meet me. She will not fail, for lovers break not hours, Unless it be to come before their time; 5 So much they spur their expedition. See where ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... little toss of her head. "'Mistress Betty'! Very well, so be it; and thanks to the star of good fortune which guided my steps up the road to-day. I wonder how she comes here, and why," and Captain Yorke gave his horse the spur ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... led them along a high spur of the hill, past a small body of soldiers, some of whom called to them; but, not hearing what they said, they went on; when, coming to the extreme end of the spur, they saw a deep glen before them. Plunging into it, they ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... right?" she asked on the spur of the moment, thinking to divert his attention from ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... these exegetical commentaries, the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase "peerten up" means substantially 'to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective "peert" (probably a corruption of 'pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of "smart" in New England, as e.g., a "peert" horse, in antithesis to a "sorry" — ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... so long! The lively scratching of pencils soon began to lag, and the teacher had to spur them on again, and now and then she walked down between the desks and looked at the slates to see that no ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller |
