"Strait" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nuns in the Seven Years' War; that the ghost of the murdered Bullingdon haunted my house. Once at a fair in a town hard by, when I had a mind to buy a waistcoat for one of my people, a fellow standing by said, ''Tis a strait-waistcoat he's buying for my Lady Lyndon.' And from this circumstance arose a legend of my cruelty to my wife; and many circumstantial details were narrated regarding my manner and ingenuity of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was not yet come. Ever anxious to serve their Catholic Highnesses, "and particularly the Queen," he had determined to find a strait through which he might penetrate westward into Portuguese Asia. After the usual inevitable delays his prayers were granted, and on May 9, 1502, with four caravels and 150 men, he weighed anchor from Cadiz and sailed on his fourth and last ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.) Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... map, the reader will see that the island of Sicily is separated from the main land by a narrow strait called the Strait of Messina. This strait derives its name from the town of Messina, which is situated upon it, on the Sicilian side. Opposite Messina, on the Italian side, there was a town named Rhegium. Now it happened that both these towns had been taken possession of ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... how strait the gate How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... of ever pulling the vessel through, when we suddenly entered a narrow strait. I knew that I was in a waterway between two islands—Apsley Strait, dividing Melville and Bathurst Islands, as I have ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... us joy and comfort reap; There teach us how to pray, For grace to choose, and strength to keep The strait, the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... head discovered, land.[10] This error in the arrival, was at least thirty leagues in the East. It was attributed to the currents of the straits of Gibraltar; if this error really arises from the currents of the strait, it merits the attention of vessels which frequent these seas. The whole night we proceeded with few sails up; at midnight we tacked, in order not to approach too near ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... amazement. The phrases quoted told their own tale; they were plainly from the shyster's mint. A few hours back I had seen him a mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable he had gone without breakfast; the absence of Norris must have been a crushing blow; the man (by all reason) should have been despairing. And now I heard of him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, insinuating, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In all its highways it throbs and thrills; We greet you! Queen of the Western Ocean, As you wake to life on your hundred hills. The forts salute, and the flags are streaming From ships at anchor in cove and strait; O'er the mountain tops, in splendor beaming, The sun looks down on ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... a gift, there are conditions to be fulfilled, difficulties to be overcome. Our Lord recognized this when He said that the gate was strait and the way narrow, but He also said that this Kingdom was worth any price, or was beyond all price, to be obtained at any sacrifice. He emphasized this by a strong figure. It was better to enter into life maimed, He said,—with hand or foot ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... fetching blocks of stone by sea from the Sinaitic Peninsula; such an expedition, which would have been dangerous even for Greek or Roman Galleys, would have been simply impossible for them. If they ever crossed the Strait of Ormuzd, it was an exceptional thing, their ordinary voyages being confined within the limits of the gulf. The merchants of Uru were accustomed to visit regularly the island of Dilmun, the land of Magan, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... determination a dash of romance as well as of keen desire to do something to help her grandfather in his sore strait. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... of self-government. But their subject peoples must also be protected in their lives, property, and occupations, and given an opportunity to establish self-government when they desire it. The Dardanelles strait must be taken out of the power of the Turks, and placed under the control ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... wind fell; there was a two days' calm, and the ships reached their destination with diminished supplies and dispirited crews. The first attack, made on St. Stephen, was successful. Buonaparte and his guns were then landed on that spot to bombard, across a narrow strait, Magdalena, the chief town on the main island. The enemy's fire was soon silenced, and nothing remained but for the corvette to work slowly round the intervening island of Caprera, and take possession. The vessel had suffered slightly from the enemy's fire, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was absent, and threw the Greek capital into no little alarm and confusion. Tradition reports that "The patriarch Photius took the virginal robe of the Mother of God from the Blachern Church, and plunged it beneath the waves of the strait, when the sea immediately boiled up from underneath and wrecked the vessels of the heathen. Struck with awe, they believed in that God who had smitten them, and became the first-fruits of their people to the Lord." The hymn of victory of the Greek Church, "To the protecting Conductress," in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... had nearly crossed the island, and Estein saw before them another long sound. On the far side of this lay a large and hilly island that stretched to his left hand as far as his eye could reach, and on the right broke down at the end of the strait into a precipitous headland, beyond which sparkled the open sea. In the middle of the sound a small green islet basked like a sea ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... Jan Mayen, and thence, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, into an icy sea which has been but little explored. And the other is the usual route taken by nearly all the great Arctic explorers, namely, up Davis Strait, through Baffin's Bay, and thence, by way of Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel, into the open Polar Sea, if such should actually exist. By the one route we shall have an opportunity of surveying the eastern coast of Greenland, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... entered the Endeavour Straits, which are about ten leagues long and five broad. We had several canoes off from the shore of New Guinea. It is a long narrow island of the South Pacific Ocean, and north of New Holland, from which it is separated by this strait, except on the north-east entrance, where it is counteracted by a group of islands, called the Prince of Wales's Islands. The land is generally low, and covered with an astonishing luxuriance of wood and herbage. The ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... himself unable to defend himself against his fierce auxiliaries. Thanet was still cut off from the mainland by an arm of the sea, and the Jutes were strong enough to hold it against all assailants. Their numbers rapidly increased as shiploads of their fellows landed, and they crossed the strait to win fresh lands from the Britons on the mainland of Kent. In several battles Vortigern was overpowered. His rival and successor, Ambrosius Aurelianus, whose name makes it probable that he was an upholder of the old Roman discipline, drove back the Jutes in turn. He did ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... flows under influences which the lake and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it concentrates or ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... lukewarm state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry. Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without a small modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... other hand, while the young creatures are engaged in this discipline, they have to suffer from others that which in them is reprimanded and punished. In this way the poor things are brought into a sad strait between the natural and civilized states, and, after restraining themselves for a while, break out, according to their characters, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... know not what philosopher he was, that would have women come but thrice abroad all their time, [6284]"to be baptised, married, and buried;" but he was too strait-laced. Let them have their liberty in good sort, and go in good sort, modo non annos viginti aetatis suae domi relinquant, as a good fellow said, so that they look not twenty years younger abroad than they do at home, they be not spruce, neat, angels abroad, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... more heed to the things that I shall tell thee of. The Lord says, 'Strive to go in at the strait gate, the gate to which I send thee, for strait is the gate that leads to life, and few there be that find it.' Why didst thou set at nought the words of God, for the sake of Mr. Worldly Wiseman? That is, in truth, the right name for such as he. The Lord hath told thee ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... in the old man, 'if you're not coming with a strait-waistcoat, or a coil of rope to hold me down, I'd say it's better ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... mermaid. Purchase another vessel. New establishment. Departure on the fourth voyage, accompanied by a merchant-ship bound through Torres Strait. Discovery of an addition to the crew. Pass round Breaksea Spit, and steer up the East Coast. Transactions at Percy Island. Enormous sting-rays. Pine-trees serviceable for masts. Joined by a merchant brig. Anchor under Cape ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... free respiration: and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that, at Malta, the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked: for they, being naturally strait or small, did not admit air sufficient serve them when they travelled or laboured in that hot climate. And we know that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses. (* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the child's nature as a whole, education arrests the growth of all the master faculties of his being, and that there are some at least among these which, even in the judgment of the supernaturalist, imperatively need to be trained. When the strait-laced, result-hunting teacher reminds us that his sole business is to teach certain subjects, and that therefore he cannot concern himself with growth, we answer that, in neglecting to foster growth, he makes it impossible for the child ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... from it to the grass above must have been a matter of forty foot. But the ness as it thrust forth into the river rose also, so that its crest was a score of feet higher where it went down into the water than its base amidst the green grass. Then came the strait passage of the water, some thirty feet across, and then the bank of the eastern side, which, though it thrust out not, but rather was as it were driven back by the stream, yet it rose toward the water, though not so much as ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... executed without serious danger. Necessity knows no law, however, and when all the circumstances of this battle are fully considered it is possible that justification may be found for the manoeuvres by which the army was thus drifted to the left. We were in a bad strait unquestionably, and under such conditions possibly the exception had to be applied rather than ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Kambia and Bangalang, though I still had half the cargo of the Feliz to make up. Time was precious, and there was no foreigner on the river to aid me. In this strait, I suddenly resolved on a foray among the natives on my own account; and equipping a couple of my largest canoes with an ample armament, as well as a substantial store of provisions and merchandise, I departed for the Matacan river, a short stream, unsuitable ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Mauna-ole. According to one authority this should be Mauna-Hilo. Verses 13, 14, 16, and 17 are difficult of translation. The play on the words ku a, standing at, or standing by, and kua, the back; also on the word kowa, a gulf or strait; and the repetition of the word mauna, mountain—all this is carried to such an extent as to be quite unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon mind, though full of significance ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... say, Griffin?" asked Cuffe, who felt regret that so brave an enemy should be reduced to so desperate a strait, notwithstanding his determined hostility to all Frenchmen; "do not bear too hard upon him, at the first go off. Has he any excuse ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... o'clock in the day, and Dance pursued Linois till four in the afternoon; when fearing that a longer pursuit would carry him too far from the Straits of Malacca, he made the signal to tack, and by eight in the evening they all anchored safely in a situation to enter the strait next morning. Nothing more was seen of Linois; and the squadron returned safely to England, when Dance was knighted by the king, and with his brave crew rewarded by the East India Company. Liberal sums ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... synod is to be hoped for, surely it is to be wished that, for defending the orthodox faith, both against Popery and other heresies, as also for propagating it to those who are without, especially the Jews, a more strait and more firm consociation may be entered into. For the unanimity of all the churches, as in evil it is of all things most hurtful, so on the contrary side, in good it is most pleasant, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... belief that America was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration—perhaps the easiest way to account for ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and forfeiture, and the laws of monopoly. Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means, can justify such a prostration of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence. Will Congress be too strait-laced to carry the constitution into honest effect, unless they may pass over the foundation laws of the State governments, for the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... though there were those among the aged or the discontented who never ceased to pine for the heather hills of the old land, the young grew up strong and content, troubled by no fear that, for many and many a year to come, the place would become too strait for them or for ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the accounts of Pere la Chaise, sold at its concierge. Annexed is a Map of the Great World—but the author has not "attempted to lay down the longitude; the only measurements hitherto made being confined to the west of the meridian of St. James's Strait." Then the author tells us of the atomic hypothesis of the formation of the Great World. "These rules, for the performance of what appears to be an atomic quadrille, are furnished by Sir H. Davy, elected by the Great World, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... don't necessarily think of themselves as such. The peak of rampant individualism was reached in the nineteenth century, legally speaking. Though in point of fact social pressure and custom were more strait-jacketing ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... river, and repaired to Annapolis in Maryland, where he ordered the governors of the different colonies to meet him in council, urging them each to call upon their respective provinces to help the common cause in this strait. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most advantageous site for the projected settlement, the destined cradle of the Canadian nation. There accordingly, Champlain unfurled the white Banner on the 3rd of July, 1608. In the Algonquin tongue, "Kebec" signifies a strait, the St. Lawrence flowing at this point in a narrow channel between two high banks. The intended capital [Footnote: Quebec is now considered the military capital of Canada, Montreal ranking as the commercial metropolis, and Ottawa as the legislative.] of Canada could not have been more ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... "Strait-jacket case," Burris said. "Delusions of persecution. Paranoia. And a lot of other things I can't pronounce. But I'm sending him on out to Yucca Flats anyhow, under guard. You might find a ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... That big started tear that hovers on the brim; I forgot about your nephew and the Merrimac's ball; No more then of her, since it summons up him. But talk o' fellows' hearts in the wine's genial cup:— Trap them in the fate, jam them in the strait, Guns speak their hearts then, and speak right up. The troublous colic o' intestine war It sets the bowels o' affection ajar. But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world, A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods Flogging ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... and strait backward fled, Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head. And when the Spaniards their assault begin, At once beat those ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... amongst themselues; which may also be possible in my opinion. For if the deuil may forme what kinde of impressiones he pleases in the aire, as I haue said before, speaking of Magie, why may he not far easilier thicken & obscure so the air, that is next about them by contracting it strait together, that the beames of any other mans eyes, cannot pearce thorow the same, to see them? But the third way of their comming to their conuentions, is, that where in I think them deluded: for some of them sayeth, that being transformed ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... from these islands for Nueva Espana. The almiranta, while sailing out of a strait where these islands come to an end, encountered seven hurricanes, so furious that it seemed as if the sea would swallow it up; and those who were aboard gave themselves up a thousand times for lost. They tried to make port in Japon, but it was impossible; and they finally arrived ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... far less into actions. Why, even now she could love all the household at home, if they would but let her; yes, even yet, though she felt that it was the open accusation of Prudence and the withheld justifications of her aunt and Faith that had brought her to her present strait. Would they ever come and see her? Would kinder thoughts of her,—who had shared their daily bread for months and months,—bring them to see her, and ask her whether it were really she who had brought on the illness of Prudence, the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... told him that she was "well-dressed, and not at all embarrassed." George III. and his sons talked a good deal to her, about her passage, her stay in England, and similar matters; but the princesses none of them said a word; and we hear that Queen Charlotte "looked at her earnestly." The strait-laced wife of George III. had probably consented to receive the Pretender's widow, only because this ceremony was a sort of second burial of Charles Edward, a burial of all the claims, the pride of the Stuarts; but she felt presumably no great cordiality ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to work to sharpen her wits, to follow the strait road. At first with some stumbling, of course, and frequent backslidings. Intellectual curiosity could not, she discovered, be awakened to order; and she often caught herself napping. Thus though she ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... in that of character. It was said that he knew as many life histories as a doctor or a priest, and generally the more dramatic ones. The experience had clearly made him cynical, but tolerant also, and human, with a tendency, as far as he was personally concerned, to being morally strait-laced. He had seen so much of the picturesque side of life that he could appreciate the prosaic, which, in Chip's explanation, was why he could stand by Mrs. Bland. Other people's surfeits of champagne and ortolans had assured his own taste for plain roast beef. But he himself ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... you, sir, the abuses which you point out; but I have so great an affection for order,—not that common and strait-laced order with which the police are satisfied, but the majestic and imposing order of human societies,—that I sometimes find myself embarrassed in attacking certain abuses. I like to rebuild with one hand when I am compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... consequence of the intense evaporation. The Aral Sea, though supplied by the Jaxartes and the Oxus, has brackish water. There is evidence that, in the pliocene and pleistocene periods, to go no farther back, the strait of the Dardanelles did not exist, and that the vast area, from the valley of the Danube to that of the Jaxartes, was covered by brackish or, in some parts, fresh water to a height of at least 200 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. At ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... like nettles;) and going into this low place, I was obliged to creep upon all fours, as I have said, almost ten yards; which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough, considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was beyond it. When I had got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up, I believe near twenty feet; but never was such a glorious sight seen in the island, I dare say, as it was, to look round the sides and roof of this vault or cave; the wall reflected an hundred thousand lights to me from my two candles. What ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... we ran through what Jack called "the Strait of Gibraltar," and were in the great Atlantic Ocean, and one ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... hardly any creature in his habitual world that he was not fond of; teasing them occasionally, of course—all except his uncle, or "Nunc," as Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the baronet was the reverse of a strait-laced man, and left his dignity to take care of itself. Him Daniel loved in that deep-rooted filial way which makes children always the happier for being in the same room with father or mother, though their occupations may be quite apart. Sir Hugo's watch-chain and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... arrived, and the kangaroo, and by and by the mastodon, and the giant sloth, and the Irish elk, and the old Silurian ass, and some people thought that man was about due. But that was a mistake, for the next thing they knew there came a great ice-sheet, and those creatures all escaped across the Bering Strait and wandered around in Asia and died, all except a few to carry on the preparation with. There were six of those glacial periods, with two million years or so between each. They chased those poor orphans up and down the earth, from weather to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bent head of the climber, Miss Horn was walking up a certain street, called from its precipitousness the Strait, that is difficult, Path—an absolute Hill of Difficulty, when she was accosted by an elderly man, who stood in the doorway ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... was all now left to me. In that hour I had forgotten about everything—about the peril of Virginia, even about Elspeth and the others in the fort on the hill-top. There comes a time to every one when the world narrows for him to a strait alley, with Death at the end of it, and all his thoughts are fixed on that waiting enemy ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Horatius, the captain of the gate: "To every man upon this earth death cometh, soon or late. Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, with all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand may ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... Orinoco; to go up that vast river, to the south of the cataracts, as far as the Rio Negro and the frontiers of Brazil; and thence to return to Cumana by the capital of Spanish Guiana, commonly called, on account of its situation, Angostura, or the Strait. We could not determine the time we might require to accomplish a tour of seven hundred leagues, more than two-thirds of that distance having to be traversed in boats. The only parts of the Orinoco known on the coasts are those ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... issue to the people, and free from what he termed strait-jacket restrictions, the Governor said at Columbus, when he talked to the ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... seized Mr. Vigors by the throat, and would have strangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendent and his satellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was then manacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and the group so left him in charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towards such circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had so minutely set forth. The purse, recognized as ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am master of my fate, I am the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... a narrow strait, on one side of which was Charybdis, a dread whirlpool from which no ship could escape, and on the other was the cave of Scylla, a monster having six snake-like heads, with each of which she seized a man from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... so sad the sky, So strait the wide world's range, He would not stay to wonder why Was ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... saw a dark-blue sea, dashing with billows clashing and yeasting waves each as it were a lofty mount. So he sat down and repeated what he might of the Koran and besought Allah the Most High to ease him of his troubles, or by death or by deliverance from such strait. Then he recited for himself the funeral-prayer[FN35] and cast himself down into the main; but, the waves bore him up by Allah's grace, so that he reached the water unhurt, and the angel in whose charge is the sea watched over him, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... will not "live out." I was one day witness of the extreme failure of a friend whose city cook had suddenly abandoned him, and who applied to a friendly farmer's wife in the vain hope that she might help him to some one who would help his family out in their strait. "Why, there ain't a girl in the Hollow that lives out! Why, if you was sick abed, I don't know as I know anybody 't you could git to set up with you." The natives will not live out because they cannot keep their self- respect in the conditions of domestic service. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of doing what we would as we would, drives us to look for help. And this brings us to a new point of departure. Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the strait path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain—oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... middle-class spinster resident at the Manor gates. To Mrs Greville, Miss Briskett stood as a type of all that was narrow, conventional, and depressing. As much as she could trouble herself to dislike any woman outside her own world, she disliked the rigid, strait-laced spinster, and was fully aware that the dislike was returned. Miss Briskett invariably declined the yearly invitations which were doled out to her in company with the other townsfolk, satisfied that in so doing she proclaimed a dignified disapproval of the frivolities of the Manor. "Thank goodness, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thus brought up within the face of the Court, the Serjeant at Arms, with his mace, receives and conducts him strait to the bar, having a crimson-velvet chair set before him. After a stern looking upon the Court, and the people in the galleries on each side of him, he places himself, not at all moving his hat, or otherwise ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... my country to know what should be done concerning them; for of their own free will they would not go, neither could they be compelled against their will, through fighting. And [the people of the country,] being in this strait, they caused a chamber to be made all of iron. Now when the chamber was ready, there came there every smith that was in Ireland, and every one who owned tongs and hammer. And they caused coals to be piled up as high as the top of the chamber. And ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... like a mill stream, and soon swept him off from the neighborhood. It was not, however, until he had drifted a great distance that he ventured to ply his oars, when he made his skiff dart like an arrow through the strait of Hell Gate, never heeding the danger of Pot, Frying Pan, nor Hog's Back itself, nor did he feel himself thoroughly secure until safely nestled in bed in the cockloft of the ancient farmhouse ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... missionary postmistress at Cape Prince of Wales, on Behring Strait, had realized what homesick feelings she was going to stir up in Johnny's heart by impressing her post office stamp on that bill before she paid it to some Eskimo, perhaps she would not have stamped it, and then again, perhaps ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... outbreak feared in western Montana.... Stanley going to Egypt.... Policeman beaten up in Brooklyn; a tough place, Brooklyn!... American schooner arrested by Russian corvette for selling rum to Bering Strait natives: a very strict modern people, the Russians.... Picnics on Staten Island blamed for ruin of young girls.... And Bismarck and the pope still sparring. Did that poor German think he could ever get the better of the subtle Romans ...? Och, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... in prison; but no cry for help from him as he faced the terrible strait he was in with the dumb despair of an Indian at the stake; for his own bosom sin had brought him there, and this was to be the bitter lesson that tamed the lawless ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... In this strait the Assyrian king deemed it necessary to divide his forces and to send a portion against the enemy which was advancing from the south, while with the remainder he himself awaited the coming of the Medes. The troops detached ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... new Home in the Woods.—The Burning of his first Slash.—His House catches Fire, and he and his Wife engage in extinguishing it, praying for the return of their Son, Claud Elwood, to help them in their terrible strait. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... lingering and gradual departure of one among us for those unknown shores, the mysterious solemnity of his secret dreams, his commemoration of past facts and passing ideas when still breathing upon the narrow strait which separates time from eternity, affect us more deeply than any thing else in this world. Sudden catastrophes, the dreadful alternations forced upon the shuddering fragile ship, tossed like a toy by the wild breath of the tempest; the blood of the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... be admitted however, that on the original chart the nautical phrase "Anda ne barcha," may refer to the difficulty of navigating the strait between Java and Bali, or the one between ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said Nipper, 'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like of them ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... as I went, to see if I could find some gap or passage to enter therein. But none could I find for some time. At the last I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through which I attempted to pass. Now, the passage being very strait and narrow, I made many offers to get in, but all in vain, even until I was wellnigh quite beat out, by striving to get in. At last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... known, in the conviction that it was the eastern shore of Asia which he had reached. It was the same object which directed the nautical enterprises of those who followed in the Admiral's track; and the discovery of a strait into the Indian Ocean was the burden of every order from the government, and the design of many an expedition to different points of the new continent, which seemed to stretch its leviathan length along from one pole to the other. The discovery of an Indian passage is the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... circumstances, vanquished the mighty car-warrior, Satyaki, and brought him under thy control, thou soughtest to display thy superiority. Thou hadst desired to cut off, with thy sword, the head of Satyaki in battle. I could not possibly behold with indifference Satyaki reduced to that strait.[170] Thou shouldst rather rebuke thy own self, since thou didst not take care of thyself (when seeking to injure another). Indeed, O hero, how wouldst thou have behaved towards one who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to keep a straight face. "Better call someone with a strait jacket—or a butterfly net!" he said, quaking with laughter. "I'm afraid he's just ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... passage of Thermopylae was disputed, he Greek fleet advanced and took position in the strait of Artemisium, to prevent the Persian fleet from advancing farther into Greek waters. During the battle the fleets were also engaged in an indecisive conflict. A storm, however, arose and destroyed two hundred of ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... afeard she might a took a fit o' madness, as she did fifteen years befoore, and was buckled up, many a time, in a strait-waistcoat, which was the very leathern jerkin I sid in the closet, off my ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Niagara River to the Falls, carried their canoes on their shoulders around the rapids, launched them again on Lake Erie, traversed that inland sea over two hundred and fifty miles, entered the magnificent Strait, passed through it to Lake St. Clair, crossed that lake, ascended the St. Clair River to Lake Huron, and traversing its whole length, a distance of three hundred miles, reached the Falls of ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... yet the something remained. It was not that his manner was bad, as on that occasion; it was now very good, as being modest, gracious, and ready. Yet the something never left it. It has been written of men who have undergone a cruel captivity, or who have passed through a terrible strait, or who in self-preservation have killed a defenceless fellow-creature, that the record thereof has never faded from their countenances until they died. Was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... summoned, and the orders were given for Priscilla's dress, to be made to fit Daisy. It was very amusing, the strait-cut brown gown, the plain broad vandyke of white muslin, and etceteras that Mrs. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... remarkable vitrified forts. A few years ago no less than forty-four were counted. The most celebrated are those of Barry Hill and Castle Spynie in Invernesshire, Top-O-Noth in Aberdeen, and a small fort which rises from a lofty rock in the midst of the Strait of Bute. Vitrified cairns also occur in the Orkney Islands, notably on the little isle of Sanday, but the most interesting structures of the kind are Craig Phoedrick and Ord Hill of Kissock, which rise up like huge pillars on the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... sent a frigate to Alexandria to beg the Portuguese admiral, the Marquis de Niza, to assume the blockade, as the most important service to be rendered the common cause. When the frigate reached its destination, Niza had come and gone, and Nelson then headed him off at the Strait of Messina, on his way to Naples, and sent him to blockade Malta. It may be added that this squadron remained under his command until December, 1799, and was of substantial utility in the various operations. Nelson professed no great confidence in its efficiency, which was not subjected to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the ensign at the presidio, was sent with seventeen men to punish the gentiles of the region of the Carquines Strait, who for several years had been harassing the neophytes at San Francisco, and sixteen of whom they had killed. Moraga had a hard fight against a hundred and twenty of them, and captured eighteen, whom he soon released, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... construct batteries at that season, and that, even had it been possible, Denmark would not have consented to their doing so, for fear that Sweden would renew her old claim to one half of the rich duties levied by Denmark on all ships passing the strait. There may have been some grounds for the last excuse; but the true reason for their conduct was the fear of getting involved in a war with England. Napoleon says that, even at that season, a few days ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the consideration of the House of Commons. The opposition asked leave to bring in a bill vacating all grants of Crown property which had been made since the Revolution. The ministers were in a great strait; the public feeling was strong; a general election was approaching; it was dangerous and it would probably be vain to encounter the prevailing sentiment directly. But the shock which could not be resisted might ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an all-destroying flood. The remarkable geographical position of this mountain seems to justify the Armenian view that it is the center of the world. It is on the longest line drawn through the Old World from the Cape of Good Hope to Bering Strait; it is also on the line of the great deserts and inland seas stretching from Gibraltar to Lake Baikal in Siberia—a line of continuous depressions; it is equidistant from the Black and Caspian Seas and the Mesopotamian plain, which three depressions are now watered ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... by Thy bitter death we plead, Help bring to us poor sinners in this our strait and need; Hei! and stand by us in the field, And have our land and people beneath Thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... see," said the good woman, pointing to the floor, "is a splendid carpit strait fro' the looms o' Turkey; so the man said as sold it to me, but I've reason to believe he told lies. Hows'ever, there it is, an' it's a fuss-rater as ye may see. The roses is as fresh as the day it was put down, 'xceptin' that one where Tottie ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... to serve the Revolution, invented his telegraph; but in doing so he subjected himself to the suspicions of the more ignorant, and on one notable occasion was brought into a strait place—both he and his invention. The story of this affair is given by Carlyle in the second volume of his "French Revolution." One knows not whether to smile or weep over the graphic account which the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... shining on her face? Had I quite forgotten her, or was she indeed something new? It was as if grief had chiselled her features afresh out of the superfluous roundings of prosperity, wasted them into perfect sweetness, hacked them into purer refinement. She wore a strait black gown of the coarsest material, only the fair folds of muslin about her throat giving daintiness to her attire. Her son breakfasted with us, and I fancied he often looked at me curiously as if to say, "What concern ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... Empress of Atlantis in the way she wished. And as for that other woman who should have filled my mind, I will confess that the stress of the moment, and the fury of the engagement, had driven both her and her strait completely out beyond the marches of my memory. Of such frail stuff are we made, even those of us who ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... poet of the East named Hafiz, Who sang of wine and beauty. Let us go Praising them too. And where good wine to quaff is And maids to kiss, doff life's gray garb of woe; For soon that tavern's reached, that inn, you know, Where wine and love are not, where, sans disguise, Each one must lie in his strait bed apart, The thorn of sleep deep-driven in his heart, And dust and darkness in ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... hers has been!" remarked Violet; "but she has reached home at last. And here, mamma," drawing Grace forward, "is a little pilgrim who has but just passed through the wicket-gate, and begun to travel the strait and narrow way." ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... me but a moment. I was too much of a real sea-dog to be standing idle at a time like that. There was but one man before the mast on whom I could call for anything in such a strait, and that was a New Yorker, of the name of Jack Neal. This man was near me, and I suggested to him the plan of getting the fore-topmast staysail loose, notwithstanding the mast was gone, in the hope it might blow open, and help the brig's bows round. Jack was a fellow ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that on a certain day two vessels passed in the Strait of Gibraltar. The smaller, a trim white yacht, was speeding toward the east, and on her deck sat a young woman who gazed with sad eyes upon a diamond-studded locket which she idly fingered. Her thoughts were far away, in ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to my mind which I must recount as an example when psychology failed. A Whitechapel "lady," suffering with a very violent form of delirium tremens, was lying screeching in a strait-jacket on the cushioned floor of the padded room. With the usual huge queue of students following, he had gone in to see her, as I had been unable to get the results desired with a reasonable quantity of sedatives and soporifics. It ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... After this, the generals sent on the tony[7] for the pepper, which carried such merchandize as was meant to be given in exchange; and for its protection Pacheco and three other captains accompanied it with two hundred men, and five hundred Cochin paraws[8]. In passing a narrow strait or river, our people were assailed from the banks by a vast number of the natives armed with bows and arrows, but were defended by their targets, which were fixed on the gunwales of their boats. Leaving one of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... has not heard each poet sing The powers of Heliconian spring? Its noble virtues we are told By all the rhyming crew of old.— Drink but a little of its well, And strait you could both write and spell, While such rhyme-giving pow'rs run through it, A quart would make an epic poet," ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... strait between these capes is passed, and the water becomes wider, they are navigable up to the city Teredon, where, after having suffered a great diminution of its waters, the Euphrates falls into the sea. The entire gulf, if measured round the shore, is 20,000 furlongs, being of a circular ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Lindhorst; these working hours were for him the happiest of his life; ever encircled with the lovely tone of Serpentina's encouraging words, he was filled and overflowed with a pure delight, which often rose to highest rapture. Every strait, every little care of his needy existence, had vanished from his thoughts; and in the new life which had risen on him as in serene sunny splendor, he comprehended all the wonders of a higher world, which before had filled him with astonishment, nay, with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of the third day we lay off the entrance to the Bosphorus till morning, when we steam down that charming strait to Constantinople. It is almost a year since I took, in company with our friend Shelton Bey, a pleasure trip up the Bosphorus and gazed for the first time on its wondrous beauties. I have seen considerable since, but the Bosphorus looks as fresh ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens |
