"Struggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holding the breath. The pause before emission is accomplished without any internal muscular struggle, and without any constriction of the larynx. Some writers lay down the rule that after inhaling, the singer should retain the breath by closing the vocal cords. The only objection to laying down this rule is that it is apt to make ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... indeed, with sentiments and aspirations all of them suddenly extinguished. The first had bequeathed him a single huge sorrow, the second a single trying duty. In due time the anguish had lost something of its poignancy, the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that duty which he had confronted with such an effort had become ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... accident occurred. A panic seized her. What if he should ask her? What could she tell him? He had a masterful way about him. If he took it into his head to make her confess she realized that she would have a struggle to keep from telling him everything. She made up her mind that she would not, she dare not answer any ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... business was said by the late J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska. He declared that a newspaper's enemies were its assets, and the newspaper's liabilities its friends. This is particularly true of a country newspaper. For instance, witness the ten-years' struggle of our own little paper to get rid of the word "Hon." as a prefix to the names of politicians. Everyone in town used to laugh at us for referring to whippersnapper statesmen as "Honourable"; because everyone in town knew that for the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... The prolonged struggle cost him deep anxiety and sleepless nights, which in the declining years of a laborious life told hardly upon his aged frame. But against all odds of numbers and under all disadvantages of circumstances ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... that if he could be left to himself he would struggle along from one Saturday Night to another and keep out of the Way of the Cars and possibly extract some Joy from this Life in his own ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... this dead weight was diminished in precisely the same proportion as the burthen was increased, the moral force of every man lessening in a very just ratio to the magnitude of his delinquencies. Bitterly did this deep offender struggle with his conscience, and little did his half-unsexed wife know how to console or aid him. Jack had been superficially instructed in the dogmas of her faith, in childhood and youth, as most persons are instructed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... come again for a month, and then she appeared with the blackest eye I had ever seen on a woman. She was seedier than ever, and looked hungry. I was deeply sorry for her, believing her clothing a sure index of an honest woman's struggle to remain honest. Partly from the delicacy of feeling due to this belief, and partly because I had but thirty-five cents in my pocket, I made no offer of pecuniary assistance. But, after giving me a conventional explanation of the cause of the black eye, she hinted plainly that, unless she could ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... unworthy creature. The tragedy follows, then, from the king's preferment of private above public good, or, we may say, from the conflict between the king's wishes as a man and his duty as a monarch. It is to Marlowe's perception of this vital struggle underlying the hostility between King Edward and his nobles that the play owes its greatness. We pity the king, we can hate those who beat him down to the mire, because his fault appeals to us in its personal aspect as almost a virtue; ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... stronger she might have combatted these conditions, but the uselessness of such a struggle had been demonstrated by so many—she did not have courage or faith in her ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... mind and will with the divine mind and will is not the future hope and aim of religion, but its very beginning and birth in the soul. To enter on the religious life is to terminate the struggle. In that act which constitutes the beginning of the religious life—call it faith, or trust, or self-surrender, or by whatever name you will—there is involved the identification of the finite with a life which is eternally realized. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Marsyas and Apollo is supposed by some to typify the struggle between the Flute and the Lyre; Marsyas representing the archaic Flute, Apollo the champion of the Lyre. The latter of course was victorious: it sets the voice free, and ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... time sufficiently obvious that this remarkable association of plant and animal is by no means to be termed a case of parasitism. If so, the animals so infested would be weakened, whereas their exceptional success in the struggle for existence is evident. Anthea cereus, which contains most algae, probably far outnumbers all the other species of sea-anemones put together, and the Radiolarians which contain yellow cells are far more abundant than those which are destitute of them. So, too, the young gonophores of Velella, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... a long struggle against the difficulties that friends and father put in his way, Edward Burrowes managed at the age of twenty-seven to get ordained in Canada, whither, in despair of escaping otherwise from the solicitor's ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the father, who seems to be in vain uplifting his eyes to the gods. The wreathed serpents represent to us that inevitable destiny which often involves all the parties of an action in one common ruin. And yet the beauty of proportion, the agreeable flow of the outline, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a representation, the most appalling to the senses, is yet managed with forbearance, while a mild breath of gracefulness ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in the middle years of my pathless teens. A comprehensive ignorance of the countries and histories which formed the setting of his most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of the man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... vain for the Fort, which has, since the war, been demolished; but the landlord of the hotel at which I afterwards dined, took me to its site, and related several incidents that occurred in connection with the fortress, and the struggle between the belligerent parties at the time. As, however, I considered these somewhat apocryphal, from several of his relations failing to hang together, and his decided bias against the Britishers, as he called the English, I shall not trouble the reader with the details. After viewing ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... eve came up with thunder's muttered growl, And ever and anon the lightning's scowl Flashed angrily upon me as I viewed The breakers dashing on the sea beach rude. I grew passionate amid the whirlwind's sigh, It had no word of comfort, loud was its cry, And deep, dark was the struggle of my soul, As I watched the billows onward roll. There came no ray of hope across my breast, As I turned toward my place of wild unrest; I looked in vain for calmness, up on high, It was not God's time for rainbows in the sky. I went again next eve; there was no storm, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... Abraham Lincoln said to Jefferson Davis, "work the slaves until they are about twenty-five or thirty years of age, then liberate them." Davis replied: "I'll never do it, before I will, I'll wade knee deep in blood." The result was that in 1861, the Civil War, that struggle which was to mark the final emancipation of the slaves began. Jefferson Davis' brothers, Sam and Tom, joined the Confederate forces, together with their sons who were old enough to go, except James, Tom's son, who could not go on account of ill ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... he was satisfied that the colonies had before them a difficult struggle. Many still refused to believe that there was really a state of war. Lexington and Bunker Hill might be regarded as unfortunate accidents to be explained away in an era of good feeling when each side should acknowledge ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... human right was beginning to present itself alongside of the problem of human might. The relations between the crown, the feudal barons, the pope, bishops, and abbots, differed widely in France, Germany, England, and other countries. The struggle among them for supremacy presented itself, therefore, in varied aspects; but the general outcome was essentially the same. The church began to appear as something behind and above abbots, bishops, kings, and barons. The supremacy of the papal authority gained increasing ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... were arrested, and sent off to Bridewell under the charge of Officer Bowyer, with a squad of police. The latter were assailed, however, on the way, by a portion of the mob that pursued them, and a fierce fight followed. In the struggle, Bowyer and his assistants had their clothes torn from their backs, and some of the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... crowbar, and crape, joined half-a-dozen neophyte burglars—his pupils and his victims. The hostelry chosen for attack was "The Spaniards." The host and his servants were, however, on the alert; and, after a smart struggle in the passage, the housebreakers were worsted; two or three of them being killed, and the others—save and except the cautious Jemmy, who had only directed the movement from without—being fast in the clutches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... him of his landing in Canada, and he looked back upon the disappointments and hardships he had borne in the country. He had soon found there was no easy road to wealth, and life had so far been an arduous struggle. He had known poverty, hunger, and stinging cold, and now his pay left little over when he had satisfied his frugal needs. All would be different if he went back to England, and he pondered over Allott's specious arguments. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Babylonians could not give the name of "Fool" to the representation in the sky of their supreme deity, the Hebrews and the Babylonians regarded the constellation in different ways. Several Assyriologists consider that the constellations, Orion and Cetus, represent the struggle between Merodach and Tiamat, and this conjecture is probably correct, so far as Babylonian ideas of the constellations are concerned, for Tiamat is expressly identified on a Babylonian tablet with a constellation near the ecliptic.[241:1] ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... became routine. In the morning three biscuits, at noon real tea, and at night three biscuits. In between he drank spruce tea for his scurvy. He caught himself making larger biscuits, and after a severe struggle with himself went back to ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... distinguished at the distance of a yard. In this state we lay for nearly an hour, unable to move from our ground, or offer any opposition to those who kept us there; when a straggling fire of musketry called our attention towards the piquets, and warned us to prepare for a closer and more desperate struggle. As yet, however, it was uncertain from what cause this dropping fire arose. It might proceed from the sentinels, who, alarmed by the cannonade from the river, mistook every tree for an American; and till the real state of the case should be ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and said, 'You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if you choose. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... struggle became desperate. He fought for his life, for he saw that, now he had defied me, I meant what I threatened. No doubt he was physically stronger than myself, and at first he had the advantage; but not for long, because, resorting to a ruse taught me long ago by a man who was a professional ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... to battle—the discipline that provides for this is great and valuable and must be always observed and practised. This gives, however, only the common courage of the crowd, and can only be trusted on an even field where the chances of war are equal. But when there is a struggle to restore freedom, where from the nature of the case the chances are uneven and the soldiers of liberty are at every disadvantage, then must we seek to adjust the balance by a finer courage and a more enduring strength. The mustering of legions will not suffice. The general reviewing ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... become almost the very reverse of what he was, of what he gave so brave an earnest of becoming. He who was once so electric, so vital, so brilliant a figure has become dreary and outward and stupid, even. He who once seemed the champion of the new has come to fill us with the weariness of the struggle, with deep self-distrust and discouragement, has become a heavy and oppressive weight. He who once sought to express the world about him, to be the poet of the coming time, now seems inspired only by a desire to do the amazing, the surface thing, and plies ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to this, had cut short his words in a paroxysm of horror. "My God!" he had exclaimed, "think, think what you are saying. It is too incredible, too monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet world, where men and women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or maybe fail, and fall down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange fortunes for many a year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as this. There must be some explanation, some way out of ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... truce necessarily develops its own jokes, informalities, callousnesses, disregard of wounds and gruesome sights, yet deep in their souls the units never forget that they are drilled and regimented for struggle. We stood the other evening with a Freeport man in the baggage compartment at the front of a train leaving Brooklyn. We two had gained the bull's-eye window at the nose of the train and sombrely ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... lowered the pillow, an unwonted radiance lit up her eye, and an expression of ineffable gladness overspread her face, as she murmured: "It is beautiful, so beautiful!" Fainter and fainter grew her voice, until, without a struggle or sigh, she passed away beyond the power of oppression ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... of violence. Consequently others are able to seize their place, and the same process of softening and, so to say, unconscious Christianizing goes on with them. It is something like the process of ebullition. The majority of men, having the non- Christian view of life, always strive for power and struggle to obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the least Christian elements of society overpower the most gentle, well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence to the upper ranks ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... off in his usual school suit of black Eton jacket and dark grey trousers. There were no signs that anyone had entered the room, and it is quite certain that anything in the nature of cries, or a struggle, would have been heard, since Caunter, the elder boy in the inner room, is a ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good? Probably. And, knowing no other region, had remained there, and for the first time, or at least after a long interval of captivity and dependence on man, it had discovered what liberty was and with liberty the necessity to struggle for existence. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... declaration. That people were few in number and without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters was still waging,—of undistinguished parents and in an obscure district of one of those colonies Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant child ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... seem to struggle with Death as with an invisible assassin; in the agony at the last, as the final thrust is made, the act of dying seems to be a conflict, a hand-to-hand fight for life. Pons had reached the supreme moment. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... and Mississippi had shown a decided disposition to become hostile. In addition to the usual incentives to war which always exist where the white settlements border closely upon Indian territory, there were several special causes operating to bring about a struggle at that time. We were already at war with the British, and British agents were very active in stirring up trouble on our frontiers, knowing that nothing would so surely weaken the Americans as a general outbreak of Indian hostilities. Tecumseh, the great chief, had visited the ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... direction, strikes up the Vallee de Lesponne, en route for the Lac Bleu (6457 ft.) and the Montaigu (7681 ft.). When Baudean and its quaint old church were left in our rear, and we were nearing Campan, we witnessed a fierce struggle between a young bull-calf and a native. The calf objected very strongly to the landaus, and wished to betake itself to the adjacent country to avoid them. To this the native very naturally objected in turn, and a struggle was ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... clutching, tearing open his shirt and swaying. His eyes stared wildly, his face was drawn and his mouth was open to its fullest capacity in a struggle for breath. Then he went down, all of a heap; tried to regain his feet, but failed, and crawled about on his hands and knees in the dust, still fighting for that first gasp of air which seemed tauntingly to stand between him and ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... cast their flies toward the indicated spot. They all were about the same size, just under two pounds, all native or cutthroat trout. They soon tired of it, and returned nearly all of their catch to the water as soon as taken. Sometimes a fish, tired with the struggle, would lie at the bottom, on its side, as though dead, but if touched with the end of the landing-net handle would recover ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... The struggle was brief. He began to wear plainer clothes—an Oxford tweed coat and a flannel shirt—to talk about fame as an empty word, and to tell his father that he was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... save you for your father, Mademoiselle, and your poor grandmother! There! be a good child! Do not struggle.' ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the battle of Diamond Hill, as it was called from the name of the ridge which was opposite to Hamilton's attack. The prolonged two days' struggle showed that there was still plenty of fight in the burghers. Lord Roberts had not routed them, nor had he captured their guns; but he had cleared the vicinity of the capital, he had inflicted a loss upon them which was certainly as great as his own, and he had again proved to them that it ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... understand the look on his predecessor's face and the drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and gentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a mis-shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... was between the sheets with a hot-water bottle at his toes and a huge breakfast inside him that Roland learned the name of his good Samaritan. When he did, his first impulse was to struggle out of bed and make his escape. Geoffrey Windlebird's was a name which he had learned, in the course of his mercantile career, to hold in something approaching reverence as that of one of the mightiest business brains ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... you again, Tom; it is nice to be with you. Please don't make it necessary for me to send you away again. Let's just be friends, and let me feel that I have your sympathy and affection in the struggle I am ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... right into those really reliable boots of his. Anthea and Cyril each had a private struggle with that inside disagreeableness which is part of all of us, and which is sometimes called the Old Adam—and both were victors. Neither of them said to Robert (and both tried hard not even to think it), 'This is YOUR doing.' Anthea had the additional ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the nearest church (Nocellae, 133, c. ii.). This rule naturally proved inconvenient when a monastery was situated in a desert or at a distance from a city, and necessity compelled the ordination of abbots. This innovation was not introduced without a struggle, ecclesiastical dignity being regarded as inconsistent with the higher spiritual life, but, before the close of the 5th century, at least in the East, abbots seem almost universally to have become deacons, if not presbyters. The change spread more slowly in the West, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... leaned back in 'is seat panting and trying to wrap 'imself up better in the counterpane, which 'ad got torn in the struggle. They went through street arter street, and 'e was just thinking of a nice warm bed and a kind nurse listening to all 'is troubles when 'e found they ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... had no hope of temporal reward; that thenceforth the great feature of their life and work was that it must be filled with labour and self-denial. The whole business of helping and saving our fellow-creatures was one of struggle and suffering. Sacrifice was the key-note of Christianity as laid down by its Founder. Those who sought money and temporal honour must look elsewhere than to the Salvation Army. Its pride and glory was that thousands were ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... state interferes either in a struggle already in progress, or interferes before the ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... it is all the more difficult to overcome them because they are generally to be met with together. Unfortunately, they never can be wholly killed, for when you think they are left dead on the field after a hard struggle, they always come to life again; but they have never been quite so strong since the war waged on them by John Howard, who died fighting against them ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... is suddenly plunged into darkness, there is the noise of a struggle, and the lights go on to reveal Jasper by the door covering ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... arranged that the mistress of the house was to be watched and never left alone. Occasionally Mrs. Krauss had disputes and dreadful altercations with Lily; but by degrees she appeared to acquiesce; her strength was unequal to a prolonged struggle, and the victim of cocaine would throw herself down on her bed and moan like some dying animal. These moans pierced the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... always find itself; for by how much the soul struggleth under these distresses, by so much the more doth Satan put forth himself to resist, still infusing more poison, that if possible it might never struggle more, for strugglings are also as poison to Satan. The fly in the spider's web is an emblem of the soul in such a condition—the fly is entangled in the web; at this the spider shows himself; if the fly stir again, down comes the spider to her, and claps a foot ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Old World, who hated republican institutions, and who thought they saw, in this act of treason, the downfall of the great American experiment. Most citizens, however, of the United States, who were then sojourning abroad, hastened home to take part in the struggle,—some to side with the rebels, others to take their stand with the friends of liberty. Among the latter, none came with swifter steps or more zeal than Jerome and Clotelle Fletcher. They arrived in New Orleans a week after the capture ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... burst the chain which bound her, and be free. But with a shake other head, Anna bade her go away. "Leave me, 'Lena Rivers," she said, "leave me to work out my destiny. It is decreed that I shall be his wife, and I may not struggle against it. Each night I read it in the stars, and the wind, as it sighs through the maple trees, whispers it to ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... by plunging toward her, rearing her head in as serpentine a manner as she could command; and after a struggle the two mighty saurians went down together in a whirlpool of frothing waves. They came up quite out of breath, and sat laughing and panting on the willow root, which in one place curved out in such a way as ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... a little dubiously, "I think not. But this will be my first experience of fighting, you know—I have never been face to face with an enemy thus far—and I must confess that the idea of a hand-to-hand fight—for I suppose it will come to that—a life-and-death struggle, wherein one has not only to incur the awful responsibility of hurling one's fellow-creatures into eternity, but also to take the fearful risk of being hurled thither one's self, perhaps without a moment of time in which to breathe a prayer for mercy, is something ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... struggle; for Angelot, though strong, was slender and small, and Ratoneau had height and width of chest, besides great muscular power. And he hated Angelot with all the intensity of his violent nature. It was a case in which strength told, and Angelot had been unwise in trusting to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... with memorials of the great Mutiny of half a century ago, where the British were so hard pushed and suffered so terribly in those days of bitterness which tried men's souls. And there is no memorial of this bitter struggle, to which the British refer with so much of pride and glory, as they do to the Cashmere gate, which they blew up and thereby forced an entrance into the city, with a loss of much ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... later, the undoubted grandeur of the scene, for we were mainly concerned with getting our guns and overloaded vehicles along. Time after time they sank almost up to the axle-trees in the heavy sand and time after time did the sweating horses pull them out and struggle on again. One G.S. waggon, laden till it resembled a pantechnicon, was soon in dire straits. Originally starting with a six-horse team it acquired on the journey first one extra pair, then another—with a spare man mounted on each of the off-horses—and finally arrived in camp at the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Elzevir, he thought he would easily have him broken down and handcuffed, and then turn to me. But he reckoned without his host, for though Elzevir was the shorter and older man, he was wonderfully strong, and seasoned as a salted thong. Then they hugged one another and began a terrible struggle: for Elzevir knew that he was wrestling for life, and I daresay the turnkey guessed that the stakes were much the same for ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... whipping me when he see me cry, and I wanted the bladder experiment to go on, so I looked kind of hard, as if I was defying him to do his worst, and then he took me by the neck and laid me across a trunk. I didn't dare struggle much for fear the bladder would loose itself, and Pa said, 'Now Hennery, I am going to break you of this damfoolishness, or I will break your back,' and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel stave down on my best pants. Well, you'd a dide if you had heard the explosion. It almost knocked me ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... any morning whip a savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... and embraced her in token of his sincerity. Whether this generous condescension diffused such a composure upon her spirits as tended to the ease and refreshment of nature, which had been almost exhausted by disease and vexation, certain it is, that from this day she began to struggle with her malady in surprising efforts, and hourly gained ground, until her health was pretty ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... grasp my bliss. My heart seems to struggle out at my throat, but hard before me bloom her lips. I am brave and kiss her. "Oh," she says, "your beard ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."—HERBERT SPENCER: Principles ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... narrow of hip, though not yet come to the fulness of maturity, was of the evident strength fitted to toil hugely at the beck of its owner's will. The agent, conscious of a puny frame that had served him ill in life's struggle, experienced a half-resentment against this youth's physical excellence. He wondered, if, after all, the boast might be ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... lance-head, a brass tray hung on the wall, the long barrel of a gun leaning against the chest, caught the stray rays of the smoky illumination in trembling gleams that wavered, disappeared, reappeared, went out, came back—as if engaged in a doubtful struggle with the darkness that, lying in wait in distant corners, seemed to dart out viciously towards its feeble enemy. The vast space under the high pitch of the roof was filled with a thick cloud of smoke, whose under-side—level like a ceiling—reflected the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... man she would have decided long ago. And that is the truth. It is his age alone that prevents her at once deciding in his favour. It prevents those feelings arising in her mind, without which it would be a struggle to accept him, and this she never will do. She was therefore desirous that he should know the state of her feelings, that she might be again at her ease. He had seen her manner cold towards him, and wrote to say that he would call upon me yesterday. I was horribly frightened, as I hate ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... with blood, and the stain was on his neck and chest. He had one helpless arm; his clothes were torn as from a fierce struggle. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the struggle which was going on between the partisans of royalty and the Republic. He was told that royalism was everywhere on the increase. All the generals who returned from Paris to the army complained of the spirit of reaction they ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... bunch of keys. He was about to call for help, but Watson placed his left hand over the man's mouth, and with his right clutched the unfortunate's throat. Then Macgreggor seized the keys, after a sharp but decisive struggle, and hurried into the hallway, where he began to release the general prisoners. He quickly unlocked in succession the doors of the three other rooms on the second floor. The men thus freed did not understand the significance of it all, but they saw unexpected liberty staring them ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... whom he must defy in order to reach salvation; and out of that contemplation rose his wonderful romance, not exactly an allegory, where every circumstance can be fitted with an appropriate meaning, but with the sense of the struggle of life, with external temptation and hereditary inclination pervading all, while Grace and Prayer aid the effort. Folko and Gabrielle are revived from the Magic Ring, that Folko may by example and influence enhance all higher resolutions; while Gabrielle, in all unconscious ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the boys burst in a window next to it, leapt into the room, groped their way to the door, and then finding the stairs, hurried up. On the landing a dim oil light was burning, but it needed no light to indicate the room in which the struggle was still proceeding. The door stood ajar, and the boys, with drawn ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... passed in sordid struggle and disappointment. He was not prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate the sins of his fathers ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... minister at the same court, representing more than any other man, embodying more than any other man, the spirit of Massachusetts, said to George III., on the first day of June, 1785, after the close of our long and bitter struggle for independence: "I shall esteem myself the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in restoring an entire esteem, confidence and affection, or, in better words, the old good-nature and the old good-humor ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... the Long Serpent with five large ships; he laid the Jarn Bardi alongside, and then ensued the fiercest fight and the most terrible hand-to-hand struggle of the day, and such a shower of weapons was poured upon the Long Serpent that the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... itself with the efforts of the countess to give her niece, whom she values much less than her daughter, a suitable husband. The poor girl is bullied and badgered after the most approved methods of domestic tyranny, and her high-spirited struggle against adverse circumstances makes the book as readable as one could wish. After all, the family is a microcosm, and furnishes frequent opportunity for the practice of good or bad qualities; and the cleverest novel-writers have chosen just this subject which seems so bald to the romantic writer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... toward him with a wondrous look—a look which made him shiver with emotion. He looked down a moment, and his struggle to speak made him seem very boyish ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... but one thing more to do. But oh, the tears that fell as she stood there before she could go on; how the little hands were pressed to the bowed face, as if they would have borne up the load they could not reach; the convulsive struggle, before the last look could be taken, the last good-by said! But the sobs were forced back, the hands wiped off the tears, the quivering features were bidden into some degree of calmness; and she leaned forward, over the loved face that in death had kept all its wonted ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... sustain Hood, so the country is likely to get good out of evil. General Hood is displaying great energy and using his best exertions for success. I think very well of him. He is a most excellent man, and undoubtedly of great military talent. Whether equal or not to this great struggle, time ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... if only myself were concerned, but you are the uncertain quantity—more uncertain than you have any idea; you think you know yourself, you think you have analyzed yourself, but the truth is, Hugh, you don't know the meaning of struggle against real resistance." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he dreamed vaguely, confusedly; broken fragments of images and fancies followed each other, fleeting and incoherent, but all filled with the same dim sense of struggle and pain, the same shadow of indefinable dread. Presently he began to dream of sleeplessness; the old, frightful, familiar dream that had been a terror to him for years. And even as he dreamed he recognized that he had been through it ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... can attain to such security of their own faith as they believe essential. Indeed, this state of wretchedness is almost deemed a necessary stage in the Christian life, like the Slough of Despond in the Pilgrim's Progress; and with such a temperament as David Brainerd's, the horrors of the struggle for hope were dreadful and lasted for months, before an almost physical perception of light, glory, and grace shone out upon him, although, even to the end of his life, hope and fear, spiritual joy and depression alternated, no doubt, greatly in ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... seeing all natural power fails, give us some sign, that you live upon the comfortable promises which you have so often shewed to us." At this speech he lifted up one of his hands, and immediately after, without any struggle, as one falling asleep, he departed this life about eleven o'clock at night, finishing his Christian warfare, he entered into the joy of his Lord, to receive a crown of righteousness prepared for him (and such as him), from before the foundation ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... understood, I shall start at the beginning of my subject by very briefly describing the theory of natural selection. It is a matter of observable fact that all plants and animals are perpetually engaged in what Mr. Darwin calls a "struggle for existence." That is to say, in every generation of every species a great many more individuals are born than can possibly survive; so that there is in consequence a perpetual battle for life going on among all the constituent individuals of any given generation. Now, in this struggle for existence, ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... English Government of having opened his letters and told their contents to the authorities of Italy. This set the whole of England against him, but Carlyle defended him in great measure, and testified to the worthiness of his noble struggle for his country's freedom. Later, in 1848, when the Lombard revolt broke out, he took the part of the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Blake. He has come with five hundred men of Popham's regiment, to protect us from a large army of Malignants—twenty thousand men, it is said—under Prince Maurice, cousin to the King. He threatens to annihilate our little town; but though we shall have a hard struggle to beat them back, ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... doubt. Glad as I should be to see you, I don't like to ask you to come all the way to Petersham to dinner, and if you asked me to Potters Bar—well, I should come, but it would be something of a struggle, and I thank you for not asking me. Besides, we have made different friends now, and our tastes are different. After we had talked about the old days, I doubt if we should have much to say to each other. Each of us would think the other a bit of a bore, and our wives would wonder why we had ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... it Clo had said, that day? "There was once a mouse who gnawed a net——" Poor mouse, it had tried to-day to gnaw the net! It had gnawed one small hole, but even before the prisoner could struggle to get free, the hole had closed again. Still, the mouse was ready for another bout. It was a brave, bold mouse—a subtle mouse! For some strange reason her ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and Julian, the Emperors next in succession after Commodus, amounted together only to a few months; and the faithful had meanwhile to struggle with many discouragements; [296:4] but these short-lived sovereigns were so much occupied with other matters, that they could not afford time for legislation on the subject of religion. Septimius Severus, who now obtained the Imperial dignity, was at first not unfriendly to the Church; and a ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... But they had to struggle with difficulties far more serious. The West Indian interest which opposed them, was a collected body; of great power, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... "It was a hard struggle for some years, monsieur. Business did not prosper, and we could not afford many country excursions, and, besides, we had got out of the way of them. One has other things in one's head, and thinks more of the cash ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... interred; but this (I know not why) was insufficient, and the spirit still lingered on the theatre of death. When peace returned a singular scene was enacted in many places, and chiefly round the high gorges of Lotoanuu, where the struggle was long centred and the loss had been severe. Kinswomen of the dead came carrying a mat or sheet and guided by survivors of the fight. The place of death was earnestly sought out; the sheet was spread upon the ground; and the women, moved with ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'I have a right to reproach myself because my own undisciplined heart has gone beyond control sometimes; but does it lie in your province, Paul, to blame me for that? Have I not an equal right,' she went on, 'to tell you that you have not helped me in the daily struggle I have had to make? You are unjust, you are ungenerous. I could never ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... bit of a struggle, till my foot slipped, and while I was waving my arms and trying to get my balance back 'e made a dash for the empties. Next moment he was roaring like a mad bull that 'ad sat down in a sorsepan of boiling water, and rushing back agin ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... You are generous people, you and your son; but young folks' hearts will go their own way. I had made up my mind to a struggle with the prejudices of all the family, and I had rather it had been for Jock; but it can't be helped, and there is not a shadow of objection ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one or two were requisite during the delirium, and we could not get a nurse for love or money, and when he became better, then, as we had dreaded, our poor little boy was struck down. However, it has pleased God to spare him, and, after a long struggle, he is safe from the disorder and almost restored to his former health. But we are still under a sort of quarantine, for, although people pretend to believe in vaccination, they avoid the house as if the plague were in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the Irish missal-painter ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... disagreeableness from Henrietta, and she did not like the boys, there was nothing of Evelyn in them, while they for their part could not imagine why their mother cared for their aunt Henrietta. It was a continual struggle for Evelyn not to be impatient with her; much as she longed to, she could not keep on the high plane of devotion, which had brought such ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... excepted. Unhappily, however, this baneful influence has thus far succeeded in defeating the efforts of all liberal-minded men in Spain to abolish slavery in Cuba, and in preventing the promised reform in that island. The struggle for political ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... her attitude was so threatening that Captain Sellers hesitated. Then he turned, and, picking up his coat, began to struggle into it. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs |
