"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes, and to which his ears listened at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead with something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung from the loins of his own. Crudeness ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... power to hold back the flood of youth, seeking almost in vain to re-discover the spring that moved me then. Yet, though I can not feel it again, I know dimly what it was, that high, strange, noble, ludicrous ideal of my office which so laid hold on me as to scatter passion's forces and wrest me from the arms of her I loved. I can not now so think of my kingship, so magnify its claim, or conceive that it matters so greatly to the world how I hold it or what manner of man I show myself. I come to the conclusion (though it may seem to border on paradox) that in a like case I could not, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... THOUSAND (401-400 B.C.).—Cyrus, satrap of the Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and about ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... which I had been intrusted was one of the very greatest responsibility; for the descent of a combined French and Spanish fleet upon West Indian waters could only be assumed to point to an intention, on the part of our enemies, to wrest at least some of our West Indian possessions from us; an intention which our available resources on the spot would be utterly inadequate to frustrate, in view of the formidable force possessed by the enemy. ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... not give thee the Latin!" exclaimed he. "I forbid thee to read or learn the same, for I well know thou wouldst wrest it ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... Bertram, "Gladstone's remarks in the Fortnightly Review, his almost prediction (unless we bestir ourselves): That England's daughter, the Great United States of America, may yet in the near future wrest from us our position in manufacturing of Head servant to the household of the world. Many of we British want a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... 16. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom that has been given unto him has written, as he also in all his letters speaks thereof, in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they also do other Scriptures, to their own destruction. There St. Peter bears testimony for the Apostle Paul in respect to his doctrine, which shows plainly enough that this Epistle was written long after ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... rollers heaved the boat high until the men were again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted beach. "We won't get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Christianity was apparently, as I have said, an effort of the human soul to wrest itself free from the entanglement of physical lust—which lust, though normal and appropriate and in a way gracious among the animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness become diseased and morbid or monstrous in Man. The work thus done has probably been of the greatest value to ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... benefit his land. When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king fell, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Constitution as themselves, they were only too ready to be convinced that the denunciations of the abolitionists were the first presage of the storm that was presently to overwhelm them, to reduce their States to provinces, to wrest from them the freedom they had inherited, and to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water to the detested plutocrats of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and English Nonconformists; Waldenses from Piedmont and Huguenots from France. The same spirit that made Holland the lenient host to political and religious refugees from every land in that restive age characterized her colony and laid the foundations of the great city of today. England had to wrest from the Dutch their ascendancy in New Netherland, where they split in twain the great English colonies of New England and of the South and controlled the magnificent harbor at the mouth of the Hudson, which has since become the water gate ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... time when he was the foremost labor leader in the country. Unlike Samuel Gompers, who came to supplant him about 1890, he was foreign to that spirit of combative unionism which accepts the wage system but concentrates on a struggle to wrest concessions from the employers. Even when circumstances which were largely beyond his control made Powderly a strike leader on a huge scale, his heart lay elsewhere—in circumventing the wage system by opening to the worker an ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... conspicuous, for he topped by a head and shoulders the tallest rider on the range. Sundown became doubly conspicuous as the story of his experience with the hold-ups and his rescue of Chance became known. If he strutted, it was pardonable, for he strutted among men difficult to wrest approval from, and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... attempting to wrest from us our inherited freedom of religious worship, Charles Stuart and his abettors have pursued the courageous constancy with which we have defended the same, with more animosity than they ever did any crime. I speak not to you, Mr Renwick, of your own outcast condition,—perhaps ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... try to thwart the scheme. These bold fellows will carry off the maid to the safe keeping of Maelgon, and once let her be his prisoner, there is no fear of her escaping from his hands. Edward himself and all his forces at his back will scarce wrest away the prize, and the whole country will be united and in arms ere it suffer the tyrant to march through ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... implanted on their tender frames. Yet, practically, none of this is inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or for the very welfare and existence ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... Chartres, of a house of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... itself had beaten Gower in a strangely similar fashion. He too was old, a tired, disappointed man. He had reached for material success with one hand and happiness with the other. One had always eluded him. The other Jack MacRae had helped wrest from him. MacRae could see Gower's life in detached pictures, life that consisted of making money and spending it, life with a woman who whined and sniffled and complained. These things had been a slow torture. MacRae could no longer regard this man as a ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... have called to see you, Miss Vernon," she said, thrusting her head into the doorway of the room where teacher and pupil sat close together with clasped hands, as though some invading force was about to wrest their lives apart. ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... Acre, the last European stronghold in the Holy Land, had lost their power; but a new family of the Turkish race, the one that dwells in Europe to-day, the Osmanlis, had built up an empire by conquest over their fellows, and had begun to wrest province after province from the feeble Empire of the East. In 1354 their advance brought them across the Bosporus and they seized their first European territory.[23] Soon they had spread over most of modern Turkey. Only the strong-walled Constantinople held out, while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Lord does not here intend to intimate that all the priests and Levites were cruel, and all Samaritans tender-hearted: to apply them so would be to wrest his words. This teacher grasps his instrument by the extremity, first one extremity and then the other, that his lesson may reach further than if he had grasped it by the middle. The honourable office, and even the generally high ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... contagion in weakness and selfishness. His incessant cry had been that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn't see the child, and that he and the child must go together. He had even tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in his. "Mr. Rarx," said I to him when it came to that, "I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don't stand out of the gangway, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, if you have got one." Says he, "You won't ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... were therefore under the necessity of using the cast-steel, if they would retain their trade in cutlery against France; and Huntsman's home trade rapidly increased. And then began the efforts of the Sheffield men to wrest his secret from him. For Huntsman had not taken out any patent for his invention, his only protection being in preserving his process as much a mystery as possible. All the workmen employed by him were pledged to inviolable ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... arc his body, standing in the swing, was almost horizontal. Should he once pass above the level of the rope's attachment he would be lost; the rope would slacken and he would fall vertically to a point as far below as he had gone above, and then the sudden tension of the rope would wrest it from his hands. All saw the peril—all cried out to him to desist, and gesticulated at him as, indistinct and with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot in flight, he swept past us through the lower reaches of his hideous oscillation. A woman standing at a little distance away fainted and fell ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... with his blueberry eye as a wrestler does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angel unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches of well-nourished corporeity, defended from the winter winds by dingy linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small, circular ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... death; they might institute and celebrate every possible service—they would accomplish nothing. Is it not better to cling to the Word and maintain this treasure whereby you attain salvation and divine sonship than to permit the world to wrest you from it through persecution, passion or moral filth the source of its own ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... smile when later in the night Makrisi brought Mahi de Vernoil, disguised as a mendicant friar. This outlaw pleaded with Sire Raimbaut to head the tatters of Lovain's army, and showed Raimbaut how easy it would be to wrest Venaissin from Prince Guillaume. "We cannot save Lovain," de Vemoil said, "for Guillaume has him fast. But Venaissin is very proud of you, my tres beau sire. Ho, maker of world-famous songs! stout champion of the faith! ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... rights as British subjects; how faithfully I have narrated their wrongs and advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen, and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of England, and provide places ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... a step ladder on the back porch. I noticed it the last time we were over here." Elfreda hurried from the room to wrest the ladder from its lowly haunt. Returning she set it in place before the painting and climbed the four steps to the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Court of cases in which appeals may hereafter be taken, but interdicts its jurisdiction on appeals which have already been made to that high judicial body. If, therefore, it should become a law, it will by its retroactive operation wrest from the citizen a remedy which he enjoyed at the time of his appeal. It will thus operate most harshly upon those who believe that justice has been denied ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... and interpreter of his Father's will, Jesus Christ hath prescribed and foreappointed the rule according to which he would have his worship and the government of his own house to be ordered. To wrest this rule of Christ, laid open in his holy word, to the counsels, wills, manners, devices, or laws of men, is most high impiety. But contrarily, the law of faith commandeth the counsel and purposes ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... heavenly power seems to be coming to his relief. For nearly half a century he has been holding in his hand the keys of the great pathway from southern Russia to the East, despite the utmost efforts of the czar to wrest them from him. In vain did the emperor Nicholas visit the Caucasus to cheer on his troops; in vain did the grand-duke Alexander, the present emperor, take part in the campaign of 1850; or Prince Baratinksky in 1852 attempt by his bravery to ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... Dougherty (an Indian trader), communicated the circumstance of the case to Major O'Fallon, (the agent), who immediately and peremptorily ordered the restoration of the child to its mother, and informed the trader that any future attempt to wrest it from her should ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... general principle is applicable to the interpretation of all passages containing "things hard to be understood." The "unlearned and unstable" wrest them, by taking them out of their connection and in contradiction to the general tenor of God's word. But the candid student of Scripture never uses that which is difficult in revelation to obscure that which is plain. He seeks, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the colonists were naturally left to take care of themselves, and this, coupled with the policy of excluding them from all foreign commerce, justified Spain's enemies in seeking to wrest from her the possessions from which she drew the revenues that enabled her to make war on them. Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Hollanders made of the Antilles their trysting-ground for the purpose of preying upon the ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... led the Romance nations to battle for Christendom. In the 11th and 12th centuries the chivalry of Spain and southern France took up the struggle with the Moors as a holy war. In the autumn of 1096 the nobles of France and Italy, joined by the Norman barons of England and Sicily, set out to wrest the Holy Land from the unbelievers; and for more than a century the cry, "Christ's land must be won for Christ," exercised an unparalleled power ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... a gem, the lustre of which could only be rivalled by the brilliancy of the eye which the bonnet shaded. It was the only striking feature in his countenance; but when once noticed, it ever made a strong impression on the spectator. About his neck there hung in a scarf of sky-blue silk a WREST as it was called—that is, the key with which a harp is tuned, and which ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the domain of science must, in so far as they do this, submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting otherwise ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... came, and, with Robert's consent, set things on a better footing; but meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years' time he had tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him. The unfortunate Robert came to him at Northampton, almost alone, forced himself into his presence, and told him he would submit everything to him, if he would only leave him ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... memory of the many ills that she had brought upon France. "But," said the Bearnais, "I should like to ask you, what could a poor woman do who had, by the death of her husband, been left with five small children on her hands and two families who were endeavoring to wrest the crown from them, ours and that of the Guises? Was she not obliged to make use of strange personages to outwit both of them, and yet to preserve, as she did, her children, who reigned successively, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... councillors and by the English party here, whose interest it is to prevent any change being made, and who constantly misrepresent the feelings of this country. From the days when Strongbow first landed, this island has been the prey of adventurers, whose only object has been to wrest the land from the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman. Yet foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meagre territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... about to make the disagreeable confession, when the thoughts of the whole party were suddenly diverted to another channel, by the opening of the door and the entrance of one of those gaunt sons of the forest who were wont to hang on the skirts of civilisation, as it advanced to wrest from ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... the two partners as they looked on this scene. To wrest from reluctant earth her richest treasures, to add to the wealth of the world, to create—here ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... centuries the Albanians had been steadily re-occupying the lands of their Illyrian ancestors and pressing back the small remaining Serb population, and since the time of the Treaty of Berlin had been struggling to wrest autonomy from the Turks and obtain recognition as a nation. The whole of this district had been included in the autonomous Albanian state proposed and mapped out by Lord Goschen and Lord Fitzmaurice in 1880. Ipek, Jakova and Prizren were centres of the Albanian League. The British ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... night Donaster attempted in vain to wrest the secret from Eben, and his failure made him angry. Lack of sleep, his wet clothes, and the stubbornness of the boy annoyed him. But he could do nothing, so at length, giving up in despair, he went down into the cabin, and lighted a fire in the ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... to be understood, which the unlearned and the unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition.— ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... movements thoroughly understood, the army moved down upon the range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's work began; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winter had wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunes from the wilderness, and to hold once more their ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... qualities and of her defects kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the zest of personal gossip, her achievements made much of, her faults glossed over as things that, being without remedy in our imperfect world, should not be dwelt upon too much by men who, with the help of ships, wrest out a bitter living from the rough grasp of the sea. All that talk makes up her "name," which is handed over from one crew to another without bitterness, without animosity, with the indulgence of mutual dependence, and with the feeling of close association in the exercise of her perfections ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... historic expedition into the wilds of Virginia. His great-grandfather had accompanied Boone when that hunter first penetrated the "Dark and Bloody Ground," had gone back to Virginia and come again with a surveyor's chain and compass to help wrest it from the red men, among whom there had been an immemorial conflict for possession and a never-recognized claim of ownership. That compass and that chain his grandfather had fallen heir to and with that compass and chain his father had ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... peace thou seemest now, Yielding thy ridges to the rustic plough, With corn-fields at thy feet, and many a grove Whose songs are but of love; But different was the aspect of that hour, Which brought, of eld, the Norsemen o'er the deep, To wrest yon castle's walls from Scotland's power, And leave her brave to bleed, her fair to weep; When Husbac fierce, and Olave, Mona's king,[5] Confederate chiefs, with shout and triumphing, Bade o'er its towers the Scaldic raven fly, And mock each storm-tost sea-king toiling by!— Far different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept floors, and ran errands. Sometimes he would look across the broad stump-dotted plain to the distant forest. He had imagination. No business man succeeds without it. With him the great struggle to wrest from an impassive and aloof nature what she has so long held securely as her own, took on the proportions of a battle. The distant forest was the front. To it went the new bands of fighters. From it came the caissons for food, that ammunition of the frontier; messengers bringing tidings ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... passed by and relegated to the second place. Her place was her own. Her standing ground in the universal order, a freehold, absolute and inalienable. She could not abdicate her throne, neither could any wrest it away from her. She perceived that not self-effacement, but self-development, not dissolution, but evolution, was the service required of her. And, as divinely designed contribution to that end was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... from the foe Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow. Each woe they suffered in a hostile land The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned. They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait To wrest the captives from their horrid fate. Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls, Each savage soldier's ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... forgotten all these miserable years of married life, and was upon that heaving raft again, with his arms around me, and whispering those low, passionate words in my ear. Why did that dream come back then? Was it to lay my heart open, and reveal to me how little prayer and time have done to wrest this first and last love ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... on a lawless quest, With passions foul in the hero's breast, Moved by no greed at the fiend's behest, Gloating in lust o'er a bloody prey; But from tyrant robber the spoil to wrest, And tear down his ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... O fairest and most shrewd of enemies. A half-hour since, it seemed to me an important matter to wrest from you this secret of giving life to images. Now I have seen the miracle; I know that for the man who has your favor it is possible to become as a god, creating life, and creating lovelier living beings than any god creates, and beings which live longer, too: and even so, it is not of these things ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... than Wessex itself. But in saving Wessex it saved England. The spell of terror was broken. The tide of invasion turned. From an attitude of attack the northmen were thrown back on an attitude of defence. The whole reign of AElfred was a preparation for a fresh struggle that was to wrest back from the pirates the land they ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the poor, might have been taken and appropriated to this purpose; but, as some of these foundations had been misapplied, and others nearly ruined by bad management, it would have been a very disagreeable task to wrest them out of the hands of those who had the administration of them; and I therefore judged it most prudent not to meddle with them, avoiding, by that means, a great deal of opposition to the execution of ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... moment she escapes from the despotism of brute force, and is suffered to unfold and exercise her powers in her own legitimate sphere, shares with man the sceptre of influence; and without presuming to wrest from him a visible authority, by the mere force of her gentle nature silently directs that authority, and so rules the world. She may not debate in the senate or preside at the bar—she may not read philosophy in the university ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... matter for Monte to wrest the revolver from Hamilton's weak fingers, even with one arm hanging limp; but it was quite a different proposition to quiet Madame Courcy and Marie, who were screaming hysterically in the hall. Marjory, to be sure, was splendid; but ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... violence be, when that which suffers, nought Consents to that which forceth, not for this These spirits stood exculpate. For the will, That will not, still survives unquench'd, and doth As nature doth in fire, tho' violence Wrest it a thousand times; for, if it yield Or more or less, so far it follows force. And thus did these, whom they had power to seek The hallow'd place again. In them, had will Been perfect, such as once upon the bars Held Laurence firm, or wrought in Scaevola To his own hand remorseless, to the path, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... on St. Mark's in Venice, on the Square of Verona, on world treasures unreplaceable. The poisoned breath of Germany carries its venom into the land of sunshine and song, whose best day's work in history has been to wrest itself free from the grip of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... part so cheerfully with one whom I love dearer than life itself! I shall not let you go so easily; you shall come with me to our home, where I have lived alone too long already. I shall be alone no longer,—come with me, I say, for I will not deliver up this skin, nor shall any force wrest it from me!" ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... a man who had picked up an iron bar, and managed to wrest it from him, but another struck him violently on the head, and he had a very indistinct idea of what went on during the next minute or two. There was a struggling knot of men pressed against the side of the car, but it broke up ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... pleasing Mr. Getz, was only an added offense to both him and Absalom. They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz writhed in ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... who commanded in Pomerania, had, in the mean time, made a vain attempt to wrest Stettin from the Swedes. The Imperialists were driven out from one place after another; Damm, Stargard, Camin, and Wolgast, soon fell into the hands of Gustavus. To revenge himself upon the Duke of Pomerania, the imperial ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... escaping from the debasing drudgery of "Dawes'," of being the possessor of a cheque for L2. 12S., the prospect of securing work, if only of a temporary nature, made her forget her loneliness and her previous struggles to wrest a pittance from a world indifferent to her needs. After all, there was One who cared: the contents of the two letters which she had just received proved that; the cheque and promise of employment were in the nature of compensation for ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... night for the purpose of meeting Peace, and that Dyson, who was jealous of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson, seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary. He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had been hired for a paltry sum to come into court ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... annals was brought about by his influence. It was forgotten, however, that of all things chronology is the least suited to be an object of inspiration; and that, though men may be wholly indifferent to truth for its own sake, and consider it not improper to wrest it unscrupulously to what they may suppose to be a just purpose, yet that it will vindicate itself at last. It is impossible to succeed completely in perverting the history of a nation which has left numerous ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... not thy voice, Lord Moranzone. Madam, it were a precedent most evil To wrest the law from its appointed course, For, though the cause be just, yet anarchy Might on this licence touch these golden scales And unjust causes unjust ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... in the senate of the United States, "You might as well inhibit the fish from swimming down the western rivers to the sea, as to prohibit the people from settling on the new lands." While the great revolution was opening, that should wrest our independence from Great Britain, the stream of "long rifles" and hunting shirt men of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who followed the valleys of the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge from north to south, suddenly broke through the western mountain barriers and flowed in diminutive ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... last caressing pat to the tray before closing the trunk, and the look of her thin hands, with their slightly swollen knuckles, caused him to lean forward suddenly and wrest ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... extraneous influence for another thousand years, would ever have succeeded in evolving a system of Government in any way resembling our own, out of a Feudal System which presents so curious a parallel to that from which our modern institutions have sprung. Would the Great Chiefs have ever combined to wrest a Magna Charta from an unwilling King, and the raayat have succeeded in beating down the tyranny of their Chiefs? No answer can be given; but those who know the Malays best will find reason to doubt whether the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the site of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown Island, Va. For the next 22 years the National Park Service strove—with time out for wars and intervals between financial allotments—to wrest from the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise "James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of information has been revealed ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... municipal life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... destitute. Whoever eats the bread that another has reaped and kneaded, is under an obligation to his brother, and cannot say he owes him nothing in return. The poorest of us has received from society much more than his own single strength would have permitted him to wrest from nature. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to punish the kidnapers or wrest the slaves from the hands of their present owners. Our plan will be simply this: Take the consul with us to identify us, go to these owners, explain the facts, and offer to repurchase the negroes at once. They will, no doubt, gladly come to terms, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... as it may, the fact remained that Nan had to work her hardest to wrest a set from him after that, and felt very lucky if she managed to win one ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... visited Thor, and told him of what had passed. And the Thunderer, when he heard of Thrym's boastful words, was filled with wild wrath and wanted to start off, then and there, and wrest the hammer from the depths of the sea. But Loki pointed out the difficulties that stood in the way and, leaving the Asa to ponder over his words, he hurried off to Freya and informed ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... with honest rage, devoted pour Your inmost bosom's gore!— Yet give one hour to thought, And ye shall own, how little he can hold Another's glory dear, who sets his own at nought O Latin blood of old! Arise, and wrest from obloquy thy fame, Nor bow before a name Of hollow sound, whose power no laws enforce! For if barbarians rude Have higher minds subdued, Ours! ours the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... and some ahead of him, with drivers just as keen and eager to win as he, and every one of them accustomed to dog-driving for years. Victors are some of them in previous contests, and not one of them is disposed to see a white lad from across the sea come and wrest their honour from them. Whips are flying now in earnest, and the dogs of other trains are waking up to realise that there is fire in their masters' eyes and strength in their arms and a burning sting ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... a hand in an effort to wrest the already charred and smoldering garments from The Wolf. He evidently intended to take matters strictly into his own hands and obey orders to the letter, regardless of Jimmie's wishes in ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... property, was about to come to these islands to confer with the governor, so that his two vessels might engage in trade between these islands and Japon. When Antonio said to the father: "Take care that thou dost not reveal the design of this man, namely, to wrest Manila from you Spaniards," the father responded that Faranda did not dare do it. Antonio says that he does not know whether the father told this to Faranda to test him, for well he knows it, but it is certain that the father knows that the Japanese are trying to have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... hand, as it had been a creature of volition, and stood upright upon a smooth-faced bowlder. It needed all the man's strength to wrest it thence, and, grasping it securely, he carefully descended, for the last time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward a clump of gnarled ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... fulfil it creditably, in spite of his own tastes being so simple that his income of L5000—it was his, not his mother's, but it didn't feel as if it were—would have been more than sufficient for him. Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that might comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... a long list of troubles that was placed before the Commander-in-Chief. Disturbing as they all were, each requiring prompt and special action, there was one amongst them which stood out in bold relief—the situation at Delhi; and to wrest that stronghold from the hands of the mutineers was, General Anson conceived, his most pressing obligation. But could it be done with the means at his disposal? He thought not; and in this opinion ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... only one gardener, whom he lends to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the bells for mass, which he said, half an hour later, especially for the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... more heroic than fighting, or as the Bible states it, "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city," and trusted the people to understand his full meaning. The President himself was so above the petty tricks by which politicians wrest words from their context and force upon them unfavourable meaning that he sometimes incautiously played into the hands of this type of foe. Nor did he fully realize that his gift for making striking and quotable phrases added to ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... The hideous conception of existence which regards each individual as fighting for his own hand, striving for dear life against every other individual, was ingrained in their minds by the inveterate bitterness of their own experience; when Emily had become a woman, and was gone forth to wrest from the adverse world her own subsistence, her right to what she earned was indefeasible, and affection itself protested against her being mulcted for their advantage. As for the slight additional expense of her presence at home during the holidays, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... that wisdom of children to his folly. If he sent her the verses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping of egg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest the page from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest, her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm's length, read it smiling and approve of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... his hands from those who held them, the enraged seaman drew from his bosom an iron belaying-pin, and recklessly laid about him to right and left. Most of his persecutors fled; but some eight or ten still stood their ground, and, while bearing him aloft, endeavoured to wrest the weapon from his hands. In this attempt, one man was struck on the head, and dropped insensible. He was taken up for dead, and carried below to Cuticle, the surgeon, while the Portuguese was put under guard. But the wound did not prove very serious; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Italy, and, with no hope of new allotments from the territory of their neighbours, the people began to clamour for the restitution of their own. [Sidenote: Previous agrarian legislation. Spurius Cassius.] The first attempt to wrest public land from possessors had been made long before this by Spurius Cassius; and he had paid for his daring with his life. [Sidenote: The Licinian Law.] More than a century later the Licinian law ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... achieved triumphs more brilliant than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... more that is hid. He never forced his language, nor went out of the highway of speaking but for some great necessity or apparent profit; for he denied figures to be invented for ornament, but for aid; and still thought it an extreme madness to bind or wrest that ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... found a definite object: the Crusades were organised. The Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and defiled—what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its rescue and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? In the fantastic imagination of the men of that period the Lord's sepulchre was nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the emptiness as unmistakably as he had felt her presence. But the pang of her going was shot through with elation that at last his waking brain had knowledge of her—a knowledge that no man could wrest from him, even if she never so came again. He had done her bidding. He had kept his manhood pure and the windows of his soul clear—and, behold, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... There are certain rivers which represent nations, and ideas, and periods of history—the Scamander for instance, bringing to our thoughts the days of Grecian heroism; when men fought with gods, and in so doing seemed to wrest from them a portion of their supernatural strength and beauty—the Nile, the priestly Nile, mysterious as a dogma, but rich in blessings as the agency of a divine spirit; concealed in its source, but manifest in its operation—then the Jordan, the stream of revelation, on whose banks is heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the crests and sides of the mountains. Under this galling fire, the First division of the corps formed in line of battle, and advanced toward the frowning heights. It was an undertaking requiring more than ordinary valor, to attempt to wrest from an enemy strong in numbers, a position so formidable for defense; but the men approaching those rugged mountain sides had become accustomed to overcome obstacles, and to regard all things as possible which they were commanded to do. ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... advancing Prussians. Soon afterwards Ney carried La Haye Sainte by a most determined assault, aided by the failure of ammunition within its defences, and thus captured the key of the British position. But Napoleon saw that his one chance of victory lay in a final coup before the Prussians could wrest it from him. He ordered the imperial guard to the front, leading it himself across the valley, and then handing over the command to Ney. The guard was but the remnant of its original strength, for all its cavalry had been wrecked in wild charges against the British squares, and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... proportion of the product of the estate. I do not mind telling you that the smallness of that proportion does away with the argument that the agreement was the ordinary 'rotas' of the Baleares. We know nothing—we can prove nothing. If you claimed the estate I might possibly wrest it from you—not by proof, but merely because the insular prejudice against a foreigner would militate against you in a Majorcan court of law. I cannot legally force you to hold the estate of the Val d'Erraha. I can only ask ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... pioneers themselves; of men winnowed out from among the nations of the Old World by the energy, boldness, and love of adventure found in their own eager hearts. Such a Nation, so placed, will surely wrest ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in brain, And nobly with a giant scorn Withstood the direst pain That healing science knows, When, by the dastard blows Of his brute enemy Laid low, he sought to rise again Through help of knife and fire,— The awful enginery Wherewith men dare aspire To wrest from Death his victims. Yea, Though he who healed him shrank and throbbed With horror of the wound, Brave Sumner gave no sound, Nor flinched, nor sobbed, But as though within the man Instant premonition ran Of his high fate, Imperishable, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... a light more tyrannous ever? 20 Thou from a mother's arms canst wrest her daughter asunder, Wrest from a mother's arms her daughter woefully clinging, Then to the burning youth his virgin beauty deliver. Foes in a new-sack'd town, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... be equally frank." Hamilton Burton came closer and his lips drew themselves in a taut line. "Tomorrow I shall wrest from the Malone gang this supreme power of which you speak. I mean to force Malone and Harrison to their knees and to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths. Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their roots deep down in the hearts of the people; and their romance, their chivalry, their antique traditions, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... administrator of its policies and property. By adroit manipulation, intimidation, superior knavery, and the corrupt domination of law, it was always easy for those who understood the science of rigging the stock market, and that of strategic undermining, to wrest the control away from weak, or (treating the word in a commercial sense) incompetent, holders. This has been long shown ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers |
