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Wrestle   Listen
verb
Wrestle  v. i.  (past & past part. wrestled; pres. part. wrestling)  
1.
To contend, by grappling with, and striving to trip or throw down, an opponent; as, they wrestled skillfully. "To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well." "Another, by a fall in wrestling, started the end of the clavicle from the sternum."
2.
Hence, to struggle; to strive earnestly; to contend. "Come, wrestle with thy affections." "We wrestle not against flesh and blood." "Difficulties with which he had himself wrestled."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wrestle" Quotes from Famous Books



... giant to wrestle with him. At the beginning of the encounter, Corineus and the giant standing front to front held each other strongly in their arms, and panted aloud for breath; but Goemagot presently grasped Corineus with all his might, broke three of his ribs, two on ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... their Christmas Who wrestle still with life? Not grandsires, youths, or little folks, But they who wage the strife— The fathers and the mothers Who fight for homes and bread, Who watch and ward the living, And bury all the dead? ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... moment for refreshments. "I fear I am already too late," and he turned quickly away from the contemplation of the glories of nature, and passed again through the silent avenue, and on to the village, to wrestle with the sorrows of this weary life, where there was poverty, and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... symbols of men and women whom Antichrist made saints, and Pagan books treating of false gods, and moral treatises without one word of saving faith in them, and musical instruments, and Jewish contrivances; and he goes into his study, not to wrestle with the Spirit, but to consult the evil one; and then he goes into the steeple-house, and, instead of the milk of the word, pours ladles-full of leaden legality among ye, till ye all look like his own dumb idols, instead of faithful ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... must get him to tell you about a wrestle he had with a lion once. Extraordinary story! (Looking at his watch suddenly.) Jove! I must be off. See you again, Baxter. Good-bye, Robinson. No, don't shake hands. I'm in a hurry. [He looks at his watch again and goes out hurriedly by the door ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... waddy. He was a tame blackfellow who had been educated at the Missionary Station. He could write English, say prayers, sing hymns, read the Bible, and was therefore named Parson Bedford by the Derviners, after the Tasmanian Missionary. He could box and wrestle so well that few white men could throw him. He could also drink rum; so whenever he got any white money he knew how to spend it. He was the best thief and the worst bully of all the blacks about ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... a bare forbearance of sin, so long as thy heart is not changed, nor thy will changed, nor thy affections changed; but strive to become a new man, to be transformed by the renewing of thy mind, to hate sin, to love God, to wrestle against thy secret corruptions, to take delight in holy duties, to subdue thine understanding, and will, and affections, to the obedience of faith and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... of these facts, by means of education. Schools and churches—and parents—must concentrate on the moral improvement of the rising generation, or we wrestle ineffectively." ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the thews that wrestle with the world; She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last they set them each to each, Like perfect music unto noble words. Then comes the statelier Eden ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... know," said Sahwah. "I feel so full of—of something that I'd like to wrestle with ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with,[775-5] . . ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. "Lord," he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, "Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... this wrestle with pain. How many she did not know, but when she came forth it was with the composure of one who had fought the fight and won the victory, but at a cost ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... declamation to-day; ay, and I caught expressions in it which you may live to rue, and that very soon. Before you leave us, I must have my revenge. If you are worthy of your name let us fairly contend in more manly strife than that of the style and tables. Wrestle with me, or try the cestus against me. I burn to humble you as you deserve, before these witnesses of ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... better than he did. He played just as he studied—with all his might. He aspired to be the best wrestler, runner and leaper in school. William Bustle was his principal competitor. Many and many a time they were pitted against each other in a race or wrestle. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... he became panic-stricken at his powerlessness to check for even one brief pendulum-swing this steady tread of time. Time was such an intangible thing, and yet what a Juggernaut! There was nothing of it which he could get hold of to wrestle, and yet it was more powerful than Samson to throw him in the end. Sly, subtle, bodiless, soulless, impersonal; expressed in the big clock above the city, and in milady's dainty watch rising and falling upon her breast; ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... raises, to hold him off, the hand with Siegfried's ring. "Stand back! Fear this sign!... Stronger than steel I am made by this ring; never shall you rob me of it!" "You teach me," he replies, with his dark calm, "to detach it from you!" He reaches for it, she defends it. They wrestle. She escapes from him with a victorious cry. He seizes her again. The former Valkyrie, reinforced by the Ring, is a match very nearly for the stalwart Waelsung. A shriek is heard. He has caught her hand, and draws the ring from her finger. As if all her strength ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... what will be the doom of Camus? Shall I die disowned, dishonoured? Shall I live, and yet be famous? Backs as strong as oxen have we, legs Herculean and bare, Legs that in the ring with Titan wrestler might to wrestle dare. Arms we have long, straight, and sinewy, Shoulders broad, necks thick and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' stagnant water, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... fierce, now that they had no wind-break between them and the ocean, that Mrs. Morran could wrestle with it no longer, and found shelter in the lee of a clump of rhododendrons. Darkness had all but fallen, and the House was a black shadow against the dusky sky, while a confused greyness marked the sea. The old Tower showed a tooth of masonry; there was no glow from ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... there is no better way to discover what you can do best than to try your 'prentice hand at a great variety of topics and mediums. The post-graduate course of every school of journalism is a roped arena where you wrestle, catch as catch can, for the honors ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing

... her. Now that he was helpless, he could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel, giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun and tramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through the mesh, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked him with all ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... it, then, so long? Worthy matter for a minstrel to be told in knightly song! Worthy of a bold Provencal, pacing through the peaceful plain, Singing of his lady's favour, boasting of her silken chain, Yet scarce worthy of a warrior sent to wrestle for a crown. Is this all that thou hast brought me from thy field of high renown? Is this all the trophy carried from the lands where thou hast been? It was broider'd by a Princess, can'st thou give it to a Queen?" Woman's love is writ in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... babes, He jocund whistles through the twilight groves. * * * * * * * * * * To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair, Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene, And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle on the green. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... I had met a philosopher, and I decided that I would stop and wrestle with him and not let him go without his story—something like Jacob, wasn't ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... it doth shame me verily so to speak o' mine own flesh, I saw by her pretending to push him away that she did mightily relish his kisses; for, by my troth! had she sought to scuffle with him 'twould 'a' been as snug an encounter as when day and night wrestle for the last bit o' ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... said) In dear memorial of Patroclus dead; Dead and for ever lost Patroclus lies, For ever snatch'd from our desiring eyes! Take thou this token of a grateful heart, Though 'tis not thine to hurl the distant dart, The quoit to toss, the ponderous mace to wield, Or urge the race, or wrestle on the field: Thy pristine vigour age has overthrown, But left the glory of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... seemed to wrestle with—himself—with the hold drink had upon him—with that dark and sinister oppression so thick in the room. Allie thrilled to see his face grow soft and light up with the smile she remembered. How strange to feel in Larry King a spirit of gladness, of gratefulness ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... manifestation of weakness without sympathy, and gave directions for 'a young man to be got in' to wrestle with the luggage. When that gladiator had disappeared from the arena, peace ensued, and the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life, Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... at its best when we have to wrestle with despair, not only of ourselves but of the Universe; when we strain our eyes and see nothing but blackness. In the Gorgias Socrates maintains, not only that it is always better to suffer injustice than to commit it, but that it is better to be punished for ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... cat lifted one foot, and Thor did not carry the game any further. Then said Utgard-Loke: This game ended as I expected. The cat is rather large, and Thor is small, and little compared with the great men that are here with us. Said Thor: Little as you call me, let anyone who likes come hither and wrestle with me, for now I am wroth. Answered Utgard-Loke, looking about him on the benches: I do not see anyone here who would not think it a trifle to wrestle with you. And again he said: Let me see first! Call hither that old woman, Elle, my foster-mother, and let Thor wrestle with her if he ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... adventure of the most romantic kind. No boy will be able to withstand the magic of such scenes as the fight of Grettir with the twelve bearserks, the wrestle with Karr the Old in the chamber of the dead, the combat with the spirit of Glam the thrall, and the defence of the dying Grettir by his ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... the door with a feeble gesture of the hands. She knew that, worn as he was with his journey, if she gave him the chance he would grasp it and pause, even while his mother panted her last, to wrestle for and win a soul—not because she, Hetty, was his sister, but simply because hers was a soul to be saved. Yes, and she foresaw that sooner or later he would win; that she would be swept into the flame of his conquest. She ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... court were trained to many manly exercises. They were taught to wrestle and to run. They were instructed in the use of such arms as were employed in those times, and rendered dexterous in the use of them by daily exercises. They were taught to put their skill in practice, too, in hunting ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... book like Pease and the Lard with commentary of Rabelais, or in the one entitled The Dignity of Breeches, and who esteem highly the fair books of high degree, a quarry hard to run down and redoubtable to wrestle with. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... targe,—while every bone doth ache, And the soared mind raves up and down her cell Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake? Add not to death the bitter fear of hell; Take pity on thy future self, poor man, While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can; Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife Of meeting all its terrors in the van Just at ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... for leave of absence, and run away some where," said Frank, drying his tears. "I can't face London; I can't mix with others. I want to be by myself, and wrestle with all that I feel here—in my heart. Then I shall write to my mother, say the plain truth, and leave her to judge as kindly of me ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... but he said: "Tom Fish, you weigh a good three stone (forty-two) more than I do, but I believe I could throw you in a wrestle. When we stop for dinner, I am going to put you on ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... say to the handmaids, "Come ye on, that I may wrestle with you and gravel you, ere the moon set and the dawn break!" So each came up to her in turn and she grounded them forthright, and pinioned them with their girdles, and ceased not wrestling and pitching them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... to give at the end of the harvest. She resolved to do it, and he, not knowing what moved her, gave his promise eagerly. It struck her, afterward, that she had done a wicked thing, but, like most girls, she had not the heart to wrestle with an uncomfortable thought; she shook it off and began to hum a snatch of an ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... his sphere of influence, and he has become to society what the lawyer has been to the individual and the family. The jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary to determine its evolution. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... Brynhilda, the valkyrie, swore that no one should ever marry her who could not fling her down. Perhaps you have done the same. The man who eventually married her, got a friend of his, who was called Sygurd, the serpent-killer, to wrestle with her, disguising him in his own armour. Sygurd flung her down, and won her for his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle, and I will do my best ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... in a position for conversation at the exact moment that the demand is made upon me. I have just come to the end of a long wrestle with my umbrella. It has at last got its wicked will, and has turned right inside out! All its whalebones are aspiring heavenward. It is transformed into a melancholy cup—like a great ugly flower, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... and teacher, indoctrinating Nelly with his own views on art, reading to her from his favourite poets, or surrounding her in a hundred small matters with a playful and devoted homage. But now in the long wrestle with her grief and remorse, she had thought, as well as felt. She was as humble and simple as ever, but her companions realised that she was standing on her own feet. And this something new in her—which was nothing but a strengthened play of intelligence and will—had ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it is ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... the tomb of Karr the Old, an ancient Viking, to obtain his sword, and had to wrestle with the dead man before he could wrench it from him. [Footnote: "Grettir Saga," Copenh. 1859, chap. xviii.] I will quote another case of cairn-breaking that exhibits the same conception of suspended life in the grave, and that in Christian times. I shall slightly condense the story. "Gest started ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... no attention to us. She continued to wrestle with the monkey-nut. I should say that she was a bird not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various

... gave orders strict For her best comfort; then walked out alone, To meet and wrestle with his passion, held So long in leash by honour, free at last With overmastering and giant strength. The subtle fragrance of her hands pervades His senses; in his veins he feels the flow Of her warm breath, which entered into them That moment ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... unabashed by the spats and binocular, the corpulent plaid stockings and cigar, which completed his attire. She spread her feet, in the way she had at such times; and she shut her eyes, and she set her teeth, and she clinched her hands, and thus silently began to wrestle for the answer, her face all screwed, as by a taste ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... yield without a tremendous struggle. It is ungenerous to attack Great Britain now, when, as the champion of human liberty, she is engaged in a death-wrestle with the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... later Mr. Graves descended the steps of the car, his traveling bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other. As soon as both feet were securely planted on the platform, he put down the bag to wrestle with the umbrella and the hurricane, which was apparently blowing from four directions at once. Feeling his hat leaving his head, he became aware that the umbrella had turned inside out. He threw the wreck violently under the train and stooped to pick up the bag. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt His own love can compete with it? ... Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man; And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! Would I suffer for him that I love? So ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith

... not," said Aram smiling: "peace, my good friend, we cannot conquer men's foibles, or wrestle with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... up and shakes. There are a few other groups of people dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat is content ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... fearless like himself, leaped forward, joined hands, caught hold of Jeff, and hauled him safe ashore along with the captain, who was carried away in a state of insensibility. Again and again, at the risk of his life, did the champion wrestler wrestle with the waves and conquer them! Aided by his daring comrades he dragged three others from the jaws of death. Of those who entered the jolly-boat of the Swordfish, only five reached the land. These were all sailors, and one of them, Captain Phelps, was so ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... had to be in Washington anyway in a few days. When he saw what the conditions were in the Science Community, he became fascinated by its advantages over New York; a new system to plan from the ground up; no obsolete installation to wrestle with; an absolutely free hand for the engineer in charge; no politics to play; no concessions to antiquated city construction, nor to feeble-minded city administration—just a dream of an opportunity. He almost asked for the job himself, but Rohan was tactful ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... Who'll wrestle with dangers dire, Since Colin is gone? Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave, Thoughtless of self, human life to save, Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire? Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire, Since Colin is gone? Or hang his life on so frail a breath That there's ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... and poor Sidney will have neither father nor mother, nor fortune, nor name. Heaven is more just than man, and in Heaven is my hope for you. You, Philip, are already past childhood; your nature is one formed, I think, to wrestle successfully with the world. Guard against your own passions, and you may bid defiance to the obstacles that will beset your path in life. And lately, in our reverses, Philip, you have so subdued those ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... has not been revealed unto me, although I besought it of the Lord with great earnestness after the morning meal. I will again wrestle in prayer before the throne, and no doubt it shall all be made plain in due season, if we ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... urge to the cultivation of poetry, than the employment at which Tannahill was doomed to labour. The beauty and grandeur of nature, solemn and sublime, surround the path of him who tends the flocks. Though occasionally called upon to face the blast, and wrestle with the storm, he still experiences a charm. But when the broad earth is green below, and the wide bending sky blue above, the voice of nature in the sounding of streams, the song of birds, and the bleating of sheep differ widely from what the susceptible and poetic mind is ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... power of choice that a machine does not have, and can and does select the environment best suited to its well-being. In fact, that it should have, or be capable of, any condition of well-being, if it is only a complex of physical and chemical forces, is a problem to wrestle with. The ground we walk on is such a complex, but only the living bodies it supports have conditions ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... Merriweather, and Shad Fishpaw well remembered that night after Thor's tragic decision, when they—part of a Committee formed of the best athletes from all teams, and the most representative collegians of old Bannister, had invaded Thor's room in Creighton Hall, to wrestle with the recalcitrant Hercules. Even as Hicks ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... voice here faltered. He turned away and seemed to wrestle with a tempest of suppressed sobbing. A moment more, he looked heavenward and pointed up with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... of being left to the caprice of individuals, was controlled and regulated by the state. The women, in the first place, were trained by physical exercise for the healthy performance of the duties of motherhood; they were taught to run and wrestle naked, like the youths, to dance and sing in public, and to associate freely with men. Marriage was permitted only in the prime of life; and a free intercourse, outside its limits, between healthy men and women, was encouraged and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... holler—handsome—handsome. I didn't know I wuz so durned good lookin'. One feller tried to git my carpet bag and another tried to git my umbreller, and I jest told 'em to stand back or durned if I wouldn't take a wrestle out of one or two of them, then I asked one of 'em if he could haul me up to the Sturtevessant hotel, and by gosh I never heered a feller stutter like that feller did in all my life, he said ye-ye-ye-yes sir, and I said ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... teacher of the people, listen that you may be taught! For the last time I have come down into your world of passion and sense. The impulses with which you vainly strive and wrestle are behind me. Alone, alone, I have risen from the abysmal depths of personality. I have struggled fiercely. I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... field for sport. Let us have some of the old games that we used to play at home. Who will wrestle ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall

... turn in the desperate life-and-death wrestle, and Jack's face was turned towards the opposite side of the gulf. But this was only to show him that a new danger hung over him with fearful menace. He looked straight down a gun-barrel. On the farther brink knelt one of his enemies, a long-barrelled muzzle-loader ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... the coming festival. Now the trees are sentient beings; they have thoughts and fancies; they stir with emotion; they converse together; they whisper or dream in the twilight; they struggle and wrestle with the storm. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, a long-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, were combining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain was not of the calibre to endure ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in human nature—wrapt up in an immense great-coat, and urging on two starved ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... messages and warnings girls are so prone to give; and the young man, with a great softness at his heart, went away, as many another John has gone, feeling better for the companionship of innocent maidenhood, and stronger to wrestle with temptation, to wait and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... exercise sometimes sportfully challenges those who are more slow and heavy; but the old man who presides hinders the raillery from being carried to any excess, carefully avoiding all subjects of quarrel and dispute, on which account doubtless it is that they will never suffer them to wrestle. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... ran down again and made up the fire in the fireplace, convinced that she must get the old lady downstairs, now that with each blast the terrible wind was filling one room with the storm and battling at the little old door to make an entrance into the other. Then she put on a coat, and went up to wrestle with Granny's bed, while the wind swept round her, and the snow flew across the room and stung her cheeks. It was a hard task, getting the bed apart and down the stairs, but she accomplished it, and set it up in the living-room, far from the windows and with ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... veil was rent from the King's face and he had stepped from the dais and seized the other by the shoulders as though he would wrestle bodily with him,—"by the Holy Ring, I swear that I have never betrayed you! If you grudge not the land to the Englishman, you have no cause to grudge him anything under Ymer's skull. Can a man change his blood?—for so much a part of me is my friendship for ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... is too good for any of us to read. Moreover, I honestly think the list interesting. It is not chiefly reading for recreation, but for soul expansion, and it means intellectual effort. Unless we wrestle with an author as Jacob did with the angel, we shall not receive the highest blessing. But some one may plead that, while he does not wish to read wholly for amusement, he is not in a condition, either from training or circumstances, to engage in mental athletics. He cannot apply himself to an ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy in the parish. He might be a year older than Tom, but was very little bigger, and he was the Crichton of our village boys. He could wrestle and climb and run better than all the rest, and learned all that the schoolmaster could teach him faster than that worthy at all liked. He was a boy to be proud of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active figure, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... bear. In his scuffle with the serpent he had lost his bundle of clothes and had nothing but a large knife, which was buckled around his waist. Drawing his knife, he rushed forward and was met by the bear, when a regular hand-to-hand fight was commenced. He did not wrestle long before he found an opportunity to use his knife, and plunging it up to the hilt, he soon had the bear lying prostrate at his feet. Having lost all his clothes, it became necessary that he should do something in his nude state. The bear's skin ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold

... and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man to wrestle with difficulty, and to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... eighty-five, as full of youthful feeling and perseverance as when a student at Augsburg. The instructions he gave to his missionaries declare the sources of his own success. "Believe," said he, "hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead! Hold fast by prayer. Wrestle like Jacob! Up, up, my brethren! The Lord is coming, and to every one he will say, 'Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen? with the devil?' Oh, swiftly seek these souls, and enter not without them into the presence of the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... boxer: "So fight I not as one that beateth the air." Now he is a runner, looking not to the things that are behind, but to the things before, and running, not in one sharp dash, but, with patience, the race set before him. It is just as athletic a performance, he thinks, to wrestle with the princes of the darkness of this world, as to wrestle with a champion. It needs just as rigorous a training to pull against circumstances as to pull against time. It appears to him at least not unreasonable that the supreme interest of ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... you would find that Nature had not finished what she had so well begun, and that you are exactly half mistaken. This malconformation below did not, however, affect his strength—it rather added to it; and there were but few men in the ship who would venture a wrestle with the boatswain, who was very appropriately distinguished by the cognomen of Jemmy Ducks. Jemmy was a sensible, merry fellow, and a good seaman: you could not affront him by any jokes on his figure, for he would joke with you. He was indeed the fiddle of the ship's company, and he always ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... appointed governor and Indian commissioner, of Indiana Territory. He moved to Vincennes, the capital, on the lower Wabash. Chief Tecumseh was living eastward on the White River. Their trails were pointing in. Two master minds were to meet and wrestle. ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... several cowboys leaped to Stillwell's assistance. Stewart, getting free, tossed one aside and then another. They closed in on him. For an instant a furious straining wrestle of powerful bodies made rasp and shock and blow. Once Stewart heaved them from him. But they plunged ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... her kills the body. This fragile creature was suffering from the sorest of all troubles, a trouble which receives the least possible sympathy from our selfish world, and how could I look on with indifferent eyes? for I, a man, strong to wrestle with pain, was nightly tempted to refuse to bear the burden of a sorrow like hers. Perhaps I might actually have refused to bear it but for a thought of religion which soothes my impatience and fills ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... up to the pen, and the last wrestle began. The crowd, silent and motionless, craned forward to watch the uncanny, white-haired little man and the huge dog, working so close below them. M'Adam's face was white; his eyes staring, unnaturally bright; ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... the foot-race. Lycon of Sparta is second. Moerocles of Mantinea drops from the contest. Glaucon and Lycon, each winning twice, shall wrestle for the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... thirty-six world-rulers of the darkness, whom Solomon commanded to fetch water to the Temple. Some of these demons he condemned to do the heavy work on the construction of the Temple, others he shut up in prison, and others, again, he ordered to wrestle with fire in the making of gold and silver, sitting down by lead and spoon, and to make ready places for the other demons, in which they ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... novice, the beginner, to talk of "commanding!" Yet already he felt his foot upon the ladder. Fontenoy consulted him, and confided in him more and more. In spite of his engagement, he was informing himself rapidly on a hundred questions, and the mental wrestle of every day was exhilarating. Their small group in the House, compact, tireless, audacious, was growing in importance and in the attention it extorted from the public. Never had the whole tribe of factory inspectors shown a more hawk-like, a more inquisitorial, a more intolerable vigilance ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... shines now On no peace but the dead, On reek of trenches thunder-shocked, Tense fury of wills in wrestle locked, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... "Worse and worse. Better wrestle with philosophies than lose yourself in the clouds. At any rate, if the poets are to send the philosophers to the right about, stick ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... a question of think; I know it. And now I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll let this law end of the building take care of itself and we'll give our active energies to the paper. You do the editing and I'll do the business. You put stuff into the columns and I'll wrestle with the express agent. And I'll ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... the Jew killed himself. There was a grapple hand to hand, and a wrestle. The Jew fell undermost, and was pierced with ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... found, 'as the truth is—in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil, and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the deceitful lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... their nature is, as they be damned, to desire to draw all mankind unto like damnation; such is their malice. And though they hang in the air, or fall in a garden or other pleasant place, yet have they continually their pain upon their backs. Against these we wrestle, and "against spiritual wickedness in coelestibus," that is, in the air; or we fight against ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... to have been Christians all our lives, drawn along by a current, only broken by comparatively trivial, every-day temptations, contests and sacrifices, and another thing to wrestle with a decree that all at once confronts and contradicts a master-passion, a deeply-founded verdict, a strongly-rooted opinion whose overthrow will shake the entire framework ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... Jesus Christ. I hope never to depart from that cause nor side with those that have burnt the causes of God's wrath. They have broken their covenant oftener than once or twice, but I believe the Lord will build Zion, and repair the waste places of Jacob. Oh! to obtain mercy to wrestle with God for their salvation. As for this presbytery, it hath stood in opposition to me these years past. I have my record in heaven I had no particular end in view, but was seeking the honour of God, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... contents at the speaker. The young Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;—over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... whose lands were practically limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom of the woods and hills, had developed a frame originally powerful into that of a tall and hardened athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap, ride, as well as to use the musket and the sword. His intellect was not brilliant, but it was clear, and his habit of thought methodical; he was of great modesty, yet one of those who rise to the emergency, and are kindled into greater and greater ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... he were worthy of good at their hands, if he, an unknown man, gave sport to the people. Then he asked what they would of him; so they prayed him to wrestle with some one. ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... Harvey are intertwined even more closely than those of Greene and Lodge; but the conjunction is not a grasp of friendship but a grip of hatred—a wrestle, not an embrace. The fact of the quarrel has attracted rather disproportionate attention from the days of Isaac Disraeli onwards; and its original cause is still extremely obscure and very unimportant. By some it is connected, causally as well as accidentally, with the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... is on his quarter-deck. There is the manoeuvring for the weather-gage, the thunder of the sudden broadside, the hurtle and crash of the shot, the stern, quick word of command as the clumsy guns are run in to be reloaded and fired again and again with furious haste. The ships drift into closer wrestle. Masts and yards come tumbling on to the blood-splashed decks. There is the grinding shock of the great wooden hulls as they meet, the wild leap of the boarders, the clash of cutlass on cutlass, the shout of victory, the sight of the fluttering flag as it sinks reluctantly from the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... over Antaeus. Antaeus, the son of Terra, the Earth, was a mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth. He compelled all strangers who came to his country to wrestle with him, on condition that if conquered (as they all were) they should be put to death. Hercules encountered him, and finding that it was of no avail to throw him, for he always rose with renewed strength from every fall, he lifted him up from ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... try the same feat, you will probably find that you can go a little farther, or faster, without making it throb. Indeed, getting into training is very largely getting the heart built up and educated, so that you can run or play, or wrestle hard without overtaxing it. Whatever you can do within the limits of your heart is safe, wholesome, and invigorating; whatever goes beyond this, is dangerous and likely to ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... often came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned how ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... fancied that Laurette had never been so civil to herself and Dulcie since it was known that their brother was not to inherit the Chase. Gowan, who liked plain speaking, accused Laurette of telling "fiblets"; Bertha had had a squabble over the bathroom, and Prissie a wrestle ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... sharp as physical pain, ran through her. She stepped quickly back into the room; but there she stopped, stopped deliberately to wrestle with the terror which had swooped so suddenly upon her. She had maintained her self-control admirably a few hours before in the face of frightful danger, but now in this awful silence it threatened ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... not be mastered, but if mastered is not crushed. He questions each moment of his own sufferings, each moment of his people's oncoming doom. He debates with God on matters of justice. He wrestles things out with God and emerges from each wrestle not halt and limping like Jacob of old, but firm and calm, more clear in his mind and more sure of himself—as we see him at last when the full will of God breaks upon his soul with the Battle of Carchemish and he calmly ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... the wrestler that had no daughter heard of the wrestler that had a daughter, and he determined to go and find him and wrestle with him, to see who was the stronger. He went therefore to Ajit's father's country, and when he arrived at his house, he knocked at the door and said, "Is any one here?" Ajit answered, "Yes, I am here;" and she came out. "Where is the wrestler who lives in this house?" ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... which gives no air to the chest—you breathe and are not satisfied with the inspiration; it does not fill; there is no life in the killed atmosphere. It is a vacuum of heat, and yet the strong hot wind bends the trees, and the tall firs wrestle with it as they did with Sinis, the Pine-bender, bowed down and rebounding as if they would whirl their cones away like a catapult. Masses of air are moving by, and yet there is none to breathe. No escape in the shadow of hedge or wood, or in the darkened ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... mapped out by the present Marquess of Queensberry's grandfather, and revert to the conditions of warfare under which Cribb and Spring won their battles. Kennedy and Walton, having clinched, proceeded to wrestle up and down the room, while Jimmy Silver looked on from his eminence in pained surprise at the sight of two men, who knew the rules of the ring, so far ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... 'The fellow mixes blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion, nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him, and ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... rose up almost as tall as a steeple and suddenly laid his great clutches upon the Prince's shoulders, saying: "I will do both, if you do but wrestle with me courageously. You must do it, for there is no other way of escaping from ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... the Children of the Wise. Yet in the council with the gods no one will falter to pursue His lofty purpose, but come forth the cyclic labours to renew; And take the burden of the world and dim his beauty in a shroud, And wrestle with the chaos till the anarch to the light be bowed. We cannot for forgetfulness forego the reverence due to them Who wear at times they do not guess the sceptre and the diadem. As bright a crown as this was theirs when first they from the Father sped; Yet look with deeper eyes ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell

... early married life, and how, in spite of his words of almost impassioned tenderness and onwillingness for me to harm and strain myself by approachin' the political pole—still how he had let me wrestle with weighty hop-poles and draw water out of a deep well with a cistern ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... horizon a train moves through windy meadows: Slowly paints a long thick stroke. Like typewriters hackney hooves clatter. A dust-covered, noisy athletic club comes along. Brutal shouts stream from bars for coachmen. Yet fine bells mix with them. On the fairgrounds where athletes wrestle, Everything is dark and indistinct. A barrel organ howls and scullery maids sing. A man is ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein



Words linked to "Wrestle" :   twist, wrestler, grappling, hand-to-hand struggle, battle, wrestling, struggle, fight, debate, grapple, deliberate, squirm, writhe, wriggle, worm



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