"Dead set" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him, "and without a sign of a gun to back you, that's the time to spell prudence in big capital letters. They've got terrible claws, and can use them to tear a fellow's clothes to ribbons, not to mention what they'll do to your hide. No use talking, Steve, if the miserable beast is dead set on keeping us from going on we'll have to own up beaten, and retire with ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... cried Distin, making the water foam, as he pulled hard. "You fellows form a regular cabal, and make a dead set at me. But I'm not afraid. You've got the wrong man to deal with, and—confound ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... that will do no good. It will not be for the first time. Lady Conway has been his dread from the time of his own marriage; and if she should come to Northwold, he will be in despair. I do think he must be right; she must be making a dead set ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wife's new title, "allowed that she'd gone abroad on a secret mission from the Southern Confederacy to them crowned heads over there. She was good at ropin' men in, you know. Anyhow, Susy, afore she was Mrs. Boompointer, was dead set on findin' out where she was, but never could. She seemed to drop out of sight a year ago. Some said one thing, and some said another. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Mrs. Senator Boompointer, who knows how to pull all the wires in ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... and he felt that with things moving round him in this great household there should be opportunities of self-advancement. Being unscrupulous and stealthy—and a savage—he looked to dishonest means. He saw plainly enough that Lady Arabella was making a dead set at his master, and he was watchful of the slightest sign of anything which might enhance this knowledge. Like the other men in the house, he knew of the carrying to and fro of the great chest, and had got ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... business, but he did not approve of trying to circumvent Hervey by dangling the Gold Cross before his eyes. He was afraid that Hervey would not forget this and that the disappointment would be keen. As we know, Tom was dead set against this kind of thing. Mr. Denny did not know that. But he did know that Hervey was unfamiliar with the rigorous requirements for winning the highest award, for most of the pages in Hervey's handbook had been used to make torches and paper bullets. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and stand in your own light, Regina. What's to become of you out here? Your mistress has given you a lot of learning; but what good is that to you? You're to look after the children at the new Orphanage, I hear. Is that the sort of thing for you, eh? Are you so dead set on wearing your life out for ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I can. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not agreeing with him ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... everything about you—how you had run away from Louisianner kase your folks was all dead set agin the Union, and come up to Missoury thinking to get amongst people of your own way of thinking, and run plum into a nest of ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... why they had not given him more time, but finally concluded to preach on this text. He got up and said: "There are three points in this text: First, that men are always somewhere; second, that they are very often where they ought not to be; third, the text is dead set against infant baptism; and as the time is short, I will speak on point third." Now, I said to myself that either of these themes was a worthy one; but as Chinese comes first, Indian second, and Negro third, and, as the time is brief, I ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various
... should the world make this dead set at poor Mrs. Peony? She is good-looking, soft-hearted, and unaffected; she laughs when she is pleased, and cries when she is touched. She is altogether frank, and natural, and womanly. Can these be good reasons for running her down? Heavens knows! but run down ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... to mother. Come now, Cis, why are you so dead set against this plan? It is only because your august ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not suppose that we were standing all this while, with finger in mouth, idly gaping like children on a raree show. No, by the Living! but, fast as they neared us, we still kept our thunders close bearing upon them, like infernal pointers at a dead set; and as soon as they were come within point blank shot, we clapped our matches and gave them a tornado of round and double-headed bullets, which made many a poor Englishman's head ache. Nor were they long in ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... dead set on digging agreed to have a dart at Kavak Tepe. He will throw the 54th at it. He will turn out the 9th Corps and, if chance offers, they will attack along their own front. His chief remaining ghost inhabits the jungly bit of country between Anafarta Ova and the foothills. In that belt he fears ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... country rested on him alone. "I shall carry the thing en grande, and crush the rebels in one campaign." He soon had a magnificent army; he may be said to have made it himself. Before, as he thought, the time had come to use it, he had fallen from favour, and a dead set was being made against him in Washington. A little later, at the crisis of his great venture, when, as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the country his services were again ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... was as well as ever once more, and using her regained health to make a "dead set" at Eagle March. (I shouldn't tell this of her, if what she did later hadn't influenced events in a strange, dramatic way.) She couldn't let Eagle alone; and she showed her feelings so plainly—as a very rich girl sometimes thinks ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Sprigg's fancy for red moccasins has grown to be the one idea of his mind—a hankering, so to speak; and the best cure in the world for a hankering, as everybody knows, is a strong, sudden, overwhelming dose of the thing so hankered after. Sprigg's case is like that of a man's case, whose heart is dead set on matrimony—a little experience, tough and lively, being all that is needed to cure him of the hankering and restore him to a healthy condition of mind. As with ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... half white, in some ways," said Bill thoughtfully, "and they say he lives somewhere about here in a cabin in the bush, with a crippled sister and her darter, who both swear by him. It mightn't be hard to find him—ef a man was dead set ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... up Flood the first day that we met— Stubborn as blazes when 'is mind is set, Ole-fashioned in 'is looks an' in 'is ways, Believin' it is honesty that pays; An' still dead set, in spite uv bumps 'e's got, To keep on honest if it ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... the Horatian principle, 'If you wish me to weep, your own eyes must overflow'—and if you wish me to believe, you must speak, not 'with bated breath and whispering humbleness,' but as if you yourself believed it, and were dead set on getting other people to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was odd—he had dimly thought it odd, even in his ignorance—that Carmen should have followed them out to the Big Trees from Wawona, there to make a "dead set" at Mrs. May. She had said that her choice of the Yosemite for rest and change of air was a coincidence; that she had not known he was in the neighbourhood until she heard the news at Wawona. But suddenly Nick ceased to believe that story. She had gone ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to one of the colleges in the Middle West by his dad, who was dead set on havin' a lawyer in the family. But the more he studied, the less he hankered for law. What he wanted to be was a literature—a book-agent or a poet, or some such foolishness. Old Sol, havin' no more use for a poet than he had for a poor relation, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... because these people have made a dead set at me. They have tried to hustle me and, I fear, to rob me, and I have been obliged to act in my ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... the croaking, you fellows," admonished Bert. "Or, if you're dead set on proverbs, remember that 'it's no use crying over spilt milk.' We're up against it good and plenty, but that's all the more reason to get together and try to kill ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... And the damsel telleth him that never will he be healed thereof save he setteth thereon of the dust of the knight that is dead. And they lead him up to the castle with right great joy. Then they make him be disarmed, and have his wound washed and tended and some of the knight's dust that was dead set thereon that it might have healing. She maketh send to all the knights of her land: "Lords," saith she, "See here the knight that hath saved my land for me and protected your lives. You know well how it hath been prophesied that the knight with head of gold should ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... exigency, scramble. scrape, hobble, slough, quagmire, hot water, hornet's nest; sea of troubles, peck of troubles; pretty kettle of fish; pickle, stew, imbroglio, mess, ado; false position. set fast, stand, standstill; deadlock, dead set. fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac [Fr.]; hitch; stumbling block &c (hindrance) 706. [difficult person] crab; curmudgeon. V. be difficult &c adj.; run one hard, go against the grain, try one's patience, put one out; put to one's shifts, put to one's wit's end; go hard with one, try one; pose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... jest we all roared once more. 'You should consider yourself highly honoured, sir,' said we. 'Sir,' replied Mr. Griggins, 'you do me proud.' Here everybody laughed again; and the stout gentleman by the fire whispered in our ear that Griggins was making a dead set at us. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... blonde, Desirable, distinguished, celebrated For several winters in the grand, grand Monde: I'd rather not say what might be related Of her exploits, for this were ticklish ground; Besides there might be falsehood in what's stated: Her late performance had been a dead set At ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... been dead set against taking a companion permanently into my home. For one reason I heeded the warning of the man who made the Japanese language. To denote "peace" he drew a picture of a roof with a woman under it. Evidently being a gentleman of experience, he expressed ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... for a well-brought-up girl to love until she is loved, is it?" Her expression gave Grant a faint suggestion of a chill of apprehension lest she should be about to take advantage of their friendship by making a dead set for him. But she speedily tranquilized him by saying: "No, my reason was that I didn't want to spoil my one friendship. Even a business person craves the luxury of a friend—and marrying has been my business," this with a slight curl of her pretty, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... firmer by conflict with evil and by victory over self. Those whom he puts into his poems are still the humble, the forgotten, the neglected, the unknown; and it is the feelings and the struggles of these that he tells us, with no maudlin sentimentality, and with no dead set at our sensibilities. The sub-title Mrs. Stowe gave to Uncle Tom's Cabin would serve to cover most of M. Coppee's contes either in prose or verse; they are nearly all pictures of life among the lowly. But there is no forcing of the note in his painting ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... to-day, when the old man sent for you. He was quite white, and ready to rip out about something that had just come in. I suppose it was one of those anonymous things against your father,—the old man's dead set against 'em now." But John Milton heard him vaguely, and presently excused himself for a row on ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of the greatest man who ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... accustomed to discipline.... As she proceeded with the unexciting catalogue of her accomplishments she lost self-control, and her eyes burned and her lips quivered and her voice shook in unison with the beatings of a desperately anxious heart. Our Andrew, although an artist dead set on perfection and a shrewd man of business, was young, pitiful and generous. The pleading dog's look in Elodie's eyes was too much for him. He felt powerless to resist. His brain worked swiftly, devising all kinds of artistic possibilities. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... suspected—at least by Ultramontanes—of very doubtful orthodoxy and not at all doubtful Gallicanism. He is, moreover, the grandson of a conventionnel who voted for the King's death, and the son of a deputy of extreme Liberal views. So the Jesuits, after trying to catch him for themselves, make a dead set at him, and secure his appointment to out-of-the-way country parishes only, and even in these his constant removal, so that he may acquire as little influence as possible anywhere. At last, in a very striking interview ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... pot-wolloper from the saloon he favored, an' he guessed as she wus most as han'some as a Bible 'lustration. Wal, 'bout the time the rotgut wus flowin' good an' frekent, they started in to pool fer the prettiest wench in the room, as is the custom down ther'. Brown, he wus dead set on his gal winnin', I guess; an' 'Dyke Hole' Bill, he'd got a pretty tidy filly wi' him hisself, an' didn't reckon as no daisy from a bum saloon could gi' her any sort o' start. Wal, to cut it short, I guess the boys went dead out fer Bill's gal. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Maybe not," said Riley rather hastily. "But I been thinking. Suppose you go to Mary and tell her that you're dead set on keeping this Hunter with you. Tell her that he's a hard fellow to handle, that he likes her, and that the best way to make sure of him is for her to be nice to him. She can do that easy. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... heads, and doing damage generally. They are always giving a great deal of trouble to the Bull people; and what makes it worse is that very often they are actually tenants on the property, who ought to know better. One of these Hooligan crowds lately made a dead set against poor John; it was all the harder because to my personal knowledge he had shown himself most kind and forgiving to various members of this particular gang; and once before, when they came and broke his windows, he refused to prosecute, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley |
