"Hard-pressed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bushes by the wayside, in order to destroy the enemy by an ambuscade as he marched through the narrow part of the path. Erik foresaw this, having reconnoitred his means of advancing, and thought he must withdraw for fear, if he advanced along the track he had intended, of being hard-pressed by the tricks of the enemy among the steep windings of the hills. They therefore joined battle, force against force, in a deep valley, inclosed all round by lofty mountain ridges. Here Halfdan, when he saw the line of his men wavering, climbed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... stronger grip on things. And many a baffled, discouraged and well-nigh beaten settler, ready to give up, found in the man whose gray, mask-like face seemed so incapable of expression, fresh inspiration and new courage; while the store continued its policy of helping the worthy, hard-pressed ranchers with ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... effect an orderly withdrawal without being molested by the enemy, thus affording to its commander an opportunity of restoring the lost cohesion and tactical order. It will only be the rifle of the Cavalry which will gain for our hard-pressed comrades what is ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... to take advantage of the situation to enhance the prestige of the Bourbons. The Austrian Habsburgs were facing a vast civil and religious war in the Germanies, and the Spanish Habsburgs were dispatching aid to their hard-pressed kinsmen. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... I.L.W. that all of its members should be reinstated in their old positions. Brown never came back, but the rest of the servants are with me. I hadn't the heart to discharge them—poor creatures, they were pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver. And now I can't discharge them. They have all been unionized by the I.L.W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human endurance. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... which made their position insecure, were more concerned to dissuade their citizens from siding with the party of ecclesiastical reform than to fulfil their duties as officials of the Empire. The Emperors themselves, hard-pressed in the struggle with the Papacy and eager to purchase support at any price, contributed to the success of the communal movement by the charters which they bestowed on ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... persistent attack on the British frontier station of Malakand languished and ceased. The tribesmen, sick of the slaughter at this point, concentrated their energies on Chakdara, which they believed must fall into their hands. To relieve this hard-pressed post now became the duty of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... only in the saving of time, / but also for all purposes of / careful study, the superiority is / readily apparent of the / / Interlinear Translations / / over other translations. For the / self-teaching student and also for / the hard-pressed teacher they make / possible as well as convenient and / easy, a correct solution of / idioms, a quick insight into the / sense, a facile and lucid / re-arrangement of the context in / the English order, and a practical / comparison of both the / similarities ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the Turks, after repeated assaults upon the British lines, massed for a final attempt to drive the invaders into the sea. On and on they came, concentrating on the hard-pressed Third Brigade as the weak spot in the British defense. Fighting gamely against heavy odds, this Australian Brigade which had borne the brunt of the landing attack and which had been almost continually counterattacked all afternoon, gave way slowly, selling every inch of ground ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a fearfully common one. Men and women will gamble recklessly at Bridge, lose heavily, pay up, at whatever cost, because it is a debt of honour. All the while a hard-pressed tailor, a famished dressmaker and her children are kept out of their money, because it is only a debt of commerce. Could there be a more ghastly parody on ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees' wages. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer and hired, and is usually in vogue on poor land with hard-pressed owners. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy vessel to falling into the Russians' hands. It was also clear that they had no choice. It must be either one thing ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... lashed alongside, he boarded her sword in hand, followed only by Don Carroz, a Spanish cavalier, and seventeen of his men. He appeared at first to be gaining the day; but, by some accident, his galley swinging loose, he and his followers, deprived of all succour, were so hard-pressed by the enemy that they were driven headlong into the sea. Lord Ferrers, who had during this time been engaging the enemy without success, seeing the admiral's galley fall off, retreated. When, however, Lord Howard was missed, a flag of truce was sent to the French commander, who replied ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the good friend desired to keep it a secret it is hardly fair to try to find him out? No, from what you tell me, I hardly think you will unravel the mystery while the donor—lender, I mean—lives. Besides, even if you never do, you can repay it by assisting some hard-pressed comrade in distress. Yes, I should fancy the person who lent it would prefer that way. However, I want to tell you about your sister Aline. She has grown into a handsome young woman, too handsome almost to fight her own way unprotected in the world, but she is like ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... They, indeed, may be more honest and more sincere than I am in their reticence of language and in their determination not to deceive themselves, even by an iota. Their fierce preservation of the citadel of agnosticism, till they are sure, may make them unhappy and hard-pressed in spirit. It ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... firm through the Napoleonic rascality of Ward. General Grant was utterly ruined; he was left without income and apparently without the means of earning one. It was the period when the great War Series was appeasing in the Century Magazine. General Grant, hard-pressed, was induced by the editors to prepare one or more articles, and, finding that he could write them, became interested in the idea of a book. It is unnecessary to repeat here the story of how the publication of this important work passed into the hands of Mark Twain; that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (July) issue, "The Forgotten Planet," by Sewell Peaslee Wright, I think, takes first place, though hard-pressed by "Earth, the Marauder" and "The Power and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... that it was advisable to crawl back into shelter as soon as possible; but Weston stood still. He had for the past few weeks been looking disaster in the face, and this had produced in him a certain savage desperation which is not altogether unusual in the case of hard-pressed men who feel that they have everything against them. In his mood, which was not a pleasant one, each fresh blow stirred him to a grimmer effort, made with a curious quiet fury from which his comrades now and then almost shrank. Turning abruptly, he shook himself ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... emigrated to other countries, beyond the bounds of those ferocious plunderers. Again the Expedition was besieged by pinching hunger from which they suffered; they had recourse to the wild fruits which some parts of the country furnished. At intervals the condition of the hard-pressed band was made worse by the heartless desertion of some of its members, who more than once departed with the Doctor's personal kit, changes of clothes, linen, &c. With more or less misfortunes constantly dogging ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... followed by the sudden appearance of pillows flying in all directions, hurled by white goblins, who came rioting out of their beds. The battle raged in several rooms, all down the upper hall, and even surged at intervals into the nursery, when some hard-pressed warrior took refuge there. No one seemed to mind this explosion in the least; no one forbade it, or even looked surprised. Nursey went on hanging up towels, and Mrs. Bhaer laid out clean clothes, as calmly as if the most perfect ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the Allies giving her assistance, Italy at all times had more troops on the Western front than the Allies had on the Italian? Did you know that she called up the class of 1919 two years before their time, a measure which even France, hard-pressed as she was, did not feel justified in taking? (I have mentioned this before, but it will bear repetition.) Have you stopped to think that she was the only one of the Allied nations which won a clean-cut and decisive victory, when, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... a sequel. During the following year there dropped to the man in his hard-pressed literary life, one of those errant plums from the political tree that now and then find their way to the right basket. He was named for an excellent diplomatic post. His friends congratulated him and talked a good deal about "material" ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally our legitimate possessions. Strange that as modern philosophy transfers the visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should seem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. The hard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses for truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at the thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or being bored: and he would wish ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... spirit and life, so well sustained throughout that grown-up readers may enjoy it as much as children. This 'Covey' consists of the twelve children of a hard-pressed Dr. Partridge out of which is chosen a little girl to be adopted by a spoiled, fine lady. We have rarely read a story for boys and girls with greater pleasure. One of the chief characters would not have ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... Confederation—what wonder that it soon wore a crown of thorns! The paper currency ere long dissolved to nothingness; for four days the army was without food, and whole regiments drifted from the ranks of our hard-pressed defenders. "I see," said Washington, "one head gradually changing into thirteen; I see one army gradually branching into thirteen, which, instead of looking up to Congress as the supreme controlling power, are considering themselves as dependent upon their respective states." While ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the loveliest of Paris, in their light air-robes, with riband-girdle of tricolor, are there; shovelling and wheeling with the rest; their Hebe eyes brighter with enthusiasm, and long hair in beautiful dishevelment: hard-pressed are their small fingers; but they make the patriot barrow go, and even force it to the summit of the slope (with a little tracing, which what man's arm were not too happy to lend?)—then bound down with it again, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... charges of the Austrian cavalry drove back the Prussian Horse and enabled Benedek's defeated troops to get back in safety. At Rezonville (August 16, 1870) von Bredow's Cavalry Brigade was ordered to charge the French batteries and their infantry escort, in order to give some breathing time for the hard-pressed Prussian infantry. The charge was successful and the time was gained, but as at Balaclava (October 26, 1854) there were few survivors from "Von Bredow's Todtenritt" (death ride). After the battle of Le Cateau (August 26, 1918) and during the Retreat from Mons, the British cavalry, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... careful, dear. Think—think hard before you make up your mind. Remember that there is some duplicity which might become suddenly obvious. An official statement might upset everything. These English papers are so garrulous. You might find yourself hard-pressed ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... orders reached General Pipes to fall back on this place, where his reserves were diverted to support Piffle, hard-pressed on the Sandusky. This morning the manoeuvre was effected in good order, the enemy following us through Grierson and capturing one hundred prisoners. The battle was resumed on the Sandusky with the same fury; and it is still raging as I write. The enemy's Army of the Centre is commanded, as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hard, and as bare as the high road. A few yellow hawkweeds, a few camomiles, grew in hollows here and there; but of grass not a blade. It is easy to make a model of these Crotonian hills. Shape a solid mound of hard-pressed sand, and then, from the height of a foot or two, let water trickle down upon it; the perpendicular ridges and furrows thus formed upon the miniature hill represent exactly what I saw here on a larger scale. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... dwellers of heaven fell with their heads, separated from their bodies, and having none to lead them in that fearful battle, they were slaughtered by the enemy. And then the god Purandara (Indra), the slayer of Vala, observing that they were unsteady and hard-pressed by the Asuras, tried to rally them with this speech, 'Do not be afraid, ye heroes, may success attend your efforts! Do ye all take up your arms, and resolve upon manly conduct, and ye will meet with no more misfortune, and defeat those wicked and terrible-looking Danavas. May ye be successful! ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... let me record that there is a legend of a fox having been killed in our drawing-room (on the ground-floor with French windows) during some tenancy in my absence,—only fancy the havoc of such a strife! but all had been cleared up before our return. Also, it is memorable (and I saw it myself) that a hard-pressed stag from Sir Gilbert Heathcote's hunt took refuge in our harness-room,—to the extreme horror of a gardener's boy, who thought it was a mad donkey,—and no wonder, for as those brave barbarian sportsmen ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... when the battle seemed lost, Napoleon would go to the front where the danger was greatest; and by the mere sight of him the hard-pressed soldiers under his command were inspired to ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... the rapid close by sparkled between belts of moving shade. Large white dogs with black and yellow spots swam uncertainly about the pool and searched the bank; a group of men stood in the rapid, while another group watched the tail of the pool. Somewhere between them a hard-pressed otter hid. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... calling themselves the continental congress." Scornfully as he spoke of Congress, there is at least one record of which it may be proud. Franklin, under its authority, issued letters of marque with a lavish hand, but, hard-pressed as the colonists were, he bade John Paul Jones "not to burn defenseless towns on the British coast except in case of military necessity; and in such cases he was to give notice, so that the women and children ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... ladder to the waiting engine and emptying it into the fender. And now, after parting company with my fellow-traveller at Hamburg, I was nearing the land where once more I should see old Dannebrog, the flag that fell from heaven with victory to the hard-pressed Danes. Literally out of the sky it fell in their sight, the historic fact being apparently that the Christian bishops had put up a job with the Pope to wean the newly converted Danes away from their heathen pirate flag and found their opportunity in one of the crusades the Danes undertook ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown; A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; Our army foiled with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... of chase none of the fear and disgust they are so prone to exhibit when put on the trail of the certainly no more dangerous wolf. The cougar, when the hounds are on its track, at first runs, but when hard-pressed takes to a tree, or possibly comes to bay in thick cover. Its attention is then so taken up with the hounds that it can usually be approached and shot without much difficulty; though some cougars break bay when the hunters come near, and again make off, when they can ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... subjects is the result of the truths of socialism meeting my earlier impulse, and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and I can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have found themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization, and have not known where to turn to for encouragement, may receive the same enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough pieces in this book may help them ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton |
