"Pitted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two men were alone,—Bat furious and desperate with jealousy; Sampey fearful, but determined; brutality against wit, strength against cunning, fury against patience, a bulldog matched with a mink, a game-cock pitted against an owl. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... is current wherever Scots dwell. They had contested in Parliament and with arms for their own form of worship and for their civil rights. They were already frontiersmen, trained in the hardihood and craft of border warfare through years of guerrilla fighting with the Irish Celts. They had pitted and proved their strength against a wilderness; they had reclaimed the North of Ireland from desolation. For the time, many of them were educated men; under the regulations of the Presbyterian Church every child was taught to read at an early ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... naked, save for a wave of drapery above the knee. No form can he set on his sensations as he strolls, one blazing afternoon, along the Parisian boulevard and skips out of the way of the royal landau which, looking indescribably ramshackle, rattles along the pitted roadway, saluted by citizens of both sexes cheaply dressed in bowler hats and continental costumes; though a shepherd in kilt, cap, and gaiters very nearly drives his herd of goats between the royal wheels; and all the time the Acropolis surges into the air, raises itself above the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... epitomized; but now, in this duel of wills that was taking place before my eyes, I saw another and superior power at work. It was a force of the mind, or soul, that Holy Joe employed; it was a moral force that poured out of the clean spirit of the man and subdued the brute force pitted against him. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... easily seen that these intertribal contests were not based upon the same motives nor waged for the same objects as the wars of civilization—namely, for spoil and territorial aggrandizement. There was no mass play; army was not pitted against army; individual valor was held in highest regard. It was not usual to take captives, except occasionally of women and children, who were adopted into the tribe and treated with kindness. There was no traffic in the labor or flesh of prisoners. ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... which feels pride in the magnitude of the local industry, which parades the lowest death rate in the country, which is honestly ashamed of a bad record for crime or pauperism, so as Englishmen we shall concern ourselves less with the question whether two of our Dreadnoughts might not be pitted against one German, and more with the question whether we cannot equal Germany in the development of science, of education, and of industrial technique. Perhaps even, recovering from our present ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... that I went upstairs to Dimitri's room, I used to find there a University friend of his named Bezobiedoff, with whom he appeared to be very much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations with him ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... present at this scene, would most thoroughly have enjoyed it, and even Blanche could not help laughing at her mother's dismay. Lady Mary's was no simulation of despair. She pictured, as Cottrell would have divined, herself and her former foe once more pitted against each other as rivals, and recalled rather bitterly that campaign of four or five years back, when another niece of that lady's successfully carried off an eligible parti that she, Lady Mary, had at that time selected as suitable for her eldest daughter. She had congratulated her antagonist ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... of the shell, is spread over a certain distance. Here the shell had continued to explode as it passed down through the building, blowing the floor of the upper ward down into the ward below. A great oak beam, a foot square, was cut clean in two, the walls of both wards were pitted and pierced by fragments, and the tiled floor of the lower ward was broken up. The beds lay as they were when the dead were taken from them, the mattresses riddled with fragments and soaked with blood. Obviously no living thing could have survived in that awful hail. When the shell came ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... female of both kinds; the male as eager as the female to fasten on the lion, and as expert in making the most of him, alive or dead, as seen in the finest example extant, Bozzy and Piozzi, fairly pitted; but the male beat the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... great spirit, and some consciousness of her own abilities. We had a contest of gallantry, an hour long, so much to the diversion of the company, that at Ramsay's, last night, in a crowded room, they would have pitted us again. There were Smelt, and the bishop of St. Asaph, who comes to every place; and lord Monboddo, and sir Joshua, and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... eradicate from armed nations. This war of the tribes of the valley lands was of years in duration; men fought and women mourned, and children wept, as all have done since time began. It seemed an unequal battle, for the old experienced war-tried chief and his two astute sons were pitted against a single young Tulameen brave. Both factors had their loyal followers, both were indomitable as to courage and bravery, both were determined and ambitious, both ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... other hand, he was sparring for time. He knew his various groups were in no condition to be pitted against any considerable number of trained regulars. He hoped, too, that actual conflict would be avoided, and that a solution could be arrived at when the forthcoming ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the earth would be the better able to withstand them. It is significant, in connection with these considerations, that the little planet Mercury, which seems also to have parted with its air and water, shows to the telescope some indications that it is pitted with craters resembling those that have torn to pieces the face of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... side by side—Blake gigantic, well-proportioned, splendidly strong; Nick, meagre, maimed, almost shrunken, it seemed. But in that second she knew with unerring conviction that the greater fighter of the two was the man against whom she had pitted her quivering woman's strength. She knew at a single glance that for all his bodily weakness Nick possessed the power to dominate even so mighty a giant as Blake. What she had said to herself many a time before, she said again. He was abnormal, superhuman even; more—where he chose ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... what darkness, what confusion, In myself I find here pitted 'Gainst each other! Spirits twain Struggle desperately within me, Spirits twain of good and ill,— One with gentle impulse wins me To believe, but, oh! the other With opposing force resistless Drives me back to doubt: Oh! who Will dispel these ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the double world scheme—a divine realm set over against an undivine realm, the "sacred" set over against the "secular," the spiritual set over against the natural, the Church set against the world, faith set in contrast to reason, the spirit pitted against the flesh, "the other world" put in such light that "this world" by contrast lay dull in the shadow. Those who were broadened and liberated by the new learning found not only a new world in classical literature, but they ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... truckle-bed. The pattern of the wall-paper left nothing to be desired in that line. On a gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in this world; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the small-pox. That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my admiration of each one. There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have made the moon's landscape familiar to all. Very similar was the scene Darl scanned, save that the barren expanse, pitted and scarred like Luna's, glowed almost liquid under the beating flame of a giant sun that flared in a black sky. Soundless, airless, lifeless, the tumbled plain stretched ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the Howe burn-head, keeping the wind on my right cheek as the girl had ordered. That took me along a rough ridge of mountain pitted with peat-bogs into which I often stumbled. Every minute I expected to descend and find the young Water of Leith, but if I held to my directions I must still mount. I see now that the wind must have ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... trouble me, or seem painful? Shall I not use the faculty for the ends for which it was granted me, or shall I grieve and groan at all the accidents of life? On the contrary, these troubles and difficulties are strong antagonists pitted against us, and we may conquer them, if we will, in the Olympic game ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... their conflict of body and soul. I saw a green, downy countryside, beautiful in its summer life, ravaged by gun-fire so that the white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in a wide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditched by deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered yard after yard, mile after mile, with broken wire, rifles, bombs, unexploded shells, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... bearing in an unconscious hand the cup of defilement, was not strikingly singular either in physical or mental attraction. She was now seven-and-twenty. Small-pox, the terrible plague of the country, had pitted her face and given a yellowish tinge to her complexion; her features were clumsy and her brow low; she was short-sighted, and in old age at any rate was afflicted by an excessive squint. This homeliness was redeemed by a gentle and caressing ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the Moon gathering sticks," or whatever indeed his fancy was wont to conjure up from the lights and shades upon the shining surface, have now completely disappeared; and he sees instead a silvery globe marked here and there with extensive dark areas, and pitted all over with crater-like formations (see Plate VIII., p. 196). The dark areas retain even to the present day their ancient name of "seas," for Galileo and the early telescopic observers believed them to be such, and they are still catalogued under the mystic appellations given ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... are an American, Mr. Blunt," he remarked; "and as I am an Englishman, we may be fairly pitted against each other on this important question of international law, and about which I hear our worthy captain flourishing extracts from Vattel as familiarly as household terms. I hope, at least, you agree with me in thinking that when the sloop-of-war comes up with us, it will be very silly on ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... safe return from Germany became the subject of eager talk. There had been rumours of a remarkable load of African lions arrived in the Tiber a day or two ago, which were to make a gorgeous spectacle in the arena pitted against some tigers from Numidia. There was also talk of a novelty in the shape of crocodiles who were said to fight with great cunning and power against a pack ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... observer of the moon was Galileo. His poor telescope only magnified thirty times. Nevertheless, in the spots that pitted the lunar disc "like eyes in a peacock's tail," he was the first to recognise mountains, and measure some heights to which he attributed, exaggerating, an elevation equal to the 20th of the diameter of the disc, or 8,000 metres. Galileo drew up ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which I don't believe), and obtruded himself on public notice. Some of the young ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under his directions. Dora was among these. I felt that fate had pitted me against this man, and one of us ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the German-Magyar minority over the Slav and Latin majority, finally established by the introduction of dualism in 1867, was made possible only by the demoralising system of violence described above. One race was pitted against the other in Austria and this enabled the Germans to rule them better, while the Magyars in Hungary, by keeping their subject races in the darkness of ignorance and by using the most abominable methods of violence, succeeded in securing for themselves the entire monopoly ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... and the strip of "No Man's Land," with the pocked and pitted streaks of defenses on both sides, gleamed white and spectral green under the star-dashed shells. An infantry attack was going on; Hal could see the shapes of men as they flattened; they were pinched to dots when they jumped up and then they ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are; low shores a dizzy distance apart, with nothing between but an enormous acreage of sand-flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst them; Saharas of sand, smallpox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts as straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring the channel-interruptions)—a dry-shod ferry, you see. Long railway bridges are required for this sort of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... same system has prevailed. Ironmasters have been pitted against each other, as to which should produce an apparent rail at the lowest price. At the outset of railways the rails were made of iron. Competition gradually produced rails in which a core, of what is technically called "cinder," is covered up with a skin of iron; and the cleverest ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... possibilities unfolding to his highly coloured imagination. There was going to be something doing now that would put an edge to this dull life. With what was equivalent to a lining up of forces and an open declaration of hostilities, with Red on the one hand pitted against the trio whom Dart called the Haymakers, with a murder mystery to untangle, a robbery to solve, and—not to be forgotten—Little Saxon guarded through the winter months so that a winning horserace could be run in the spring, Mr. Dart looked forward happily to a very busy time. Then ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... important group of the whole composition. Here Zeus recognizable by the thunderbolt in his outstretched right hand and the aegis upon his left arm, is pitted against three antagonists. Two of the three are already disabled. The one at the left, a youthful giant of human form, has sunk to earth, pierced through the left thigh with a huge, flaming thunderbolt. The second, also youthful and human, has fallen upon ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... while there was always danger that some word might be dropped to awaken suspicion. The success or failure of our effort depended entirely upon taking these fellows by complete surprise. If it came to an open fight our cause was hopeless, for that would mean fourteen or fifteen men unarmed, pitted against over a hundred, thoroughly equipped and trained fighters. To be sure these were at present, without a leader, yet their force alone was sufficient to overcome us, and some one among them would doubtless ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Mildred Caniper's room, another in the kitchen; the only buds on the poplars were frozen white ones, and the whiteness of the lawn was pitted with Halkett's footsteps. Since the first day of snow he had climbed the garden wall close to the kitchen door so that he should not make another trail, but the original one still gaped there, and Helen wished ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... combined fleets of their hated Christian adversaries. From the surrounding shores 20,000 Moslem soldiers discharged their guns into the land-locked harbor. The fight lasted from three in the afternoon until seven in the evening. All bravery was in vain when pitted against Western seamanship and gunnery. In the course of a short afternoon one Turkish ship after another was sunk or blown to pieces. By sundown little was left of the Turkish fleet but a mass of wreckage. Only fifteen ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... against the English; who, although greatly inferior in number, possessed considerable advantage, from long habit in street-rows and boxing encounters. As for myself, I had the good fortune to be pitted against a very pursy and unwieldy Frenchman, who sacre'd to admiration, but never put in a single blow at me; while, therefore, I amused myself practising what old Cribb called "the one, two," upon his fat carcase, I had abundant time and opportunity to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... unconscious of all this. He had never thought of his body as being strong or well-shaped, because he had never used it, never pitted his strength against the strength of other men, never worked, never striven. It had never been necessary for him to do so. He had been taught that pride of that sort was sinful, and he had accepted the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... him from evil, and in his own good time had given him the victory, and such a victory! For twelve years he had fought on through trials and privations, hampered by bodily ailments and the deep discouragements of those who should have aided him. Pitted against the trained minds and the wealth of other nations, he had gone forth a very David to battle, and, like David, the simplicity of his missile had given him the victory. Other telegraphs had been devised by other men; some had actually been put into operation, but it ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Almohades, responded to the effort of the Pope by organizing a crusade in Moslem Africa. He proclaimed an Algihed, or Holy War, ordered a massacre of all the Christians in his dominions, and then led the fanatical murderers to Spain to join the forces there in arms. Christian Europe was pitted against Moslem Africa in a holy war, Spain the prize of victory, and the plains of Andalusia the arena of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Consolidated Companies during the fortnight succeeding the stormy session of the committee, while unexpected, did not lull Gorham into any false sense of security. Now that his vision had been cleared, he knew that it was their strength pitted against his own. He had his own plans for meeting this, but with supreme confidence in himself he preferred to let them make the first move. Covington had not retreated from his position that a compromise of some sort was desirable, but he succeeded in convincing Gorham ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... of the sea worth after that? What was the fighting value of the mightiest battleship that floated when pitted against a practically unassailable enemy, which had nothing to do but drop torpedoes, loaded with high explosives, on her decks and down her funnels until her very vitals were torn to pieces, her ammunition exploded, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... too long for quotation—but read it, read every word of it. Where in the language can you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative? I have seen with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one international battle, where the best of two great countries have been pitted against each other—yet the second-hand impression of Borrow's description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of them. This is ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... presidential campaign anxiously from Rochester, Susan wrote Mrs. Stanton, "I am starving for a full talk with somebody posted, not merely pitted for Lincoln...." The persistent cry of the Liberator and the Antislavery Standard to re-elect Lincoln and not to swap horses in midstream did not ring true to her. "We read no more of the good old doctrine 'of two evils choose neither,'" she wrote Anna E. Dickinson. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... each other's tattered hat; there two more, with legs and arms indistinguishable, were wrestling; close by was the sound of a mouth-harp, a circle of interested spectators, and, within, two dancers pitted against each other, and shuffling with a zest that ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... that weighed them down, they were tingling with exultation. It was the first time they had been pitted against a really big team, and they had clearly outclassed them. The contests with the smaller colleges had been little more than practice, and in most cases the scrub could have won as certainly if not as overwhelmingly as the 'Varsity. And the victory to-day had been ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... But when laws are pitted against human nature, they may be forced upon people by the strong hand of power, but they are sure to be evaded where they are not broken literally; and this law of forbidding clergymen to marry ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... challenge. To refuse any contest, to plead any privilege, would be instant loss of prestige. This supreme moment in Lincoln's career, this fateful turning of the political tide, found him fully prepared for the new battle, equipped by reflection and research to permit himself to be pitted against the champion of Democracy—against the very author of the raging storm of parties; and it displays his rare self-confidence and consciousness of high ability, to venture ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... way along the tote road in a buckboard, with a driver. The road bristled with rocks and was pitted with hollows; the fat horses dragged their feet at a slow walk. Craig was a big man, a bit paunchy, and he grunted while he was bounced. He wore his city hard hat as if he wished by his headgear to distinguish himself from the herd of woodsmen ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... white pigeons flew from a banquet of blue fruits to a diet of crude seeds, and not a single one of the canons of the gentle art of fishing but was scandalously violated. It was a coarse and unmanly encounter—the wit, strategy, finesse, and boldness of fish pitted against the empty noise and bluster of inferior man and the flimsiness ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... ministers, and labor leaders. At such mass meetings George did most of his campaigning, making several speeches a night, once as many as eleven. The single tax and the prevailing political corruption were favorite topics. Against George and his adherents were pitted the powerful press of the city of New York, all the political power of the old parties, and all the influence of the business class. George's opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, an anti-Tammany Democrat whom Tammany ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... note over, speculatively now, in his fingers. So she knew him as Smarlinghue! In some way she had found that out! His brows gathered abstractedly, then cleared again. Well, at any rate, it was added proof that so far her cleverness had completely outwitted those who had pitted themselves against her—so much so that even her freedom of action, in whatever role she had assumed, was still ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the giant crater rose above us. We toiled upward, out of the foothills, clinging now to the crags and pitted terraces of the main ascent. An hour had passed since we turned from the borders of the Mare Imbrium. Or was it two hours? I could not tell. I only know that we ran ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the "Little Giant," there could be no rival in the Republican ranks to Abraham Lincoln. He had in 1854 yielded his priority of claim to Trumbull; he alone had successfully encountered Douglas in debate. The political events themselves seemed to have selected and pitted these two champions against each other. Therefore, when the Illinois State convention on June 16, 1858, passed by acclamation a separate resolution, "That Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... was a Marathon winner was not generally known, and everybody in town thought that their candidate would have an unknown runner pitted against him, whom he could easily vanquish. It was, therefore, with feelings of the utmost confidence that they streamed toward the place where the race was to be held. They bantered the cowboys they ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... hospital, whom Kate had befriended, in the hope of getting a possible clew. They sat close together before the fire in Mr. Bentley's comfortable library, debating upon the possibility of other methods of procedure, when a carriage was heard rattling over the pitted asphalt without. As it pulled up at the curb, a silence fell between ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... northeast, the arm end down seventy miles long toward Oomnak Island. The entire broken coast probably reaches a circuit of over two hundred miles. Down the centre and out each spur are high volcanic mountains, two of them smoking volcanoes, all pitted with caves and hot springs whose course can be traced in winter by the runnels of steam {85} down the mountain side. On the south side, reefs line all approach. North, east, and west are countless abrupt inlets opening directly ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Bob towered above them like a great avenging red angel. Then his anger left him as suddenly as it had come. Carey and the deputy presented such a pitiable sight, although ludicrous withal, that he was moved to shame to think that he had pitted his strength against such puny adversaries. He picked T. Morgan Carey out of the corner, set him on his feet, dusted him off, gave him his hat and restored to him his gold pince-nez. The deputy needed no aid from Bob McGraw, but ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the duke gathered his wrath and his army and laid siege to the town of Morat, announcing his intention to give no quarter, but to kill all, old and young, men, women, and children. The Swiss were prepared for us. "The energy of pride was going to be pitted against the energy of patriotism." Again disaster fell upon Charles. Thousands of his army were slain, and thousands fled in hopeless rout. His soldiers had never wanted to fight, and one man defending his hearth is stronger than half ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Hawky, on the other hand, is not personally well-favoured. She is-twenty-nine; her face is much pitted with the small-pox. She has a halt in her gait, red hair, and a trifling obliquity of vision. Both ladies are endowed with EVERY MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VIRTUE. Their terms, of course, are such as their accomplishments merit. With my most grateful respects to the Reverend ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which have disgraced the vaccination craze were taught to the doctors by the public. It was not the doctors who first began to declare that all our old men remember the time when almost every face they saw in the street was horribly pitted with smallpox, and that all this disfigurement has vanished since the introduction of vaccination. Jenner himself alluded to this imaginary phenomenon before the introduction of vaccination, and attributed ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... reproduce itself. It is in the interest of one sex not to destroy the other. On the other hand, politics is not always a personal struggle. In its proper and loftiest sense it is a struggle of ideas and principles, of theories and methods. Therefore, if a man is pitted against a woman in the arena of politics, they are certainly not compelled to engage in fisticuffs and kill each other, but each will present his own views on the points at issue, with more or less sound arguments ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... resumed Harrington, "in several ways that appalling catastrophe may have taken place; and, should this be the case, how many questions will be asked of history, but asked in vain! As for Rome,—what other great name in the present strife pitted against England,—for aught we can tell, she may by that time be in desolation far more remediless than when the grim Attilas and Alarics stormed her walls. For aught we know, the agency of those terrible elements which more or less mine the soil of Italy may have made her 'like unto' Herculaneum ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... strange hazard, all the women were seated on the same side; and the Countess further had for neighbors two saintly nuns who fingered long rosaries and mumbled Paters and Aves. One of them was old and had a face so deeply pitted with smallpox, that she looked as if she had been shot full in the face by a rapid-firing gun. The other, very frail, had a pretty and sickly head on a narrow consumptive chest eaten up by that devouring faith ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... him that that, and not his liberty, should be first in his mind. We who have not his opportunity may find it more difficult to decide; but from our private knowledge of Dr Drummond we may remember what poor Finlay probably forgot at the moment, that even when pitted against Providence, the Doctor was a man of ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... leading lawyers at Williamsburg, against whom Jefferson was often pitted, was John Wayles. I need not explain that lawyers hotly opposed to each other in a trial are not necessarily enemies. The way in which Jefferson conducted his cases pleased the veteran Wayles, and he invited ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... open to any number of competitors. According to the Relation of 1636, "Village was pitted against village." "Tribe was matched against tribe," says Perrot. The number engaged in the game described by La Potherie [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 126.] was estimated by him at two thousand. LaHontan [Footnote: ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... to step out and start up the engine for her. Cranking a motor is severe on even a sturdy woman. She climbed out over the dashboard from the wheel side, and entered the door-yard. The barn had been demolished by shells. The ground around the house was pitted with shell-holes, a foot deep, three feet deep, one hole six feet deep. The chimney of the house had collapsed from a well-aimed obus. Mrs. Bracher knocked at the door, and shook it. But there was no answer. The house carried that silent ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... commencement of the present season, when a French gentleman, Monsieur Lalouette, was admitted to the club where I usually play. His skill and reputation were so great, that no men of the club were inclined to play against us two of a side; and the consequence has been, that we have been in a manner pitted against one another. By a strange turn of luck (for I cannot admit the idea of his superiority), Fortune, since the Frenchman's arrival, has been almost constantly against me, and I have lost two-and-thirty nights in the course of a couple ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... auxiliary vessels can be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of any better for the minor work, and a proportion of raw men can be mixed with the highly trained, their shortcomings being made good by the skill of their fellows; but the efficient fighting force of the Navy when pitted against an equal opponent will be found almost exclusively in the war ships that have been regularly built and in the officers and men who through years of faithful performance of sea duty have ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and by the time he graduated he had already made up his mind to study for the ministry, because it seemed to him the least laborious of all callings. In so far as he could see, it was the only business in which there was practically no competition, in which a man was not all the time pitted against other men who were willing to work themselves to death. His father stubbornly opposed Lars's plan, but after keeping the boy at home for a year and finding how useless he was on the farm, he sent him to a theological ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... to be deceived by magic. Your lad Thialfi was the one whom I first deceived. For it was not a Giant youth who raced against him, but Thought itself. And even you, O Loki, I deceived. For when you tried to make yourself out the greatest of eaters I pitted against you, not a Giant, but Fire ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole city rang with one vast riot. Down below me at Tophane—over at Stamboul—far away at Scutari—the whole eighty ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... scanty growth of washed-out hue; the lips, but yesterday so full, and red, and tempting, were thin, and drawn, and colourless, and the rose-leaf complexion had given place to an aspect so cruelly pitted, seamed, and scarred that even friends ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... advanced before and during the opening of the Wilderness campaign, i.e., "that our cavalry ought to fight the enemy's cavalry, and our infantry the enemy's infantry"; for there was great danger of breaking the spirit of the corps if it was to be pitted against the enemy's compact masses of foot-troops posted behind intrenchments, and unless there was some adequate tactical or strategical advantage to be gained, such a use of it would not be justified. Immediately succeeding the battles of the Wilderness, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... of Lord Castlereagh and the Holy Alliance, he brought all those predilections with him into office. Incapable of foreseeing the mighty events with which the future was big, and of comprehending the prodigious alterations which the moral character of Europe had undergone, he pitted himself against Canning in the Cabinet, and stood up as the assertor of maxims both of foreign and domestic policy which that great statesman saw were no longer fitted for the times we live in. With a flexibility which was more remarkably exhibited ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... well-planned company, particularly when all the family are to be here. Invite somebody for each one, mix 'em all up, play some jolly games, and you'll find Doctor Forester vying with Norman Carter for the prize, and enjoying it equally well. It sharpens up the young wits to be pitted against the older ones, and it—well, it burnishes the elder rapiers and keeps ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... South were now fairly pitted against the almost exhaustless resources of the North. Grant's plan was to keep constantly hammering Lee's army, conscious that it was the last hope of the Confederacy. The idea of thus annihilating an army was ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... altered for the worse, and in the distance were neither niggers nor the god. It is possible that I stuck my thumbs into my armpits and waggled my fingers. I don't remember. But it's no mean sensation to have pitted yourself against a strange god, with perfectly round heels, and to have ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... within certain rather ample limits, made it a legitimate thing to crush the little man and rob him of his few possessions by any means available. There was, it seemed, no mercy shown to weaklings in the arena he had rashly entered with none of the weapons that the command of money supplied to those pitted against him; but in place of shrinking from the conflict a slow, smoldering ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... ago Diana Mayo had not known the meaning of the word fear, and had never in all her life obeyed any one against her inclination, but in twenty-four hours she had lived through years of emotions. For the first time she had pitted her will against a will that was stronger than her own, for the first time she had met an arrogance that was greater and a determination that was firmer than hers. For the first time she had met a man who had failed to bow to ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... in growth," says Shakespeare, but that depends upon whether the competition is sharp and close. If the weed finds itself distanced, or pitted against great odds, it grows more slowly and is of diminished stature, but let it once get the upper hand, and what strides it makes! Red-root will grow four or five feet high if it has a chance, or it will content itself with a few inches and mature ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a change. He did not seek my company as he had done before, and so those long discussions and mental duels in which we pitted our philosophies against each other came to an end. I was, I suspected, an unpleasant reminder to him of things he would rather forget, and my presence was an omen of impending doom. That he did not order my execution forthwith was due, I believe to a sort ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... down the rapids, and straight over the line of precipice, in a vast tumultuous greyish-drab torrent which speedily emerges into comparatively still water below. The rock here is an exceedingly hard, mottled limestone, resembling the stone at St. Andrew's Rapids on Red River. Where exposed it is pitted or bitten into by the endless action of wind and water, and lies in thick layers, forming an irregular dyke all along the shore, over the surface of which passes the portage, some forty yards in length. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... in it is bitter, the enemy will be powerless; but if the sack is small, and only partially filled with a weak liquor, it will fare ill with the warriors who go into battle. For all other events, the liver itself gives the signs. When it is full and smooth, the omens are favorable; but if it is pitted, has black specks on it, is wrinkled, or has cross lines on it, the spirits are ill-disposed, and the project should be delayed. If, however, the matter is very urgent, another pig or a fowl may be offered in the hope that the attitude of the spirits ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Anything is better than being governed by an idiot child and three canting nuns. I expect to be excommunicated every day for some offence against Pulcheria's prudery.... Heraclian emperor at Rome.... and I lord and master on this side the sea. The Donatists pitted again fairly against the orthodox, to cut each other's throats in peace.... no more of Cyril's spying and tale-bearing to Constantinople.... Not such a baddish of fare.... But then-it would ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... blamed. He had gone into this war without really knowing the true state of things. He was made to believe that there were four hundred thousand men ready to take the field, when in reality there were only half that number, and those certainly not fit to be pitted against the Germans, who had been provided with better and newer maps than the French, and knew France and its army more thoroughly than the French themselves. We could have talked on this subject for hours had not the fat ponies come to take us to the station, where we bade farewell to Paul ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... trough surrounded by hilly mounds; its smooth, saucepan-like bottom, covered with whitish pumice-sand, is pitted with craters containing violently boiling and fuming mud - the so-called fango, famous for its healing properties. All around sulphurous fumes issue from crevices in the rocks, and in one special place the Solfatara reveals its subterranean ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... wisdom almost prophetic, he foresaw that if France helped the United States, and then demanded Canada as her reward, the old border warfare would be renewed with tenfold more terror. No longer would it be bushrover pitted against frontiersmen. It would be France against Congress, and Washington refused to give the aid of Congress to the scheme of France embroiling America in European wars. The story of how Clark, the American, won the Mississippi forts for Congress is not part of Canada's history, nor are the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of the current Puritanism. Hooker, most earnest of Christians, was also the most liberal-minded of men. Jonson was half a Catholic. All were manifestly men of deep religious feeling, but none can be associated with any religious party. When England was pitted as a Protestant Power against a Power aggressively determined on the eradication of Protestantism, it was inevitable that the prevailing sentiment should be increasingly Protestant; on the whole, it is surprising ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Lincoln was pitted, as a lawyer, against a brother of the toga who was of fat and plethoric habit, and who puffed and blowed when most he wished to get on with his ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the first lieutenant or mate interposed. This fellow was a short, stout-built person of thirty-five, with reddish whiskers and hair, a long-projecting under-jaw, and eye-teeth that jutted out like tusks. To add to his ugliness, he was sadly pitted by small-pox, and waddled about on short duck legs, which were altogether out of proportion to his long body, immense arms, and broad, massive shoulders. I do not remember a more vulgarly repulsive person than ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... all the towns London had been growing most rapidly in wealth and population, and during the troubles in which John had been pitted against William of Longchamps it had secured the right of being governed by a Mayor and Aldermen of its own, instead of being placed under the jurisdiction of the King's sheriff. The Mayor and Aldermen, however, did not ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... road from us was our billet—the place we cooked in, at least, and where we usually took our meals. Looking to the south between the trees, we could see the ruins of the city: to the front on the sky line, with rolling ground in the front, pitted by French trenches, the German lines; to the left front, several farms and a windmill, and farther left, again near the canal, thicker trees and more farms. The farms and windmills were soon burnt. Several farms we used for ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... with the destiny that makes Rodrigue the slayer of her father. In Polyeucte it is the same passion struggling with the dictates of religion. In Les Horaces, patriotism, family love and personal passion are all pitted against Fate. In Cinna, the conflict passes within the mind of Auguste, between the promptings of a noble magnanimity and the desire for revenge. In all these plays the central characters display a superhuman courage and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... success the meed of merit or victory the unfailing guerdon of heroism.[105] Such wisdom as is within man's reach is often a positive disadvantage in life, owing to the modesty it inspires as pitted against the self-confidence of noisy fools. Besides, should it contrive to build up a stately structure, a small dose of folly, with which all human wisdom is largely alloyed, is capable, in an instant, of undoing the work of years.[106] In a word, the wise man is often worse off than ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... green. Even as the Prince looked at them, they lost color, as if a hand out of the cloud had suddenly dropped a curtain of white gauze over them. He glanced back over the course, then forward. The donjon was showing the loopholes that pitted its southern face. Excellent as the speed had been, more was required. Half the distance remained to be overcome—and the enemy ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... added much to the artistic stature of these three supplementary studies. They have something of the concision of the Preludes. The first is a masterpiece. In F minor the theme in triplet quarters, broad, sonorous and passionate, is unequally pitted against four-eight notes in the bass. The technical difficulty to be overcome is purely rhythmic, and Kullak takes pains to show how it may be overcome. It is the musical, the emotional content of the study that fascinates. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... "Well, you're fairly pitted. Half the town backs one and half the other. That letter signed 'Aurelius' in the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... retiarius, when pitted against a powerful wild beast, appeared in the arena with a rope-net folded over his left shoulder. The animal made its spring. The man, with a sudden movement of his right arm, cast the net after the manner of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre |
