"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; my brother's—my brother's, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the only unity in us, but it is that which unifies all the rest, uses the "possessive case," and may subordinate all else in us to ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... inconveniences and restrictions it imposed increasingly disclosed themselves. A lover, as Helen reflected, provided you see enough of him, offers but small improvement upon a husband. He is liable to become possessive and didactic, after the manner of the natural man. He is liable to forget that the relation is permitted, not legalised—that it exists on suffrance merely, and is therefore terminable at the will of either party. The last days of that ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... patriarchal family-herd of a male and his women and off spring had grown into the clan and tribe; the woven tissue of related families that constitute the human comity had been woven by the subtle, persistent protection of sons and daughters by their mothers against the intolerant, jealous, possessive Old Man. But that was a thing, of the remote past. Little was left of those ancient struggles now but a few infantile dreams and nightmares. The greater human community, human society, was made for good. And being made, it had taken over the ancient tasks of the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the day after the funeral that it all came out. Lena and Ethel were sitting up together over the papers and the letters, turning out his bureau. I suppose that, in the grand immunity his death conferred on her, poor Lena had become provokingly possessive. I can hear her saying to Ethel that there had never been anybody but her, all those years. Praising his faithfulness; holding out her dead happiness, and apologizing to Ethel for talking about it when Ethel didn't understand, never having ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of peace. My indolence was conquered by my love of power: I supported the contest; the affair came before our grand jury: I conquered, and Mr. Hardcastle was ever after, of course, my enemy. To English ears the possessive pronouns my and his may sound extraordinary, prefixed to a justice of peace; but, in many parts of Ireland, this language is perfectly correct. A great man talks of making a justice of the peace with perfect confidence; a very great man talks with as much certainty of making ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Helpmate kunhelpanto. Hem borderi. Hem bordero. Hemisphere duonsfero. Hemorrhage sangado. Hemorrhoids hemorojdo. Hemp kanabo. Hen (fowl) kokino. Henbane hiskiamo. Hence de nun. Henceforth de nun. Hepatic hepata. Heptagon sepangulo. Her sxin. Her (possessive) sxia. Hers sxia. Herald heroldo. Heraldic heraldika. Heraldry (science) heraldiko. Heraldry blazono. Herb herbo. Herbalist herbovendisto. Herbivorous herbomangxanta. Herd brutaro. Herdsman ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... my way of thinking, this expression "my august confederates." Is there not something astounding about the use of the possessive pronoun in connection with the word "august," implying sovereignty? One wonders what part can they have to play, these confederates, led and dominated by a personality as jealous and self-centred as ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become "our squirrel." The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence to Christian names—oftener, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the camp was to him but a holiday exhibition—the march of an army, the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between enchanting hope and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Progress can be measured by the multitude of personal possessions. Not so. True progress for humanity consists in movement from having to doing; from the possessive to the creative; from ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... loud chapel-clock tolled another hour all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air. Zuleika's pincushion, a-bristle with new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced toilet-table, and round it stood a multitude of multiform glass vessels, domed, all of them, with dull gold, on which Z. D., in zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. On a small table ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Amiable Amanuensis and Adaptable Author, "you read your stuff aloud with emphasis and discretion, and I'll chuck in the ornamental part. Excuse me, that's my drink," I say, with an emphasis on the possessive pronoun, for the Soldierly Scribe, in a moment of absorption, was about to apply that process to my liquor. He apologises handsomely, and commences his recital. In the absence of a gong,—one ought never to travel without a gong,—I whack ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... The possessive case expresses the relation of property or possession, and always ends with the letter o; as, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... that had come to her under the consuming fire of his ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms, the close union with his warm, strong body robbed ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... the man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood burning in ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... the room emptied, and she was free to do so, Hepsey, accompanied by the possessive Jonathan, found her way over to the Maxwells. Before she started to tell them the results of the meeting she cast a glance of whimsical affection at ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... this connection by two means which serve to show the analogy of idioms; namely, the grammatical construction, and the identity of words and roots. The following are the personal pronouns of the Chaymas, which are at the same time possessive pronouns; u-re, I, me; eu-re, thou, thee; teu-re, he, him. In the Tamanac, u-re, I; amare or anja, thou; iteu-ja, he. The radical of the first and of third person is in the Chayma u and teu.* (* We must not wonder ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog" instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... was the rain, the possessive grayness, which troubled his body to-night, and through his body troubled his spirit. His nostrils inhaled the damp, and it seemed to go straight into his essence, into the mystery that was he. His eyes saw no more blue, and ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... decidedly!" she returned, without repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think anything of him—apart from what you did between ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the border ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... eye. "An ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness with ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... font, where they dowered each other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... is added to a pronoun of the First and Second person, it is preceded by the Possessive case. But when it is added to a pronoun of the Third person, it is preceded by a pronoun in the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... always the central figure. The truth is, that he could no more help being the central figure than a lion could in any gathering of lesser creatures; the fact that he was Roosevelt decided that. He did use the personal pronoun "I," and the possessive pronoun "My," with such frequency as to irritate good persons who were quite as egotistical as he—if that be egotism—but who used such modest circumlocutions as "the present writer," or "one," to camouflage their self-conceit. Roosevelt enjoyed almost all his experiences with equal ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of resentment swept through her; the patronage in his tone, the indefinable suggestion of possession was, she thought, uncalled for. That he should approve of Frank in that possessive manner was not far removed from ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had, against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall on the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... has the form of the comma. It denotes the possessive case; as, John's book; also, that one or more letters have been left out of a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the Bolshevist possessive eye," agreed Willy Cameron, readily. "Does he know you are through with him? Because that's important, too. You may know it, and I may know it, but ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... my house," answered the Baron, taking his cigar from his mouth for the first time since he had lighted it, and holding it out at arm's length with a possessive sweep while he leaned back and looked at the ceiling again. "It all belongs to me," he said. "I took it for the mortgage, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... answered the deacon. "Captain Gar'ner volunteered to go across for the doctor in my boat—" with a heavy emphasis on the possessive pronoun—"and we had him to look at the patient. But, if the salt-water be good for consumptive people, as some pretend, I think there is generally little hope for seamen whose ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... proprietorship about an Englishman in love that is not to be mistaken. It is a subtle thing, and expresses itself neither in word nor deed in its earlier stages of development; but it is there all the same, and the combination of this possessive mood, with a certain shyness which often goes with ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford |
