"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were suddenly called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... and Inshallah—God willing—return to me rejoicing; yet sore I fear lest thou come back to me and say, 'Sooth thou hast spoken in thy speech, O my mother!" However Zayn al-Asnam took up a pickaxe and, descending to that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge souterrain all pillar'd and propped with columns ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... threshe, and therto dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... years, thereby saving it from destruction, and warding off the conspiracy that would reduce you to beggary. For your sake only have I so guarded the secret of its wealth that no living soul suspects it. Even the men who delve in its depths know not the value of the material in which they toil, for I have not told them. Nor have I allowed an assay to be made of its smallest fragment; but I know its worth, its fabulous value, that will ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... if execrated service, in vain would the scientist toil in his laboratory, the inventor struggle through poverty to perfect his machine, the Captain of Industry conceive great accomplishment, and the laborer delve and grind at his daily task. The one supremely useful man is he who ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... and thought of the complications of the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. Under the shadow of the great stone bridge God had ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the precaution to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake was only required as a sign that he was not free ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that lay beneath ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... fully formulated during the period under discussion. Yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by black soldiers because of racial separation. Rarely did the Army staff bother to delve into these matters in the years before Korea, (p. 232) although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions were collected by the War Department itself. This indifference is the more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the War Department Policies and ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, closure. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... was a boy, I, too, thrilled over such nonsense, and when I made my first trip into the forest I began to delve for true wolf stories, and I have been delving ever since. So far, after over thirty years of digging, I have actually dug up what I believe to be one authentic story of an unprovoked wolf having actually attacked and killed a man. On several occasions, too, I have had the satisfaction of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... affair. But somehow the suspicion had come to him that he had accidentally stumbled upon a more complicated plot than mere blackmail. Mrs. Dupont's intimacy with Molly, and the use she was making of her distant relationship with the Major to further her ends, made him eager to delve deeper into her real purpose. At least these two, apparently ignorant of their guest's true character, should be warned, or, if that was impossible, protected from imposture. Their open friendliness and social endorsement were the woman's stock in trade at Dodge, and whatever the final denouement ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... hour of contest, you will have to delve the ground, it may chance dislocate an arm, sprain an ankle, gulp down abundance of yellow sand, be scourge with the whip—and with all this sometimes lose the victory. Count the cost—and then, if your desire still ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... that, Ken." Patty's quick perceptions had caught the flaw in Kenneth's argument. "It isn't that. It's because you're so absorbed in your work that you'd RATHER dig and delve in it, than to go to parties. That's all right, of course, and much to your credit. But you can't blame me for liking a man who is willing to throw over his business engagements ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... knees in the water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket. The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a decline, and early next fall the old man—for he was an old man now—had to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the iron; a thousand paths, marked with foot-prints, all inland leading, none villageward; and strown with traces, as of a flying host. On: over forest—hill, and dale—and lo! the golden region! After the glittering spoil, by strange river-margins, and beneath impending cliffs, thousands delve in quicksands; and, sudden, sink in graves of their own making: with gold dust mingling their own ashes. Still deeper, in more solid ground, other thousands slave; and pile their earth so high, they gasp for air, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... general reader, they have been hitherto quite inaccessible. Only the largest public libraries have the proper sources of information, and even with these books at hand the student has been forced to delve in a mass of irrelevant material for the hidden ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... French peasant of his day marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. They creep back at nightfall into ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... down they hurl, Their undulating silks they closely furl. The pick-axe one as a commandress holds, While t'other at her awk'ness gently scolds. One puffs and sweats, the other mutters why Can't you promove your work so fast as I? Some dig, some delve, and others' hands do feel The little wagon's weight with single wheel. And lest some fainting-fits the weak surprize, They want no sack nor cakes, they are ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... us toil, In the mines of knowledge; Nature's wealth, and learning's spoil, Win from school and college; Delve we then for richer gems Than ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dreamed. But what are they finding, more and more, below their facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel and the microscope can show? A something nameless, invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent, retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper they delve: namely, the life which shapes and makes; that which the old schoolmen called "forma formativa," which they call vital force and what not—metaphors all, or rather counters to mark an unknown quantity, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... a writer, for in a writer there are many men,—an author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know everything though he does not tell it, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... valise (or the manuscript) in a seat and go into another car, when you come back the goods may be there and they may not. That is the only way to keep money—fasten your eye right on it. If you leave it in the hands of others, and go away to delve in books, the probabilities are that, when you get back, certain obese attorneys have divided your substance ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... then it cam a green Yule, and the folk died thick and fastfor ye ken a green Yule makes a fat kirkyard; and I never dowed to bide a hard turn o' wark in my lifesae aff I gaed, and left Will to delve his last ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... poorly paid, either worked under mild conditions in the fields, or followed their trades in their cottages and workshops. The introduction of the steam engine brought with it a demand for fuel which forced thousands of men, women, and children to delve in the mines, and the use of machines and the adoption of the factory system shut up other thousands of both sexes, and all ages, to labor for excessive hours in crowded cities under unsanitary conditions. At the present time the system of legislation regarding the employment ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... not study eternally. The change from a toiling body and idle mind to an idle body and toiling mind requires time to make the latter condition unirksome. Happily there was small need to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and sinking back on his haunches keen-eyed for more; so mentally he caught at the lessons prepared for him by his ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the stump of a jack-pine, formed his easel. Perched upon another box, he was soon busily engaged upon the outline of what was to be his masterpiece. Forgotten was everything else as he sat there, devoting all the energy of heart, mind, and hand to the work before him. The miners might delve for gold; Curly and his companions might gamble to their hearts' content; such things were nothing to him. He had struck a vein of wealth, the true gold of love, by the side of which all the treasures of earth ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... LVII. These delve the port; the broad foundations there They lay for theatres of ample space, And columns, hewn from marble rocks, prepare, Tall ornaments, the future stage to grace. As bees in early summer swarm apace Through flowery fields, when forth from dale ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of the same noble qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why do I call this ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... her and said with grave intensity, "How, dear, are the great truths of science to be ascertained unless men—men and their wives—are willing to delve lovingly, to sacrifice comforts, and even endure ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... note the date of, and should delve into the details of the accident; special note being made of the occurrence of laryngeal spasm, wheezing respiration heard by the patient or others (asthmatoid wheeze), fever, cough, pain, dyspnea, dysphagia, odynphagia, regurgitation, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... brought in by two chairmen, with infinite satisfaction to the audience. When a high price book is balancing between L15 and L20, it is a fearful sign of its reaching an additional sum if Mr. Leigh should lay down his hammer and delve into this said crumple-horn-shaped snuff-box.' The style of the firm was for many years Leigh, Sotheby and Son. In 1803-4 a removal to 145, Strand, opposite Catherine Street, was made. John Sotheby died in 1807, and the name of Leigh disappeared from the catalogues in 1816. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... earlier recipe book the Waybroad is prescribed for twenty-two diseases, one after another; and in another of the same date we are taught how to apply it: "If a man ache in half his head . . . delve up Waybroad without iron ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head with Crosswort by a red fillet, soon he will be well." But the Plantain did not long sustain its high reputation, which even in Shakespeare's time had become much diminished. "I find," says Gerard, "in ancient ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... to act, but only to keep the child's secret. For Ingua's sake, as well as to satisfy your curiosity—and my own—I'm going to delve to the bottom of Ned Joselyn's disappearance. That will involve the attempt to discover all about Old Swallowtail, who is a mystery all by himself. I shall call on you to help me, at times, Mary Louise, but you're not to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... World.—But how different is the picture of primitive man suddenly brought face to face with an unknown world. With no knowledge of nature or art, with no theory or practice of social order, he began to dig and to delve for the preservation of life. Suffering the pangs of hunger, he obtained food; naked, he clothed himself; {8} buffeted by storm and wind and scorched by the penetrating rays of the sun, he built himself a shelter. As he gradually became ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... a bundle of letters, which Tom took, and then the giant continued to delve for more. One of the papers, rolled in a wrapper, stuck on the ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Knowledge, which is after all but a string of facts, is being arranged, sorted, distilled, and set down in compact form, ready for rapid assimilation. There is little fear that the student who may wish in the future to become master of any subject will have to delve into the original sources in his ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... coinhabiting mischief! It was enough, he says, to drive a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were no necessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were no decree of God, no real ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... that had crossed his brain, the wish that this case might seem as simple to him as it apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the smile passed, and Muller raised his head in one of the rare moments of pride in ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... we delve into this system of illusory compromises between monopoly and society,—that is, as we have explained in % 1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the patriciate and the proletariat,—the more we discover that it is all foreseen, regulated, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Gold Road is a dark road— No bird by the wayside sings, No sun shines into the canons deep, No children's laughter rings. They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks For the pittance their labor brings. Their bread is bitter who toil for their own, But they starve ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... grain of hardy fame; The imp rejoined, I never heard its name; What is it. Tousell, say'st thou?—I agree, If good return, 'twill be the same to me; Work fellow, work; make haste, the ground prepare; To dig and delve should be the rabble's care; Don't think that I will ever lend a hand, Or give the slightest aid to till the land; I've told thee I'm a gentleman by birth, Designed for ease: not doomed to turn the earth. Howe'er I'll now the diff'rent parts allot, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a delve{1} Sunning his threasure hore{2}; Is by him tempted, and led downe To see ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.— Mother, good-night.—Indeed, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the poet says, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a strong stream ...
— Options • O. Henry
... this from the point of view of the humble private, who got none of the glory, and expected none, but only suffering and toil; whose lot it was to march and countermarch, to delve and sweat in the trenches, to be stifled by the heat and drenched by the rain and frozen by the cold; to wade through seas of blood and anguish, to be wounded and captured and imprisoned, to be lured ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... patiently admitted the man who had dropped into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... facing sleet and mist; who has swung the sickle under the summer sun—this is the man for the trenches. This is the man whom neither the snows of the North nor the sun of the South can vanquish; who will dig and delve, and carry traverse and covered way forward in the face of the fortress, who will lie on the bare ground in the night. For they who go up to battle must fight the hard earth and the tempest, as well ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... infinite approbation of the audience." The snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve into ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... time was coarse, vulgar and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... generation, inclined to value everything by its money price, its private utility. The spirit which gives freely, because it knows that it has received freely; which communicates knowledge without hope of reward, without jealousy and rivalry, to fellow- students and to the world; which is content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by the practical use of some stray talisman which the poor student has invented in his laboratory; ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... tried to delve into the past. The first connecting link seemed years ago,—he was running away from something, her hand within his. The girl—yes, he remembered now, but still very indistinctly. But soon with a great influx of joy he recalled that moment at the door when he had realized ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... finds she must prove to a busy, driven world that she is worth its attention; she must do more than simply knock for admission and declare her fealty to its ideals. She realizes sooner or later that she is an outsider and must delve her way in. No sapper works harder to make his trench than most young women do to make stable places for themselves in ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... management of life problems as well as of specific brain diseases, infections, and gastrointestinal and endocrine conditions, become more and more helpful, even a necessity, in the wards and dispensary of the General Hospital on 16th Street. The layman cannot, perhaps, delve profitably into the details of such a highly and broadly specialized type of work. But he can readily take a share in the best appreciation of the general philosophy and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself—"I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep." I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into motives. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to be sober, {56} Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve; All hail to this tenth of October, One thousand eight hundred and twelve! {57} Ha! whom do my peepers remark? 'Tis Hebe with Jupiter's jug; O no, 'tis the pride of the Park, Fair ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair: "I have builded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... thought still scattered through the plays of Shakspere that no author or actor has ever discovered, and although they have read and repeated his lines, for more than three hundred years, there has been no brain able and brilliant enough to delve into or explain the secret caves of Shaksperian wit. Human sparrows cannot know the eagle flights ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal, to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still he has discovered how to melt the harder and more useful iron. We say roughly, therefore, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... said good night to Meryl she could not refrain, from just one little delve into the perplexing situation. "If you and Major Carew met at six o'clock and did not get back until seven, you must have had quite a long chat together. Such a new thing for him! I don't think even I, his trusted friend, can boast of such ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... most precious of all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless riches just beneath their feet. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... to attempt a detailed history of the Rogue River war as that task were better left to the historian with leisure to delve into the musty records of the past, but I sincerely hope that when the true story of that bloody time is written the kernel of truth will be sifted from the mass of chaff by which it has thus far been obscured. My purpose is merely to give the facts in a general ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... you love me, delve a tomb, And lay me there the earth beneath; After a year, come see my bones, And make them dice to play therewith. But when you're tired of that game, Then throw those dice into the flame; But when you're tired of gaming free, Then throw ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... be done for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... pittance, the poor-house's aid All smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... public necessity or the tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... I apprehend, that we Should oft restrain our thoughts and sight, Nor delve too far, nor try to see, With deeper, but more ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... universe were divided per capita, how long would it remain out of the clutches of the Napoleons of finance, only a percentage of whom find ultimately their Waterloo, little to the profit of the poor who spin and delve, who fight and die, in the Grand ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... shoe; Three, four, Shut the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids a-kissing; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... familiar with history, is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture. The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am not quarreling ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... of the flour[FN469] she would make into loaves for her husband so this bread would be ruddy-brown of hue.[FN470] Now every day about dawn-time the Fellah was wont fare to his field either to ear or to delve and tarry there working till noon at which time the wife would send him the bread of bran and refuse flour, whilst to those beside him who wrought as he did would be brought from their homes white bread and clean. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... fellow would speak hopefully of a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... the right bank of Elbe, it is mere intrenchment for five-and-twenty miles. With bogs, with thickets full of Croats; and such an amount of artillery,—I believe they have in battery no fewer than 1,500 cannon. A position very considerable indeed:—must have taken time to deliberate, delve and invest; but it is done. Near fifty miles of it: here, clear to your glass, has the head of Lacy visibly emerged on us, as if for survey of phenomena:—head of Lacy sure enough (body of him lying invisible in the heights, passes and points of vantage); ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... proceed in this matter for awhile as though I had not a single doubt as to the authenticity of the old man's tale. I have a theory, and if I am correct I believe I will be able to delve until I strike a clue, and if I do and prove the story correct and solve the mystery, we shall have performed one of the most ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... express clearly what thousands feel without the moral courage to utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable wall, against which they batter mentally in vain. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pastry-cook's, sit in the dusk of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and anxious mien into ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... in this quarter of Paris he has an opportunity to recall a royal memory now somewhat dimmed by time, but still in evidence if one would delve deep. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... with it, I cannot imagine, for evidence of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings, I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they surrounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering exclamations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Considering that they dig, delve, carry burthens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... fail. All we actually know of the abilities of this postulated neo-human race is what I have learned from the composition of its defensive screen. The probability approaches unity that the Masters continued to delve and to learn for millions of cycles while you Stretts, reasonlessly certain of your supremacy, concentrated upon your evolution from the material to a non-material form of life and performed only limited research into armaments of greater and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... delight to delve among pedigrees, genealogies and family connections, may perhaps be a little disappointed to learn that, in spite of the odorous nature of the herbs, there are none whose history reveals a skeleton in the closet. They are all harmless. Now and then, to be sure, there occur records ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... curiosity as to words' past experience enables us to read with keener understanding the literature of preceding ages. Of course we should not, even so, go farther back than about three centuries. To read anything earlier than Shakespeare would require us to delve too deeply into linguistic bygones. And to read Shakespeare himself requires effort—but rewards it. Let us see how an insight into words will help us to interpret the Seven ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... inclined to delve in the soil, a definite saving can be accomplished by tending a vegetable garden, raising small fruits and berries, and even maintaining a hen roost. Some people (I would I could honestly include myself) have a gift for making things grow and getting crops that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... Rome, had been humbled by the just interference of the United States. A kingdom without a king, Spain had hawked her crown round Europe. For a throne, as for humbler posts, it is easy enough to find second-rate men who have no special groove, nor any capacity to delve one, but the first-rate men are, one discovers, nearly always occupied elsewhere. They are never waiting for something ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... fatal—Lansing now perceived it—to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... dead In the pernicious lowlihead Of not aspiring to be fair. And what am I, that I should dare Dispute with God, who moulds one clay To honour and shame, and wills to pay With equal wages them that delve About His vines one ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, That is yet ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... On all sides rose lofty mountains, many of them patched with snowbanks. Deep canyons cut sharply between the ridges and shoulders. Ice fields indicated possible glaciers. I wanted to explore everything at once; wanted to climb the peaks, and delve into the canyons; hunt out the game ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... insects, particularly the larger beetles, have the habit of passing their larval state in the under earth. Here they generally excavate burrows, and thus in a way delve the soil. As many of them die before reaching maturity, their store of organic matter is contributed to the mass, and serves to nourish the plants. If the student will carefully examine a section of the earth either ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... strength and with steadfast heart, 830 He began to delve for the glorious tree Under its covering of turf, till at twenty feet Below the surface concealed he found Shut out from sight, under the shelving cliff, In the chasm of darkness —three crosses he found, In their gloomy grave together he found them,— ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... worthless or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away before its time; and this Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at high pressure, a hundred ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... book suggested by his father had made him more or less familiar with some of the original sources. He now had to plunge into various legal antiquities, and to study, for example, the six folio volumes called Rotuli Parliamentorum; to delve in year-books and old reports and the crabbed treatises of ancient lawyers, and to consider the precise meaning and effect of perplexed and obsolete statutes. He was not an antiquary by nature, for an antiquary, I take it, is one who loves antiquity for its own sake, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini que vous portez en vous"—a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It gave me ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in that fellow. I think I'll wire the San Francisco office to look him up in Dun's and Bradstreet's. Folks up this way are taking too much for granted on that fellow's mere say— so, but I for one intend to delve for facts—particularly with regard to the N.C.O. bank-roll and Ogilvy's associates. I'd sleep a whole lot more soundly to-night if I knew the answer to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... vocation—a vocation identical with that of the great artist—the "loving of the unlovely into lovableness." Thus does it participate according to its measure in the work of Divine incarnation. This does not mean a maudlin optimism, or any other kind of sentimentality; for as we delve more deeply into life, we always leave sentimentality behind. But it does mean a love which is based on a deep understanding of man's slow struggles and of the unequal movements of life, and is expressed in both arduous and highly skillful actions. It means taking the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... refuses to admit into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from us that we really wish for ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... discussion of the subject which we have propounded, and we shall best reach it by considering some aspects of the social condition of ancient Greece. The lessons to be learned from that wonderful country are not yet exhausted Each time that we return to that richest of historic mines, and delve faithfully and carefully, we shall be sure to dig up some ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... state of repair I know not—it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six-sevenths of one per cent, on the purchase price of the gaping ruin sold in 1837. There is a certain poetry in notarial records. But we will not delve for it now. Idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty-five years, or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities the gloomy pile, even when restored and renovated, stood ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... lost little time in beginning his operations. As he had said, the chief need was a fire extinguishing chemical solution or powder. Tom resolved to try the solution first, as it was easier to make. With this end in view he proceeded to delve into old and new chemistry books. He also sought the ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... of the Florentine Republic at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor Charles V and Francis ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives, to delve alone is uphill work. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... millions of people throughout this great country of ours come of their own free will to the shearing pens of the "System" each year, voluntarily chloroform themselves, so that the "System" may go through their pockets, and then depart peacefully home to dig and delve for more money that they may have the debasing operation repeated on them twelve ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet, for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... train to Brookfield. A visit to the village post office disclosed a hidden jewel. As far as Crane was concerned the fate of the two men was held in the hollow of the postmaster's hand. The latter, with little hesitation, allowed him to delve ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Ah, well, he would be unselfish enough to go away without telling of the hope of his heart. If he came back there would be ample time to tell her; it was needless to bind her to a long-absent lover. If he came back crippled—if he never came back at all—— Oh, why delve into the future! ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?" but they never put ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... boiling blood: when Summer suns Bake the cleft earth, to thick wide-waving fields Of corn full-grown, they lead their helpless young: But when autumnal torrents, and fierce rains Deluge the vale, in the dry crumbling bank Their forms they delve, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone is ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon the ground— And kindled them—and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around: 145 And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... systems of necessity lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a spot, on which he had no business to have wall, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not till late in the afternoon or evening. I expect to fetch a couple of sandbaggers along who will take over the sloop and stuff that's aboard. Having washed our hands clean of those encumbrances we'll be in fit shape to delve deeper into the game and see what we get out of the grab-bag. Anyway, don't expect me until you see me heading this way and keep a sharp lookout, for from all accounts this crowd we're up against is said to be a tricky combination, always ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Doth mochel harm, whan fyr is uppe, Bot if somwho the flamme stanche; And so to speke upon this branche, Which proud Envie hath mad to springe, Of Scisme, causeth forto bringe This newe Secte of Lollardie, And also many an heresie 350 Among the clerkes in hemselve. It were betre dike and delve And stonde upon the ryhte feith, Than knowe al that the bible seith And erre as somme clerkes do. Upon the hond to were a Schoo And sette upon the fot a Glove Acordeth noght to the behove Of resonable mannes us: If men behielden ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities— To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... thou dost spend with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail. A pair of dice is thy delight, Thou liv'st for most part by the spoil: I truly labour day and night To get my living by my toil. Chill therefore sure this issue make: The ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What say you ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... on the plain the city moans with a human cry, And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die; But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay, For God still keeps one playground where ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... good deeds must be counted the fostering of the musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and is remarkably at home in their ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... be practicable, should have a small plot of ground to cultivate, that he may dig and delve in, and make dirt-pies if he choose. Children now-a-days, unfortunately, are not allowed to soil their hands and their fine clothes. For my own part, I dislike such model children; let a child be natural—let him, as far as is ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... ever we wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... could do all that a maiden might and more—delve could they no less than spin, hunt no less than weave, brew pottage and helm ships, wake the harp and tell the stars, face all danger and laugh ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... all such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby? - 'Tis all to ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... dig and delve before the clue is mine, I may chance to put him on his guard, and find nothing. No; I will be patient—I will be very cautious. Success comes to him that can wait. Long Robin is a foe not to be despised ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... space beneath the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if—if ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton |
