"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visited Thor, and told him of what had passed. And the Thunderer, when he heard of Thrym's boastful words, was filled with wild wrath and wanted to start off, then and there, and wrest the hammer from the depths of the sea. But Loki pointed out the difficulties that stood in the way and, leaving the Asa to ponder over his words, he hurried off to Freya and informed ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... attack was directed, about noon, upon the suburb of Czyste. This was defended by forty guns, which made havoc in the Russian ranks, while two battalions of the 4th regiment, rushing upon them in their disorder, strove to drive them back and wrest Wola from their hands. The effort was fruitless, strong reinforcements ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... he cried; "I'll say it again—You're a set of great cowards; and as for you," he cried to the fellow whose weapon he had tried to wrest away, "you're ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... accept them all gratefully as the results of the intelligence which He has been pleased to bestow upon us. At the same time the experience of every age teaches us that the weakness and perversity of many wrest to evil purposes these gifts, which in the Divine intention should serve only for good. It is against the perverted use of two of God's gifts that we would very earnestly warn ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... from their sockets. His voice was lost within the vizor, and his friend affected not to understand his meaning when he made signs with his gauntlets, and endeavoured to close with him, that he might wrest the cudgel from his hand. At length he desisted, saying, "I'll warrant the helmet sound by its ringing"; and taking it off, found the squire in a cold sweat. He would have achieved his first exploit on the spot, had his strength permitted him to assault Dawdle; but what with want of air, and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... stair, and threw himself upon Donal in a fierce attempt after the key in his hand. The sudden assault staggered him, and he fell on the floor with Forgue above him, who sought to wrest the key from him. But Donal was much the stronger; he threw his assailant off him; and for a moment was tempted to give him a good thrashing. From this the thought of Eppy helped to restrain him, and he contented himself with holding him ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Carthage; and methinks that Rome, too, will run the course of other nations, and that some day, far distant maybe, she will sink beneath the weight of her power and her luxury, and that some younger and more vigorous people will, bit by bit, wrest her dominions from her and rule ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of America, a court of men tried—and convicted—this solitary woman of sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and succeeded ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... throwing all the power I possessed into my blows, and fortunately for me—a mere boy in the grasp of a heavily-built man—he was comparatively, powerless from loss of blood consequent upon his wounds, so that I was able to wrest myself ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... one of England's great naval victories. These rocks, so still and peaceful now, have resounded to the din of deadly strife, when, in the year 1797, a Spanish fleet, of twenty-seven sail, tried to wrest the dominion of the seas from its lawful holders, the English fleet, under Sir John Jervis, numbering only half that ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... the swing, was almost horizontal. Should he once pass above the level of the rope's attachment he would be lost; the rope would slacken and he would fall vertically to a point as far below as he had gone above, and then the sudden tension of the rope would wrest it from his hands. All saw the peril—all cried out to him to desist, and gesticulated at him as, indistinct and with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot in flight, he swept past us through the lower reaches ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Three thousand, 'gainst seven hundred, rang'd this day, Shall give the world, an ample specimen, What strength, and noble confidence, the sound Of Liberty inspires. That Liberty, Which, not the thunder of Bellona's voice, With fleets, and armies, from the British Shore, Shall wrest from us. Our noble ancestors, Out-brav'd the tempests, of the hoary deep, And on these hills, uncultivate, and wild, Sought an asylum, from despotic sway; A short asylum, for that envious power, With persecution dire, still follows us. At first, they deem'd our charters forfeited, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... the animal native to our prairies, so has it been with the race native to our land. We may deplore the wrongs of the Indian, and sympathize with his efforts to wrest justice from his so-called protectors. We may admire his poetic nature, as evidenced in the myths and legends of the race. We may be impressed by the stately dignity and innate ability as orator and statesman which ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... influence of his old family upon their particular line of business; but it was a line that his father and his grandfather had scorned to touch, and he had grown up with an honest contempt for it. He just could not bring himself to wrest the living from the poor and needy, and plunder the unsuspecting, and he knew that was what it would be if he closed with this offer. Not yet had he been reduced to such depths, he told himself, shutting his fine lips in a firm curve. "No, not if ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... which suffers, nought Consents to that which forceth, not for this These spirits stood exculpate. For the will, That will not, still survives unquench'd, and doth As nature doth in fire, tho' violence Wrest it a thousand times; for, if it yield Or more or less, so far it follows force. And thus did these, whom they had power to seek The hallow'd place again. In them, had will Been perfect, such as once upon the bars Held Laurence firm, or wrought in Scaevola To his own ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... evening camp-fires. As is ever the case when a man is young, handsome, rich, and holds proudly the gold medal which proclaims him the champion of the whole State—the golden disk which many a young vaquero longed to wrest from him in a fair test of skill—there were those who would rather like to see Jose humbled. True, they would never choose an alien to do the humbling, and the possibility was discussed ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... perfidy. Jealous of the growing power of George Podiebrad, he instigated Matthias, King of Hungary, to make war upon Bohemia, promising Matthias the Bohemian crown. Infamously the King of Hungary accepted the bribe, and raising a powerful army, invaded Bohemia, to wrest the crown from his father-in-law. His armies were pressing on so victoriously, in conjunction with those of Frederic, that the emperor was now alarmed lest Matthias, uniting the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, should become too powerful. He therefore not only abandoned him, but stirred ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... that wisdom of children to his folly. If he sent her the verses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping of egg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest the page from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest, her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm's length, read it smiling and approve of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... this time, except for the war with the Creeks and the bloodless capture of Mobile, the Southwest had taken little part in the contest. On land, the war had been mainly an affair of the North, where the Americans had been trying to wrest Canada from the mother country, and of the Northwest, where the British and the Indians had taken the offensive. The death of Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames, in November, 1813, had made an end of that combination, and General William Henry Harrison ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... gardener, whom he lends to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... carried La Haye Sainte by a most determined assault, aided by the failure of ammunition within its defences, and thus captured the key of the British position. But Napoleon saw that his one chance of victory lay in a final coup before the Prussians could wrest it from him. He ordered the imperial guard to the front, leading it himself across the valley, and then handing over the command to Ney. The guard was but the remnant of its original strength, for all its cavalry had been ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... grammarians following on the trail of genius—so it behoves the Aristotle who would discover the laws of the rhythm of prose to study the masters of the art, masters by instinct and a faultless ear and the grace of God, and endeavour by patient induction to wrest from their sentences the secrets of their harmonies. Who will write the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... on our approaching separation we began to reckon the minutes as hours, the hours as days. We would have amassed and concentrated years into the short space of a second, to wrest from time the happiness from which we were to be debarred during so many months. These days were days of rapture, but they had their anguish and their agony; the approaching morrow cast its gloom upon each interview, each look and word, each pressure of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... intellectual nobility with as distinct and definite a place in the hierarchical system of medieval Christendom as the Priesthood or the Knighthood." The Archdeacon of Bologna, even when he was regarded as the Chancellor, did not wrest from the college of doctors the right to decide who should be deemed worthy of a title which Cardinals were pleased to possess. The licence which he required before admitting a student to the doctorate continued to be conferred by the Bologna ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... the cards again in a frowning endeavor to wrest a few further items from their overtaxed imaginations. Patty felt that she had already given him fifty cents' worth, and was wondering how to bring the interview to a graceful end. She realized that they had carried the farce too impertinently ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... mine is now, To keep this hold against your will, And then you sware you well know how, Though now you swerve, I know how ill. But thus this world his course doth pass, The priest forgets a clerk he was, And you that have cried justice still, And now have justice at your will, Wrest justice ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... victims from the foe Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow. Each woe they suffered in a hostile land The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned. They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait To wrest the captives from their horrid fate. Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls, Each savage soldier's heart for ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... engagements with Lewis to pass for the confederates a certain number of forged notes every day. This was a perilous task! His utmost exertions and ingenuity were continually necessary to escape detection; and, after all, he was barely able to wrest from the hard hands of his friends a sufficient profit upon his labour to maintain himself. How often did he look back, with regret, to the days when he stood behind the counter, in his father's shop! Then he had in Allen a real friend; but now he had in Lewis ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... wrongs and advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen, and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... of that virtuous diligence, that through such actual meditation he shall confirm them in such a sure habit of spiritual faithful strength, that all the devils in hell, with all the wrestling that they can make, shall never be able to wrest it out of ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... acquired. Her great domains on our soil are now the seat of thriving communities of English-speaking people. The whole continent of South America has thrown off her yoke, though still retaining her language, and our troops now embarked from Port Tampa are destined to wrest from her the two only remaining colonies subject to her sway in the Western World,—Cuba and Porto Rico. With all her losses hitherto, Spain has not learned wisdom. Antagonistic to truth and liberty, she seems to sit in the shadow of death, hugging the delusions that have betrayed her, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... thus, and holding converse With the silence of my heart, I would speak with famed Orion, I would question it apart, Wrest her love's strange secret from it, If there's ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Raymond flew to their firearms, handed one to Harman, and kept the other himself. The men who used them were fierce, and powerful, and cruel. In a moment a furious contest took place. The four men immediately grappled, each one attempting to wrest the gun from his antagonist. Raymond, whose passions were now roused so as to resemble the ravenous fury of madness itself, at one time howled like a beast of prey, and shouted, and screamed, and laughed with maniac wildness that was enough to make almost ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said the duke, "you'll eat your fingers off after the government, so sweet a thing is it to command and be obeyed. Depend upon it when your master comes to be emperor (as he will beyond a doubt from the course his affairs are taking), it will be no easy matter to wrest the dignity from him, and he will be sore and sorry at heart to have been so long without ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their gift to prove its value! It shall be meat and drink to me, and honor and life itself. Many happenings shall spring from this gift, for I will put my whole strength into the holding of it; Odin himself shall not wrest it from me! I will be such a king that there will not be many to equal me; such a king that they will wish they had given me happiness and left me ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... that would be shot from the Gandiva. And, O Bharata, there is not a warrior, nor an elephant, nor a horse, that is able to bear the impetus of my mace when I am angry in battle. Why, O son of Kunti, should we not wrest our kingdom from the foe, fighting with the aid of the Srinjayas and Kaikeyas, and the bull of the Vrishni race? Why, O king, should we not succeed in wresting the (sovereignty of the) earth that is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ships staied in France. Gersea a letter from Lord S^t Albones. L11 per diem Hull. The king's answert to our petition about the militia. If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the weapon from. A similitude of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... bounds of Louisiana? No one knew with certitude. The letters of Livingston and Monroe had convinced Jefferson that Louisiana included at least West Florida, and for two years he sought by every diplomatic device to wrest from Spain a confirmation of this shadowy title. That Spain did not intend to cede West Florida and that France had no expectation of receiving it seems clear enough from the instructions to Laussat. What he handed over to the American representative was Louisiana, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... did Boev, the man next in order behind Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great difficulty, while ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... away Frances by force, Lady Elizabeth made an effort to recover her by a similar method. Gerrard wrote to Carleton[20] that Lady Elizabeth, having heard that Frances was to be taken to London, determined to meet her with an armed band and to wrest ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Zagal to make a frank and entire surrender. "Trust," said he, "to the magnanimity of the Castilian sovereigns; they will doubtless grant you high and honorable terms. It is better to yield to them as friends what they must infallibly and before long wrest from you as enemies; for such, my cousin, is the almighty will ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... imagine my state of mind. As I endeavored in those seconds to wrest some meaning from the tangle of words I had overheard, my thoughts were tumbling over each other so fast that I had forgotten the doubtful part I had played as an eavesdropper. I had heard a reference made to me as one who had brought some new complication into the affairs of that household which ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... on a lawless quest, With passions foul in the hero's breast, Moved by no greed at the fiend's behest, Gloating in lust o'er a bloody prey; But from tyrant robber the spoil to wrest, And tear down his ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... that even I have power to grant thy suit. I have saved, with some hazard, the life of the Queen and her daughter; in doing it I promised to the soldiers, in their place, the best blood of Palmyra, and theirs it is by right. It will not be easy to wrest Gracchus from their hands. It will bring danger to myself, to the Queen, and to the empire. It may breed a fatal revolt. But, Piso, for the noble Portia's sake, the living representative of Cneius Piso my early friend, for thine, and chiefly for ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Imperial city there were troops of one nationality or another: American, British, French, German, Japanese, and others—all looking jealously at every passer-by, and holding so tight to their precious gates, that it appeared as if all the world was conspiring to wrest them from their grasp. They thought, perhaps, that this Palace is the magic wand which touches all China and can produce any results; that both in the immediate and dim future the obtaining of a good foothold here will mean an immense amount to their respective ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... had fallen outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... grimace; deformity; malformation, malconformation^; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion^, want of symmetry, anamorphosis^; ugliness &c 846; talipes^; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric^, awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump^, deformed; harelipped; misshapen, misbegotten; misproportioned^, ill proportioned; ill-made; grotesque, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... George Sand's. It should be endued with devotion, self-abnegation, greatness of soul, tenderness; and fine words. Her pliant nature almost rejoiced in this new attitude. She pondered almost till evening what she should do, wondering how she should manage to wrest ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... Germany. Trample them in the mire under the German heel. The Russian Slav? He challenges the supremacy of Germany and Europe. Hurl your legions at him and massacre him. Britain? She is a constant menace to the predominancy of Germany in the world. Wrest the trident out of her hands. Ah! more than that. The new philosophy of Germany is to destroy Christianity. Sickly sentimentalism about sacrifice for others—poor pap for German digestion. We will have a new diet. We will ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... into the garden and its prospects, for she was still haunted by the fear that he would some day go back to the ring, and she never missed the old man for an hour without being convinced that he had hobbled off to wrest the belt from the latest upstart champion. It was at his own very earnest request that they inscribed "He fought the good fight" upon his tombstone, and though I cannot doubt that he had Black Bank and Crab Wilson in his mind ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his feet with a curse, and endeavored to wrest the gun from Mehetabel's hand. But she held it fast. She clung to it with tenacity, with the whole of her strength, so that he was unable to pluck ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... follow a multitude to do evil, neither shalt them speak in a cause to decline after many, to wrest judgment." ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, Or nicely charge your understanding soul With opening titles miscreate, whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For God doth know how many now in health Shall ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet—oh, how sweet—to be thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its shield!—magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dukedom in it?—I have a large family of children, and the prospect of more. I have three sons, who, I see already, have brought into the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves.—Can I look tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from them the birthright of my boys,—the little independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?—No! I will not! should my heart's blood stream around my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... cylinder; To nature's portals ye should be the key; Cunning your wards, and yet the bolts ye fail to stir. Inscrutable in broadest light, To be unveil'd by force she doth refuse, What she reveals not to thy mental sight Thou wilt not wrest from her with levers and with screws. Old useless furnitures, yet stand ye here, Because my sire ye served, now dead and gone. Old scroll, the smoke of years dost wear, So long as o'er this desk the sorry ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... out Davis's character in its best light. Nevertheless, so rooted was Davis's faith in his own abilities that he was capable of saying, at a moment of acutest anxiety, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from those people." And yet, his military experience embraced only the minor actions of a young officer on the Indian frontier and the gallant conduct of a subordinate in the Mexican War. He had never executed a great ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... done to all other countries; that is, duplicate her rival's fortification plans, her total military and naval strength; and so forth, and so on. The United States is not an enemy, but there are possibilities of her becoming so. Some day she must wrest Cuba from Spain, and then she may become a recognized quantity in ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the fisherman with a harpoon speareth the aubbu fish, the fisherman with a tchabhu instrument catcheth the paqru fish, and the common fishermen are always drawing fish from the river. Observe! Thou art even as they. Wrest not the goods of the poor man from him. The helpless man thou knowest him. The goods of the poor man are the breath of his life; to seize them and carry them off from him is to block up his nostrils. Thou art committed to the hearing of ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... 16. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom that has been given unto him has written, as he also in all his letters speaks thereof, in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they also do other Scriptures, to their own destruction. There St. Peter bears testimony for the Apostle Paul in respect to his doctrine, which shows plainly enough that this Epistle was written long after St. Paul's Epistles. And ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... houses and private dwellings were crowded. A new and modern fireproof hotel was stretching skeleton fingers of steel skyward, but meanwhile the task of sheltering, and especially of feeding three times a day, the hungry hordes that bulged the sides of the little city was a difficult one. To wrest possession of a cafe table for two at the rush hour was an undertaking almost as hazardous as jumping a mining claim, but Calvin Gray succeeded and eventually he and "Bob" found themselves facing each other over a discolored tablecloth, reading a soiled menu ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... rapidly, and in which, in every case, the effects have been directly opposite to what short-sighted mortals had anticipated. It was in 1756, scarcely forty years ago, that the French, being in possession of the provinces, attempted to wrest from us those portions of America which we occupied. What was the result? After a war which, for cruelty and atrocity, is perhaps unequaled in history, both parties employing savages, by whom the French and English were alternately ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... He was therefore about to make the disagreeable confession, when the thoughts of the whole party were suddenly diverted to another channel, by the opening of the door and the entrance of one of those gaunt sons of the forest who were wont to hang on the skirts of civilisation, as it advanced to wrest ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... is applicable to the interpretation of all passages containing "things hard to be understood." The "unlearned and unstable" wrest them, by taking them out of their connection and in contradiction to the general tenor of God's word. But the candid student of Scripture never uses that which is difficult in revelation to obscure that which is plain. He seeks, on the contrary, to illumine what ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... example of what perseverance combined with intelligence, courage and honesty can accomplish in the face of great difficulties; for it was a union of all these qualities which enabled Sir William Phips to wrest fortune and honors ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... is being organized and disciplined by the very mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms. It must, first of all, definitively wrest from its class adversaries the political power—the command of the force devoted by them to preserving intact ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... your pleasure to wrest my words,' replied Philip, in his own calm manner, though he actually felt hurt, which he had never done before. His complacency was less secure, so that there was more ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... secondary streams beside the mighty Rhine. There are certain rivers which represent nations, and ideas, and periods of history—the Scamander for instance, bringing to our thoughts the days of Grecian heroism; when men fought with gods, and in so doing seemed to wrest from them a portion of their supernatural strength and beauty—the Nile, the priestly Nile, mysterious as a dogma, but rich in blessings as the agency of a divine spirit; concealed in its source, but manifest in its operation—then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... threw the other, with one of his "silencer" twists of the neck cords, the Jap sprang up. A demoniac anger twisted that usually smiling countenance, and it took all of Shirley's strength, to wrest away the automatic revolver from the maddened valet, to ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... evil place in the world, was a notorious woman in fact, was even now a prisoner under suspicion of murder. Nevertheless, she felt a thrill of ecstasy over this written document—which it had never occurred to her to wrest from the girl at the time of the oral confession. Now that it had been proffered, the value of it loomed above almost all things else in the world. It proclaimed undeniably the wrong under which she had ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... who listened to the tale Upstarted with the cry: "God give us grace To wrest that sacred ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... of autocracy in industry. There was autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land, if you do not show that you have some humanity ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... shape of nothingness; the tough, hard work of years was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... or that of his nation or city, or whether he was bond or free, he only replied in the Roman tongue, to all questions, 'I am a Christian.' Therein was, for him, his name, his country, his condition, his whole being; and never could the Gentiles wrest from him another word. The fury of the governor and the executioners was redoubled against him; and, not knowing how to torment him further, they applied to his most tender members bars of red-hot iron. His members burned; but he, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicanery, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... humanitarians avow that he and practically all his friends were materialists, and such they are even when they will not admit it. Dear girl, believe me, I have lived over in my mind and suffered in my heart the long toil and agony which the human race has undergone in its effort to wrest some assurance of spiritual joy and peace from these clouds of illusion about us; I have read and felt what the Hindu ascetic has written of lonely conflict in the wilderness; I have heard the Greek philosophers ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Fouquet; "I understand men pretty well; I know you are incapable of forfeiting your word; I do not wish to wrest your secret from you, and so let us talk ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... his opportunities. If destiny smiled, he succeeded; if destiny frowned, he did not. However, Mallory was optimistic about his forthcoming bid for the Grail, for if it wasn't in the books for him to wrest the Cup from Sir Launcelot, the chances were he wouldn't have gotten as far as ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... it has been said, and shall be; even when scholars of another race and another civilisation, springing from the ashes of this, wrest from the relics of a history of to-day the secrets of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tenderness in her voice seemed to restore Cardo to life. He crossed the velvet path, and, laying hold of her hands, which she in vain tried to wrest ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... it was destroyed by the Turks. In the sixteenth century it was conquered by the Persians, and continued to be a perpetual source of discord between them and the Turks, although it at length became annexed to the Ottoman Empire. Nadir Schah again endeavoured to wrest it from the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... politician than a doctor of diseases, and in important cases only is he called to treat in a healing ceremony. It requires a particularly capable Indian to attain the position of head medicine-man, for to do so he must not only make the people subservient to his will, but must wrest the leadership from some other and usually older medicine-man who is himself an influential character. Unfortunately it is apt to be the most crafty, scheming man who gains such power ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... since the vikings to set foot on the North American continent, which Columbus himself had never seen, were John and Sebastian Cabot, Italians like their predecessor, but in the service of the King of England and with an English ship and an English crew prophetic of the race which was, in time, to wrest the supremacy of the continent from the other nations of Europe. They explored the coast from Newfoundland as far south, perhaps, as Chesapeake Bay, and upon their discoveries rested the English claim to North America, though they themselves are ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... man does not wish and aspire to repeat his own life in better wise in his children and, again, in their children, and still to continue to live upon this earth, ennobled and perfected in their lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit, the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... North, mysterious in its age-old desolation, where even the winds seemed to whisper of strange things that had happened countless years before, was just ahead of them. They were about to bury themselves in its secrets, to wrest from it the yellow treasure it guarded, and their blood tingled and leaped excitedly at the thought. What would be revealed to them? What might they not discover? What strange adventures were they destined to encounter in that Unknown World, peopled ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... the Dragon was a punishment for the great wickedness of the Baron's ancestor, the original Sir Godfrey Disseisin, who, when summoned on the first Crusade to Palestine, had entirely refused to go and help his cousin Godfrey de Bouillon wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Paynim. The Baron's ancestor, when a stout young lad, had come over with William the Conqueror; and you must know that to have an ancestor who had come over with William the Conqueror was in those old days a much rarer thing than it is now, and any one who ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... accused of crime, or what assurance of justice in a civil cause? Now we know that in Eastern countries everything depends on bribery. This Moses forbade in his law. "Thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the eyes; thou shalt not wrest the judgment of the poor, but in righteousness ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... He thus attempted to wrest from the senate the control of the public land and, with the aid of the Latini and the plebeians, to put an end to the system of occupation.[4] The lands which he proposed to divide were solely those which the state had acquired through conquest ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... In order to wrest its fullest expressiveness from a work of art it is necessary as far as possible to regard the work from the artist's own point of view. We must try to see with his eyes and to feel with him what he was working for. To this end we must reconstruct imaginatively on a basis of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... minutes the little room was a bedlam. The crazed strikers fought without weapons, except such as they could wrest from the soldiers. But they fought to the death. One of them seized Carmen and threw her beneath the table at which she had been working. Above her raged the desperate conflict. The shouting and cursing might ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... I will now answer for myself and thousands more. You are too young a man to have known the cause of the insurrection, or, rather, opposition, to the unfortunate King Charles. He attempted to make himself absolute, and to wrest the liberties from the people of England: that his warmest adherents will admit. When I joined the party which opposed him, I little thought that matters would have been carried so far as they have been; I always considered it lawful to take up arms in defense ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... them into a kind of lethargy; at a time that the enemy were rapidly pursuing their victories in Spain, which might one day be turned against them. They would have been very well pleased to attack them by open force, and to wrest their conquests out of their hands; but the fear of another (not less formidable) enemy, the Gauls, whom they expected shortly to see at their very gates, kept them from showing their resentment. They therefore had recourse to negotiations; and concluded a treaty with Asdrubal, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... raining when he went forth, and a thick fog fell low upon the ground. The night was drawing on dark and dreary, and everything seemed full of gloom. Chester walked on; he took no heed of the way, but turned corner after corner with reckless haste, one hand working in his bosom as if he could thus wrest away the pain that seemed strangling him, and the other grasping his walking-stick upon which he paused and leaned heavily ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... his change of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures "served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else." He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... seemed foolish, that heaviness of heart which sometimes assailed her. She was perfectly happy. In each of them the good, red blood of youth ran full and strong, offering ample security against illness. They had plenty of food. In a few brief months Bill would wrest a sack of gold from the treasure house of the North, and they would journey home by easy stages. Why should she brood? It was sheer folly—a mere ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of Heaven, your majesty, do not let your tears fall upon the shroud!" cried the Countess Dann, while she tried with gentle force to wrest the cloth from the empress's hands. "I have heard it said that what is laid in the coffin bedewed with tears, draws after it to the grave the one ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... There was a rumpus; neither earthquake nor cyclone would have caused a greater commotion in the community. What, then, did this lying gringo mean by resorting to the trickery of the United States law courts and the power and services of the county sheriff? Why did he wrest their property from them? Had this gringo not always accepted their signatures as a legal tender for the payment of their debts? Had he not told them time and again that their handwriting was better ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... Alexandria, with only his body-guard of a hundred men under his command, he was called to save the capital from the vast hosts of enemies that were pouring on it in resistless columns. To save his native State from the invasion that threatened it, and Maryland from the grasp of a soldiery that would wrest it from the Union, he was offered an army shattered by disaster, and legions of new recruits who had never handled a musket or heard the sound of a hostile cannon. The responsibility was greater than had ever been reposed on the shoulders of one man ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... people much better than they do for themselves; but how can they be certain that his descendants will have the same virtues; and when once an absolute power is granted to a good prince, it will be in vain that the people will endeavour to wrest it from the hands of a bad one.—Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country, that the relief would be as bad as the disease. Upon ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... weapon descended Kelly shot up his hand and caught it. He twisted on the oar to wrest it from Denny's grasp, and the two suddenly went to the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... let the pray'rs, th' entreaties of your friends, Their tears, their common danger, wrest it ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... lord, we pray you to proceed, And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall drop their blood in approbation[8] Of what your reverence ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, God our aid! A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band South, East, and on to the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... collection of compositions by the great German masters and mediators. The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the moon's pale rays, which led, alas! in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... such an act of hostility against our navigation, as was not to have been expected from the friendship of that nation. It is as new in its nature as extravagant in its degree; since it is unexampled, that any nation has endeavored to wrest from another the carriage of its own produce, except in the case of their colonies. The British navigation act, so much and so justly complained of, leaves to all nations the carriage of their own commodities free. This measure, too, is calculated ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all these attempts by the nations of Europe to wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New World thus ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... of strong drink! Where shall we begin, where end, or how, in the clear and truthful sentences that wrest conviction from doubt, make plain the allegations we shall bring against an enemy that is sowing disease, poverty, crime and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... his pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not a painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We remember hearing a brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours upon a picture, deftly shifting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... saw in letters of gilt splendour a variety of praiseworthy and appropriate inscriptions, among which he read and understood, "Excellent," "Fine Old," "Well Matured," "Spirits only of the choicest quality within," together with many other invocations from which he could not wrest the hidden significance, as "Old Vatted," "Barclay's Entire," "An Ordinary at ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... missionaries from the earliest centuries of our era, and they have rarely been molested when they have taken the trouble to behave themselves. In the time of the Emperor Justinian the fact that the Christian religion was openly preached throughout China enabled that sovereign to wrest from the Chinese the jealously-guarded secret of silk-making. He sent two monks to Pekin, who alternately preached seriousness and studied sericulture, and who brought away silkworms' eggs ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... money, the amount then on deposit. But the real reason of the change was social and political. The President desired to weaken the Bank, lest its representatives, its masterful lobbyists, and the financial pressure it was bringing to bear should wrest from Congress a charter which ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... are apt, interpreted my words, To all the advantage he could wrest the sense, As if I meant you ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Crusades (1096-1272), during which the Christians of Europe endeavoured, with tremendous yet fitful energy, to wrest the birthplace of Christianity from the equally fanatic Moslems, the Knights Templars fought bravely among the foremost. Whether by the side of Godfrey of Bouillon, Louis VII., Philip V., Richard Coeur de Lion, Louis IX., or Prince Edward, the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in their fellow-men, and find their gain in the loss of others. No doubt it seems to you that no necessity, however dire, would have tempted you to subsist on what superior skill or strength enabled you to wrest from others equally needy. But suppose it were not merely your own life that you were responsible for. I know well that there must have been many a man among our ancestors who, if it had been merely a question of his own life, would sooner have given it up than ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly, he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should wrest that ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... brave men, as ye are,— Nor let the despot, sin, Wrest those immortal rights away, Which ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... despiteful wrong she takes her seat, In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet. There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: So rue the nations when their kings offend— When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will. Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear! Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear, That the foul record may no more be seen— Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... before the fort at New York, which surrendered without firing a shot. The example was followed by the city and country; and, in a few days, the submission of New Netherlands was complete. After this acquisition the old claim to Long Island was renewed, and some attempts were made to wrest it from Connecticut. That province however, after consulting its confederates, and finding that offensive operations would be agreeable to the union, declared war against the Dutch; and not content with defending its own possessions, prepared an expedition against New York. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... blight; When every grove and hill are pathless With frosts of winter's lengthened night, No goat from Hafren's {141} banks I ween, From thee a scanty meal may glean! Though Spring's bleak wind with clamour launches His wrath upon thy iron spray; Armed holly tree! from thy firm branches He will not wrest a tithe away! Chapel of verdure, neatly wove, Above ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... trains are around him and some ahead of him, with drivers just as keen and eager to win as he, and every one of them accustomed to dog-driving for years. Victors are some of them in previous contests, and not one of them is disposed to see a white lad from across the sea come and wrest their honour from them. Whips are flying now in earnest, and the dogs of other trains are waking up to realise that there is fire in their masters' eyes and strength in their arms and a burning sting at the end of the heavy lash. With terrific rushes they make their desperate efforts ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... colonists were naturally left to take care of themselves, and this, coupled with the policy of excluding them from all foreign commerce, justified Spain's enemies in seeking to wrest from her the possessions from which she drew the revenues that enabled her to make war on them. Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Hollanders made of the Antilles their trysting-ground for the purpose of ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... endless schemes of attempted reconciliation with the letter of Scripture. There were, there are perhaps still, two modes of reconciliation of Scripture and science, which have been each in their day attempted, AND EACH HAS TOTALLY AND DESERVEDLY FAILED. One is the endeavour to wrest the words of the Bible from their natural meaning and FORCE IT TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE." And again, speaking of the earliest known example, which was the interpolation of the word "not" in Leviticus xi, 6, he continues: "This is the earliest instance ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies, Bewitch ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... for a parley, when some of the men from each side approached the line of demarcation. Joe McKay was the interpreter, and while he was speaking, an Indian, named Little Chief, grabbed at his revolver and tried to wrest it from him. A struggle ensued in which the Indian was worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ringing ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and induced him to avenge an attempt made to dishonor his daughter. The story of the old man touched the Virey, who had a manly heart wrapped up in a forbidding exterior. But it was a delicate undertaking even for a vice-king to attempt to wrest a rich estate out of the clutches of the "Holy Office" without himself being suspected of heresy, or of disloyalty to the Church. Yet Ravillagigedo was never at a loss for expedients when justice was to be done or the oppressed relieved. The best advice, however, that he could give the old ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... It is useless to insist, Brandon. If you can wrest the story from her, all well and good. You will hate me then, dear love. But it cannot ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon |
