"Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... examples before us, the humblest and most laborious in the community may without scruple read the harmless tales of fictitious joys and sorrows, after they have secured that narrow minute training which alone gives grasp ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... under Dr. Wilson's guidance, assembled the medical equipment and fixed up little surgical outfits for sledge parties. By the time we arrived at Melbourne, our next port of call, a great deal had been accomplished and people had a grasp of what was ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... like upon a precious jewel. On the day of his first birthday, Mr. Cheng readily entertained a wish to put the bent of his inclinations to the test, and placed before the child all kinds of things, without number, for him to grasp from. Contrary to every expectation, he scorned every other object, and, stretching forth his hand, he simply took hold of rouge, powder and a few hair-pins, with which he began to play. Mr. Cheng experienced at once ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the considerations of prophecy are more lofty than those of acquired science. Now natural indisposition hinders the considerations of acquired science, since many are prevented by natural indisposition from succeeding to grasp the speculations of science. Much more therefore is a natural disposition requisite for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of his eyes. He took her little hand and held it between his own, which were trembling with all this strain—her little tender helpless woman's hand, formed only for soft occupations and softer caresses; it was not a hand which could help a man in such an emergency; it was without any grasp in it to take hold upon him, or force of love to part—a clinging impotent hand, such as holds down, but cannot raise up. He held it in a close tremulous pressure, as she stood looking down upon him, questioning him with eager hopeful eyes, and taking comfort in her ignorance from his silence, and ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... immediate authority is the only known, the only human and possible way to ensure the obedience and punctuality of agents.—Administration is thus carried on in all countries, by one or several series of functionaries, each under some central manager who holds the reins in his single grasp.[2310] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a sacrificed people was now reeking on Beaver. This singular man's French ancestry—for he was descended from Henri de L'Estrange, who came to the New World with the Duke of York—doubtless gave him the passion for picturesqueness and the spiritual grasp on his isolated kingdom which keeps him still a notable ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... dashed between, and caught him back irresistibly, so that a most frantic effort only availed to wrench one arm free. With that, on the impulse of sheer despair, he cast at her with all his force. The door swung behind her, and the flask flew into fragments against it. Then, as Sweyn's grasp slackened, and he met the questioning astonishment of surrounding faces, with a hoarse inarticulate cry: "God help us all!" he said. ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the table and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He was so agitated that he could not speak—choking with joyful emotion, as if he had been Jeanne's father, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... in the log {12} as "a storm." The stiffish breeze cost us one sail; the storm, two. During the time it lasted, the sea ran so high, that it was with the greatest difficulty we could eat. With one hand we were obliged to grasp the plate, and at the same time to hold fast on to the table, while, with the other, we managed, with considerable difficulty, to convey the food to our mouth. At night, I was obliged to "stow" myself firmly ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... stone on the main artery. Now," he said to the Buriat, "hold this stick firm with one hand and place the other on his chest to prevent his moving. Do you lay your arm across him," this to the mother; "that is right. Kneel with your face against his. Now, Godfrey, grasp the leg just below the knee and hold ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Road by which souls travel from There to Here and from Here to There, and the Gates that were burned away, and the City of the Mansions that descended, were but signs and symbols of mysteries which as yet we cannot grasp or understand. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... cast their spears with such amazing force and precision, is not used by them. Their spears, too, instead of being made with the bulrush, and only pointed with hard wood, are composed entirely of it, and are consequently more ponderous. In using them they grasp the center; but they neither throw them so far nor so dexterously as the natives of the parent colony. This circumstance is the more fortunate, as they maintain the most rancorous and inflexible hatred ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... the Great Universe of God! How can we with our limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each! An infinity of suns, the nearest of which only diminish in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... played upon it, wintry sunshine still, crystal cold and clear. Beth began to watch it. There was something she had to think about—something to see to—something she must think about—something she ought to see to, but precisely what it was she could not grasp. It seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of her mind, but it always eluded her. However, she had better not move for fear of making a noise. And there was far too much noise as it was—the wind rising and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... thought anything else on this lovely spring morning, with the brightest of skies overhead, his first important order within his grasp, his dear old father and Nathan beside him, and the loveliest girl in the world or on the planets beyond waiting for him at the top of her ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... expect to go down here and by some means, which I must confess is quite beyond my ability to grasp, be cured in ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... them to carry out the principles of the treaty of New Echota, have made their first geographical movement since the discovery of the continent, a period of 331 years. How much longer they had dwelt in the country abandoned we know not. They clung to it with almost a death grasp. It is a lovely region, and replete with a thousand advantages and a thousand reminiscences. Nothing but the drum of the Anglo-Saxon race could have given them an effectual warning to go. Gen. Scott, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... my gun. Hands reached out to grasp me; to grasp all three of us. Then darkness closed in swiftly; I was whisked upward, on and on, breathlessly. I was suddenly very heavy; I was dropping in the blackness ... there was something solid beneath my feet ... a glare of light ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... a tiger. Startled, I jumped to my feet. He laid hold of me by the throat, and griped me with a quivering grasp. Recovering my self-possession, I stood perfectly still, making no effort even to remove his hand, although it was all but choking me. In a moment or two he relaxed his hold, burst into tears, took up his hat, and ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Ole's, it could scarcely be overcome. Oyvind's thoughts flew, terrified, from obstacle to obstacle; for a time he saw only poverty, opposition, misunderstanding, and a sense of wounded honor, and every prop he tried to grasp seemed to glide away from him. It increased his uneasiness that his mother was standing with her hand on the latch of the kitchen-door, uncertain whether she had the courage to remain inside and await the issue, and that she at ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the household that Herr Winckel would have laughed at any suspicion of his being anything else but a butler. Herr Winckel was so fond of saying and repeating that the man had a butler mind it could never grasp anything ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... and that Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without shock. However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort, they decided to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But before doing this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp the precious manuscript, and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote table, where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets from his hand, and bounding up, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... finally back to the lower platform. Then Mr. Smith got possession of the weapon which his assailant had been wielding, and the last hope of his enemy seemed to vanish with the loss of that, for, freeing himself from the grasp of the man whom he had thought a few minutes before was entirely in his power, he disappeared in the darkness, and fled up the track in such haste that he did not even stop for his hat, which was found by some one upon the platform next morning. The weapon which ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... cried Craven, springing upon Capitola and holding her tightly in the grasp of his right arm, while he covered her lips and nostrils ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... leeches; fever, plague, Cold rheum, and hot podagra, do but look on him, And quit their grasp upon the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... inculcates; in other words, those who leave Christ's spiritual Church. My great object is to draw my fellow-creatures into that Church; to induce them to accept Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life; to persuade them to grasp that hand so lovingly stretched forth to lead them to the Father. I ignore the schism of which you speak, invented by the sacerdotalists to alarm the uneducated. You have my reply, Mr Lerew, and I wish you ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the exception of the rendering of the scenes in which the movement of feelings is expressed, is quite absent in Shakespeare. He does not grasp the natural character of the positions of his personages, nor the language of the persons represented, nor the feeling of measure without which no work can ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,—even if it was meant in love,—I'll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their sisters—but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the heavens gemmed with countless stars, each shining with a brilliancy unknown in our moist northern climes, the attention of man was naturally turned earlier than elsewhere to these luminous bodies, and attempts were made to grasp, and reduce to scientific form, the array of facts which nature presented to the eye in a confused and tangled mass. It required no very long course of observation to acquaint men with a truth, which at first sight none would have suspected—namely, that the luminous ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... whose rich gilded Roofs so oft put me in mind of Majesty— And thou, my Bed of State, where my soft Slumbers have presented me with Diadems and Scepters— when waking I have stretch'd my greedy Arms to grasp the vanish'd Phantom! ah, adieu! and all my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... majestic step, though his form was slightly bent, apparently by age. To Talma's great surprise, David received him most cordially, even throwing away his usually inseparable companion, a long pipe, to grasp both his hands. 'Welcome, welcome, my old friend!' he said; 'you could not have come at a better time. I have not for many a day felt so happy, and the sight of you is a great addition.' And the old painter kept rubbing his hands, a token with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... would not be convenient to Edith to-day," said Marian, quickly drawing her hand from his detaining grasp, waving him adieu, and walking ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... whom wine is a mocker. Far be it from me to find fault with the good and sound-hearted men and women who are never scathed by their innocent potations; my attempt is directed toward saving the wreckages of civilization who perish in the grasp of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... manner made me sensible that we stood upon no real terms of confidence. The thought came sadly across me, how great was the contrast betwixt this interview and our first meeting. Then, in the warm light of the country fireside, Zenobia had greeted me cheerily and hopefully, with a full sisterly grasp of the hand, conveying as much kindness in it as other women could have evinced by the pressure of both arms around my neck, or by yielding a cheek to the brotherly salute. The difference was as complete as between her appearance at that time—so simply attired, and with only ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me and gently extracted my bag from my grasp. He stood about six feet three; his face was long and brown and grave; his figure was spare and strong. Atop his head he wore the sacred Arizona high-crowned hat, around his neck a bright bandana; no coat, but an unbuttoned vest; skinny ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... double tenaculum (Fig. 61) is applied. One clip is fixed to the anterior edge of the wound, and the other carried beneath the limb and made to grasp the posterior edge. If found desirable to keep the edges of the wound apart, and no tenaculum to hand, the same end may be accomplished by means of a needle and silk. In like manner as is the tenaculum, the silk is attached ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... distance were now heard. "They are coming," said she to Brown; "you are a dead man." He was about to rush out, when the gipsy seized him with a strong grasp. "Here," she said, "here, be still, and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing shall ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... not long before it became evident that the "talens" of Mr. Lacy Bassett, as indicated by Captain Jim, were to grasp at a seat in the state legislature. An editorial in the "Simpson's Bar Clarion" boldly advocated his pretensions. At first it was believed that the article emanated from the gifted pen of Lacy himself, but the style was so unmistakably that of Colonel Starbottle, an eminent ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Dean's quick searching eyes to grasp the meaning of the change. Whatever had menaced the camp had set this trap. He swung sharply to leap from the block, but stopped at the sight of Smith's chunky figure coming ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... arms I lay, The world fell mouldering from my hands each hour, And left me scarce a grasp—I thank ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... is the Assyrian lion's golden hide, That all the East once grasp'd in lordly paw? Where that great Persian bear, whose swelling pride The lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw? Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard, Through all the world with nimble pinions fared, And to his greedy ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and softness. Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to crumble in my grasp. All this, in frankness, to show my first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Taste for Musick, some for History and those Sciences which must help to Accuracy in it: Some have Heads turned for Politicks, and others for Wars. Some few there are of such quick and strong Faculties, as to grasp at every thing, and who have made a very eminent Figure in several Professions at once. We have known in our Days the same Men learned in the Laws, acute Philosophers, and deep Divines: We have known others at once eloquent Orators, brave Soldiers, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... he found his salary insufficient, seeing he was at no expense for maintenance, having only to buy his clothes. He went on and on, hiding his eyes from the approach of the "armed man," till he was in his grasp, and positively in want of a shilling. Then he borrowed, and went on borrowing small sums from those about him, till he was ashamed to borrow more. The next thing was to borrow a trifle of what was passing ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death and, it ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... possessed that aptitude, energy, and efficiency which accomplishes great objects, that men call genius, and which is oftimes nothing more than untiring mental activity harnessed to intensity of purpose. These constituted his grasp of much of the intricacies of mechanical knowledge. His example was ever in evidence, by word and action, that only by assidious effort could young men hope to succeed ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... it. He had, indeed, a genius for business—a gift almost as rare as that for poetry, for art, or for war. He possessed a marvellous power of organisation. With a keen eye for details, he combined a comprehensive grasp of intellect. While his senses were so acute, that when sitting in his office at Soho he could detect the slightest stoppage or derangement in the machinery of that vast establishment, and send his message direct to the spot ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... for tragedy, those of the 'three unities,' which they believed to dominate classic literature. Many of these rules were trivial and absurd, and the insistence of the critics upon them showed an unfortunate inability to grasp the real spirit of the classic, especially of Greek, literature. In all this, English writers and critics of the Restoration period and the next half-century very commonly followed the French and Italians deferentially. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... open to the rich, autumn sunlight that sifted through the woods and over the pasture till it lay in golden sheens across the fence and the yard and rested on his window-sill, rich enough almost to grasp with his hand, should he reach out for it. There was a little colour in his face—he had eaten one good meal that day, and his long fight with the fever was won. He did not know that in his delirium he had spoken of Judith—Judith—Judith—and this day and that had ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... a little more gasoline, and there was a spurt in their speed which made Mr. Damon grasp the upright braces near him with firm hands, and his face became a ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... up the device and fell to examining its construction. Of course this was utterly beyond me, for no ordinary engineer can hope to grasp the intricacies of a van Manderpootz concept. So, after a puzzled but admiring survey of its infinitely delicate wires and grids and lenses, I made the obvious move. ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... jests and laughter, and a few more oaths, I heard Charlie (or at any rate somebody) coming toward me, with a loose and not too sober footfall. As he reeled a little in his gait, and I would not move from his way one inch, after his talk of Lorna, but only longed to grasp him (if common sense permitted it), his braided coat came against my thumb, and his leathern gaiters brushed my knee. If he had turned or noticed it, he would have been a dead man in a moment; but his drunkenness ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... within the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business. Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For these reasons ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... while the very stillness voiced its own message of infinity. Neither of us would speak at such times. Harry had a turn for emotional sentiment, I knew, but I too could feel that it was good to lie there motionless and silent, and try to grasp its meaning. Then the strained sense of expectancy would fade at the sight of the approaching homestead, or a bronco blundering into a badger-hole would call us back ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... birds grasp a twig firmly with their very limber toes and sharp claws, and put their head under their wing; but many others, like tame Geese and Ducks, sleep standing on the ground on one foot or ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whirr of wheels, the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal. "Short lever—spark—long lever—gas!" she persisted resolutely. "It ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... any rate they had little to hope from a legislature in which working men had votes. But the masses, who had just secured the franchise, were reluctant to believe that the action of the state had lost its virtue at the moment when the control of the state came within their grasp. The vote seems to have been given them under the amiable delusion that they would be happy when they got it, as if it had any value whatever except as a means to an end. Nor is it adequate as a means: it is not sufficient for a nation by adult suffrage to express its will; that will has also ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... had an exceedingly active mind. He seemed to be able to grasp a situation instantly, and to decide quickly the best thing to do in ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... his grasp to fling Jimmie from him as he stepped backward to escape the onslaught of kicks and blows from Jimmie's active head. As he released the boy he aimed a vicious swing that would have done a great deal of ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... under protection of the ore-dump, his ear pressed close to the earth, his contracted eyes searching anxiously those dark hollows in front, a Winchester, cocked and ready, within the grasp of his hand. Above, Irish Mike, sniffing the air as though he could smell danger like a pointer dog, hung far out across the parapet of rock, every eager nerve tingling in the hope of coming battle. Winston remained in the cabin door, behind him the open room ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... did not make clear in your Address, namely what is the meaning and importance of Professors Cope and Hyatt's views on acceleration and retardation. I have endeavoured, and given up in despair, the attempt to grasp their meaning. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... and shut with a bang. Whether purposely or not, it was impossible to say, but in his outward rush the half-wit brushed so rudely past Hallam that he knocked his crutch from his grasp, so that he would have fallen, had not the superintendent caught and steadied the lad to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... in her hand, the lady closed her eyes and sat motionless, as if in the grasp of an absorbing thought. With the disappearing child, the signs of life on the hillside had diminished. The traffic of the street passed far below, the sharp click-click of a pedestrian now and then sounded above, but no one passed her way. The hum of the city ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... could read between the lines. The allegory touched him where his nerves were sensitive. Where she had gone he could not go until his eyes had seen and known what hers had seen and known; he could not grasp his happiness all in a moment; she was no longer at his feet, but equal with him, and wiser than he. She had not meant the song to be allusive when she began, but to speak to him through it by singing the heathen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him. It is satisfactory to know that from the moment of the earl's departure misfortune and disaster fell upon the fortunes of King Charles, and that the crown which he had received from the English earl was wrested from his unworthy grasp. Peterborough had gone but a short distance when he heard that all his baggage, consisting of eight wagon loads and of the value of eight thousand pounds sterling, had fallen into the hands of the enemy. When he left Valencia to extricate the king from his difficulties he had ordered it to be sent ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... returned the archdeacon's grasp, but he said little. His heart was too full for speaking, and he could not express the gratitude which he felt. Dr. Grantly understood him as well as though he had spoken for ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... complained. We had a national philosophy that measured prosperity in dollars and cents, included in this measurement the profits of liquor dealers who were responsible for most of our idiots. So long as we set our hearts on that kind of prosperity, so long as we failed to grasp the simple and practical fact that the greatest assets of a nation are healthy and sane and educated, clear-thinking human beings, just so long was prostitution logical, Riverside Franchises, traction deals, Judd Jasons, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... A little white, but bravely smiling, she was sitting erect, apparently serene. And only Mr. Hartley knew that one of her hands was clutched about his arm in a grasp that actually hurt. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Girty raise his club, and, quick as lightning, Henry, turning off at a right angle, hurled himself directly at Girty, passed within the circle of the falling club, seized the renegade's arm, and wrenched his weapon from his grasp. ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... now and my fists were up for the renewal of the contest, for Walters seemed to be about to spring at me; but he drew back, and as quickly as I could grasp what it meant, I heard almost simultaneously the clicking of my pistol-lock, the report, and the crash caused by the sudden wrenching open of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... never will be an end, of the lamentations which ascend from earth and the rebellious heart of her children, upon this huge opprobrium of human pride—the everlasting mutabilities of all which man can grasp by his power or by his aspirations, the fragility of all which he inherits, and the hollowness visible amid the very raptures of enjoyment to every eye which looks for a moment underneath the draperies of the shadowy present, the hollowness, the blank treachery of hollowness, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... was a saint, with that firm grasp of truth, and tender mysticism, whose combination is the charm of Scottish piety, and her face was troubled. While the minister was speaking in his boyish complacency, her thoughts were in a room where they had both stood, five years before, by ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the Opposition candidates told the electors that if they united themselves with Canada direct taxation would be the immediate result. They said that every cow, every horse, and every sheep which they owned would be taxed, and that even their poultry would not escape the grasp of the Canadian tax-gatherers. In the city of St. John, Mr. Tilley and his colleague, Mr. Charles Watters, were opposed by Mr. J. V. Troop and Mr. A. B. Wetmore. Mr. Troop was a wealthy ship-owner, whose large ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... conscientious purpose to satisfy her judgment; and, above all, he was ambitious,—ambitious not as I, not as Roland was, but ambitious as Ellinor was; ambitious, not to realize some grand ideal in the silent heart, but to grasp the practical, positive substances that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... yuh just tell me," demanded an irate cowboy who vainly undertook to grasp the science of photography, "that the light actin' on the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Biff. "Don't put him out till you feed him all he's got coming." Thereupon he succeeded in extracting Mr. Trimmer from the grasp of Mr. Johnson and forced the former back upon a chair, where he began to fan him with a ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... London. I stared out of the window and tried to grasp the tremendous, wonderful fact with all the power of my mind. Somehow or other it did not seem real, but I felt I could make it real by an ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... that he had thought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing? Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable—a blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint within him in trying to grasp all that had once filled it and that had since vanished, because it was not a prospect into futurity? Was he wrong in finding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years—which he did not live to see? ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... with transformations so many-sided as those which all existences have undergone, or are undergoing, is such as to make a complete and deductive interpretation almost hopeless. So to grasp the total process of redistribution of matter and motion as to see simultaneously its several necessary results in their actual interdependence is scarcely possible. There is, however, a mode of rendering the process as ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... grasp it with the thumb and forefinger, and pinch it firmly on each side; if in the hand, press on the bleeding spot, or press with the thumb just above and in ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... ourselves on these accessions, yet another instalment of pay was delivered, with form of receipt as in the previous case. We were almost convinced that the country cottage and the leisured ease of our dreams were within our grasp, but the well ran dry at that point. Some of my balance may yet lurk in the coffers of the Paymaster, but I dare not throw off the yoke of my bondage on the strength of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... of Wyoming met him and greeted him. His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of this friend's hand. The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if tears were close. But none came, and no word more open than, "I'm ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... different. Gray's reminiscences of April had strongly impressed upon his mind the fact that he was now on the verge of his country's battle-fields; that this was the first soil that had been wrested from the grasp of treason, and saved for the Union,—that the ground he stood upon was already historic. And now the sight of some negroes reminded him that he was for the first time in his life in a ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... with natural pathos. "It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp." ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with his new ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... passing under a bridge, a little way out of the city, he was startled to see some one leap from it into the water and immediately sink. He shot his boat to the spot, and when the figure arose to the surface, he was ready to grasp it. It was no easy matter to lift it into his boat, but he succeeded at last, when he rowed with all possible speed back to the city, where, instead of notifying the police and giving me into their hands to be taken either to a hospital or to the morgue, as the case might demand, he procured a ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the questions asked by the king, or of the answers made by the four young Hebrews; so it is merely a conjecture that possibly some question bearing on the calendar may have come up. But if it did, then certainly the information within the grasp of the Hebrews could not have failed to impress ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... remonstrated Lydyard, still maintaining his grasp. "What satisfaction will it afford you to witness her sufferings—to see the frightful ravages made upon her charms by this remorseless disease,—to throw her whole family into consternation, and destroy the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rushed him; you would have wrenched the gun from his grasp, and broken it across your knee; you would have despoiled him of his ——, and cuffed him home with ignominy. Yes, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Instead, I stole out of the doorway, and crept round the house and round the house again, hunting for a back entrance. I found none; but at last, goaded by the reflection that fortune would never again be so nearly within my grasp, I marked a window on the first floor, and at the side of the house; by which it seemed to me that I might enter. A mulberry-tree stood by it, and it lacked bars; and other trees veiled the spot. To be brief, in two minutes I had my knee on the sill, and, sweating ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with the blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged here too, that I was a part of it all—and would not be neglected or forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... redeemed them from the curse of the law, and from all iniquity (Titus 2:14), to adopt them as His own children, "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."—Rom. 8:17. So wonderful is the plan that it is hard for a human being to grasp it. God's plan with men is not simply to save them, but to put them above all other created beings. "Unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son?"—Heb. 1:5. Yet, "having in love predestinated us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... the day and widened into morning glow With rosy tints o'erstreaked, and faintly blurred With flecks of cloud. Still lay the child, nor stirred. Dumb Eve looked down, nor knew Death's pallid masque, And strove to wake the maid. In vain. Her task Was done. And as she gazed, a gentle grasp Soft loosed the dead from that cold mother's clasp, And Lilith laid the babe in its chill bed— Straightened the limbs, and kissed the little head. And o'er the sleeper, kneeling, she did lean. Forth from her breast she drew, close folded, green, A ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... I have nothing to complain of," said Miss Symes. "She is just brilliant. She seems to leap over mental difficulties as though they did not exist. Her intuition is something marvellous, and she will grasp an idea almost as soon as it is uttered. I should like you to hear her play; it is a perfect delight to teach her; her little fingers seem to be endowed with the very spirit of music. And then that delightful voice of hers thrills one when she recites aloud, as she ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... up" was to grasp Dora's curls in his fingers and give them a tug. Dora shrieked and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the boats are beached, not on the shingle, where the stones would be slippery. No! on the sand, where they have run them up as high as possible. Now she jumps lightly and quickly out of her boat, and he a little more heavily out of his; they grasp each other's hands again. Yes! ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... be ascended without great difficulty and danger, and yet there was no way of avoiding it. Up we went, I holding fast to the girdle of Makarov, who had nearly reached the top, when he was obliged to free himself from my grasp, in order to climb up a very steep part of the rock just at the top. I braced the toes of my uninjured foot against a projecting stone, wound my right arm round a young tree, which curved up from below, and in this position waited until Makarov had reached ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... with you," interrupted the prisoner, quickly, wresting himself at the same time with a dexterous movement from the grasp of the two boys who had held him; and then he went on in his usual soft voice and slow way: "I mean this joke's gone quite far enough. You came half an hour or so before I expected you, but I think ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... springing at his throat, threw him backward on to the floor of the carriage. As he fell the man drew out his revolver, but Vincent grasped his arm and with a sharp twist wrenched the revolver from his grasp, and leaping up, threw it out of the open window. The ruffian rose to his feat, for a moment half dazed by the violence with which he had fallen, and poured out a string of imprecations upon Vincent. The latter stood calmly awaiting a fresh attack. For a moment ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... her lips tightened to thin purple lines across her white teeth, and she fought with Mary for a moment, seeking to make her way into the tent; but Mrs. Kyley was a powerful woman, and in her grasp, when she was really determined, Aurora ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... toil, Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil; Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow, Till a new garden there shall grow, Cleared of the weeds that fill it now,— Mere human love, mere selfish yearning, Which, cherished, would arrest me yet. I grasp the plough, there's no returning, Let ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... adroitness or prudence, Fleury did not all at once aspire to all-powerfulness. Assured in his heart of his sway over the as yet dormant will of his pupil, he suffered the establishment of the Duke of Bourbon's ministry, who was in a greater hurry to grasp the power he had so long coveted. When the king received his cousin, head of the house of Conde, who had but lately taken the place of the Duke of Maine near his person, he sought in his preceptor's eyes the guidance he needed, and contented himself with sanctioning by an inclination ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... intuitively, as the days wore on, that he was growing cold toward her. It was pitiful to see her grasp the hands of the little maid that had been engaged to take care of her, and hear her beg her to dress her prettily, and to see that every curl was in place, and the lace at her throat and sleeves ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... speak, but could proceed no further, and her hand was again, silently and without objection, taken into the grasp of his. The youth, after a brief pause, resumed, in a tone, which though it had lost much of its impetuousness, was ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... which I carried in my hand, and I was obliged to use force to retain it. They then made signs to Mr. Hunter to send his gun to the boat; this was of course refused, upon which one of them seized it, and it was only by wrenching it from his grasp that Mr. Hunter ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... those seven great car-warriors began to afflict Bhimasena, O king, like the seven planets afflicting the moon at the hour of the universal dissolution. The son of Kunti, then, O monarch, drawing his beautiful bow with great force and firm grasp, and knowing that his foes were but men, aimed seven shafts. And lord Bhima in great rage sped at them those shafts, effulgent as solar rays. Indeed, Bhimasena recollecting his former wrongs, shot those shafts as if for extracting the life from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with Polly. For rushing and pushing as the change about was effected, to get her way and be with Polly, she felt her arm taken in a very light but firm grasp. ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... that honest and affectionate hand grasp, once more I met those clear and steady blue eyes, and I noted the flush of pride which overspread his face when I told him that I had received his ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... burned, and every movement of the hand sent a thrill of agony up the arm. He persisted, however, in frequently opening and clenching his hands, regardless of the pain, for he feared that did he not do so they would stiffen and he would be unable to grasp a sword. Fortunately the wounds were principally on the upper side of the thumbs, where the flesh was burned away to the bone, but the sinews and muscles of the wrists had to a ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... and I stepped sharply into the room. The grasp of the lunatic was on the child's throat. I loosed it somewhat roughly, throwing him off with a force that brought him to the ground. He rose quickly, glared at me with tiger-like ferocity, and then darted out of the room. The affair had become serious, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... position just captured. Steadily they advanced, and the shells which our mountain guns sent among them, and the volleys poured down from the face of the hill, did not suffice to check them in the slightest. Reassured by their own enormous numbers, and feeling that success was in their grasp, they pressed forward; and desperate fighting took place. A position held by the 5th Punjaub Infantry was carried by their attack, and two guns were lost; but the rest of the positions ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... than you were in the old hell? Isn't there the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,—the forgiving side, the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law? You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the case, nothing else seemed to be of any importance. Carrissima was prepared to condone an offence, the importance of which, she supposed, she had exaggerated; and perhaps if she were to make herself more abject, he would grasp the olive branch. As Bridget suggested, what did it matter so that they came together at last? Granting his love, as there could be no doubt about her own, it would be sheer foolishness to allow the present unfortunate estrangement ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... earthly ministry that he could not tell all his mind to his followers. They were not able to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in. He had to carry his deepest thoughts out of the world with him unuttered, trusting with a sublime faith that the Holy Ghost would lead his Church to grasp them in the course of its subsequent development. Even what he did ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... him the silent grasp That knits us hand in hand, And he the bracelet's radiant clasp That locks our ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... doubled by its shadow. Can it be, That evil hearts throb near a scene like this? And yet how soon comes the Medusa, Thought, To chill the heart's blood of sweet fantasy! For, O bright orb! That glid'st along the fringe of those tall trees, Where a child's thought might grasp thee, Art thou not This night in thousand places hideous? To think Where thy pale beams may revel—on the brow Of ghastly wanderers, with the frozen breast And grating laugh, in murder's rolling eye, On death, corruption, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... hear Uncle William talk in this way, just as quietly and rationally as at Berlin, and with the same grasp of political things. He only got excited once, and that was when he was telling Uncle Henry that it was his particular wish that Uncle should go to the captain and offer to take over the navigation of the vessel. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... to the slimy mosses, fearing each new energy of grasping muscle is the last that Nature holds in its store for you; and then, weary almost unto death, you look up and see two human faces peering above the curbstone, see the rope curling down to you, swinging right before your grasp, and a doubt comes,—have you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday, and he is so sure we shall be married this fall,—and I know it cannot be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept together,—the old grim, gray woman holding the soft golden head against her breast with a convulsive grasp. "Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... till afterwards that they begin to read the texts. They run a great risk of not understanding them at all, or of understanding them wrongly. What happens is that a kind of tacit contest goes on between the text and the preconceived opinions of the reader; the mind refuses to grasp what is contrary to its idea, and the issue of the contest commonly is, not that the mind surrenders to the evidence of the text, but that the text yields, bends, and accommodates itself to the preconceived opinion.... To bring ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... knife, Patsy, give me your knife." Patsy at once responded by placing his hunting-knife in Doug's left hand. Dic saw his imminent danger and with his right hand clasped Doug's left wrist in a grasp that could not be loosened. After several futile attempts to free his wrist, Doug tossed the knife over to his right side. It fell a few inches beyond his reach, and he tried to grasp it. Rita saw ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... still occupying his old quarters, and the two friends being determined not to part one from the other. Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only in that generous time that they are formed. How different the intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own hand after it has been shaken about in twenty years' commerce with the world, and has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms! As you can seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language after twenty, the heart refuses ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gifted with a natural perspicacity that enabled him, as soon as he heard these remarks, to grasp their spirit. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... nothing to lose. It is only when a man has everything to lose and nothing to gain that he should become uneasy about his game. When you have won a few prizes and there are critical eyes upon you, there may be some excuse for nerves, but not before. All young players should grasp the simple truth of this simple statement; but it is surprising how many fail to do so. No stroke or game ever seemed to cause me any anxiety in those young days, and my rapid success may have been in a large measure ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... desperate struggle was going on for the person of the Inca. His nobles surrounded and faithfully strove to defend him; as fast as one was cut down another took his place, and with their dying grasp they clung to the bridles of the cavaliers, trying to force them back. Atahuallpa sat as one stunned in his swaying litter, forced this way and that by the pressure of the throng. The Spaniards grew tired at last of the work of destruction, and, fearing that in the ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... overcome in herself many true impulses of nature to which he gave the false name of weaknesses. It was less painful thus to repress them herself, than to have them crushed in the iron hand with which he was ever ready to grasp them. ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... from a vague and indistinct idea of a new presentation to a clear and defined idea of it. The process is always analytic-synthetic. In a literature lesson the order of procedure must be: (1) Let the pupil get that somewhat indistinct grasp of the thought and feeling which comes from a preliminary reading of it; (2) make this more definite by a process of analysis, by concentrating attention on the details; (3) make the idea completely definite by a clear grasp of the relations ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... me grasp thy waist, be thou of wood Or levigated steel, for well 'tis known Thy habit is disease. In iron clad Sometimes thy feature roughen to the sight, And oft transparent art thou seen in glass, Portending frangibility. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... a cold dogma of blind heredity and a wholesale fatalistic asylum scheme, to an understanding of individual, familiar, and social adjustments, and a grasp on the factors which we can consider individually and socially modifiable. We have passed from giving mere wholesale advice to a conscientious study of the problems of each unit, and at the same time we have developed a new and sensible approach to mental hygiene and prevention, as expressed ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... me of very great importance that women should grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as chastity and purity. There is a mass of real superstition on this question—a belief in a kind of magic ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... same time or a little later. What was he like? I cannot tell. His figure and face remained indistinct throughout—phantom-like. His features seemed endowed with a stronge weird mobility that would defyingly elude the fixing grasp of our eager eyes. Now, and to my two companions, he would look marvellously like me; then, to me, he would stalk and rave about in the likeness of Jack Hobson; again, he would seem the counterfeit of Emmanuel Topp; then he would look ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... winter loosened its grasp on Fort Blizzard. Once more, the fort was in touch with the outside world for a few months. The mails came regularly and there were two trains a day at the station, ten miles away. In May Anita had ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... and another blaze of fire, and then Tera, in spite of convulsive efforts, felt her grasp on the elephant loosening. Dazzled and bewildered, she suddenly found herself at the elephant's feet. In a hazy manner she was conscious that something was touching her. Beyond this she knew nothing, ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... there for a moment before attempting to reach the vines high up on the left hand, which he must grasp in order to draw himself up into the shadowy niche in the rock, and begin his zigzag course back again across the face of the cliff to the projecting ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... not the truth, it must be because God has in reserve for us a sequel greater and lovelier, not meaner than our brightest dream hitherto. The worthiest theory of the fate of man which the spirit of man can construct must either be a revelatory divination of the truth, or an inadequate attempt to grasp the design of the Creator in its true glory. It is impious and absurd to hold that man can think out a scheme superior to the one God has decreed. And it seems equally unreasonable to suppose that the scheme of God for the future stages of our career is one which has no hints in our present experience. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and, as they reached the spot where Miss Anthony sat, each child deposited a blossom in her lap, a rose for every year. It was a surprise so complete, so wonderfully beautiful, that for a few moments she could do nothing more than grasp the hand of each child. Then she began kissing the little people, and the applause which greeted this act was deafening. The roses were distributed among the pioneers at the close of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... represents the former. The loftier, nobler Tintoretto gives us the second. There is something in his greatest pictures, as, for instance, in the Crucifixion, at St. Rocco, which no other artist approaches. The lordly composition gives us an impression of intellectual grasp and vigor. The foreground group of prostrate women is full of a tenderness. The rich pearly light, which floods the centre, glows with a solemn picturesqueness, and the great Christ, who hangs like a benediction over the whole, is vocal with a piety which no other picture in the world displays. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... circumstances rather than of inward quiet. He kept deliberating all those years whether he should go to England, Germany or France, hoping at last to find the brilliant position which he had always coveted and never had been able or willing to grasp. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... and of Kush, so great was his pride at having trampled underfoot the land of the Delta. And, in fact, Egypt had, for a century, been the only one of the ancient Eastern states which had always eluded the grasp of Assyria. The Elamites had endured disastrous defeats, which had cost them some of their provinces; the Urartians had been driven back into their mountains, and no longer attempted to emerge from them; Babylon had nearly been ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Euphemia that these things were calculated to lose us friends, and she promises to destroy the likeness; but I have no confidence in her promise. She will probably clap a violent auburn wig on Mrs. Harborough and make Scrimgeour squint and give Harborough a big beard. The point that she won't grasp is, that with that fatal facility for detail, which is one of the most indisputable proofs of woman's intellectual inferiority, she has reproduced endless remarks and mannerisms of these excellent people with more than ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... he looks like some one!" And I distinctly perceived that only just in time did she repress an impulse to grasp me by the hand. Under the circumstances I am not sure that I wouldn't have overlooked the lapse had she yielded to it. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... his daughter. Accustomed as Jeff had become to Mr. Mayfield's patronizing superiority, it seemed unbearable now, and the easy indifference of the guests to his own presence touched him with a new bitterness. Here were HER friends, who were to take his place. It was a relief to grasp Yuba Bill's large hand and stand with him ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... breathlessly, for even now I failed to grasp the conclusion my scientific companion could be coming ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... motionless against the tree, but to my heated imagination he appeared to have turned and be watching me. I hardly breathed; the filthy water rippling past me seemed to roar to attract the guard's attention; I reached my hand out cautiously to grasp a root to pull myself along by, and caught instead a dry branch, which broke with a loud crack. My heart absolutely stood still. The guard evidently heard the noise. The black lump separated itself from the tree, and a straight line which I knew to be his musket ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was to receive an eighth part of the profits of the newly-found countries, and to be their governor-general. He probably apprehended that this viceroy, when once master of the boundless wealth which was supposed to be nearly within his grasp, would become more powerful than his master, and might finally throw off his allegiance altogether. But here was an opportunity, without any flagrant breach of faith, of eluding the bargain, by refusing, on very ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... all. I was simply bored. This I attribute to two things: first, my preponderating interest in the romantic side of things; secondly (and this bears with it a strong moral), the feeling that the knowledge lay always within my grasp kept me from that curiosity which so oft consumes those who think it is hidden away ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... holds. How do I know anything about the sun? Because the sun shines, and in its light I see what the sun is. The sun is its own evidence. No philosopher could have told me about the sun if the sun did not shine. No power of meditation and thought can grasp the presence of God. Be quiet, and trusting, and resting, and the everlasting God will shine into your heart, and will reveal Himself. And then, just as naturally as I enjoy the light of the sun, and as naturally as I look upon the pages ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... I never will," he said, his voice husky and low and trembling, but his eye and his grasp firm. "I have assured you that environment, education, art, can supplement nature and heredity. They have done so with you. You are your father's child. You received from your mother only the vital spark, only this beauty, this fatal beauty. If you inherited ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... read his whole story in the stern self-command of brow, and the slight convulsion of feature, which all the self-command could not prevent. He returned warmly the grasp of the hand, answering merely, "I will see ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... genius is vital with passion and imagination. Only the latent heat of passion and imagination could save these seemingly bald and monotonous narratives from being as dull as a dictionary. But they are not so; they have an interest which holds the reader with a fixedness of grasp which he cannot loosen. Crabbe's poetry of the poor is slow and epic; Hood's is rapid and lyrical. Crabbe's characters are only actual and intensified individuals; Hood's characters are idealized ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... The awful grasp of this law; this repressive force, the tabu, held fast the student from the moment of his entrance into the halau. It denied this pleasure, shut off that innocent indulgence, curtailed liberty in this direction and in that. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... swift for Stella's vision to follow. She saw him leap the verandah-balustrade, and heard Tessa's shrill scream of fright. Then he had the offender in his grasp, and Stella saw the deadly determination of ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell |
