"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... value. This, if true, made plain the difficulty of re-sale, and made him think decidedly unpleasant things of "Lewis and Company, Specialists in B.C. Timber." The second was that someone, within recent years, had cut timber on his limit. And it was his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister, as it usually is in men who have ever possessed any considerable property. He did not like the idea of being cheated or robbed. In this case there was superficial evidence that both these things had ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... are not at hand, but these given indicate that, as in most Malay dialects, a noun with a possessive suffix is ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... ere the loud chapel-clock tolled another hour all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air. Zuleika's pincushion, a-bristle with new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced toilet-table, and round it stood a multitude of multiform glass vessels, domed, all of them, with dull gold, on which Z. D., in zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. On a small ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... when a possible, nay, a probable chance, might for ever have blasted his ambitious hopes, he for the first time spoke of France as his. Considering the circumstances in which we then stood, this use of the possessive pronoun "my" describes more forcibly than anything that can be said the flashes of divination which crossed Bonaparte's brain when he was wrapped up in his chimerical ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... exhibition—the march of an army, the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between enchanting ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Zeitoon was grinning at us through a small square window in the wall at one end of the veranda. Then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt. His eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment as a guide, but he stood at respectful attention until ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... sense of resentment swept through her; the patronage in his tone, the indefinable suggestion of possession was, she thought, uncalled for. That he should approve of Frank in that possessive manner was not far removed ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... so sure of that," he returned stiffly; "but since you wish it I will give your message to—my wife." He always hesitated over the possessive pronoun ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... forms mean "yours." To translate these terms, "my foolish wife," "my swinish son," is incorrect, because it twice translates the same word. In such cases the Japanese thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a few blunt pronouns wherewith to state this ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... etc., throughout all the different persons. When these possessive pronouns are used with nouns, nearly all the syllables are omitted, except the first, which is added to the noun in the ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... wistfully. The bow-legged range-rider was in no hurry to have her go. She was the first girl who had ever looked twice at him, the first one he had ever taken out or talked nonsense with or been ordered about by in the possessive fashion used by the modern young woman. Hence he was head ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... instinctively avoiding these, his technique improves. Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought. As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which." I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it. Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste. When I began to write I thus employed ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... where they dowered each other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was manifest in him ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... that language, placed before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... was curious—he recognized Fanny's desirability, he loved her beyond all doubt, and yet physically she had now no perceptible influence on him. He was even a little embarrassed, awkward, at her embrace; and its calmly possessive pressure filled him with a restive wish to move away. He repressed this, forced himself to hold her still, repeated silently all that she had given him; and she turned a face brilliant with color to his gaze. Fanny made him bring her ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I could stop him, he seized it ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... same in speech making. If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture without insisting ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Use of the Apostrophe.—The apostrophe is used to denote the possessive case, to indicate the omission of letters, and to form the plural of signs, figures, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... a station, and a moment later their compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple preoccupied with the bestowal of bulging packages. Anna, at their approach, felt the possessive pride of the woman in love when strangers are between herself and the man she loves. She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet; and while ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... inflected for number, person and case. There are two forms of the dual and plural in the first person. The following table shows the nominative and possessive cases: ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... column," answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, "doesn't believe that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... reacted, though with different effect. For an instant he watched the tall retreating form of this, as he perceived, very perfect gentleman. Then he turned to Damaris, looking her over from head to heel, in keen somewhat possessive fashion. And as, meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. This is no new discovery. The Gospel says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" The thought we give to ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... summarised, further and further, in the dim fire-dust of endless avenues; that was all of the essence of fond and thrilled and throbbing recognition, with a thousand things understood and a flood of response conveyed, a whole familiar possessive feeling ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... dealt by the mercilessly honest hand of youth. Esther's eyes were quite dry now. Her nervousness was passing. Regret and pity were merged in one overpowering, instinctive desire: the desire to show him beyond all manner of doubt that she repudiated that possessive touch upon her hand. "I could not ever possibly marry you," she said, as calmly as if she had been accustomed to dismissing suitors all ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English have the good fortune ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural, and instead of saying that "some little birds had built their nests near the posts of Mr. West's gate," a Sussex boy would say, "the birds had built their nestes near the postes of Mr. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... opinion. In the Yorkshire dialect, when the possessive case is followed by the relative substantive, it is customary to omit the S; but if the relative be understood, and not expressed, the possessive case is formed in the usual manner, as in a subsequent line ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the difficulty with the church is that she has lost her interrogation point. At the day of Pentecost people were saying, "What do these things mean?" To-day they never think of saying it. I have been told in a little pamphlet issued by an English writer that the church has lost her possessive case, which means that somehow she has gone on without realizing that the risen, glorified Christ is her blessed Lord. It is a great thing to say "Jesus"; infinitely greater is it to say "My Jesus." The church has lost her imperative ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world. ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... grotesque jumble of archaic words of very different periods and dialects. The orthography and grammatical forms were such as occurred in no old English poet known to the student of literature. The fact that Rowley used constantly the possessive pronominal form itts, instead of his; or the other fact that he used the termination en in the singular of the verb, was alone enough to stamp the poems as spurious. Tyrwhitt also showed that the syntax, diction, idioms, and stanza forms were ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... certain renunciation of that Particular and Fleeting. A refusal to get everything out of it that we can for ourselves, to be possessive, or attribute to it absolute worth. This involves a sense of detachment or asceticism; of further destiny and obligation for the soul than complete earthly happiness or ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... to Spanish custom, a matron is known by prefixing her maiden name with de (possessive of) to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... they regarded her, had in them a smile that the girl instinctively resented. Was it a shade too possessive and complacently ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... And again I wish to mention That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram." Yet my classic lore aggressive (If you'll pardon the possessive) Is exceedingly impressive When ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... his hold relaxed at last, she hid her face panting against his breast. He smoothed the dark hair with a possessive touch, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... this remark, though his eyes were on her. They were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly, alight, evoking curiosity ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... memory registered the slight difference in the wording of the greeting as reported by this pseudo-Nita and the man she was running to meet. But Penny, as Nita, was already straightening Tracey Miles' necktie with possessive, coquettish fingers, was coaxing, with ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... room emptied, and she was free to do so, Hepsey, accompanied by the possessive Jonathan, found her way over to the Maxwells. Before she started to tell them the results of the meeting she cast a glance of whimsical affection ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... mine," she cried, putting a possessive hand on Lady's flank while the latter turned her dainty head and regarded the girl out of softly-wistful brown eyes. "I wanted her as ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... Teachers are informed that anybody else's is correct."—"New York Times," Sunday, July 31, 1881. An English writer says: "In such phrases as anybody else, and the like, else is often put in the possessive case; as, 'anybody else's servant'; and some grammarians defend this use of the possessive case, arguing that somebody else is a compound noun." It is better grammar and more euphonious to consider ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think anything of him—apart from what you did between you ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable—and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made me murmur with ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... being able to pass through the mire of Lutetia on tiptoe, like a dancer who studies her steps, without soiling her white stockings with a single speck of mud. The manolas of Madrid, the cigaretas of Seville in their satin slippers are not better shod; mine—pardon the anticipation of this possessive pronoun—put forward from under the seat an irreproachable boot and aristocratically turned ankle. If she would give me that graceful buskin to place in my museum beside the shoe of Carlotta Grisi, the Princess Houn-Gin's boot and Gracia ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... spotless, diaphanous tunic, fresh flowers in her hair, a treasured pink silk garter clasping her rounded arm. "Big White Brother," she called me with pride, though often I saw a sad wonder in her great eyes as she squatted near, silently watching me. Her possessive ways were pretty to see as she walked close by my side on the trail from my cabin to the beach, while Exploding Eggs regarded her jealously, insisting on his prerogative as Tueni Oki Kiki, Keeper of the Golden Bed, the glittering magnificence of which he ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Omega-street. I am ashamed of myself when I remember the foolish cause of this elation of mind. I was going to Yorkshire, the county of which my Charlotte was now an inhabitant. My Charlotte! It is a pleasure even to write that delicious possessive pronoun—the pleasure of poor Alnascher, the crockery-seller, dreaming his day-dream in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... certain conditions, into whose and whom; but that and which always remain the same, with the exception of the possessive case, as ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... known, or that the severe rule of his daily life had checked long ago, began its struggle for life; and when the same sweet odour came again—he knew now it was the scent of heliotrope—his heart was lifted and he was overcome in a sweet possessive trouble. He sought for the cheque amid the bundle of cheques and, finding it, he pressed the paper to his face. The cheque was written in a thin, feminine handwriting, and was signed "Henrietta Brown," and the name and handwriting were pregnant with occult significances ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... possession of her. But as I considered her possession the only sufficient reason for the continuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, mine. It may have been that I would not have been obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to my reveries had I confessed the state of my feelings ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... it was a friendship not untinged by enmity. His enmity was awakened when she became too possessive in the demands which she made and especially when she let fall criticisms, however mild, concerning Terry. These occurrences set him thinking of the other casuals who had ventured on her doorstep, not meaning to stay, and had ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the Bolshevist possessive eye," agreed Willy Cameron, readily. "Does he know you are through with him? Because that's important, too. You may know it, and I may know it, but if he ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exquisite for him as some pale pressed flower (a rarity to begin with), and, failing other sweetnesses, she was a sufficient reward of his effort. They had communities of knowledge, "their" knowledge (this discriminating possessive was always on her lips) of presences of the other age, presences all overlaid, in his case, by the experience of a man and the freedom of a wanderer, overlaid by pleasure, by infidelity, by passages of life that were strange and dim to her, just by "Europe" in short, but still unobscured, still exposed ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... out, the moment the culprits appeared in view. "This is the kind of order you keep in my house—my house!" and he emphasized the possessive pronoun so severely that the poor little word must have had a hard time of it among his ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he, possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book, too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one of these sallies made his young teacher laugh, which was the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all—two leaders and a follower—and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain and myself ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... genitive case, jong, is sometimes omitted for the sake of brevity, e.g. u ksew nga (my dog) for u ksew jong nga. The preposition la gives also the force of the possessive case, e.g. la ka jong ka jong (their own). There are some nouns which change their form, or rather are abbreviated when used in the vocative case, e.g. ko mei, not ko kmei Oh mother; ko pa, not ko kpa Oh father. These, however, are all ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. "I didn't think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the Nome. And so—I am ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... it was his youth she wanted most, partly because it was Martin's youth, partly because it called to something in her which was not youth, nor yet belonged to age—something which was wise, tender and possessive—something which had never yet ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... moved away Una reveled in having refused his half-hearted invitation, but already she was aware that she would regret it. She was shaken with woman's fiercely possessive clinging to love. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great economy of finer matter. I make free in these connexions with the plural possessive because if I was never able to do what the Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and simpler charities, I met, first and last, every demand of reflexion, of emotion—particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of resentment. No one, I think, paid the tribute of ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... to mention That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram." Yet my classic love aggressive, If you'll pardon the possessive, Is exceedingly impressive When you're passing ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... for the most part, words used instead of nouns. They may be arranged under the following divisions: Personal, Possessive, Relative, Demonstrative, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... reacting upon those about her, gained both for herself and her opinions a degree of consideration to which she was unaccustomed and which she highly relished. Never had Serena presented so bold a front to her philanthropic and very possessive elder sister. Never had she enjoyed so much attention in the small and rigidly select circle of Slowby society, in which she and Miss Susan moved. Serena spoke with authority upon all subjects, on the strength of a purely fictitious affair ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... expressionless. But she moved the coin nearer to her eyes and a smile broke and widened until her whole face was a wrinkle of joy. When she turned in the doorway, the interviewer noticed that the hand jammed into an apron pocket was clutched into a possessive fist, cradling the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... 1895 when Mrs. Riley come fer me to hep' her in the Hotel here in Washington an' I been here ev'ry since. I recollects well living on the Hunt plantation. It wuz a big place an' we had fifteen or twenty slaves"—(The "we" was proudly possessive)—"we wuz all as happy passel o' niggers as could be found anywhere. Aunt Winnie wuz the cook an' the kitchen wuz a big old one out in the yard an' had a fireplace that would 'commodate a whole fence rail, it wuz so big, an' had pot hooks, pots, big old ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration |
