"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Light Dragoons, Sound to saddle and spur," he said; "He that is ready may ride with me, And he that can may ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... latter. He disengaged his lance from his saddle, seized it with the right hand, placed it in rest with its point half-elevated, gathered up the reins in the left, waked his horse's mettle with the spur, and prepared to encounter the stranger with the calm self-confidence belonging to the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... a way that he lifted me up in his arms and kissed me, as if I were a little child instead of a maiden just fifteen. This he had never done before, and it made me a little frightened. He saw it, and spoke on the spur of the thought, though still with one arm ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... themselves possessed of a large and lively family, all methods of discipline, whether sanctioned by long custom or invented on the spur of the moment, through the extreme urgency of the case, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Nohant. We have seen this legend disproved by one who knows. This Polonaise is not as feverish and as exalted as the previous one. It is, as Kleczynski writes, "the type of a war song." Named the Heroique, one hears in it Ehlert's "ring of damascene blade and silver spur." There is imaginative splendor in this thrilling work, with its thunder of horses' hoofs and fierce challengings. What fire, what sword thrusts and smoke and clash of mortal conflict! Here is no psychical presentation, but an objective picture of battle, of concrete ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... spur on another successfully? That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... long and hard; much hunger and thirst, and there was hell in the hearts of men this night. Even Bedient was shaking with fatigue; and Cairns beside him, felt that there wasn't the brain of a babe in his skull. His saddle seemed filled with spikes. His spur was gone, and for hours he had kept his half-dead, lolling-tongued pony on the way, by frequent jabbing from a broken lead-pencil.... And here was Lipa at last, the second Luzon town, and a corral for the mules. As they ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... 150 east of Greenwich, by about 30 north; and my first thought was that we might have sighted the Ganges group, as many a ship sailing from 'Frisco to Japan; but when I had looked at the land a little while, and especially at a low spur of rocks to the northward, I knew that this was truly the Ken Archipelago, and that ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... discovered in the year 1895 and up to the time of this writing (June 1896) only six persons have ever entered it. It is in a point or spur of the Ozark Mountains which runs to the east from the great Wilderness Ridge, and is three miles distant from the Marble Cave. Having been one of the first to enter the Cave, being called by the owner as a sort of cave expert, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Bud—lifted a booted foot and laid it across his other knee and with his forefinger absently whirled the long-pointed rower on his spur. The hardness at his lips somehow spread to his eyes, that were bent on the whirring rower. It was the look that had come into the face of the baby down on the Staked Plains when Ezra called and called after he had been answered twice; the look that had held firm the lips of ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... us, and interposed his dark wings between us and the blessed sun; indeed, so instantaneous was the effect, that it reminded me of the withdrawing of the foot—lights in a theatre. The road now wound round the base of a precipitous spur from the Liguanea Mountains, which, instead of melting onto the level country by gradual decreasing undulations, shot boldly out nearly a mile from the main range, and so abruptly, that it seemed mortised into the plain, like a rugged promontory running into a frozen lake. On looking up along ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in certain respects bicycles and tricycles answer admirably to the requirements of travellers in search of the picturesque. They are swift or slow at need, may be halted without want or waste, and have no vicious instincts to be combated by whip or spur. But they are nevertheless hideous inventions, and it is impossible for lookers-on to feel for wheelmen the cordial good will given so freely to Mr. Stevenson on his donkey, for instance. The rider on wheels is an object that exasperates the nerves of horses, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend be dismounted in the rapid career, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... hurricane," said Bob, inventing something on the spur of the moment. "Only, instead of blowing straight ahead or around in a circle it blows up and down. It's liable to snatch you right up to the clouds, or suck you down into ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... stir it, up it blazes, much higher and brighter than if no coals had been put on. I knew a horse that was not naturally good-tempered, and bad usage had made him much worse: he was then bought by a gentleman, who gave him enough of the whip, and spur, and sharp iron bit to cure him, if that could have done it; but it only made him cunning and revengeful. Poor beast! a little patient kindness would have gone much farther. I will tell you an ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... violets; and yet, except for the fact that he had never before sent her flowers, he could not rightly be accused of sentimentalism. He had acted on the spur of the moment, remembering only the sad, wistful smile with which she had bade him good-night when she stood at the door of the pension. Or perhaps he had been prompted by the fact that she ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... charming gardens; the epithets 'great, rich, and fine city'; the 'trade, manufactures, and handicrafts,' and the 'necessaries in great plenty and cheapness,' appear to apply rather to the populous plain and the large city of ancient fame, than to the small Fu-yang hien ... shut in by a spur from the hills, which would hardly have allowed it in former days to have been a great city." (Note by Baron R.) The after route, as elucidated by the same authority, points with even ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... order of knighthood?"—"I would."— "In the name of God, then! And may He order it that it be well bestowed on you, and that you may grow in honour as you have in person." Then, putting on the right spur, he said, "Now are you a knight, and may receive the sword." The king took the sword, and gave it to him, and the Child girded it on. "Then," said Perion, "according to your manner and appearance, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... in many a perilous place, I who sprang from the Swaying Stone to the point of the Trembling Spur, and missed my aim, but never, never in such a one as this. Agony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst from every pore. I could feel it running down my face like tears; my hair bristled upon my head. And below, in utter silence, Leo turned round and round, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... whole action in the matter, that I doubt if the sight of Mr. Barrows' writing alone, even though it had been used in transcribing her name, would have served to recall the incident to my mind. But the shade of the envelope—it was of a peculiar greenish tint—gave that unconscious spur to the memory which was needed to bring back the very look of the writing which had been on the letter I had so carelessly handled; and I found, as others have found before me, that there is no real forgetfulness in this world; that the most superficial glance may serve to imprint ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... brood over the past, Molly," said Mr. Wingate, a grass-covered mound in Pine Forest Cemetery rising before him. "Let the dead past be gone." "I will not! I cannot!" said Molly, pausing. "The past will spur me to higher aims in the future. I never can forget the time that Harold came to make a last plea to me to be his wife, expressing his willingness to make every sacrifice for my happiness. He had bright hopes of success in his ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... starved appetite. How he would handle him, what he would do with him, when he found him, did not occupy his thoughts; it was a purpose and not a plan which was taking him ashore. He had the man's pursy large face for ever in his consciousness; the vision of it was a spur, an exasperation; he found himself swimming furiously, wasting strength, in the thought ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... recovered consciousness, and her movement in sitting up recalled me to my duty. I ran to Sir Cyril, and, kneeling down so as to screen his body from her sight, I drew the dagger from its sheath, and began hastily, with such implements as I could contrive on the spur of the moment, to attend ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... flanks beneath the yoke in vain Quiver; their nostrils vainly void as foam Dense tides of lava; and in vain they rear; For Number on their mettled haunches poised Holds them, or duly with the rein controls, Or in their flanks buries his spur divine." (3/8.) ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... one-half the distance had been made, his pony looked sharply through the semi-darkness in the direction indicated and there about three hundred feet away were the Indians; four of them were mounted, the remainder on foot. Mr. Hindman put whip and spur to his pony and ran him for about a mile, then he stopped in a valley to listen for the Indians, but he did not hear or ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... on, though in truth he hardly knew any longer why he ran or what his need for haste, and as he came to the wood round a spur where a cluster of young beeches grew, he saw a tall, upright, elderly man walking there, well-dressed and of a neat, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... the most painful, was a blessing. He had felt that the only chance of combating his sorrow, and preventing its obtaining full mastery over all his faculties, was to work off the sense of depression by hard study,—to battle against it with the arms of some engrossing occupation; but how could he spur himself up to study without an object?—and he was as far as ever from obtaining his father's consent to fitting himself for the bar, or for any other professional pursuit. No,—there was only one pursuit left open to him, the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Cyrus, "can one solitary speech fill the hearer's soul on the selfsame day with honour and uprightness, guard him from all that is base, spur him to undergo, as he ought, for the sake of glory every toil and every danger, implant in him the faith that it is better to die sword in hand than to escape by flight? [52] If such thoughts are ever to be engraved in the hearts of men and there abide, we must ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... not now the originals, are among the most extraordinary letters ever written. All shame, all hesitation, all innocence, are flung away in them. The writer is so fired with passion that each sentence is like a cry to a lover in the dark. As De Peyster says: "In them the animal instincts override and spur and lash the pen." Mary was committing to paper the frenzied madness of a woman consumed to her very marrow by the scorching blaze of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her little boot touched the side of the pony, and it was off with a bound. She was galloping wildly down the trail ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... galloped along the path, until they found themselves by noon, at the foot of a spur of mountains that extended from the main coast range to the ocean. Jim regarded this barrier in their way with a ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... them to pull another stroke, the taskmaster's whip, mercilessly applied, proves that they not only can pull still, but pull well too. I am ashamed to say how these two beloved women had almost to carry me, a stout youth; and even all their strength might have been insufficient but for the potent spur of the dragoons' return. With an arm round the neck of each, and resting almost my entire weight on their shoulders, I managed to scuffle along, very slowly and with fearful pain, towards Les Arenes. We paused now and ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... veterans of Verdun. The artillery preparation, made chiefly by pieces of 220, 274, and 370 mm., lasted for three full days. The assault was let loose on December 15, at 10 a.m.; on the left the French objectives were reached by noon; the whole spur of Hardaumont on the right was swiftly captured, and only a part of the German centre still resisted, east of Bezonvaux. This was reduced the next day. The Cote du Poivre was taken entire; Vacherauville, Louvemont, Bezonvaux as well. The front was now three kilometres ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... live—live—live—to tell my darling how I had loved her all the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all my life, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was in very deed my most conscious and perpetual spur henceforth until the end. ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... opening the gate, sauntering up the avenue and turning down the path which she had taken. But the trespass on private property, and the fear of being stopped at the mansion to make explanations, deterred him from taking the step. He judged it wiser to spur up the main road and trust to luck. Perhaps he might find an outlet for that bridal path whence she would issue. In this surmise he was not mistaken. After riding about half a mile he came to the mouth of a rugged, unfrequented country road, the bed of which was moist from the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... reaches me in a tiny village on a spur of a range of beech clad hills, whither I have fled for a breathing space from the nightmare of the war and the menacing gloom of the London streets at night. Here the darkness has no terrors. In the wide arch of the sky our lamps are lit nightly as the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... boy who was lying in wait with a boot-black's apparatus on his back for any dusty foot. "Chico, come and clean my shoes." He jested with the boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave him a shining peseta. Hillyard was revelling in the romance of his life under the spur of the excitement which the affair of the letter had fired in him. "Yes, I wandered here, passing up and down in front of this ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... had leaped, under the spur of necessity, to an independence of understanding beyond his years, allowed himself to be quite misled by the Squire as to his attitude in the matter of the mortgage. In spite of the momentary light reflected from the doctor's shrewder intelligence ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the intonation carried Pixie's thoughts irresistibly towards another speaker, whose memory war associated with her own first meeting with Stanor. On the spur of the moment ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... to a block of wood with handscrews or a vise. Punch a hole, with a nail set or punch, in the center of the circle to be cut, large enough to receive the spur of the expansive bit. A few turns of the brace will cut out the circle and leave a smooth edge. —Contributed ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... deep-lying impulse to give pleasure, to be pleasing, made an effort to overcome her somber lassitude and spoke of Molly's miraculous competence in dealing with the fire. Her companion said that of course Molly hadn't made all that up out of her head on the spur of the moment. After spending every summer of her life in Lydford, it would be surprising if so energetic a child as Molly hadn't assimilated the Vermont formula for fighting fire. "They always put for the nearest factory and get all hands out," he explained, adding meditatively, as he chewed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... respond to the slightest touch on her mouth, and stopped instantly. Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at her temples, confusing what she actually heard with what her imagination pictured. She was half-way up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid from the saddle, and putting her ear to the ground listened, Indian fashion. Above the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously, like the imprisoned roar of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... along the summit of yonder spur or buttress," said Dale. "That will bring us back to the main part of the mountain, and we ought to reach ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the intellectual activity of Charlemagne acted as a spur to Alfred's personal ambition and to his desire to elevate his people. Although he did not follow the example of Charlemagne in seeking universal education for his people, he did urge that the children of every freeman should be able to read and write, and should have instruction in Latin. The distinction ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... and crouched on a mat, or at the gates, or wherever carriages must proceed slowly on the highroads near the city, as for instance up the slope of the Appian Way as it passed over the south-western spur of the Alban Hills. Other towns would be infested in the same manner. Nor were thieves and footpads wanting in the streets or highwaymen upon the roads, especially in the lonelier parts near the marshes ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... might have gone, for she had an active, creative imagination, and a discriminating, critical judgment of style. As it was, her writings were not extensive, and were almost all produced under the spur of some particular need. They ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Sister Martha? You know what we Hawaiians are. You know what we were half a hundred years ago. Lilolilo was wonderful. I was reckless. Lilolilo of himself could make any woman reckless. I was twice reckless, for I had cold, grey Nahala to spur me on. I knew. I had never a doubt. Never a hope. Divorces in those days were undreamed. The wife of George Castner could never be queen of Hawaii, even if Uncle Robert's prophesied revolutions were delayed, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... in us by moral consistency is joined the invigorating idea of the most perfect suitability in the great whole of nature. In this case the thing that seemed to militate against this order, and that caused us pain, in a particular case, is only a spur that stimulates our reason to seek in general laws for the justification of this particular case, and to solve the problem of this separate discord in the centre of the general harmony. Greek art never ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... weight, the size of a small turkey, and covered with the most beautiful feathers, pale yellow speckled with brown, a long neck and a short, strong beak, long black legs with three toes, the fourth, the spur, missing. That a hawk should knock over a bustard had not happened often, and he regretted that he knew not how to save the bird's skin, for though stuffed birds are an abomination, one need not always be artistic. And there were plenty at Riversdale. His grandfather ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... was sure, the other would be a source of equal satisfaction. His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred; and Catherine's sincere commendations acted as a spur to his industry. His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect: I could hardly fancy it the same individual I had beheld on the day I discovered my little lady at Wuthering Heights, after ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Dick's—sank up to the feathers in the horse's neck, and down it came. The rider shook himself clear and began to fight. Hugh was beaten to his knee beneath a heavy blow that his helm turned. He rose unhurt and rushed at the knight, who, in avoiding his onset, caught his spur on the body of a dead ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... cliffs of the middle ridges having been scrambled over, on the following morning they stood on the summit of Cumberland mountain, the farthest western spur of this line of heights. From this point the descent into the great western valley began. What a scene opened before them! A feeling of the sublime is inspired in every bosom susceptible of it, by ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... adultery, action is never taken against the woman, but against the adulterer. An abominable custom among the men is to bore a hole through the genital organ, placing within this opening a tin tube, to which they fasten a wheel like that of a spur, a full palm in circumference. These are made of tin, and some of them weigh more than half a pound. They use twenty kinds of these wheels; but modesty forbids us to speak of them. By means of these they have intercourse with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... the information he was after, he could not have told himself. It was a pet aphorism between O'Connor and him that they had often traveled to success on the backs of their hunches. And his proposition to Mercer was made on the spur of one of those moments when the spirit of a hunch possessed him. His morning had been one of unexpected excitement, and now he leaned back in an effort to review it and to forget, if he could, the distressing thing that ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... with the sun shining brighter than ever, ain't that so, Tony? Of course it is. Well," went on Phil, sagely, "I guess I can size the McGee up, all right. He's just got a fiendish temper. He does things on the spur of the moment, that he's sorry for afterwards. All right. I can understand such a man; and Tony, take it for me, I'd rather deal with such a fiery disposition than the cold, calculating one of the man who never ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... older part of all these river towns, from Bremen to Koenigsberg, rests upon hills, while in every case the newer and lower part is built on piles or artificially raised ground on the alluvium.[412] So Utrecht, the Ultrajectum of the Romans, selected for its site a long raised spur running out from the solid ground of older and higher land into the water-soaked alluvium of the Netherlands. It was the most important town of all this region before the arts of civilization began the conquest by dike and ditch of the amphibian coastal belt which now comprises ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... on a spur running from the hills. Looking down the river from it, one saw level flats waving with long grasses, in which the solemn cattle waded knee-deep. Here and there clumps of willows and stately poplars waved in the breeze. In the clear, dry air all colours ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... sudden departure. There was a sort of guarded irony suppressed in her tone—she was evidently feeling her way with the stranger, and when she found that Susan would only own to causes Lord Shrewsbury had adduced on the spur of the moment, she was much too wary to continue the examination, though Susan could not help thinking that she knew full well the disturbance which ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whatever I lay out for the show, but working on every number at the same time, doing maybe four steps for one number, four for another, and so on, until I have laid out the whole show in my mind. I never lay a show out in advance. I do my best work on the spur of the moment. I have tried the other way, but whatever is cut and dried is never any good. I must be inspired ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... others his tattooed breast, upon which he had his whole mournful history imprinted. Upon his arm were his own and his bride's names. That pleased me; I wished to have my name also on my arm. 'It is painful!' said he; 'then thou wilt pipe, my lad!' That was spur enough to make me desire it. I allowed him to puncture my skin, to puncture an O and a T upon my shoulder, and did not cry,—no, not once whilst the powder burnt into it; but I was praised, and was proud to bear the initials—proud of them until three years ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... of black battlemented walls, the town is built near Cape Apcheron, on the extreme spur of the Caucasian range. But am I in Persia or in Russia? In Russia undoubtedly, for Georgia is a Russian province; but we can still believe we are in Persia, for Baku has retained its Persian physiognomy. I visit a palace of the khans, a ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... against the spur, Sir Knight," answered Adrian, "a wise horseman should, in such a case, take care how he pull the rein too tight, lest the beast should rear, and he be overthrown—yet that is the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his goodwill, the longer he listened to Ned, the cooler he felt himself grow. Another disagreeable impression was left by the grudging, if-nothing-better-turns-up fashion, in which Ned accepted an impulsive offer on his part to take him into the store. It was made on the spur of the moment, and Mahony had qualms about it while his words were still warm on the air, realizing that the overture was aimed, not at Ned in person, but at Ned as Polly's brother. But his intuition did not reconcile him to Ned's luke-warmness; ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... have made themselves absolutely useful to him. This Scot, being a most inveterate enemy to France, lets the Prince rest neither night nor day, but is still inspiring him with new hopes of a crown, and laying him down all the false arguments imaginable, to spur the active spirit: my lord is not of the opinion, yet seems to comply with them in Council; he laughs at all the fopperies of charms and incantations; insomuch, that he many times angers the Prince, and is in eternal little feuds with Hermione. The ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and taunted, Brown was true. Guarded at friendship's shrine the fame of the unpublished story grew and grew. It's a long, long lane that has no end, but some lanes end in the Potter's field; Smith to Brown had been more than friend: patron, protector, spur and shield. Poor, loving-wistful, dreamy Brown, long and lean, with a smile askew, Friendless he wandered up and down, gaunt as a wolf, as hungry too. Brown with his lilt of saucy rhyme, Brown with his tilt of ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... since he was a boy, he had longed to be free; and he had already gone through enough to convince him he had better not lose the chance that offered. He concluded by saying, "Don't worry about me, dear grandmother. I shall think of you always; and it will spur me on to work hard and try to do right. When I have earned money enough to give you a home, perhaps you will come to the north, and we ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... menace could not but fill Wahb with uneasiness, for he was not young now, and his teeth and claws were worn and blunted. He was more than ever troubled with pains in his old wounds, and though he could have risen on the spur of the moment to fight any number of Grizzlies of any size, still the continual apprehension, the knowledge that he must hold himself ready at any moment to fight this young monster, weighed on his spirits and began to tell on ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hot walk over rough, hilly roads brought the visitor to Cordelia's place just after the noon hour of a sweltering July day, and the shade of the tall water oaks near the little cabin was a most welcome sight. The house stood only a few feet from a spur of railroad track but the small yard was enclosed by a luxurious green hedge. Roses predominated among the many varieties of flowers in evidence ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... followed the horse-shoe, encircling at the base hospital in alphabetical designation. "N" and "O" blocks nestled in a glade of trees, partially sheltered from the Southern sun, just around the bend in the curve of the road from the base-hospital. "Y" block formed the other end of the spur at Admiral—while divisional headquarters rested on the knoll in ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... say "Come, Gerda," seemed strange. She probably thought that Kom must be Swedish, and that it sounded well. She certainly invented Kom on the spur of the Scandinavian moment, and I learned afterward that it was correct. My inspired Letitia! Still, in spite of all, my opinion is that "Come, Gerda," would have done just ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... had been born in old Egypt, he would have found his chief diversion in the building of pyramids, so undismayed is he by the size of a task. His patriotism is a sharp spur to him, and has enabled him to write an orchestral composition devoted to Paul Revere's Ride; a fantasy descriptive of a battle between the Northern and Southern armies; "The Battle of Manila;" ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... shop to buy Du Halde; and upon hearing me express an enthusiastic desire to visit China, he undertook to apply to his father to take me in the ambassador's suite. His representation of me as a young man of talents and literature, and the view of some botanical drawings, which I executed upon the spur of the occasion with tolerable neatness, procured me the favour which I so ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... mud-spots off my boots in the stirrup. It is quite useless to bellow, "That will do, Steggles!"—his ideal is the unattainable perfection, and he persists. I have to escape by giving Sapphira the spur at the risk of knocking Steggles into the mud, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... you will be sure to have this, or something like it, 'Oh, he has plenty of go in him; but he knows when to pull up.' He may have all other defects in him; he may be coarse, he may be illiterate, he may be stupid to talk to; still this great union of spur and bridle, of energy and moderation, will remain to him. Probably he will hardly be able to explain why he stops when he does stop, or why he continued to move as long as he, in fact, moved; but still, as by a rough instinct, he pulls up pretty much where he should, though ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... stood by the right side, should take the opportunity of his absence to seduce his wife! It was a hideous and incredible idea, some mad mistake which could be easily explained. Dundee, throwing off his black and brooding burden of thought, would touch his horse with the spur and gallop for a mile in gayety of heart and then ride on his way, singing some Cavalier song, till Grimond, who kept away from his master those days and rode among the troopers, would shake his head, and say to himself, "God grant he be not fey" (possessed). Dundee would ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... two-handled swords; or that of Lucca—its fantastic columns clasped by writhing snakes and winged dragons, their marble scales spotted with inlaid serpentine, every available space alive with troops of dwarfish riders, with spur on heel and hawk in hood, sounding huge trumpets of chase, like those of the Swiss Urus-horn, and cheering herds of gaping dogs upon harts and hares, boars and wolves, every stone signed with its grisly beast—be one whit ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Tom; "that is," added he, with as much of a swagger as he could assume on the spur of the moment, "I had been half thinking of just seeing what it was like. Some of our fellows, you know, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... circumstances it was a crowning stroke of misfortune. To-day was the twenty-first of his twenty-eight days' leave: to-morrow he was to begin a round of what he called duty visits among his relatives; he would have to motor, play golf, dance attendance on girls at theatres and concerts, and spur himself to a thousand activities that he detested. There was no escape for him. Perhaps he could have faced this seven days' penance more equably if he had had the recollection of three well-employed weeks to sweeten it. Even ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... be said that men will not work well if the fear of dismissal does not spur them on. I think it is only a small percentage of whom this would be true at present. And those of whom it would be true might easily become industrious if they were given more congenial work or a wiser training. The residue who cannot be coaxed into industry by any such methods ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... friend. "I said yer wasn't a cart-hoss: one touch of the spur and up goes tail and ears, and then look out. Are yer ashamed to do any kind of honest work? I mean kinder pious work, that hasn't any smack of the devil you're ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the two bays, ready to drive in the yoke, most vehement to drive in the yoke. And this red stallion too, loudly neighing, has been placed here, beautiful to behold; may it not cause you delay on your marches, O Maruts; spur ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... versatility with which his thought at once assumed the right attitude of defence against any argument coming from any quarter. I used to think that while others of us could perhaps find, on the spur of the moment, AN answer more or less effective to some unexpected attack, your father seemed always able to find THE answer—I mean the answer that it was reasonable to give, consistently with his general view, and much the same answer that he would have given if he had been ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 13th Battalion, had a spur knocked off his heel by a bullet while climbing a fence, and a private of the same battalion had the ball on the top of ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... had surrounded the house, and Mr. King and his servant being in bed they immediately commanded them to rise and put on their cloaths. While his servant was putting on his spurs, one of the soldiers damned him, saying, was he putting a spur on a prisoner? To whom he replied, He would put on what he pleased: For which he received from him a blow: then another gave that soldier a blow, saying, Damn you, sir, are you striking a prisoner, while making no resistance. In the hurry, Mr. King's servant ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... scattered village on the western slopes of the Cuckmere valley; the Early English church is embowered in trees on a spur of the Downs; there is a fine canopied tomb in the chancel, an old screen and an uncommon type of font built in the wall. Note the eloquent epitaph to ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... method by which federal power under the Constitution has been extended has been the adaptation—some will say the perversion—by Congress of old grants of power to new ends. Under the spur of public sentiment Congress has discovered new legislative possibilities in familiar clauses of the Constitution as one discovers new beauties in a familiar landscape. The clause offering the greatest possibilities has been the so-called Commerce Clause, which ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... Compared with many other Old Testament books, the religious value of Ecclesiastes is slight indeed. Its chief value, however, is historical: it presents one phase of thought in the Judaism of this period, and shows how sorely the Jewish people needed the spur of a great crisis to rouse them to noble and unselfish action. The book of Ecclesiastes also furnishes the darker background which brings out in clear relief the inspiring messages of the great prophets that had gone before, and of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... moving off, and we can head for camp," Frank remarked, as they still hovered behind the spur of rocks that had concealed them, though allowing a view of the ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... registered an increase every year since. Negotiation of 19 production-sharing arrangements (PSAs) with foreign firms, which have thus far committed $60 billion to oil field development, should generate the funds needed to spur future industrial development. Oil production under the first of these PSAs, with the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, began in November 1997. Azerbaijan shares all the formidable problems of the former Soviet republics in making the ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... into the yard, and turned their faces toward us. If we had come down their chimney, they could not have seemed more astonished. Not making out what they said, I went down to the house, and learned to my chagrin that we were still on the Mill Brook side, having crossed only a spur of the mountain. We had not borne sufficiently to the left, so that the main range, which, at the point of crossing, suddenly breaks off to the southeast, still intervened between us and the lake. We were about five miles, as the water runs, from the point of starting, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... from Tzintzuntzan with every species of red pottery, from cups to immense water-jars, in great nets on the backs of horses, asses, men, and women. Beyond the railroad the trail picked its way, with several climbs over rocky spur-ends, along the marshy edge of the lake, which was so completely surrounded by mud and reeds that I had to leave unfulfilled my promised swim in it. The trip was made endless by the incessant chatter of the "doctor," who rattled on in English without a break; and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... provides for them, and without social grades to spur them to ambition, their sports and races and amusements of many kinds occupy the chief attention of the men, who quickly succumb to their more energetic and businesslike rivals from India or China. The women, more capable ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... No further spur was needed. Miss Pritty scrambled up into the tree and crept towards her friend with such reckless haste that one of her feet slipped off the branch, and her leg passing through the foliage, appeared in the regions ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... in the Bavarian nobility, was celebrating a double festival: his silver wedding and the completion of his castle, Franzensruhe, which he had built outside the gates of Marktbreit, on the slope of one of the hills, which, as the last western spur of the Steigerwald, roll in a gradual descent to the bank of the Main. The castle was a magnificent edifice, in the Renaissance style—of course. Red sandstone and white marble had been used, with a beautiful ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a sort of yell, which came not amiss into his part, started up with his club, and dealt a sound douse or two on each side of him; and then, like a coach-horse pricked by the spur, started off at once into the full career of his address, and by dint of active prompting on the part of Dickie Sludge, delivered, in sounds of gigantic intonation, a speech which may be thus abridged—the reader being to suppose that the first lines were addressed ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... if there's one now." She turned round, stared for a minute at the south-west, where ill weather discoloured the hills like a bruise, and said reproachfully, "Surely the rain will never come to spoil to-day." To-day was to be such a lovely holiday. And then she ran round the stone spur of the bridge and crouched down beside the arch ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... "Twopenny doss in Spur Street, off of 'Orseferry Road, Westminster." This identification is to help Rosalind, as she may not be able to spot this particular doss-house among ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... which Mr. Pertell had thought of on the spur of the moment, required Mr. Bunn to fall into the horse trough, and the actor, after strenuously objecting, finally yielded. He fell into the big hollowed-out log that served to hold the water for the farm animals, making a mighty splash as ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... girl replied, her big eyes shining. And with the words there entered into Jerry-Jo's distorted imagination a concrete and lasting jealousy of poor Dick Travers, who was innocent of any actual memory of Priscilla Glenn. Travers at that time was studying as few college men do, always with the spur of lost years and a big ambition ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... counties and boroughs in the name of the Council requesting contributions. The letters remained generally unanswered; and in the autumn fresh letters had to be sent out in which the war which now threatened German Protestantism in the Palatinate was used to spur the loyalty of the country to a response. The judges on assize were ordered to press the king's demand. But prayer and pressure failed alike. In the three years which followed the dissolution the strenuous efforts of the sheriffs only raised sixty thousand pounds, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not as being in the slightest degree evidential, but for its intrinsic interest, and because I am personally convinced that she had not sufficient imagination to have made it up on the spur of the moment. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... afraid of that—no danger of my coming to shame any more than a thousand other people in office, who never trouble themselves about diplomatic information, and all that. There is always some clerk who knows the forms, and with those, and looking for what one wants upon the spur of the occasion in books and pamphlets, and so forth, one may go on very well—if one does but know how to keep one's own counsel. You see I got through with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the jail, or some authorized place, to receive their punishment, a faithful record whereof, including slave and owner's names, to be kept. My reasons for this proposal are, that a man will frequently punish on the spur of the moment, when a little reflection would subdue his anger, and save the culprit. Also, that it is my firm conviction that a great portion of the cruelty of which slaves are the victims, is caused by half-educated owners of one or ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... experience-drama, and the Devil's function is to provide the experience. And he is a devil, not the Devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of God, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the world-economy, to spur man to activity. This he does partly by cynical criticism and opposition, but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. At first Mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Privatization of government-owned copper mines relieved the government from covering mammoth losses generated by the industry and greatly improved the chances for copper mining to return to profitability and spur economic growth. Copper output increased in 2004 and is expected to increase again in 2005, due to higher copper prices and the opening of new mines. The maize harvest was again good in 2004, helping boost GDP and agricultural exports. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... usually wound up his remarks with a question which, irrespective of its length, was generally made to sound like one word. The habit affected me as the application of a spur affects a well-fed and not unwilling steed. I did not resent it, but it made me jump. On this occasion I explained to the best of my ability that I wanted whatever sort of job I could get, but preferably one ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... his arm, like that of a roasted grouse-cock. This gallant equerry was mounted on a steed as old as that which toiled betwixt the shafts of the carriage, and which he guided by a leading rein. Goading one animal with his single spur, and stimulating the other with his whip, he effected a reasonable trot upon the causeway, which only terminated when the whiskey stopped at Mr. Bindloose's door—an event of importance enough to excite the curiosity of the inhabitants ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... him and smitten from his hand the shining lash. Then from his eyes ran tears of anger, for that he saw the mares still at speed, even swiftlier than before, while his own horses were thrown out, as running without spur. But Athene was not unaware of Apollo's guile against Tydeides, and presently sped after the shepherd of hosts, and gave him back the lash, and put spirit into his steeds. Then in wrath after the son of Admetos was the goddess gone, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... its beak enabled it to dig up insects out of the soft sand far more easily than if it had been straight. We saw vast numbers of the large black goose walking about slowly and feeding. It had a strong black spur on the shoulder, with which it can defend its young. David told us that it forms its nests in ant-hills, and, of course, eats up the inhabitants. Among the several varieties of geese was the Egyptian ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... sign-posts, and conveyed an additional lesson. You will find such crosses in the desolate country on the borderland of Yorkshire and Lancashire. They were usually placed on the summit of hills. In Buckinghamshire there are two crosses cut in the turf on a spur of the Chilterns, Whiteleaf and Bledlow crosses, which were probably marks for the direction of travellers through the wild and dangerous woodlands, though popular tradition connects them with the memorials of ancient battles between the Saxons ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... reminiscences of Provence. One side of the wall was largely covered by a picture of Frejus by Wislin, painted in the days when St. Raphael and Valescure did not exist, and when the old town rose clear from the low ground as Rome rises from the Campagna, the beautiful Roquebrune, a spur of Sir Charles's beloved Mountains of the Moors, behind it. Sevres china, vases, bronzes, filled the window ledges, presents to the first Baronet from the Emperor of Austria, Napoleon III., the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor Frederick), ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... very good, sir, but really I would rather not, if you will excuse me. It is horrid being thanked and made a fuss about, just because, on the spur of the moment, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... night when speeding upon a similar errand, they rode for a long time in silence. Again they two alone were pushing out into the dark and the vast silence that was broken only by the soft thudding of their own horses' hoofs and the creak of saddle leather and jingle of spur ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Hall there is a loop under the Park. From 142d Street there is a spur north under Lenox Avenue to 148th Street. There is a spur at Westchester and Third Avenues connecting by viaduct the Manhattan Elevated Railway Division of Interborough Rapid Transit Company with the viaduct of the subway at or near ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... a word, and he did not even look at Sheba, though she watched him with admiring and longing eyes. As soon as they were fairly in their seats the horses, which were fine creatures, needing neither whip nor spur, sprang forward with a light, easy movement, and so cantered down the street towards the high road which stretched itself over a low hill about a ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... world-thought: and for this end it is our business to be thinkers, using the divine Manasic light within us to some purpose. H.P. Blavatsky supplied something much greater than a dogma: she—like Plato —gave the world a method and a spur to thought: pointed for it a direction, which following, it might solve all problems and heal ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... allows him great credit, as an author contemporary with his subject, grave, well cultivated, instructed in the facts of which he treats, and of entire probity. He observes, however, that his writings being composed on the spur or excitement of the moment, often related circumstances which subsequently proved to be erroneous; that they were written without method or care, often confusing dates and events, so that they must be read with ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... accuracy with which his valet selected socks to match his tie his entire happiness, to say nothing of his peace of mind, depended. His daily life consisted of a series of subdued and nicely adjusted social events. They were forecast for months ahead. Nothing was ever done on the spur of the moment at Mr. Hepplewhite's. He could tell to within a couple of seconds just exactly what was going to occur during the balance of the day, the remainder of Mrs. Witherspoon's stay and the rest of the month. It would ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... acorn, and kissed it twice, and kissed it thrice for thee! And do you know that it has grown into a fine young oak?' 'I know it,' she answered softly and sadly, 'I often go to it!' This was almost too much for me, and as my memory, on the spur of the moment, of Tennyson's Talking Oak was growing misty, I was afraid the interview might become embarrassing for lack of reminiscences, so I said, 'Dearest Olivia, that is so lovely of you. There, be a good girl, good-bye now. You'll surely come and see ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... hat, the laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that I have come up to you," exclaimed Don Josef. "There is work for you; your aid is wanted; you will not refuse it, I know? But come, ride back with me as fast as your beast's legs will move, and I will tell you. Give him the spur! spare him not; I may supply you with a better soon. The French are at no great distance from this; secure as they fancy themselves, we have spies among them to inform us of all their movements. After daybreak ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston |
