"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... said Nancy. "We both sought to wrest power and happiness from the world, to make our own laws. How can we assert that—this is not merely a continuation ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blow quite through his target drove, And bored through his breastplate strong and thick, The tender skin it in his bosom rove, The purple-blood out-streamed from the quick; To wrest it out the wounded Pagan strove And little leisure gave it there to stick; At Godfrey's head the lance again he cast, And said, "Lo, there again ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... gladly, could she but have seen how, would she have left her father and fled to Gerbino. In like manner, Gerbino, on learning of the marriage, was vexed beyond measure, and was oft times minded, could he but find means to win to her husband by sea, to wrest her from him by force. Some rumour of Gerbino's love and of his intent, reached the King of Tunis, who, knowing his prowess and power, took alarm, and as the time drew nigh for conveying the lady to Granada, sent word of his purpose to King Guglielmo, and craved his assurance that it might ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... could have borne with him well; and, as we have hitherto done, continued to pass by his labors with silent contempt. But we have deemed it important to show in what manner, and to what extent, the spirit of abolitionism can wrest the pure word of God ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... powerful protection of the Marshal de DURAS,[8] her lover, she prevailed over her formidable rival, who, however, had on her side the public, and the sublimity of her talent. This quarrel arose from Madame VESTRIS wishing to wrest from Mademoiselle SAINVAL the parts for which she was engaged. A memoir, written by an indiscreet friend, in favour of the latter, which she scorned to disavow, and in which the court was not spared, caused her to be banished from the capital by a lettre de cachet. The public, informed of her ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in her voice seemed to restore Cardo to life. He crossed the velvet path, and, laying hold of her hands, which she in vain tried to wrest from his grasp. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... that green spot where at last the sons and daughters of earth were to stand equal before the law. With no greater faith did the crusaders of old seize their shields and start on their perilous journey to wrest from the infidel the Holy Sepulcher, than did these defenders of a sacred principle enter Kansas, and with hope sublime consecrate themselves to labor for woman's freedom; to roll off of her soul the mountains of sorrow ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and cog, and ring, and cylinder; To nature's portals ye should be the key; Cunning your wards, and yet the bolts ye fail to stir. Inscrutable in broadest light, To be unveil'd by force she doth refuse, What she reveals not to thy mental sight Thou wilt not wrest from her with levers and with screws. Old useless furnitures, yet stand ye here, Because my sire ye served, now dead and gone. Old scroll, the smoke of years dost wear, So long as o'er this desk the sorry lamp hath shone. Better my little means hath squandered quite away Than burden'd by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... conflict for supremacy in the South was still uncertain, in the Northwest the Americans made a stroke destined to have astounding results. Virginia had long coveted lands in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was in this region that Washington had first seen active service, helping to wrest that land from France. The country was wild. There was almost no settlement; but over a few forts on the upper Mississippi and in the regions lying eastward to the Detroit River there was that flicker of a red flag which meant that the Northwest was under British rule. George Rogers Clark, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... catalogue of names for the electoral Legislature, calculated to impose the hesitant, who were not permitted to observe that he smarted and snarled under many a kick. Strong names were essential if the Republicans were to wrest New York from the Federals after twelve years of unbroken rule, but strong men had long since ceased to have aught to do with Burr; although Jefferson, as Hamilton suspected, had recently extended his politic paw. But in spite of snubs, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... German attempts to wrest from the French the trenches they had won on November 1, 1916, on the western edge of St. Pierre Vaast Wood were unsuccessful, though at some points the German troops succeeded in penetrating the lines. But their foothold in the French trenches was only temporary, and they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... now come to Greenhich three lette. Three greate ships staied in France. Gersea a letter from Lord S^t Albones. L11 per diem Hull. The king's answert to our petition about the militia. If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the weapon from. A similitude of a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... confident that such a prince as ours knows how to chuse for his people much better than they do for themselves; but how can they be certain that his descendants will have the same virtues; and when once an absolute power is granted to a good prince, it will be in vain that the people will endeavour to wrest it from the hands of a bad one.—Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country, that the relief would be as bad as the disease. Upon the whole, therefore, I cannot think Patkul in the wrong for attempting ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... daring hopes of ambition were set loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... we find carried forward into the invisible world is the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried by piling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest the Thunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; and next we read of a few specified criminals, who had been excessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his direct ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... wire factory in Second Avenue, and the rioters had learned the fact. Therefore they swarmed thither, forced an entrance, and began to arm themselves and their comrades. A despatch to headquarters announced the attack at its commencement, and the force we have named was sent off in hot haste to wrest from the mob the means of more effective resistance. Emerging into the avenue from 21st Street, Dilkes found the thoroughfare solid with rioters, who, instead of giving way, greeted the police with bitter ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... On forfeit of yourselves, think nothing true: Lest so you make the maker to judge you, For he knows, poet never credit gain'd By writing truths, but things (like truths) well feign'd. If any yet will, with particular sleight Of application, wrest what he doth write; And that he meant, or him, or her, will say: They make a libel, which he made ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... the flood of youth, seeking almost in vain to re-discover the spring that moved me then. Yet, though I can not feel it again, I know dimly what it was, that high, strange, noble, ludicrous ideal of my office which so laid hold on me as to scatter passion's forces and wrest me from the arms of her I loved. I can not now so think of my kingship, so magnify its claim, or conceive that it matters so greatly to the world how I hold it or what manner of man I show myself. I come ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... in with Swords drawn, wrest his Glass out of his hand, and break it against the ground; his rout make signe of resistance, but are all driven in; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... stooping posture down the hillock; the only words I heard poor Sir William utter being, 'Az barae Khooda' (for God's sake!) I saw his face, however, and it was full of horror and astonishment. I did not see what became of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past me by several Affghans, whom I saw wrest his weapons from him. Up to this moment I was so engrossed in observing what was taking place, that I actually was not aware that my own right arm was mastered, that my urbane friend held a pistol to my temple, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... now. You shall not hold me back. You don't understand. The man I love is up there, perhaps surrounded by savages. Let me go, I tell you! If he is dying I shall die by his side. Let me go! Would you have me strike you?" She turned on him like an angry goddess, and strove to wrest herself from his grip. At that instant Tollemache and Frascuelo, the only survivors of the deadly struggle forward, were driven back by a rush of Indians. They caught sight of others leaping ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... And I deem thou canst not do it. Nay, she said, staying the words that were coming from his mouth, I wot that thou canst do it if thine heart can suffer it; for thou art stronger than I, and thou mayst break my bow, and wrest this knife out of mine hand; and thou canst bind me and make me fast to the saddle, and so lead my helpless body into thraldom and death. But thou hast said that thou lovest me, and I believe thee herein. Therefore I know that thou canst not will to ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... whence know we to produce the other three?" From the meaning, as is said, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil."(377) I am hearing that "I shall be with them for good." If so, why is it said, "to decline after many to wrest judgment"?(378) "Because thy inclinations to good do not equal thy inclinations to evil. Thy inclinations to good are by the report of one. Thy inclinations to evil are by the report of two. And a tribunal ...
— Hebrew Literature
... hand. He fell into a chair near the table and dropped his face upon the yellowed fragments, pressing them against his lips with awful sobbing sounds, as if he would wrest from them the kisses the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and they had lost in the great gamble. Like thousands of other reckless adventurers attracted to the newly discovered diamond country, they had rushed out there from England, confident that they, too, could wrest from nature that wonderful gem, ever associated with tragedy and romance, mystery and crime, for the possession of which, since history began, men have been ready to give up their lives. Confident of their success, they had risked all on a turn of the wheel, and Fortune, mocking ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... IV. came to the throne at the early age of thirteen; and thus the kingdom came under the regency of Raymund II. of Tripoli. Happily for the kingdom whose king was a child and a leper, the attention of Saladin was distracted for several years by an attempt to wrest from the sons of Nureddin the inheritance of their father—an attempt partially successful in 1174, but only finally realized in 1183. The problems of the reign of Baldwin IV. may be said to have been two—his sister Sibylla and the fiery Raynald of Chatillon, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has employed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from Egyptian beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure, their soul; going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver, melt the gold ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve to decorate and to dignify the bowl from which he feeds!—how ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... nothing by it, it caused him more anguish than thousands who had lost their all. He was afraid of banks, afraid of men, afraid even of good mortgages on productive real estate. He dreaded some calamity he could not define, which would wrest from him every dollar he ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... impotent longing. He remembered the feeling which had come over him the day after his first arrival. He remembered the resolution he had formed then, and he felt angrily indignant with himself. What was it that had been able to wrest him aside from that which he had acknowledged as his duty, the single problem of his future life? The thirst after happiness—the old thirst after happiness. "It seems that Mikhalevich was right after all," he thought. "You wanted to find ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... salvation; as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you; (16)as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things; in which things are some that are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... summons to draw the sword in defence of the covenant; and the supreme authority over the military within the lines of communication had been, by an ordinance of the last year, vested in a committee, all the members of which were strongly attached to the Presbyterian interest. To wrest this formidable weapon from the hands of their adversaries, they forwarded a request to the two houses, that the command of the London militia might be transferred from disaffected persons to men distinguished by their ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... struggle for existence. In order to exist according to the needs of their psychic development they were often obliged to snatch from us the things which seemed necessary to them for the purpose. They had to move contrary to our laws, or sometimes to struggle with other children to wrest from them the ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... It was no less than to save Kentucky to the Union. A border State, with an interest in slavery, public opinion was divided, and it was uncertain to which side it would incline. The Confederates understood the value of the prize, and they had taken measures, which promised to be successful, to wrest it from the Union. The task had been committed to Gen. Humphrey Marshall, who had invaded Eastern Kentucky from the Virginia border, and had already advanced as ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... pressed desperately close as if to imprison the divine fugitive moment, the song seems to come nearest. Who has not held some loved face in his hands, and gazed into it with an almost agonizing effort to realize its reality, to make eternally sure of it, somehow to wrest possession of it and the transfiguring moment for ever, all the time pierced with the melancholy knowledge that tomorrow all will be as if this had never been, and life once more ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... 157, backbite, run down. Fr. despraver, spoyle, marre, make crooked, wrest, wry ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... The fact that Jason was himself wounded in the struggle was ingeniously utilised by the defence to show that he had received murderous blows from her hand, for the very reason that he had attempted (unsuccessfully, inasmuch as his right arm was impaired) to wrest the mad girl's murderous ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... others, all most learned as well in the vulgar tongue as in the Latin and the Greek—but also in every other faculty. Nor have they been too proud to set themselves with their little hands, so tender and so white, as if to wrest from us the palm of supremacy, to manual labours, braving the roughness of marble and the unkindly chisels, in order to attain to their desire and thereby win fame; as did, in our own day, Properzia de' ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... doth wrest thee, Ere folly hath much oppressed thee, Far from acquaintance kest thee Where country may digest thee... Thank God that so hath blessed thee, And sit down, Robin, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... opening of the tenth century we find in the chronicles of the time an account of a certain ambitious count of Troyes, Robert by name, who died in 923 while trying to wrest the crown of France from Charles the Simple. His county passed to his son-in-law, who already held, among other possessions, the counties of Chteau-Thierry and Meaux. His son, in turn, inherited all three counties and increased his dominions by judicious usurpations. This process ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... his servants, for he has only one gardener, whom he lends to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the bells for mass, which he ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... painfully and vividly, painted truthfully the mad terror that had seized upon her and struck her down at that frightful time, raised her hands to her brow with the gesture of despair, as though she would wrest the madness from her brain—and a shudder of pity and awe passed through the assembled crowd. It is a fact that at this moment, if her words were false, her anguish was both sincere and terrible. An angel soiled by crime, she lied like Satan ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The defeat of the feudalists and their Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's honour required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou from Louis VIII., and to strengthen the English hold over Gascony. Besides national obligations, clergy and laity alike were still called upon to contribute towards the cost of crusading enterprises, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... "To wrest your daughter and the wife of this royal warrior from the clutches of these archfiends you have but to command the resources of a mighty nation, for all Kaol is at your disposal. What may be done? ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than seven hundred men, including militia, and six hundred Indians was the cession of a territory and the surrender of a General-in-Chief, a strong fort, the armed brig John Adams, and the two thousand five hundred men, who were designed not to defend their country only, but to wrest Upper Canada from the Crown of Great Britain. To General Hull's fears of the savage ferocity of the Indians, this bloodless victory must, to some extent, however trifling, be attributed. General Hull was evidently superstitiously afraid of an Indian. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... remember," answered Bertram, "Gladstone's remarks in the Fortnightly Review, his almost prediction (unless we bestir ourselves): That England's daughter, the Great United States of America, may yet in the near future wrest from us our position in manufacturing of Head servant to the household of the world. Many of we British want ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... two fragile victims from the foe Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow. Each woe they suffered in a hostile land The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned. They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait To wrest the captives from their horrid fate. Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls, Each savage soldier's heart for ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... she wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look, fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her being. She wished to live, now that her reason had returned to her, to live to wrest from the Prince a word of pardon. It could not be possible that her existence was to end with the malediction of this man. It seemed to her, that, if she should ever see him face to face, she would find words of desperate supplication which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the weakness of her sex, stabbed herself in the thigh to try how she could bear pain; and finding herself constant enough to that sufferance, gently chid her Brutus for not trusting her, since now she perceived, that no torment could wrest that secret from her, which she hoped might be entrusted to her. If there were no more things to be said for your satisfaction, I could have made it disputable, which have been more illustrious in their friendship, men or women. I cannot say that women are capable of all those excellencies ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Clarissa had been nearly a week in Brussels—a very quiet week, in which she had had nothing to do but worship her baby, and tremblingly await any attempt that might be made to wrest him from her. She lived in hourly fear of discovery, and was startled by every step on the staircase and fluttered by every sudden opening of a door, expecting to see Daniel ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... hastily,—"Well, there's a little—but not much. My love affair at Loch Lomond did one thing for me,—it made me work hard. I had a sort of desperate idea that I might wrest a fortune out of journalism by dint of sheer grinding at it—but I soon found out my mistake there. I toiled away so steadily and got such a firm hold of all the affairs of the newspaper office where I was employed, that one fine morning I was dismissed. My proprietor, genial and kindly ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... is as lofty, as noble, and as clear as that in which proud man exults. Arise then, Women of America! Study immediately the tactics of military discipline; proceed to the green savannahs of Florida; wrest their authority from those who now possess it, and deck your own brows of loveliness with the wreaths of conquest and of glory. March to the halls of legislation; demand from statesmen there assembled the concession of 'woman's rights,' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... took her hand in his. She glanced about wildly. She was in a whirl of terror of everything under heaven. Too dignified to wrest herself away and run, she gave him a swift glance of appeal, then bent her ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... fact. From the mingling of these doubts and fears grew a feeling of resentment against Dic—a conviction before the fact. She wished him to know her regard for him, but she did not want him to learn it from any act of hers. She desired him to wrest it from her by main force, and as little awkwardness as a man may use. Had Dic by the smallest word or act shown a disposition to profit by what Rita feared had been excessive frankness in her letter, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... vain to attempt to win her sister's confidence, and she was too delicate to seek to wrest her secrets from her; she therefore took no notice of this effusion of love and disappointment, which she concluded it ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... his own manliness. He promised his mediation to better her eventful and mysterious life, to be a friend to her; and nobly did he keep his promise. On the following day he took measures for her rescue, and though several attempts were made to wrest her from him, and the mendacity of slave-dealers summoned to effect it, he had the satisfaction of seeing her restored to her native village,—to freedom, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of America, a court of men tried—and convicted—this solitary woman of sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and succeeded in irretrievably damaging ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... enterprise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance: and be debated within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from Method; albeit we count for the long run, that Method has assurance of success, however late in the race ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... giving a last caressing pat to the tray before closing the trunk, and the look of her thin hands, with their slightly swollen knuckles, caused him to lean forward suddenly and wrest the keys away ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... clenched fists, throwing all the power I possessed into my blows, and fortunately for me—a mere boy in the grasp of a heavily-built man—he was comparatively, powerless from loss of blood consequent upon his wounds, so that I was able to wrest myself ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... Parker, was elected by sixty or eighty thousand majority. Mr. Parker was an able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's, standing close to the conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type. These conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the Democratic party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They hailed Judge Parker's victory as a godsend. The Judge at once loomed up as a Presidential possibility, and was carefully groomed for the position by the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... bracelets, and the rings on her ankles: and at length, at the seventh gate, takes from her her last covering. When she at length arrives in the presence of Allat, she throws herself upon her in order to wrest from her in a terrible struggle the life of Dumuzi; but Allat sends for Namtar, her messenger of misfortune, to punish, the rebellious Ishtar. "Strike her eyes with the affliction of the eyes—strike her loins with the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half-an-hour, all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used to anything, and ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... thee—quotha!—still our best In counsel!—no man's soul is base as thine! Go to, thyself shrink shivering from the strife! Cower, coward, in thine halls! But all the rest, We men, will still go armour-girt, until We wrest from this our truceless war a peace That shall not shame us! 'Tis with travail and toil Of strenuous war that brave men win renown; But flight?—weak women choose it, and young babes! Thy spirit is like to theirs. No whit I trust Thee in the day of battle—thee, the man ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... "you are not made for a mortal, and I do not believe that you will ever be mine. At the very moment of possessing you some miracle will wrest you from my arms. Your divine spouse, perhaps, jealous of a simple mortal, will annihilate all my hope. It is possible that in a few minutes I shall ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... put his arm round her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly, he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should wrest that from him. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... now an impulse, like despair, Makes me these inner foldings tear! With desperate effort bids me wrest The yearning secret from my breast! Far be the thought that any blame Can fix on thy beloved name! The hapless Minstrel may not feign; But thou, I know, canst all explain— Yet let me from this place depart, To nurse my fainting, sicken'd heart! Yet let me ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... than the other. At last they agreed to try their powers upon a traveller, to see which could soonest strip him of his cloak. The North Wind had the first try; and, gathering up all his force for the attack, he came whirling furiously down upon the man, and caught up his cloak as though he would wrest it from him by one single effort: but the harder he blew, the more closely the man wrapped it round himself. Then came the turn of the Sun. At first he beamed gently upon the traveller, who soon unclasped his cloak and walked on with it hanging loosely about ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... without some alteration, for the whole inscription was thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa; To the unknown and strange Gods." And according to his example do the sons of the prophets, who, forcing out here and there four or five expressions and if need be corrupting the sense, wrest it to their own purpose; though what goes before and follows after make nothing to the matter in hand, nay, be quite against it. Which yet they do with so happy an impudence that oftentimes the civilians ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... invasions of France from Switzerland and the Upper Rhine in 1814, and Flanders and the Lower Rhine in 1815, and concluded that a similar result would have attended a like bold invasion under Marlborough and Eugene. There never was a greater mistake. The great object of the war was to wrest Flanders from France; when the lilied standard floated on Brussels and Antwerp, the United Provinces were constantly in danger of being swallowed up, and there was no security for the independence either of England, Holland, or any of the German States. If Marlborough and Eugene had had two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... is, duplicate her rival's fortification plans, her total military and naval strength; and so forth, and so on. The United States is not an enemy, but there are possibilities of her becoming so. Some day she must wrest Cuba from Spain, and then she may become a recognized ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... an up-to-date Persephone, visiting the underworld realm of Pluto to wrest from it hidden cosmic secrets, was described recently at a meeting of the American Geographical Society at the Engineering Building by Prof. Harlow Shapley, Harvard astronomical wizard, who told of the ultra-modern ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... apparently, as I have said, an effort of the human soul to wrest itself free from the entanglement of physical lust—which lust, though normal and appropriate and in a way gracious among the animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness become diseased and morbid or monstrous in Man. The work thus done ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... blame you, Duke," Mr. Sabin said. "My one desire now is to wrest my wife away from this gang. Can you tell me whether she left alone or ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... young knights who listened to the tale Upstarted with the cry: "God give us grace To wrest that sacred Spear ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... sometimes civility almost borders on servility. Notwithstanding this, however, it is quite plain that it was always thoroughly understood who was master in Italy, and that any attempt on the part of the Senate to wrest any portion of real power from Theodoric would have been instantly ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow; say'st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid! — But is there no other way? no lawful way? —Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest this old man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... monkey!" thought Tonio Kroeger. But he saw clearly that Inga Holm, the merry Inga, often followed M. Knaak's movements with a self-forgetful smile, and this was not the only reason why all this wonderfully controlled corporosity did at bottom wrest from him something like admiration. How peaceful and unperplexed M. Knaak's eyes were! They did not penetrate to the point where matters grow complex and mournful; they knew nothing save that they were brown and beautiful. But that ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... my botanist almost reprovingly. "You know, she won't be quite the same lady here that you knew in Frognal," I say, and wrest myself from a subject that is no longer agreeable by rising to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... in 1291, had conquered Acre, the last European stronghold in the Holy Land, had lost their power; but a new family of the Turkish race, the one that dwells in Europe to-day, the Osmanlis, had built up an empire by conquest over their fellows, and had begun to wrest province after province from the feeble Empire of the East. In 1354 their advance brought them across the Bosporus and they seized their first European territory.[23] Soon they had spread over most of modern Turkey. Only the strong-walled Constantinople held ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of him, with drivers just as keen and eager to win as he, and every one of them accustomed to dog-driving for years. Victors are some of them in previous contests, and not one of them is disposed to see a white lad from across the sea come and wrest their honour from them. Whips are flying now in earnest, and the dogs of other trains are waking up to realise that there is fire in their masters' eyes and strength in their arms and a burning sting at the end of the heavy lash. With terrific rushes they make ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... to achieve these reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe for effective ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... everlasting sky. Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat, In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet. There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: So rue the nations when their kings offend— When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will. Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear! Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear, That the foul record may no more be seen— Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... her seat. She did not even look behind her as she walked to the bed-room door, pushed it open, entered, and closed it, and turned the key in the old-fashioned lock. She had said all that she meant to say: no power, human or divine, should wrest another word from her just then. But in her heart she was crying over and over again the words that had been upon her lips a hundred ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the reconstruction and dreaded it; and there were no ties of blood to hold him in the States. Italy itself was in turmoil. Il Re Galantuomo, that Piedmontese hunter, Vittorio Emanuele, wished to liberate Venice from the grasp of Austria, to wrest temporal power from the Vatican, and to send the French troops back to France. Well, he accomplished all these things, and both my father and the prince were with him up to the time he entered the Quirinal. After victory, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... liable to be torn from the partner of his bosom and children at a moment's warning mal-treated worse than a brute, &c. &c. &c. is more desirable than to be a free man, able to acquire wealth, unrestricted in his movements, from whom none may wrest his wife or children, and who can find redress for any outrage ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... slate. These, he said, were collected by the peasants, who, in spring, covered their snow-clad fields with them; the sun, heating the slabs, caused the snow beneath to melt rapidly; and thus, by a very simple touch of art, they managed to wrest from Nature several weeks that would otherwise have ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to help her to wrest Andrew Dean from Lilian Swetnam! He was to take part in a shameful conspiracy! He was to assist in ruining an innocent child's happiness! And he was deliberately to foster the raw material of a scandal in which he himself would be involved! He, the strong, obstinate, self-centred ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to spare the useless shedding of blood, entered into a truce—some said a capitulation—with the revolutionary forces. The Duke d'Angouleme, in his rage, called the venerable marshal to his face a traitor. In endeavoring to wrest from him his sword, the duke severely wounded his own hand. General Marmont was put under arrest; but soon, by the more considerate ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... twice the sum: if that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er, On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart: If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority: To do a great right do a little wrong: And curb this ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... which proceeds from their sympathy with the energies of the living system. Could we recover the hand from the Cross, or from the custody of the Black Douglas, I would be pleased to observe this wonderful operation of occult sympathies. But, I fear me, one might as safely go to wrest the joint from the talons of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... (401-400 B.C.).—Cyrus, satrap of the Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... plan he knew of had been tried—and tried, too, with repeated success—and this was the engaging of a superior force to wrest the body from the surgeon's crew, a set of sturdy miscreants with whom to do battle a considerable mob was needed; but, with money grown very scarce and time so short, the thing could not be managed, and Reuben tried to tell Joan of its impossibility ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... that her every move was watched. During this period my father gained great distinction as a warrior and had taken the metal from several chieftains. His love for my mother had never diminished, and his own ambition in life was to reach a point where he might wrest the metal from Tal Hajus himself, and thus, as ruler of the Tharks, be free to claim her as his own, as well as, by the might of his power, protect the child which otherwise would be quickly dispatched should the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as it had been a creature of volition, and stood upright upon a smooth-faced bowlder. It needed all the man's strength to wrest it thence, and, grasping it securely, he carefully descended, for the last time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward a clump of gnarled trees which appeared to him like the faces of long-lost friends. It seemed to him that ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... certain barbarous and insipid writers would wrest into meaning that poets were to be thrust ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... physical wants, from those who are able to supply them; but there are few who will acknowledge your claim, or spare an atom of their superfluity to appease your cravings. That which they will not spontaneously give, it is not right to wrest from them by violence. What then ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... blow had fallen upon her was all too evident. Resentment, anguish, bitter despair alternated within her breast, and she seemed really not to care whether she lived or died. Was it for this that she had schemed, and so successfully, to wrest Lord Hartledon from his promised bride Anne Ashton? She would lie back in her chair and ask it. No labour of hers could by any possibility have brought forth a result by which Miss Ashton could be so well avenged. Heaven is true to itself, and Dr. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Constantinople. And Constantinople is a sacred city. It's the only ancient city purely Christian in its origin, having been built by the first Christian Emperor in honour of the Blessed Virgin. Which brings us to the noblest idea of all. In their fight to wrest this city from the Turk, the three great divisions of the Church are united once more. The great Roman branch is represented by the soldiers and ships of France: the great Eastern Orthodox branch by the Russians, who are behind the fight: the great Anglican branch by ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... interest in "The Freshman Full-Back" is that of character. The action has real dramatic quality and is staged with the local color of a college contest. But the great value of the action is ethical, for it shows that one may "wrest victory from defeat" and that it is a shameful thing to be a "coward and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... all Latin Christians, and seal your letters with the signet of your office as patriarch of Jerusalem. As a penance for my sins, I will travel over Europe, I will describe everywhere the desolate condition of the Holy City, and exhort princes and people to wrest it from the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... him with a shiver. Very shortly, when the little flour and pork was gone and their few cartridges had been expended, he would be reduced to the condition of primitive man. Cut off from all other resources, he must then wrest what means of subsistence he could from the snowy wilderness by brute strength and cunning and such instruments as he could make with his unassisted hands, except that an ax of Pennsylvania steel was better than a stone one. Civilization has its compensations, and Carroll longed ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... these means are the laws which present or ought to present to the will of man those motives which are most suitable to deter him from committing injurious actions. If these motives fail of the proper effect, if they are unable to influence him, society, for its own peculiar good, is obliged to wrest from him the power of doing it further injury. From whatever source his actions may arise, therefore, whether they are the result of free-agency, or whether they are the offspring of necessity, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... prosecuted to no good end. He has conquered large territory, but he has paid for it with the blood of his people. Neither they nor he are the better because of those accessions, and the duke has made enemies who will one day surely wrest them from him. A brave prince should not fear to be called a coward because of an act that will bring peace and happiness to his subjects and save their lives, their liberties, and their estates. That great ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... greater provocation, had at its commencement been less violent. The Treasurer was instantly driven from office, impeached, sent to the Tower. Sharp and vehement votes were passed on the subject of the Popish Plot. The Commons were prepared to go much further, to wrest from the King his prerogative of mercy in cases of high political crimes, and to alter the succession to the Crown. Charles was thoroughly perplexed and dismayed. Temple saw him almost daily and thought ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of her ablest and most venerable statesmen had given up honors and home for the privilege of being freemen! All the South knew that the admission of the state was but an empty form—powerless alike to aid their cause, or to wrest her from the firm grasp the Federal government had set ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... an' bauld, Wha haud the pleugh, or wake the fauld, Until your dearest bluid rin cauld, Aye true unto your country be. Wi' daring look her dirk she drew, An' coost a mither's e'e on you; Then let na ony spulzien crew Her dear-bought freedom wrest frae thee. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... not greatly care, O fairest and most shrewd of enemies. A half-hour since, it seemed to me an important matter to wrest from you this secret of giving life to images. Now I have seen the miracle; I know that for the man who has your favor it is possible to become as a god, creating life, and creating lovelier living beings than any god creates, and beings which live longer, too: ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... dull if he is never eloquent; he is always wise if he is seldom witty. Among the Elizabethan poets there will have been many of a lowlier quality, many who could not have reached the piety and sweet humour of "My friend if cause doth wrest thee," which, with its happy close of "And sit down, Robin, and rest thee," is the best known of all his rhymes. As a verbal acrobat I don't suppose any of them could approach him. His greatest ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... permission to kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort to safeguard him through his territory. It was the moral influence of prelates such as this and monks such as St. Bernard that enabled the hierarchy to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the bishoprics and abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices from lay potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money, and to ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of the Bible rather than the church. The creation of the order of the Jesuits, though directed more against Protestantism than against unbelief, was a witness, like the previous reactionary movement of the scholastic writers in the thirteenth century, to the wish to wrest the use of learning out of the hands of the opponents of the church, and to employ the weapons of reason ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... left her house that night for the purpose of meeting Peace, and that Dyson, who was jealous of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson, seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary. He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had been hired for a paltry sum to come ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of Conrad IV, last of the Hohenstaufen emperors; his heir is Conradin, his infant son. In Germany, William is acknowledged; Pope Innocent IV attempts to wrest the Two Sicilies from the Hohenstaufens; he is defeated by the regent Manfred, uncle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... very remarkable that a version by one who was either a Jew or a heretic Christian should have been preferred to the LXX of Daniel and the Additions so as practically to supersede it. Prof. J.J. Blunt describes Theodotion as one who "attempts to wrest the Hebrew from the cause of the Gospel" (Christian Church, p. 129). This was indicated by Irenæus, III. xxiii. 1. If, however, the previous version used by him was due to a pre-Christian Jew, this ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, God our aid! A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band, South, East, and on ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... rove not now on a lawless quest, With passions foul in the hero's breast, Moved by no greed at the fiend's behest, Gloating in lust o'er a bloody prey; But from tyrant robber the spoil to wrest, And tear ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the man next in order behind Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great difficulty, while amid the general confusion ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... and the personal is the key to Strauss' work. The church, when it continued faithful, had always looked to the Gospels as the Holy Sepulchre of its faith, and was ever ready to make a crusade against the power which would wrest it from her grasp. But, amid the conflicts occasioned by the growth of the destructive criticism, the Gospels had received at its hands a treatment no less severe than had been inflicted upon the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... in sparring for time. And the referee seemed willing to aid them, for his watch was in his hand, and the game had only the life of a few seconds to live, when the ball fell into the hands of Heady. The desperate boy realized that now he had the final chance to retrieve the day and wrest victory from defeat. He was far, far from the basket, but he did not dare to risk the precious moment in dribbling or passing the ball. The only hope lay in one perfect throw. He held the ball in his hands high over his head, and ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... admit, as he ascribed the total destruction of his army in Russia to physical causes alone. It was the conqueror of Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, Ratisbon, Wagram, and Mojaisk. Fresh laurels entwined his brow at Luetzen, Bautzen, and Dresden. Here at Leipzig the allies attempted to wrest them from him who grasps so firmly. It was easy to foresee that with unshaken resolution he would risk all, in order, as on former occasions, to gain all, and to put an end to the campaign with a single blow. He ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your Colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, and this from ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... she earned guns. Such had not been the practice of the Spaniards in those seas, for they had been fully convinced that no enemies could venture through the straits to wrest their ill-gotten treasures from their hands. Hitherto they had enjoyed the monopoly of tyrannising over the Indians, and of all the profitable commerce carried on along the coast. Drake had aroused them ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... and induced him to avenge an attempt made to dishonor his daughter. The story of the old man touched the Virey, who had a manly heart wrapped up in a forbidding exterior. But it was a delicate undertaking even for a vice-king to attempt to wrest a rich estate out of the clutches of the "Holy Office" without himself being suspected of heresy, or of disloyalty to the Church. Yet Ravillagigedo was never at a loss for expedients when justice was to be done or the oppressed relieved. The best advice, however, that he could give ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... that wisdom of children to his folly. If he sent her the verses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping of egg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest the page from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest, her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm's length, read it smiling and approve of the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... treaties which brought to an end the World War. Since the time that the principle was proclaimed, it has been the excuse for turbulent political elements in various lands to resist established governmental authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into domestic as well as international affairs ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... tell you, will not go to war to wrest your children from the royal family, but will afford you personally ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... hand, facing each other behind the desk, to get what rest they could. For over two weeks the two houses continued in tumultuous session. Meanwhile men were crowding into Topeka from all over the State: grim-faced Populist farmers, determined that Republican chicanery should not wrest from them the fruits of the election; equally determined Republicans, resolved that the Populists should not, by charges of election fraud, rob them of their hard-won majority. Both sides came armed but apparently ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... in its nature, but of an official character, was received to the effect that preparation was making within the limits of the United States by private individuals under military organization for a descent upon the island of Cuba with a view to wrest that colony from the dominion of Spain. International comity, the obligations of treaties, and the express provisions of law alike required, in my judgment, that all the constitutional power of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... run the course of other nations, and that some day, far distant maybe, she will sink beneath the weight of her power and her luxury, and that some younger and more vigorous people will, bit by bit, wrest her dominions from her ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... in saying (observes Lord Stowell in 1798) that this is an article incapable of being carried into literal execution according to the modern understanding of the law of nations; for no neutral country can intervene to wrest from a belligerent prizes lawfully taken. This is perhaps the strongest instance that could be cited of what civilians ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... evident the contest in which the two youths were engaged was one not destined to end before time was up. I pointed to within half a minute of the fated hour—and it would take far longer than that for even so powerful a champion as Jim to wrest the ball from Charlie's defiant grasp. The timekeeper turned away from the rivals and held me up. On went my hand, and ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... When Francis I. continued his attacks upon the Duchy, and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the Sforza formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That town is the key to the valleys of the Spluegen and Bregaglia. Strongly fortified and well situated ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... payment of the three thousand ducats as many times over as he should desire; which Shylock refusing, and still insisting upon having a pound of Antonio's flesh, Bassanio begged the learned young counselor would endeavor to wrest the law a little, to save Antonio's life. But Portia gravely answered, that laws once established must never be altered. Shylock hearing Portia say that the law might not be altered, it seemed to him that she was pleading in his favor, and he said, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... Discourse, by far the ablest indictment of Oliver ever penned, "took armes against two hundred thousand pounds a year, and raised them himself to above two millions." It is true. Cromwell spent the money honestly and efficiently, and chiefly on a navy that enabled him to wrest the command of the sea from the Dutch, to secure the carrying trade, and to challenge the world for supremacy in the Indies, both East and West. In doing this, he had the instinct of the whole nation behind ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... immense loss of life of men and animals. It is plain that miracles of courage, constancy, and industry must have been accomplished by the Hollanders, first in creating and afterwards in preserving such a country. The enemy from which they had to wrest it was triple: the sea, the lakes, the rivers. They drained the lakes, drove back the sea, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hard work of years was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels of ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... present itself to him as a wall deliberately built by the entire nation as a means of concealing a deep duplicity the sole object of which was the baffling, thwarting, and undoing of Englishmen, from whom it wished to wrest their honest rights. Apoplexy becoming imminent, as a result of his impotent rage during their first few days in Paris, she paid a private visit to a traveler's agency, and after careful inquiry discovered that it was not impossible ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bank of the stream, Halstead had overtaken him and had tried to wrest the gun from him. Alfred had turned, struck him, and then given him so hard a push that he had fallen over sidewise with his foot down between two logs. Alfred had run on ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet—oh, how sweet—to be thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its shield!—magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... time from the vessel's deck at the strong fortress which has been held securely in the grasp of Great Britain for two hundred years, we thought of the many unsuccessful attempts that have been made during those two centuries to wrest it from British control; most noted of all, the long siege by the French and Spanish forces that continued for four years when Napoleon was supreme in France. What might have been the result, if ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... terrestrial sphere. It is not difficult to persuade most people that somewhere in the great beyond there is a place of peace and bliss, prepared for the children of God to inhabit forever. But few men have disposition of spirit to wrest the clear declarations of inspiration on this delightful theme. Perhaps no other subject in the Bible is so universally received. Eternal rest to the Christian is the voice of the Word forever settled in heaven. Oh, how our hearts glow ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... did in New York was to go to a jeweler's for this ring, and since then I have guarded it day and night as dragonishly as if it had been the Koh-i-Noor diamond, or some inestimable gem which hundreds of envious persons were lying in wait to wrest from me. Walking the streets with this trinket in my possession, I have actually had a sense of personal insecurity. I seemed to invite general assault. That was being ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Genus Empiricum, quod in paucorum Experimentorum Angustiis & Obscuritate fundatum est. For I neither conclude from one single Experiment, nor are the Experiments I make use of all made upon one Subject: Nor wrest I any Experiment to make it quadrare with any preconceiv'd Notion. But on the contrary, I endeavour to be conversant in divers kinds of Experiments, and all and every one of those Trials, I make the Standards or ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... delighted, told him to draw on him for all the money he wanted. This Ferdy did promptly. He suddenly gave up running away from college, applied himself to cultivating the acquaintance of his fellow-students, spent his money lavishly in entertainments, and for a time it appeared that he might wrest the prize ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... cities by Louis VI., was the first move toward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance which would eventually wrest the power from the hands of the nobles. But that end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power came in the succeeding reign when Louis VII. married Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine; ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... We have got a footing on the sea, and we are going to keep it. While Charles of Sweden is fooling away his time in Poland, in order to gratify his spite against Augustus, we are strengthening ourselves here, and never again will Sweden wrest Ingria from ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... a house of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... home, to dwell with the beasts in the caves of the mountains? History relates that but a little band of ten, inclusive of the Asmoneans, by retiring to the fastnesses of the mountains, formed the nucleus of that brotherhood of heroes who were to wrest victory after victory from the hosts of Syria, and win that unsullied fame which belongs only to those who display firm endurance and devoted courage in a righteous and ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... trust thee with a secret. There are spies This hour at work. But, as thou art a man, Whom I have picked and chosen from the world, Swear that thou wilt be true to what I utter; And when I've told thee that, which only gods, And men like gods, are privy to, then swear, No chance, or change, shall wrest ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us any dispensation to do the same; those are masterstrokes ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection could only consist in his own predominating ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... excelled, or even equalled. In reply to the generous letter of Ariosto's nephew, who wrote him a letter of congratulation, he said, "The crown you would honour me with already adorns the head of the poet to whom you are related, from whence it would be as easy to snatch it as to wrest the club from the hand of Hercules. I would no more receive it from your hand than I would snatch ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... lord, we pray you to proceed, And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall drop their ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare |
