"Wrestle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honor; triangular duel; hostile meeting, digladiation[obs3]; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c. adj.; bone of contention &c. 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib|!, justle[obs3], tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer[obs3]; fight &c. (war) 722; wrangle &c. (quarrel) 713. contend &c. with, grapple with, engage with, close ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... beginning, instead of being left to the caprice of individuals, was controlled and regulated by the state. The women, in the first place, were trained by physical exercise for the healthy performance of the duties of motherhood; they were taught to run and wrestle naked, like the youths, to dance and sing in public, and to associate freely with men. Marriage was permitted only in the prime of life; and a free intercourse, outside its limits, between healthy men and women, was encouraged and approved by public opinion. Men who did not marry ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Thor did not carry the game any further. Then said Utgard-Loke: This game ended as I expected. The cat is rather large, and Thor is small, and little compared with the great men that are here with us. Said Thor: Little as you call me, let anyone who likes come hither and wrestle with me, for now I am wroth. Answered Utgard-Loke, looking about him on the benches: I do not see anyone here who would not think it a trifle to wrestle with you. And again he said: Let me see first! Call hither that old woman, Elle, my foster-mother, and ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... turn in the desperate life-and-death wrestle, and Jack's face was turned towards the opposite side of the gulf. But this was only to show him that a new danger hung over him with fearful menace. He looked straight down a gun-barrel. On the farther brink knelt one of his enemies, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Donald seized her. The flames leaped on him, too, as if to wrestle with him; his brown beard crackled, his hair, but he fought through it all. Throwing Elspie on the ground, he rolled her over and over, crying aloud, "Oh, my darlin', if I break your sweet bones, it is better ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... poverty, no ears to hear of it, no tongue to tell thereof, and point them out "as the poor ladies that once were rich." This was a great relief, though it came of pride, and she knew it; and she said within herself, When health strengthens my body, I will wrestle with this feeling, for it is unchristian. She never even to Mabel alluded to what was heaviest on her mind—the loss of the old furniture; though she cheered her niece by the assurance that, after a few months, if the Almighty blessed the exertions they must make ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... battle, not forsaken, Watched in secret by our awful Sire; Left to conquer, lest our spirits weaken, And forget to wrestle and aspire, Finding all things ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was impeded by many scruples; it was as unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children especially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate to persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the sense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... what you needed. There was but one unpardonable breach of etiquette—to fail to leave dry kindlings. I'm afraid of the transitory stage we're coming to—that epoch of chaos between the death of the old and the birth of the new. Frankly, I like the old way best. I love the license of it. I love to wrestle with nature; to snatch, and guard, and fight for what I have. I've been beyond the law for years and I want to stay there, where life is just what it was intended to be—a survival ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... flourish; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact,—emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming; undertook a Hercules' Labour and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean Hydra-coil, wide as England, hissing heaven-high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quack-heads; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest wrestle I have heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... strength and agility of body, at certain times exercise themselves naked; that girls and servant-maids should dance naked among the young men; that women in the flower of their youth should dance, run, wrestle and ride with young men naked as well as they, which, says Plato, "whosoever misliketh understandeth not how profitable it ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... orders strict For her best comfort; then walked out alone, To meet and wrestle with his passion, held So long in leash by honour, free at last With overmastering and giant strength. The subtle fragrance of her hands pervades His senses; in his veins he feels the flow Of her warm breath, which entered into them That ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... uttering a choking gasp. I heard the flutter of blood in his throat. He raised himself on his front feet and lifted his head high, higher, until his nose pointed skyward and his antlers lay back upon his shoulders. Then a strong convulsion shook him. I heard the shuddering wrestle of his whole body. I heard the gurgle and flow of blood. Saw the smoke of fresh blood and smelled it! I saw a small red spot in his gray breast where my bullet had struck. I saw a great bloody gaping hole on his rump where the.30 Gov't expanding ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... from to-day, we sail with a party of friends in the French steamer "Lafayette," from New York for Brest. Will you be ready?' demanded Amanda, after a protracted wrestle with aforesaid adverse circumstances. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I will not profane her name; if it were for her that I was thus sacrificing myself. I could bear it, I could welcome it. I can imagine perfect and everlasting bliss in the sole society of one single being, but she is not that being. Let me not conceal it; let me wrestle ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... very hot. I would not coddle the child. No, Sir, the hardy method of treating children does no good. I'll take you five children from London, who shall cuff five Highland children. Sir, a man bred in London will carry a burthen, or run, or wrestle, as well as a man brought up in the hardiest manner in the country.' BOSWELL. 'Good living, I suppose, makes the Londoners strong.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I don't know that it does. Our Chairmen from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... be the one to cool first," said Henchard grimly. "Now this is the case. Here be we, in this four-square loft, to finish out that little wrestle you began this morning. There's the door, forty foot above ground. One of us two puts the other out by that door—the master stays inside. If he likes he may go down afterwards and give the alarm that the other has fallen out by ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... unspeakable Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems, Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him? I wrestled with the lion, when a boy, 260 In play, till he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ear, and his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; he will set his heart upon perfecting his works, and he will be wakeful to adorn them perfectly. So is the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... but there is no better way to discover what you can do best than to try your 'prentice hand at a great variety of topics and mediums. The post-graduate course of every school of journalism is a roped arena where you wrestle, catch as catch can, for the honors ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... preferred before me, and are sure before long to address themselves successfully to the same task in which I perhaps have failed. What indeed can we each of us look for but a large measure of failure, especially when we are moving not with the tide but against it—when the things we wrestle with are principalities and powers, and spiritual stupidity in high places—and when we are ourselves partly weakened by the very influences against which ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... court were trained to many manly exercises. They were taught to wrestle and to run. They were instructed in the use of such arms as were employed in those times, and rendered dexterous in the use of them by daily exercises. They were taught to put their skill in practice, too, in hunting excursions, which they took, ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Mr. John Wilson, the minister of the church at Boston until the arrival of Cotton, was journeying with a certain Mr. Adams, when tidings came to the latter of the probably fatal illness of his daughter. "Mr. Wilson, looking up to heaven, began mightily to wrestle with God for the life of the young woman ... then, turning himself about unto Mr. Adams, 'Brother,' said he, 'I trust your daughter shall live; I believe in God she shall recover of this sickness.' And so it marvelously ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... a man's task at daily labor, while yet a mere stripling. Brought up mainly on the farm, spending his days in severe labor and his nights in sweet slumber, he became the peer of all his companions in athletic feats involving strength and skill. He could "pitch the bar," run, leap, wrestle with the best of them, and more than held his own with the most doughty champion. But he never boasted of his strength, nor sought occasions to display his skill, being content ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... the way he likes to fight—not with his fists, I mean, necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to—wrestle with, you know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is for him to—roll me in the dirt and walk ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... "sea" unhindered now save by pickerel weed and sagittaria, rush and meadow grasses, and in woodsy places by brook alder, clethra, huckleberry and spice-bush that lean into it as they wrestle with greenbrier and clematis. The mayflower snuggles into the leaves along its drier upper margins, here and there, and is to be found on the borders of the "sea" more plentifully. Plymouth has done well in making of this region a park, beautifying it mainly by ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of Henry V James remained a prisoner. But although a prisoner he was not harshly treated, and the Kings of England took care that he should receive an education worthy of a prince. James was taught to read and write English, French, and Latin. He was taught to fence and wrestle, and indeed to do everything as a knight should. Prince James was a willing pupil; he loved his books, and looked forward to the coming of his teachers, who lightened the loneliness ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought to acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour. There is none of them that does not supply some truth useful to every man, and some untruth equally so to the few that are able to wrestle with it. If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius: and Fancy herself would lie muffled up ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... he said, "the weight of a fearful penance is laid upon me, which I must work out alone. I leave you today, and charge you not to seek to follow my footsteps; but, as you hope to escape hell, watch and wrestle for me and yourselves during the time I am gone. Before many days I hope to return to you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... of the audience, no sooner had the last notes of the air died away than the performer thrust the pipe into his pocket, threw off his coat, and in a loud voice challenged the best man in Madagascar to wrestle with him. As the challenge was given in English of course no native responded. Even if it had been given in choice Malagasy we question whether any brown man there would have ventured a hug with the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the custom of the country we took along our trunks and traps on top of the taxicab. At the moment of our arrival there were no porters handy, so a policeman on post outside the station jumped forward on the instant and helped our chauffeur to wrestle the luggage down on the bricks. When I, rallying somewhat from the shock of this, thanked him and slipped a coin into his palm, he said in effect that, though he was obliged for the shilling, I must not feel that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... satisfied. Now it is not true that faith and submission make a wall round a man, so that he escapes from such calamities. In the supernatural system of the Old Testament such exemptions were more usual than with us, though this very Book of Job and many a psalm show that devout hearts had even then to wrestle with the problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the indiscriminate fall of widespread calamities on the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... With mighty motions mighty enterprises, Often in sleep will do and dare the same In manner like. Kings take the towns by storm, Succumb to capture, battle on the field, Raise a wild cry as if their throats were cut Even then and there. And many wrestle on And groan with pains, and fill all regions round With mighty cries and wild, as if then gnawed By fangs of panther or of lion fierce. Many amid their slumbers talk about Their mighty enterprises, and have often ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the cession of Calais and the release of the unpaid ransom of King John. However, on June 27, 1375, a truce for a year was signed at Bruges, which was further extended until June, 1377, just long enough to allow the old king to end his days in peace. France had once more to wrestle with the companies set free by the truce, so that England could still enjoy possession of Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Brest, and the other scanty remnants of the cessions of the treaty of Calais. Satisfied at putting an end to the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in very low condition, weary, and worried, and in want of food. Riding express, and changing horses twice, not once had he recruited the inner man, who was therefore quite unfit to wrestle with the power of sudden grief. When he heard of the Admiral's death, he staggered as if a horse had stumbled under him, and his legs being stiff from hard sticking to saddle, had as much as they could do to hold him up. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... she should ask him to come and fiddle at the party her father was to give at the end of the harvest. She resolved to do it, and he, not knowing what moved her, gave his promise eagerly. It struck her, afterward, that she had done a wicked thing, but, like most girls, she had not the heart to wrestle with an uncomfortable thought; she shook it off and began to hum a snatch of ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Lord in his heart and the Gospel in his hand hath no fear of the machinations of man or devil," the missionary answered stoutly. "I will see this man and wrestle with him. One backslider returned to the fold is a greater victory than a thousand heathen. He who is strong for evil can be as mighty for good, witness Saul when he journeyed up to Damascus to bring Christian captives to Jerusalem. And the voice of the Saviour came ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... were worthy of good at their hands, if he, an unknown man, gave sport to the people. Then he asked what they would of him; so they prayed him to wrestle with ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... of the window. In her soul she began to wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened of words, because she knew that mere word-force could always make her believe what she did ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... matter for the Adjutant-General's Department, sir, but I'll let them know about it." "I told you to do it yourself," snapped the Chief in a very peremptory tone. Under the circumstances, one could only go to the man concerned in the A.G. Department, explain matters, and beg him for goodness sake to wrestle with the problem and carry out ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... in this wrestle with pain. How many she did not know, but when she came forth it was with the composure of one who had fought the fight and won the victory, but at a cost that ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... was large enough to go to walkin' about, his old master given him to his son, Master Warren Junell. Warren would carry him about and make him rassle (wrestle). He was a good rassler. As far as work was concerned, he didn't do nothing much of that. He just followed his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... depend on circumstances, that I shall not venture to lay down an opinion on the subject. My prospects are not very promising, but I suppose we shall wrestle through life like our neighbours; indeed, by H.'s last advices, I have some apprehension of finding Newstead dismantled by Messrs. Brothers, &c., and he seems determined to force me into selling it, but he will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... embraced her tenderly, he inquired the cause. His caresses for the moment soothed her, and induced her to struggle against the ideas which oppressed: for there are thoughts that Satan excites within us, which we can wrestle with—ay, and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... rigid discipline, severer truth, And more complete surrender of the soul Unto her God, this was to my reproach, And scoffs and gibes beset me on all sides. In mine own cell I mortified my flesh, I held aloof from all my brethren's feasts To wrestle with my viewless enemies, Till they should leave their blessing on my head; For nightly was I haunted by that face, White, bloodless, as I saw it 'midst the ferns, Now staring out of darkness, and it held Mine ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... wood and stone, and painted symbols of men and women whom Antichrist made saints, and Pagan books treating of false gods, and moral treatises without one word of saving faith in them, and musical instruments, and Jewish contrivances; and he goes into his study, not to wrestle with the Spirit, but to consult the evil one; and then he goes into the steeple-house, and, instead of the milk of the word, pours ladles-full of leaden legality among ye, till ye all look like his own dumb idols, instead of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... his pursuit had been vain and her luring laughter had died away in his ears, she came back and stood in the shadowy end of the aisle, watching him with large, luminous eyes, just as she used to come and watch him wrestle with the fever. Breathless, he looked at her, waiting for her to vanish, but she did not. Then it came to him that he might go to her, might reach her this time before she fled. But something lay on his shoulder, something that weighed him down and kept him from moving, kept him from rising ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... see one of these entertainments. Do you ever have a ladies' night? If you do, and the ladies are not supposed to wrestle with the laundresses in the early light, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... did play, And to the Maydens[*] sounding tymbrels sung, In well attuned notes, a joyous lay, And made delightfull musicke all the way, Untill they came, where that faire virgin stood; 60 As faire Diana in fresh sommers day, Beholds her Nymphes enraung'd in shadie wood, Some wrestle, some do run, some ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... accumulate the lie, And pile the Pyramid of Calumny! These are his portion—but if joined to these Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease, 80 If the high Spirit must forget to soar, And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,[101] To soothe Indignity—and face to face Meet sordid Rage, and wrestle with Disgrace, To find in Hope but the renewed caress, The serpent-fold of further Faithlessness:— If such may be the Ills which men assail, What marvel if at last the mightiest fail? Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given Bear hearts electric-charged ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... souls repair, And lawns of green, the dwellings of the blest. A purple light, a more abundant air Invest the meadows. Sun and stars are there, Known but to them. There rival athletes train Their practised limbs, and feats of strength compare. These run and wrestle on the sandy plain, Those tread the measured dance, and join the song's ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... a head to follow me and leap up on the table and wrestle me, or to drink against ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... life is pervaded by rigid self-discipline and self-restraint. He is to be sober and vigilant, to eschew evil and do good, to walk in the spirit, to be obedient unto death, to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand; to wrestle against spiritual wickedness, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world; to be rooted and built up in faith, and not to be weary of well-doing; for in due season he shall ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... quite understand it. (To Fairies.) Now here is a man whose physical attributes are simply godlike. That man has a most extraordinary effect upon me. If I yielded to a natural impulse, I should fall down and worship that man. But I mortify this inclination; I wrestle with it, and it lies beneath my feet! That is how I treat my regard for ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... not always possible Still to preserve that infant purity Which the voice teaches in our inmost heart, Still in alarm, forever on the watch Against the wiles of wicked men: e'en virtue Will sometimes bear away her outward robes Soiled in the wrestle with iniquity. This is the curse of every evil deed That, propagating still, it brings forth evil. I do not cheat my better soul with sophisms; I but perform my orders; the emperor Prescribes my conduct to me. Dearest boy, Far better were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... billows did struggle and wrestle, Pleasant to see! Pleasant to climb the tall cliffs where the sea birds nestle, When near to thee! Nought can I now behold but the track of thy vessel ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... understand what mothers are. I am no different from other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I clothed you, when you were hungry I ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... If so, your teeth are sharper than mine. Can you hear a robber's footstep when he's kneeling before murder? or can you listen to the snow falling on Midsummer's day? If so, your ears are finer than mine. Can you run with a chamois? can you wrestle with a bear? can you swim with an otter? If so, I'm your match. How many cities have you seen? how many knaves have you gulled? Which is dearest, bread or justice? Why do men pay more for the protection of life than life itself? Is cheatery a staple at Constantinople, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... borough that must have grown up under its walls. The first definite evidence for its existence lies in a brief entry of the English Chronicle which recalls its seizure by Eadward the Elder, but the form of this entry shows that the town was already a considerable one, and in the last wrestle of England with the Dane its position on the borders of Mercia and Wessex combined with its command of the upper valley of the Thames to give it military and political importance. Of the life of its burgesses however we still know little or nothing. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... inculcation of these facts, by means of education. Schools and churches—and parents—must concentrate on the moral improvement of the rising generation, or we wrestle ineffectively." ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... to make that foaming Strength Whose rebel forces wrestle still Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length Become a vassal to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pafajxo | pah-fah'zho to shoot | pafi | pah'fee skating; to | glitumado; glitumi | glitoomah'doh; skate | | glitoo'mee spectator | spektatoro | spek-tah-tohr'o swimming; to | nagxado; nagxi | najah'do; nah'jee swim | | tennis | teniso | tehnee'so to wrestle | lukti | look'tee tent | tendo | tehn'doh theatre | teatro | teh-ah'tro act | akto | ahk'toh —, to | ludi rolon | loo'dee ro'lohn actor, actress | aktoro, aktorino | ahktohr'o, ahktoree'no auditorium | auxditorio | ahw-ditohr-ee'o ballet ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... doctrines—is a system of teachings with which only the very learned attempt to wrestle. It is claimed to have been handed down by oral tradition from angelic sources, through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Seventy Elders, to David and to Solomon. No attempt was made to commit this sacred knowledge to writing, till, in the early centuries ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... not even try to be with him. They knew that he could wrestle with what he called his "blue devils" more successfully alone. A restlessness generally accompanied the mood, and he would wander off by himself to the churchyard, the river, or the woods; or spend whole long, golden afternoons shut up in his room, poring over some quaint ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the boys were also carefully trained in gymnastics. They could handle weapons, throw heavy weights, wrestle, run with great speed, swim, jump, and ride, and were experts in all exercises which tended to make them ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... 'The fellow mixes blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion, nevertheless there is always something ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... diplomatist; the poet-soldier, Van der Does; heroic defender of Leyden; De Gryze, Hersolte, Francis Maalzoon, and three legal Frisians of pith and substance, Feitsma, Aisma, and Jongema; a dozen Dutchmen together—as muscular champions as ever little republic sent forth to wrestle with all comers in the slippery ring of diplomacy. For it was instinctively felt that here were conclusions to be tried with a nation of deep, solid thinkers, who were aware that a great crisis in the world's history had occurred, and would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried 'Why, here he is!' Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and to touzled, and worried, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... nature of most men to know and to understand and to reason very far. Therefore, why should they make a pretense of it? It is the nature of some few men to reason, then let them reason. Those whose nature it is to be rational will instinctively ask why and wherefore, and wrestle with themselves for an answer. But why every Tom, Dick and Harry should have the why and wherefore of the universe rammed into him, and should be allowed to draw the conclusion hence that he is the ideal person and responsible for the universe, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... Bloat thy cheeks, and bulge thine eyes Unto bursting; pelt thy thighs With thy swollen palms, and roar As thou never hast before! Lustier! Wilt thou! Peal on peal! Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel— Wrestle with thy loins, and then Wheeze thee ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... still stands, true enough, on bourgeois foundations; but it is forced to wrestle neither with old European prejudices nor with institutions that have survived their day. As a consequence American society is far readier to adopt new ideas and institutions that promise advantage. For some time the position of woman has been looked ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... slowly. He went in again, jabbing with his left. It struck the Battler's thick arms wrapped around his head. With a spring like a cat the Mexican was on him. He shot up his right and it pounded into the Battler's ribs. He tried to wrestle himself out of the clinch into which the Mexican ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the thews that wrestle with the world; She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last they set them each to each, Like perfect music unto noble words. Then comes the statelier Eden back to man; Then springs the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but a fool that plays the fool now and then.' 'I cannot tell,' says he, 'but he is no idiot at eating, nor will I let my affront pass so; for I must have a turn or two of wrestling with him for it in your presence.' Whereupon a stander-by asks Duncan if he would wrestle with him. 'I will,' says he, 'for I think I was fit sides with him in eating and might be so with this.' They yocks, and Duncan threw him thrice on his back. The Irishman was so angry he wist not what to say. He invites him to put the stone, and at the second cast he worried him four feet, but could ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... uncivilized almost any envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... usual, so Belle said, the Clown, his wages in his pocket, had sat in one corner of Morrison's bar-room, the heels of his red-socked feet clutched in the rung of his chair. A moment before there had been a good-natured, rough-and-tumble wrestle as he and another lumber jack grappled. The Clown had thrown his antagonist fairly, the lumberjack's shoulders striking the rough floor with a whack that made things jingle. The next moment the two had treated one another at the bar, and with a mutual, though maudlin ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... had so well begun, and that you are exactly half mistaken. This malconformation below did not, however, affect his strength—it rather added to it; and there were but few men in the ship who would venture a wrestle with the boatswain, who was very appropriately distinguished by the cognomen of Jemmy Ducks. Jemmy was a sensible, merry fellow, and a good seaman: you could not affront him by any jokes on his figure, for he would joke with you. He was indeed the fiddle of the ship's company, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... side with those that have burnt the causes of God's wrath. They have broken their covenant oftener than once or twice, but I believe the Lord will build Zion, and repair the waste places of Jacob. Oh! to obtain mercy to wrestle with God for their salvation. As for this presbytery, it hath stood in opposition to me these years past. I have my record in heaven I had no particular end in view, but was seeking the honour of God, the thriving of the gospel in this place, and the good of the new college, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... distressful red during recitation, and tugged away so manfully that no one could help respecting him for his efforts, and trying to make light of his failures. So the first hard week went by, and though the boy's heart had sunk many a time at the prospect of a protracted wrestle with his own ignorance, he made up his mind to win, and went at it again on the Monday with fresh zeal, all the better and braver for a good, cheery talk with Miss Celia in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Donald continued for five and twenty minutes, and unfolded the works of the Devil in such minute and vivid detail that Burnbrae talks about it to this day, and Lachlan Campbell, although an expert in this department, confessed astonishment. It was a mighty wrestle, and it was perhaps natural that Donald should groan heavily at regular intervals, and acquaint the meeting how the conflict went, but the younger people were much shaken, and the edification even of the serious was ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... those chaps are like a lot of young animals," Frank observed. "They must have a certain amount of tussle and wrestle in order to develop their muscle. They'll need a lot ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... her eyes Resembled—what could they resemble? what Ever resemble those! E'en her attire Was not of wonted woof nor vulgar art: Her mantle showed the yellow samphire-pod, Her girdle the dove-coloured wave serene. 'Shepherd,' said she, 'and will you wrestle now And with the sailor's hardier race engage?' I was rejoiced to hear it, and contrived How to keep up contention; could I fail By pressing not too strongly, yet to press? 'Whether a shepherd, as indeed you seem, Or whether of the hardier race you ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the very point of being flung to death by drowning. In another of these pictures a man seated upon the ground is being tortured by the breaking of his teeth, while a furious fellow holds a club suspended over him, in act to shatter his thigh-bones. Naked soldiers wrestle in mad conflict, whirl staves above their heads, fling stones, displaying their coarse muscles with a kind of frenzy. Even the classical subjects suffer from extreme dramatic energy of treatment. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... embrace from the moth-eaten civilization of the Old World. Starratt was only a generation removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness ... he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent—that is, they had begun to wrestle; the years that had succeeded found them still eager and shut-lipped for the conflict. They had abandoned the struggle only when they had found their victory complete. Naturally, soft days had followed. Was eternal conflict the price of strength? Starratt found himself ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... maiden, pure and white, Enter into thy kingdom bright! If vain desires and earthly longing Have turn'd my heart from thee away, The sinful hopes within me thronging Before thy blessed feet I lay. I'll wrestle with the love I cherish'd, Until in death its flame hath perish'd. If of my sin thou wilt not shrive me, Yet in this hour, oh grant thy aid! Till thy eternal peace thou give me, I vow to live and die thy maid. And on thy bounty I will ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... of him, pounding his head and shoulders with a heavy stick of some kind. Old Builder knew he didn't have the strength to wrestle; he managed to get his pile of skins unfolded and, with his last ounce of strength, throw them over the head of his attacker. Somehow he managed to wiggle out from underneath and climb to his feet. His assailant began to scream ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... he was speaking Andy had advanced upon Fred, and now the two started to wrestle. Jack tried to stop them and in the confusion the three upset a small stand, sending a dozen or more books to the floor with a thump. Almost immediately came another thump on one of the doors ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... It was a little trying for me, but when he continued, "She answered, 'From Montreal to Canada the distance is three thousand mires,'" I was glad she had gone. I am afraid I choked a little at this point, for just here he decided to wrestle with the pencil himself. When he handed the paper back again I read: "While we are passing the distance between Mount Rocky I had a great danger, for the snow over the mountain is falling down, and the railroad shall be cut off. Therefore, by the snowshade, which is made by ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... made he tried to stifle his conscience by falling upon his Latin with unwonted zeal, and so ardently did he wrestle with it that when, an hour later, Bob pushed aside his papers and offered to help him with the lesson he was able to greet his chum with a translation so far beyond his customary efforts that Bob patted him on the head with ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Shakspeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... to snuff perfumes and essences, and used to lounge out of the conservatories of Khadija, his wife, to give battle to the robust sons of Koriesh; even so this Rio land-breeze comes jaded with sweet-smelling savours, to wrestle with the wild ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... trace behind it, and his path seemed to become comfortably clear before him. He settled it that the proper thing to do would be to buy some food, start back at once while his permit was still valid, help himself to the property which he had sold the Professors, leaving the Erewhonians to wrestle as they best might with the lot that it had pleased Heaven ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... watchful antagonism between two parties mutually indispensable to each other, at one time veiling itself in endearments, at another breaking out into open defiance. He who has a message to deliver must wrestle with his fellows before he shall be permitted to ply them with uncomfortable or unfamiliar truths. The public, like the delicate Greek Narcissus, is sleepily enamoured of itself; and the name of its only other perfect lover is Echo. Yet even great authors must lay their account with the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... beginning of the year to reflect anticipated effects from the global economic slowdown. Over the long term, Germany faces budgetary problems—lower tax revenues and higher pension outlays—as its population ages. Meanwhile, the German nation continues to wrestle with the integration of eastern Germany, whose adjustment may take decades to complete despite annual transfers from the west of roughly $100 ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... desire, To speak the language which the dream divine Incessantly implies; to live and move In Fancy's heav'n—yet know that earth still holds The fancy captive: these the daily death Of many minds that wrestle all in vain 'Gainst that which Heav'n in cruel kindness sends To teach mankind humility. Ah, me! The pow'r to feel the touch of Paradise And to enjoy it not—as hungering men Have died ere now, gazing upon the food By heartless ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... unpicturesque, Hessian paupers that that fellow, with an infinite patience, rooted up, got their police reports, set on their feet, or exported to my patient land. And he would do it quite inarticulately, set in motion by seeing a child crying in the street. He would wrestle with dictionaries, in that unfamiliar tongue.... Well, he could not bear to see a child cry. Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions. But, although I liked him so intensely, I was rather apt to take these things for granted. They made ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... where he had made the course. Dracontius, pointing to the place where they were standing, said, "This hill is an excellent place for running, in whatever direction the men may wish." "But how will they be able," said they, "to wrestle on ground so rough and bushy?" "He that falls," said he, "will suffer the more." 27. Boys, most of them from among the prisoners, contended in the short course, and in the long course above sixty Cretans ran; while others were matched in wrestling, boxing, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... she, in a low, hoarse voice. 'It would kill me to see her again as I saw her this morning. And I must live till I have worked my work. Leave me!' said she, suddenly, and again taking up the cross. 'I defy the demon I have called up. Leave me to wrestle ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have finished with our school here. If they'll have us, we'll try to join out with one of them. In the meantime we must work hard, Teddy, so we shall be in fine shape when we join out two weeks from today. Come on; I'll wrestle you a few falls." ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the supply of horses that its fields may afford. In this connection it is instructive to compare the military strength of a country like China, where the horse is not a common element in the life of the people, with that of any of the western folk who may hereafter have to wrestle with that populous empire. Some writers, in their efforts to forecast the large politics of the future, have imagined that when the hardy and obedient Chinaman came to receive the European training in the military art, the armies of that country might prove ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of unconscious despairing gesture. Was there some devil in his soul whom he was bound to wrestle with by fasting and prayer, and conquer in the end? Or was it an angel that had entered there, before whose heavenly aspect he must kneel and succumb? Why this new and appalling loneliness which had struck ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... police might have chosen, even by day, some other opportunity to light upon us than in the very thick of our wrestle with the extortionate prices of fresh kuruma. It was inconsiderate of them, to say the least; for the attack naturally threw us into a certain disrepute not calculated to cheapen fares. Then, too, our obvious haste helped furnish ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... appreciate the tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle. Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties, and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... as of old the Netherlanders, in their immortal fight for freedom against the monstrous and appalling tyranny of Spain, were stirred to heroic deeds by the psalms of Clement Marot, even so to-day, where a few desperate and devoted men are moved to wrestle with a brutal despotism, the Marseillaise is their battle hymn. It is to Paris that the dearest hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... quite fair—'No charm of voice, no sonorous phrases, nothing to captivate an audience. His voice while clear and distinct, is dry and unsympathetic. He speaks monotonously, with many pauses, at times he almost stutters, as if an obstinate tongue refused to obey orders, and as if he had to wrestle for the adequate expression of his thoughts. He rocks to and fro, somewhat restlessly, and in no relation to what he is saying. But the longer he speaks the more he overcomes all difficulties, he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... barrow, and the heavy tide of filthy things have marred the grace of my youthful countenance, and sapped my wonted pith and force. Besides all this, I have fought with the dead, enduring the heavy burden and grievous peril of the wrestle; Aswid rose again and fell on me with rending nails, by hellish might renewing ghastly warfare after ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... to wrestle, how to cheat at cards, how to throw knives. None of the things Alan learned from Hawkes were proper parts of the education of a virtuous young man—but on Earth, virtue was a negative accomplishment. You were either quick ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... of the crisis has come. One touches with one's naked hand every object he describes. One feels the gasping breath of every person he brings forward. His images slap one's cheeks till they tingle, and his situations wrestle with one to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of the most romantic kind. No boy will be able to withstand the magic of such scenes as the fight of Grettir with the twelve bearserks, the wrestle with Karr the Old in the chamber of the dead, the combat with the spirit of Glam the thrall, and the defence of the dying Grettir ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... time. "Already have I seen her cheek grow pale, her head bow down like a blighted flower, her walk become weary with faintness. Hast thou already been at thy filthy machinations? But Black Claus, the witchfinder, is there to wrestle with the powers of evil. And hear me! That fair sweet girl is the only comfort of my wretched life. My soul grows calm and soothed when I look upon that lovely face. A ray of sunshine gleams upon the darkness of my path ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... and hues of paradise: Each brawler be enthroned in calm among the Children of the Wise. Yet in the council with the gods no one will falter to pursue His lofty purpose, but come forth the cyclic labours to renew; And take the burden of the world and dim his beauty in a shroud, And wrestle with the chaos till the anarch to the light be bowed. We cannot for forgetfulness forego the reverence due to them Who wear at times they do not guess the sceptre and the diadem. As bright a crown as this was theirs when first they from the Father ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... not been revealed unto me, although I besought it of the Lord with great earnestness after the morning meal. I will again wrestle in prayer before the throne, and no doubt it shall all be made plain in due season, if we ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... really ill. Her eyes gave out; and no greater inconvenience could have just then befallen her. Her mental activity was temporarily paralyzed, and yet she knew that prompt measures were necessary to avert the evils crowding upon her. She had truly been anointed to wrestle ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Barlaam for some many years, pursuing this marvellous and more than human life, dwelling with him as with a father and tutor, in all obedience and lowliness, exercising himself in every kind of virtue, and learning well from practice how to wrestle with the invisible spirits of evil. From that time forward he mortified all his sinful passions, and made the will of the flesh as subject to the spirit as slave is to his master. He was altogether forgetful of comforts or repose, and tyrannized over sleep ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the throbbing of the great human engines in the buildings about me, a rising and a falling there seemed as of those great steel-limbed monsters, weird contortionists of metal, that jet up and down, and writhe and wrestle this way and that, behind the long glass windows of great water-towers, or toil like Vulcan in the bowels of mighty ships. An expression of frenzy seems to come up even from the dumb tossing steel; ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... very opposite to that popularly held: it will appear that in didactic poetry the teaching is not the power, but the resistance. It is difficult to teach even playfully or mimically in reconciliation with poetic effect: and the object is to wrestle with this difficulty. It is as when a man selects an absurd or nearly impracticable subject, his own chin,[49] suppose, for the organ of a new music: he does not select it as being naturally allied to music, but for the very opposite reason—as being eminently alien from music, that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... most of all he dwells on its heroic qualities, inseparable to him from what is religious in the "Odyssey"; and, says Gogol, this book contains the idea that a human being, "wherever he might be, whatever pursuit he might follow, is threatened by many woes, that he must need wrestle with them—for that very purpose was life given to him—that never for a single instant must he despair, just as Odysseus did not despair, who in every hard and oppressive moment turned to his own heart, unaware that with this ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... you go. I will plead and wrestle with you as in the old fable my namesake of my own race wrestled with the angel, until at length you bless me. You despise me because I am a Jew, because I have had many adventures and not succeeded; because you think me mad. But I tell you that there ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... and wondered at Belton's dullness. Belton, poor fellow, was having a tough wrestle with poverty and was trying to coin something out of nothing. Now and then, at some humorous remark, he would smile a faint, sickly smile. Thus it went on until they arrived at the station. Belton by this time decided upon ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... own sake—for the love of Him in whose image you were made—wrestle with the devil that possesses you,' said John Jardine, when they had risen to leave the room, laying his hand affectionately upon Brian's shoulder. 'Believe ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon |
