"Life-and-death" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been tremendous for France. No lists of her dead or wounded are published; it was at first a life-and-death struggle. While the total casualties—killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners—were estimated in the press reports and by the people as 600,000, I happen to know that they were more than 1,000,000. Of these, of course, one third or more will return to the battle-line, ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... in that estate always. We—" Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... saw a great surgeon, after settling a particular procedure as to a life-and-death operation, as a general settles his order of battle. He began his work, and at the second cut altered the entire conduct of the operation. No one not in the secret could have told this: not a moment's pause, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... no sympathy for us, till, when we came near the black heaps of coal, we saw the crowd standing round,—then getting into the midst, there was the great broken down piece of blackened soil and the black strong-armed men working away with that life-and-death earnestness. By the ruins of a shed that had been thrown down, there was a little group, Lady Lucy, looking so fair and delicate, so unlike everything around, standing by an old woman in a red cloak, whom she had placed in the chair that had been brought ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... country that had learned to look upon herself as unconquerable. Pitt, who hated war, was destined to play the uncongenial part of a War Minister, with one short interval, for the rest of his life, and to devote his genius and his energy to a life-and-death struggle with the soldier of fortune who was yesterday the hero of Italy, to-day First Consul, to-morrow to be Emperor of the French. The story of Pitt's life, for the rest of Pitt's life, is the story of a struggle against Napoleon, a struggle maintained under difficulties and disadvantages ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... blazed from her pale face and illuminated every feature, though she was turned from the light, and she shook my arm in her grasp so that it pained me. The marble was burnt in the fire, and must consume itself to ashes. The white and calm statue was become a pillar of flame in the life-and-death struggle for love. I strove to speak, but could not, for fear and wonder tied my tongue. And indeed she gave me short ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Canada," make a wonderful chapter of history. Never was a colony, moreover, so loaded with bounties, so fostered, petted, and protected. The result was absolute paralysis, political and social. When after a century of irritation and skirmishing the French in Canada came to a life-and-death struggle with the self-governing colonists of New England, New York, and Virginia, the result for the French power in America was instant and irretrievable annihilation. The town-meeting pitted against ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... say," he replies at last, "that 'he that is not for us is against us?' That seems to sum up the situation. We on our side are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the freedom of the world. We know that you are not against us; still, considering the sacredness of our cause, and the monstrous means by which the Boche is seeking to further his, we ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... thought was in my own mind; if Godfrey had run down Crochard and got the diamonds, without a life-and-death struggle, that engaging rascal must be much less formidable than ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in his turn to welcome his guests; and especially singled out Hagen, his friend's son. While many of the Burgundians accompanied the king into the hall, Hagen drew Volker aside, and, sitting down on a stone seat near Kriemhild's door, entered into a life-and-death alliance with him. Kriemhild, looking out of her window, saw him there and bade her followers go out and slay him; but although they numbered four hundred, they hung back, until the queen, thinking that they doubted ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Georgie, just being an aunt isn't really the great career it may sometimes appear to you! In fact, I don't know of anything much that Fanny has got, except her feeling about Eugene. She's always had it—and what's funny to us is pretty much life-and-death to her, I suspect. Now, I'll not deny that Eugene Morgan is attracted to your mother. He is; and that's another case of 'always was'; but I know him, and he's a knight, George—a crazy one, perhaps, if you've read 'Don Quixote.' ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Imperial Chancellor pays no high compliment to the intelligence of the American people when he asks them to believe that 'the war is a life-and-death struggle between Germany and the Muscovite races of Russia', and was due to the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... called upon to deal was in its essence the situation sketched by Frere twenty years before in the memorable forecast to which reference has been made. But the working of the forces indicated by Frere as destined, if unchecked, to drive England one day to a life-and-death struggle for her supremacy in South Africa, had been complicated by an event which cannot be omitted altogether from a chapter intended, like a Euripidean prologue, to prepare the mind of the spectator for the proper understanding of the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... capitalist, say, a thousand pounds as a premium to be forfeited if his ship should be lost, but to be repaid by the capitalist fivefold to the merchant if it returned. Incredible as it may seem to us, there were shrewd money-lenders always ready for this sort of deal in life—or life-and-death—insurance: an eloquent testimony to the risks encountered in sailing unknown seas in the ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... sceptred foulness the benefit of his skill at the literary rouge-pots? You? Yes? I give you joy of your avocations! Truly, it was worth the while, having such a cause, to defame a noble people in the very hour of their life-and-death struggle! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... altered—that is to say, either killing themselves piecemeal in deference to the surroundings or killing the surroundings piecemeal to suit themselves. There is a ceaseless higgling and haggling, or rather a life-and-death struggle between these two things as long as life lasts, and one or other or both have in no small part to re-enter into the womb from whence they came and be born again in some form which shall ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler |
