"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become used to his faults. He had one advantage, and that was a consideration. Although he was a Negro by birth he did not speak like a Negro, and nothing is so irritating as that hateful jargon in which all the pronouns are possessive and all the verbs infinitive. Let it be understood, then, that Frycollin was a ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... lay around, very hot and shiny, and content. Large backsheesh was assured, and they looked up at her with pleased possessive eyes, as an achievement of their own; hardly realising how large a part her finely developed athletic powers and elastic limbs had played in the speed ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... glare of moonlight by the forward window, Miko held Anita, his great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive caresses. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... way, acquired possession of her. But as I considered her possession the only sufficient reason for the continuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, mine. It may have been that I would not have been obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to my reveries had I confessed the state of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... have known other girls. You didn't talk like that if you were new to it. She was again curious. Once she almost blurted out the question; but she stayed the words in time. It would have been a mistake to ask anything at this stage. It would have seemed possessive. It might have alarmed him. Anyway, she thought, if he has, what does that matter? To her it was an added pleasure, that he might be wise and experienced. It was a greater flattery; it called for ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Pudentiana, in the year 384; and in the mosaic of the apse the Redeemer holds a book, on the open page of which is written: "The Lord, defender of the church of Pudens." In course of time the ignorant people changed the word Pudentiana, a possessive adjective, into the name of a saint; and the name Sancta Pudentiana usurped the place of the genuine one. It appears for the first time in a document ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... to Spanish custom, a matron is known by prefixing her maiden name with de (possessive of) ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the funeral that it all came out. Lena and Ethel were sitting up together over the papers and the letters, turning out his bureau. I suppose that, in the grand immunity his death conferred on her, poor Lena had become provokingly possessive. I can hear her saying to Ethel that there had never been anybody but her, all those years. Praising his faithfulness; holding out her dead happiness, and apologizing to Ethel for talking about it when Ethel didn't understand, never having ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... that the article "the" should have replaced the possessive pronoun "my." But on reflection she decided that one might not unreasonably object to confessing in so many words to the possession of a dog who so persistently did all the things he ought not to do. And, anyway, it was nice of Mr. Maclin ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Home had been so unbearable that she had taken desperate measures to escape it, but as the white house with its tree and shrub filled yard could be seen more plainly, Kate suddenly was filled with the strongest possessive feeling she ever had known. It was home. It was her home. Her place was there, even as Adam had said. She felt a sudden revulsion against herself that she had stayed away seven years; she should have taken her chances and at least ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... by saying 'anybody's grandmother,'" remarked Ralph. "You put anybody in the possessive case, which means, of course, that the grandmother belonged to the anybody, and then you make out that ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... at her side, and taking it in his, he slipped it under his arm with a possessive air, while she made to Brady some hurried excuses in a trembling voice. For a moment still she hung back, but Adams drew her gently with him, and after the first few steps, she recovered herself and walked rapidly to the waiting carriage. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... In the Yorkshire dialect, when the possessive case is followed by the relative substantive, it is customary to omit the S; but if the relative be understood, and not expressed, the possessive case is formed in the usual manner, as in a subsequent ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling arm of all his hostess's fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and arose unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, "Dick ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... contractions with a and de, personal and possessive pronouns and words to be rendered in every case by like words in English (e.g. action, affection) are omitted in this vocabulary. Irregularly formed plurals and the feminine endings of adjectives are noted. Irregular verbal forms are ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... was that Cynthia was driven into an intimate and possessive tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted, and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... marrying a man out of spite. He felt that since an obstinate lover is apt to be an exacting husband, in the end the heavy predominance of Oliver might wring much sincerer tears from her than she had ever shed for himself. But that generosity was but the bright edge to a mainly possessive jealousy. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the argument. It was their only chance. There was a blast that shook the ground beneath their feet, and a huge section of the stone door was blown into the room. He drew Ulana close with a possessive encircling arm. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all—two leaders and a follower—and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... safety, the lady who gave the assent for him saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was manifest in him was for the first counsel that Christ gave.[8] Oftentimes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... afraid. After all, strange as he looked, more strangely as he talked, he was her Pierre, her man. The confidence of her heart had not been seriously shaken by his coldness and his moods during this winter. There had been times of fierce, possessive tenderness. She was his own woman, his property; at this low counting did she rate herself. A sane man does no injury to his own possessions. And Pierre, of course, was sane. He was tired, angry, he had been ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... dancer who studies her steps, without soiling her white stockings with a single speck of mud. The manolas of Madrid, the cigaretas of Seville in their satin slippers are not better shod; mine—pardon the anticipation of this possessive pronoun—put forward from under the seat an irreproachable boot and aristocratically turned ankle. If she would give me that graceful buskin to place in my museum beside the shoe of Carlotta Grisi, the Princess Houn-Gin's boot and Gracia of Grenada's slipper, I would fill it ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... came in to take the long, flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable—and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made me ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... sure of that," he returned stiffly; "but since you wish it I will give your message to—my wife." He always hesitated over the possessive pronoun in addressing Haskett. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had now given them a ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... blasphemous curse (Bunyan never vented worse), With all those weeds, not flowers, of speech Which the Seven Dialecticians teach; Filthy Conjunctions, and Dissolute Nouns, And Particles picked from the kennels of towns, With Irregular Verbs for irregular jobs, Chiefly active in rows and mobs, Picking Possessive Pronouns' fobs, And Interjections as bad as a blight, Or an Eastern blast, to the blood and the sight: Fanciful phrases for crime and sin, And smacking of vulgar lips where Gin, Garlic, Tobacco, and offals go in - A jargon so truly adapted, in fact, To each thievish, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... her own children, her heart swelled and opened wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in motherhood than she had had; but which she could have if she could deserve it; something so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish, possessive, never-satisfied ache which had called itself love withered away, its power to hurt and ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... that language, placed before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... ages past is considered by infidels themselves a sufficient ground for belief. The fact that those books exist has certainly been known from the age of the apostles to the present time, for men quoted extensively from them in the second century. The names they bear were in the possessive case then, and it is but fair to consider ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... constantly introduced, generally in the possessive case; examples are "Santa Ana's house," "Santa Maria's umbrella," "San Jose's canes." Less commonly the names of other Bible worthies occur; thus "Adam's hair." There is not always any evident fitness ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... that the same day the gunboat Neptun, steering east, passed the brig Bonito becalmed in sight of Carimata, with her head to the eastward, too. Her captain, Jasper Allen, giving himself up consciously to a tender, possessive reverie of his Freya, did not get out of his long chair on the poop to look at the Neptun which passed so close that the smoke belching out suddenly from her short black funnel rolled between the masts of the Bonito, obscuring ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... doubtful value. This, if true, made plain the difficulty of re-sale, and made him think decidedly unpleasant things of "Lewis and Company, Specialists in B.C. Timber." The second was that someone, within recent years, had cut timber on his limit. And it was his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister, as it usually is in men who have ever possessed any considerable property. He did not like the idea of being cheated or robbed. In this case there was superficial evidence that both these things had happened ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... my justice of peace and his justice of peace. My indolence was conquered by my love of power: I supported the contest; the affair came before our grand jury: I conquered, and Mr. Hardcastle was ever after, of course, my enemy. To English ears the possessive pronouns my and his may sound extraordinary, prefixed to a justice of peace; but, in many parts of Ireland, this language is perfectly correct. A great man talks of making a justice of the peace with perfect confidence; a very great man talks with as much certainty ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... matters little moreover from what quarter of the land it may hail, as Stevenson knew when he claimed the right of mingling Ayrshire with his Lothian verse. Even such archaisms as 'deemen' and 'thinken,' such colloquialisms as the pronominal possessive, need not be too severely criticized. What goes far towards justifying Jonson's acrimony is the wanton confusion of different dialectal forms; the indiscriminate use for the mere sake of archaism of such ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... lord./ This transposition, common in earnest address, is due to close association of possessive adjective and noun.] ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of deep blue encircled in black, its hide quite smooth and ending in a double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I could stop him, he seized ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the man himself, there could be no doubt that he had reached the stage of entire subjugation. His whole bearing was instinct with possessive pride, his strong, bronzed features softened into a beautiful tenderness as he watched the flickering colour in Elma's cheeks, and smiled encouragement into her eyes. He had a good face; a trifle arrogant and self-satisfied, no doubt, but these were failings which ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... or possessive case is expressed either by the use of the word punya after the noun, or by placing the noun which signifies the possessor immediately after the thing possessed; as sahaya, I; sahaya punya, of me, mine; rumah, house; rumah punya, of the ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... different from that given in his "Native Calendar," above mentioned. In the former he says uotan "is from the pure Maya root word tan, which means primarily 'the breast,' or that which is in the front or in the middle of the body; with the possessive prefix it becomes utan. In Tzental this word means both 'breast' and 'heart.'" It must be admitted that these explanations are apparently somewhat strained, yet it is possible they are substantially correct, as they appear to receive some support from ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... from which his wife relievedly withdrew—and he had whirled Maria Angelina about in motors, plunged her into roaring subways, whisked her up dizzying elevators and brought her out upon unbelievable heights, all the time expounding and explaining with that passionate, possessive pride of the New Yorker by adoption, which left his young guest with the impression that he owned at least half the city and was personally responsible for the ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... eye. "An ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray |
