"Protract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remain there only till the following week; but the kind importunities of Mr. Younge and his family, induced me to consent to prolong my stay for some days, and an arrangement was at length made, which caused me most cheerfully to protract it still further. This arrangement was, that if I would remain in Paris till after the National Fetes, Mr. Younge, his lady, and her niece, Mademoiselle St. Sillery, would form a travelling party, and accompany me in my tour along the banks of the Loire, and thence along the Southern ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... general opinion that it would be proper to protract the war, as the enemy were distressed by (423) famine and the straitness of their quarters, yet he resolved with equal rashness to force them to an engagement as soon as possible; whether from impatience of prolonged ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... protract my fame, And those, who chance to read them, cry, I knew him! Derrick was his name, In yonder tomb ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... interlocutor. He would stand for hours, when talking, his right elbow on a mantel-piece, if there was one near, his fingers going through their strange palmistry; and in this manner, never once stirring from his position, he would not unfrequently protract his discourse till long past midnight. An inexhaustible, undemonstrative, noiseless, passionless man, scarcely evident to you by physical qualities, and impressing you, for the most part, as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and, at any rate, you have your Voyage home to England to tell me of: and how you find yourself and all in the Old Country. I suppose you include my Old Ireland in it. Donne wrote that you were to be there till this Month's end; that is drawing near; and, if that you do not protract your Visit, you will [be] very soon within sight of dear Donne himself, who, I hear from Mowbray, is ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... these reflections, the old gentleman had, for the first time in his life, some disinclination, arising from shame and vexation, to face his own son; so that to protract for a little the meeting, which he feared would be a painful one, he went to wait upon the sheriff-depute, who he found had set off for Dumfries in great haste to superintend in person the investigation which had been set on foot by his substitute. This gentleman's ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... with the Italian spirit—the celebrated Mazarin. This minister, independently of his particular taste that way, knew how to ally gaming with his political designs. By means of gaming he contrived to protract the minority of the king under whom he ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he is found guilty and sentenced to death, at such time and place as Gen. Hooker shall designate. The penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio, is designated as the place of confinement of Walsh and Semmes. The trial has been long, mainly by reason of the course pursued by the defense, whose aim has been to protract it, so as to tire out the perseverance of the prosecution and the patience of the court and people. The court have performed their arduous duties with great ability and fairness. The result will doubtless be satisfactory to the people. It is proved that this great crime was in all its naked ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... neck throws him into convulsions, attains this blessed momentary respite of insensibility by an unexplained special machinery of the nervous currents, OR A SENSIBILITY TOO EXQUISITELY ACUTE FOR ANIMAL ENDURANCE? Better that I or my friend should die than protract existence through accumulated years of torture upon animals whose exquisite suffering we cannot fail to infer, even though they may have neither voice nor feature ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... for us thus to enlist them, is but for a limited time. Soon they will become committed to the North Canada Pacific Road, north of Lake Superior, when they will not help ours, and thus protract ours for want of means and competing road. At present, two of the most important Canada roads can be enlisted in the above views, because if the Canada road north of Lake Superior is made, it will divert the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... It is now averred that the extension of the borough franchise to counties must be carried before a Parliament adequate to deal with the Irish question is formed. This appears a strong demand, and one likely to protract the present distracted state of the country. But I hear, on the best authority, that the Land League and the associated farmers can wait. They are in no hurry. England can take her own time and they will wait patiently, meanwhile ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives,—why, at such a rate, better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to me, O my life, this love whose offer thou deignest Between us twain lively and lusty to last soothfast. (Great Gods!) grant ye the boon that prove her promises loyal, Saying her say in truth spoken with spirit sincere; So be it lawful for us to protract through length of our life-tide 5 Mutual pact of our love, pledges of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Horner, it must be admitted, with all his excellence, was too fond of good eating; it is in vain to deny it; his deliberately pulling out a plum with his finger and thumb, shows the epicure, not excited by the voracity of hunger, but evidently aiming to protract his enjoyment. The exclamation which follows savours of vanity; but when his youth is recollected, this will be deemed a venial error, and it must also be considered that his few faults were probably compensated by a constellation of excellencies. This poem has been imitated, (I will not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... Vandercleeve, go Lord Ambassadour From us to the renowmed Duke of Saxon, And know his highnesse reason and intent Whie being (of late) with such importunate suite Betroth'd to our faire sister Dowager Of this our Dukedome, he doth now protract The time he urged with such speede of late His honourd nuptiall ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... gaining easily and early Dunbarton, the town where were the head-quarters of his regiment. But still his mother's entreaties, his own natural disposition to linger among scenes long dear to him, and, above all, his firm reliance in his speed and activity, induced him to protract his departure till the sixth day, being the very last which he could possibly afford to spend with his mother, if indeed he meant to comply with ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... want of the commonest necessaries, and able to protract his defence no longer, he beat a parley, signed a capitulation on the 9th of December, obtaining all he asked, and retired from Lille. Prince Eugene, to whom he surrendered, treated him with much distinction ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... plans and sketches of the new places, or they protract their field-books, working very hard and very slowly. I have but little confidence in their route-surveys: sights are taken from mule-back, and distances are judged by the eye. True, the protractions come ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Glenelg, Sky, Mull, Icolmkill, Lorn, and Inveraray, which I wrote down. As my father was to begin the northern circuit about the 18th of September, it was necessary for us to make our tour with great expedition, so as to get to Auchinleck before he set out, or to protract it, so as not to be there till his return, which would be about the 10th of October. By M'Aulay's calculation, we were not to land in Lorn till the 20th of September. I thought that the interruptions by bad days, or by occasional excursions, might make it ten days later; and I thought ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth her while to protract, and turned away her eyes ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... another. To embarrass matters still more, she next proposed to James a match with the sister of the king of Navarre, a princess much older than himself, destitute of fortune, and whose brother might be influenced to protract the negotiation to any length convenient to his valuable ally the queen of England. This proposal being declined by James, and overtures made in his name to a younger daughter of the Danish house, she again set her engines at work to thwart his wishes: but indignation ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... only," said the Lady Hermione, "because I linger like a criminal on the scaffold, and would fain protract the time that must inevitably bring on the final catastrophe. Yes, dearest Margaret, I rest and dwell on the events of that journey, marked as it was by fatigue and danger, though the road lay through the wildest and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
