"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, of many Americans, both at home and abroad, that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism rouses the honor and evokes the veneration of the alien, and as we have long had a grudge against the English, we would be particularly glad to forget it in a sense of English respect and affection. We would fain believe that the English have essentially ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... surprise, Big Olaf rose up and with oaths and leather proceeded to fetch out the last ounce of effort in his animals. It was a spurt that should have been reserved for the last hundred yards instead of being begun three miles from the finish. Sheer dog-killing that it was, Smoke followed. His own team was superb. No dogs on the Yukon had had harder work or were in better condition. Besides, Smoke had toiled with them, and eaten and bedded with them, and he knew each ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the table, and threw himself on his bed, uttering a deep sigh, or rather one of those exclamations which we cannot tell whether they arise from discouragement or simply from fatigue. His Majesty's countenance was sad and careworn, nevertheless he slept from sheer weariness for many hours. I awoke him to announce the arrival of M. de Rumigny, who was the bearer of dispatches from Chatillon. In the condition of the Emperor's mind at this moment he seemed ready to accept any reasonable conditions which might be offered him; therefore I ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... drunk sheer madness! Not with wine, But old fantastic tales, I'll arm My heart in heedlessness divine, And dare the road, nor dream ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the sea and looked towards the cliff. Now he had the palace on his left hand. On his right, not far off, was a high bluff going almost sheer into the sea. Nevertheless, access to the village was possible by the strip of rocks beneath it. Had Hermione gone to the village by the rocks? If she had, Gaspare's keen eyes would surely have seen her. Artois ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... out her arms, and would have fallen headlong into the greedy, crawling water, but he caught her and made his way back. The hot, bitter tears on her face brought her to herself, and with one great sob she broke down, clinging to him and crying till from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep. ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... their flame Sheer down the primal wall, But up and up each linking troop In stretching festoons crawl— Nor fire a shot. Such men appall The foe, though brave. He, from the brink, Looks far along the breadth of slope, And sees two miles of ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... companions make the customary bow, which blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit better than his black slaves, and that for himself ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... she answered, with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, that you should refuse my nephew? A man that any woman in England would be proud to marry! Forty thousand a year, and an earl's grandson! That's what comes, I suppose, of ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... it there in the hard shrewd lines, the cold, heartless, vindictive lines, or the softer lines which the smiles could form when smiles were necessary, which was not so often now as in former years. And in place of the beauty now gone, she ruled by sheer power and wit, which time had turned to biting acidity,—and by the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Of Michael from the Armory of God Was given him tempered so, that neither keen Nor solid might resist that Edge: It met The Sword of Satan, with steep Force to smite Descending, and in half cut sheer— ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she realized suddenly, might be an illusion scene. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... have trifled with honor and reputation, whose names are spoken with the sneer of contempt, have been led on, step by step, in the path of sin by vanity as the chief motive. Where one woman falls from low and coarse passions, a hundred fall from sheer levity and the ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the land itself, anything of that real and magical country which he had hoped to behold, seeing nothing at all, on the plots of ground strewn with barrels, of the dances of petticoated and stockinged peasants crying for very joy, stamping their feet out of sheer happiness and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... mile in depth and eight miles in length. Judge if I was astounded! But how should we feel it, when travelling on the lunar surface, we should suddenly find ourselves on the brink of a yawning chasm two miles wide, fifty miles long, and so fathomless in sheer vertical depth as to leave its black profundities absolutely invisible in spite of the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... edge of the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; but the invulnerable armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... tone was one of sheer amusement. "I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Rifle Club the other day. Someone introduced us. It was great fun. If there were a little more light, I would show you what he looked like. For some reason ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... his cousin Lizzie;—and so unlike any other girl he had ever seen! How full she was of energy, how courageous, and, then, how beautiful! No doubt her special treatment of him was sheer flattery. He told himself that it was so. But, after all, flattery is agreeable. That she did like him better than anybody else was probable. He could have no feeling of the injustice he might do to the heart of a woman who at the very ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... words were uttered in quite a simple fashion, there was a ring about them that Berrington did not altogether like. He wanted to flatter himself that he had conquered this murderous ruffian by sheer force of will, as he had done more than once with certain native tribes that he had been sent ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... period of our lives, and cut ourselves accordingly. At first the cut hurts and stings, and down drops the knife, and we cry out like wounded little babies as we are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... upon the invasion of Indiana and Ohio by Morgan seems like sheer madness. He had a force of only a little over three thousand, and the states which he invaded had millions of population. But he had reasons to believe that thousands of that population were friendly to him, would ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... time to get through what he had to say to his attorney in the anteroom, and even then, of course, he did not manage to put it in words, for he had "broken down" with sheer gratitude. "Why, damn ME, Joe," he sobbed, "if ever I—if ever you—well, by God! if you ever—" This was the substance of his lingual accomplishment under the circumstances. But Claudine threw her arms around poor ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... narrow entrance into its superb harbour. We appeared to be sailing up a large lake, extending as far inland as the eye could reach, and surrounded with lofty mountains of many different and picturesque shapes. On either side were walls of granite, rising sheer out of the water to a height of nearly 2000 feet, while behind them rose the vast Sugar-loaf Mountain, and a number of other lofty and barren peaks towering up clear and defined against the blue sky. Like mighty giants they surround the harbour, the ground ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... women who suggest chiffon and others brocade; women who call for satin, and others for silk; women for sheer muslins, and others for heavy linen weaves; women for straight brims, and others for those that droop; women for leghorns, and those they do not suit; women for white furs, and others for tawny shades. A woman with red in her hair is the one to ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... himself and his wife. Besides, for Alice's sake, it was clearly his duty to get the fellow out of the way. Girls, Mr. Anthony considered, were always falling in love with the very last people in the world with whom they should do so, and out of sheer contrariety it was more than possible that Alice might take a fancy for this penniless vagabond, and if she did Mrs. Anthony was fool enough to support her ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... bloody body ceased its titanic struggles. It stiffened spasmodically, twitched and was still, yet the bulls continued to lacerate it until the beautiful coat was torn to shreds. At last they desisted from sheer physical weariness, and then from the tangle of bloody bodies rose a crimson ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... southern extremity of the ridge, where they halted, lay down around the crest, and waited for light. Dawn revealed the nature of the position which the diminished detachment occupied. Behind, the southern end of the mountain dropped almost sheer to the valley. In front, to the northward, the hill-top first sloped downward somewhat to a point, where, like Talana, it was narrowed by a deep re-entrant on one side, then rose to a new sky line, which hid from the British troops the remainder of the ridge some 1,200 or more yards from the southern ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... last sentence gravely and his reply was as grave though his voice was still hoarse. "You were sublime goodness and wisdom. When a woman through the sheer quality of her silence saves a man from slipping over the verge of madness he does not forget. While I was sane I dared scarcely utter her name. If I had gone mad I should have raved as madmen do. For that reason ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... offspring by decree Must rot if they abjure rapacity, Not argument, but effort shall decide. They number many heads in that hard flock, Trim swordsmen they push forth, yet try thy steel; Thou, fighting for poor human kind, shalt feel The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, And bring the army of the ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... rage. Then pouring forth his arrowy rain That stony flood to stay, With winged darts, as she charged amain, He shore her hands away. As Tadaka still thundered near Thus maimed by Rama's blows, Lakshman in fury severed sheer The monster's ears and nose. Assuming by her magic skill A fresh and fresh disguise, She tried a thousand shapes at will, Then vanished from their eyes. When Gadhi's son of high renown Still saw the stony rain pour down Upon each princely warrior's head, With words of wisdom thus he said: ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... pancake—a dead monotony of cultivated alluvium, square mile upon square mile of wheat, rice, vetch, sugar-cane, and other crops, amidst which mango groves, bamboo clumps, palms, and hamlets are scattered promiscuously. In some places the hills rise sheer from this, in others they are separated from the alluvial plains by belts of country known as the Tarai and Bhabar. The Tarai is low-lying, marshy land covered with tall, feathery grass, beautifully monotonous. This is succeeded by ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... barren rocks and the grim, forbidding hills echoed the loud sound of wheel and hoof. Down the steep flank of the mountain, with screaming, grinding brakes, they thundered and clattered into the narrow hall-way of Devil's Canyon with its sheer walls and shadowy gloom. The little stream that trickled down from the tiny spot of green at the spring tried bravely to follow but soon sank exhausted into the dry waste. A cool wind, like a draft through a tunnel, was in their faces. After perhaps two hours of this the way widened out, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... ran, and that he—the Sapper—although he was not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his mine was only hurrying to forestall an enemy mine which was judged to be approaching the trench the Infantry officer would presently occupy. This last was a sheer invention of the moment, but it served excellently, and the Sapper and his party bore off their pump in triumph. It was later erected in the mine shaft, and the difficulty of providing sufficient ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... sea-rovers showed desperate courage and reddened the sea with their blood. There might be inserted here a battle-piece worthy of the Drakes and Morgans of old, if the facts only bore us out. Instead of that, however, we are forced to say that the pirates proved sheer caitiffs when matched against honest men, and the battle ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... flew in showers, And lasses and lads came after them, with feet like dancing flowers. Their queen had torn her green gown, and bared a shoulder as white, O, white as the may that crowned her, While all the minstrels round her Tilted back their crimson hats and sang for sheer delight: ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... hill, measuring, perhaps, three thousand paces round its base. It was of no great height, and yet unclimbable, for, after a man had gone up a little way, the sides of it were sheer, offering no foothold except to the rock-rabbits and the lizards. No one was to be seen without this hill, nor in the great kraal of the Halakazi that lay to the east of it, and yet the ground about was trampled with the hoofs of oxen and the feet of men, and from within ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... sign it. Perhaps if they had been priests or divines they might have resisted to the last. But they were magistrates and judges; their posts and emoluments were in danger. In the end they signed it in sheer desperation. From that day the power of the Ulama was gone; they had abdicated their authority to the padishah; they became mere ciphers in Islam. A worse lot befell their leaders. The head of the Ulama and the obnoxious chief justice ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... unsophisticated, free, and enlightened citizens have an innate refinement about them. They never use that nasty word 'spitting,' but call it 'expressing the ambia.' Well, whenever his Majesty crosses my mind, I do the same out of clear sheer disgust. Some o' them sort of uppercrust people, I call them big bugs, think they can do as they like, and use the privilege of indulging those evil habits. When folks like the king do it, I call them 'High, low, jack, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town; when, on that disastrous morning, the news of their successful temerity fell like a cannon-shot upon ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... so often applied to regions like this, would, however, be inappropriate here, for in God's name the locality is famous. On a promontory whose sides fall down in sheer precipices all about, except where a narrow neck of rock connects it with the net-work of cliffs, is a vast monastery, the Mother Abbey of the Olivetani. In 1313 a noble of Siena, Bernardo Tolomei, in the midst of a life of literary distinctions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... ship, risking his life as freely as the youngest of his esquires. Then for a while on the French left it was a question of which could best handle the long, heavy swords, made not for deft fencing work, but for sheer hard hacking ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Leslie, "you have no right to assume that a disbelief in a general Good, however genuine, necessarily involves a sheer egoism in conduct? For a man might find that his own Good consisted in furthering the Good of other people; and in that case of course he will try ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... some lightless dungeon and left to die. Such visions implied human instrumentality, human whim; the most implacable jailer might relent. But this, this was an incarceration no supplication could end, a doom not to be stayed. Silently, evenly, unmeasuredly the well deepened and the walls became more sheer. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the frightened Tamoszius would attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would scream. "Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children of hell?" And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would return to her place and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... other's hands, the Sadducees denying angel and spirit, with their war-cry of unfettered freedom and scientific evidence; and in the centre, far rolling, innumerable, the dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and self, making void the law by their sheer godlessness. And on the other side, 'He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God, and they that were with Him were called, and chosen, and faithful.' The issue is certain from of old. Do you ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... into the chair, from which she had risen to hurl her Philippic at Rita's head, and by sheer force of her indomitable will caused a most alarming pallor to overspread her face. Rita ran for the camphor, Mr. Bays fetched the whiskey, and under these restoratives Madam Jeffreys so far recovered that her husband and son were able to remove her from the chair ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... revolutions turn back, But go straight on. Imperial governance Is coffined for your family and yourself! It is declared that military repose, And France's well-doing, demand of you Your abdication—unconditioned, sheer. This verdict of the sovereigns cannot change, And I have pushed on hot ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... may meet an objection that has perhaps been lurking in the minds of many readers. 'All this,' they may say, 'professes to be a simple analysis of known facts, but in reality is sheer idealization. These Greeks whom you call so "noble" have been long since exposed. Anthropology has turned its searchlights upon them. It is not only their ploughs, their weapons, their musical instruments, and their ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Dalgard contacted the animal. It was its usual curious self, nothing had alarmed or excited its interest. And he did not try to establish more than a casual contact as they made their way down the bank to the edge of the stream, Sssuri splashing in ankle-deep for the sheer pleasure of feeling liquid curl about his feet and ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... less, a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh, my dear,' he half turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together. And later—we must have advice—medical ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... a little white as he threw a quick glance into his sister's eyes; but his voice, when he spoke, was clear and strong from sheer ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage, towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the high steep bank, going up and down and threading in ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... white roving sea tern fleck and skim The morning's rim; Or the dark thrushes clear Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer, Then hush ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... were painful things when they pierced the tender places between one's claws, and no delicious morsel behind the spears could make up for a swollen mouth that would be sore and smarting for days—so sore that its owner, unable to eat, might die from sheer starvation. So the Porcupine passed under the tree in safety, dawdling on purpose as he caught sight of the crouching ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... to school to-morrow, and it's a shame," said Laura in the low, passionate tone that never failed to exasperate Mother, so different was it from her own hearty fashion of venting displeasure. Pin began to sniff, in sheer nervous anxiety. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... over-young for such a fight as this, Edmund," he said when the Danes had taken to flight. "You will need another four or five years over your head before you can stand in battle against these fierce Northmen. They break down your guard by sheer weight; but you bore yourself gallantly, and I doubt not will yet be as famous a warrior as was your ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... and failed in every expedient but one,—the employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically, religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies. The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is almost too well known to require ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to wander in the early days of Spring From one place to another in sheer delight and glee; While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around Fair Nightingale, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he said, "it's only three weeks more, old man, and then to Jericho with books, and test-tubes, and anatomy! I'll drag you out of your study by the scruff of your neck, see if I don't; I'll clap a knapsack on your back, and haul you by sheer force down into Kent. There you shall snuff the ozone, and hold your hat on your head with both hands on the cliff top. I'll hound you through old castles, and worry you up hills. If I catch so much as a leaflet on chemistry in your hands, I'll tear it up and send it ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... among the ruins of Carthage, was waiting for the two lodgers that yet remained to her, and bemoaning her lot with the sympathetic Sylvie. Tasso's lamentations as recorded in Byron's poem are undoubtedly eloquent, but for sheer force of truth they fall far short of the widow's cry from ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... end is always regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself being good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil for sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the good that is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... a sheer peak of joy we meet; Below us hums the abyss; Death either way allures our feet If we take ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... while a sigh of sheer rapture rose from the crowd, "is pre-eminently the car for a medical man or pushful undertaker. No horn is supplied, though this will be fitted if desired. The car is not cheap, but properly used will soon repay itself. Amongst the accessories supplied with the standard chassis I should like to call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... was from this point—at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose—that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air Thickened with twilight shadows dim: I rose and left. I knew each limb Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit They bear in autumn. What blooms here, Filling the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do, that ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... theological refinements. There is an excuse for the Fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particular points; but every definition is a misfortune, and for us to persevere in the same way is sheer folly. Is no man to be admitted to grace who does not know how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Spirit? or how the nativity of the Son differs from the procession of the Spirit? Unless I forgive ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... three men and women in a generation have the true gift. This cannot be too good. But besides this there is a mass of honest and needful work to be done with the pen, to which literary form is only accidental, and in which consummate literary finish or depth is a sheer work of supererogation. If Miss Martineau had given twice as many years as she gave months to the condensation of Comte, the book would not have been a whit more useful in any possible respect—indeed, over-elaboration ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... have acknowledged such holiday missiles with showers of brickbats, and eggs not filled with aromatic dew. What was the result? The Tories increased in confidence and strength with every new assault; whilst the battered Whigs, from their sheer pusillanimity, became noisome in the nostrils of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... whole life—who seems first to have recognised the one child, happy in an heroic appellation, soaring upwards on the wings of fortune, and the other, like the dead sailor in his shotted hammock, haled down by sheer weight of name into the abysses of social failure. Solomon possibly had his eye on some such theory when he said that "a good name is better than precious ointment"; and perhaps we may trace a similar spirit in the compilers of the English ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the slow clemency of Heaven. At times a thick voice full of anguish, and at others a shrill and piercing voice, would arise. The Father's, which was an imperious one, was now at last breaking through sheer emotion. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... listens to him praising the bean fields and the turnips here, and the oaks and acacias there, cursing the Wen-devils and place-men and pensioners, the reptiles, toad-eaters and tax-eaters, and yet the sheer honesty and affection of the man shine from every page. There never was such a mixture of execration and the scent of bean-blossom. But Rural Rides remains a book of the library ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Elliott would have laid hands on him, then he laughed from sheer helplessness. "Oh, go on, go on; let's see, there's Clemence and Marie Tellec and Cosette and Fifine, Colette, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... helped ourselves to a little wild game, as fish, peccari, deer, and turtles' eggs. But these made only a drop in the commissary bucket; had we depended upon finding provisions on the road, we must have perished from sheer hunger. Game, in the dry season, is exceedingly scarce. Our provisions were packed in kerosene cans, a part of which were soldered up to keep out moisture (for the Valley of the Napo is a steaming vapor-bath) and to keep out the hands ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... expanse averages about 1200 feet. The Taunus Mountains divert it at Mainz, where it widens, and it flows westward for about twenty miles, but at Bingen it once more takes its course northward, and enters a narrow valley where the enclosing hills look down sheer upon the water. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... wind was blowing the blue dress into lovely, long, curving lines; about her throat a white collar of some sheer stuff was being lifted into waves, or curling against her cheek; and the golden hair, in disorder, was tousled ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... is very undesirable, as the small quantity of gas so admitted to the cylinder is quite useless, and a sheer waste is incurred. With the governing arrangement shown in fig. 26, this trouble does not exist. The cam is so designed that the first rise from X to A determines whether or not the valve is to be opened; the curve from A to Y is struck from the centre of the side shaft; thus, during that ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... town of Lumberville there was a cliff which rose sheer 200 feet above the level of the river. So perpendicular was the cliff that a stone dropped from the overhanging ledge at the top would fall straight down to the railroad track below without touching a twig in its course. Back of this broad ledge ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... much that she held there was not his equal within the guard, either in talking or in anything else. Even when men were compared, and noblemen therein were pointed to, all men easily saw that Gunnhild thought that at the bottom there must be sheer thoughtlessness, or else envy, if any man was said to be Hrut's equal. [Sidenote: Hrut comes to Iceland] Now, inasmuch as Hrut had in Iceland much money to look after, and many noble kinsfolk to go and see, he desired ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... some time, like butterflies in June; then, from sheer exhaustion, the sisters released him, and wiped their eyes from excess of emotion. Barbara was just assuring herself that the widower's arms did seem to be all right, when he turned round, and, seizing both ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... argues the scientific questions concerned—all that relates to secondary causes—upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case. Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced as sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterward, when it takes its place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment reversed, as we suppose it would be ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... cooperatives which follow are worth attention, for, as a result of their mistakes, they are now dead. One of the most pitiful aspects of cooperative failures is that one group after another will go on making the identical mistakes that have brought ruin to others. Sometimes it is the result of sheer ignorance, and sometimes of shameful negligence. In either case the result is the same—the stockholders lose their savings and cooperation feels ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... incident you have referred to is one you unduly magnify. Believe me, it was really nothing more than a little bit of work, which came to my men and to me to do in the ordinary course of strategy in warfare. That was all it was, a little bit of work, and it is sheer exaggeration ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... that far silence and had brought back wonderful stories of that outer world: and she began to wonder more than ever before whether she would ever go into it and see for herself what was there. With the thought, she rose slowly to her feet, moved slowly to the cliff that dropped sheer ten feet aside from the trail, and stood there like a great scarlet flower in still air. There was the way at her feet—that path that coiled under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through majestic oak and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... saw it," muttered the first officer, under his breath and glowering at me. "A pack of sheer nonsense, I call it, this going out of our course on a wild-goose chase and tearing away full speed on a wild night like this, in a howling sea, with a gale, too, astern; and all because an ass of a youngster fancies ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought to myself—well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Mr. Rowe myself very busy in the bar of the White Lion, with a sheet of paper and an old steel pen, which looked as if the point had been attenuated to that hair-like fineness by sheer age. He started at the sight of me, which caused him to drop a very large blot of ink from the very sharp point of the pen on to his paper. I left him wiping it up with his handkerchief. But it never ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... companion from childhood! Knowing her as well as he did, he had treated her as if she were a mere ball-room coquette; he had forgotten her as soon as if it had been a mere holiday fancy of a boy of fifteen. He had been completely infatuated, dazzled, blinded by a beautiful face. That it was sheer infatuation was now evident; for, absent from both Elinor and Jane, all feeling for the latter seemed to have vanished like a dream. It is said that love without hope cannot live: the question must be settled by those who have suffered most frequently ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... unimportant, friends and enemies," he says himself, "a varied crowd, who are looking for my medical advice. There is scarcely time for me to get down from my carriage and wash myself and eat a little, and then until night I am constantly occupied, so that, from sheer exhaustion, I must lie down. Only on the Sabbath day have I the time to occupy myself with my own people and my studies, and so the day is away from me." What a picture it is of the busy medical teacher at all times in the world's history, yet it must not be forgotten ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... striking, when the gallant Leake, calling on the crew to support him, took the command, and so ably fought the remaining guns that both the fire-ships were sunk, his large assailant compelled to sheer off, and the ship ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered "ST. GEORGE;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each shoulder, and he galloped ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is a sample of his ward's temper, I fear Erle has resumed guardianship of Tartary. As Miss Orme is a total stranger in New York, it is sheer madness to talk of leaving here. This is Erle Palma's house, not mine, else I should not hesitate a moment; but under the circumstances I shall insist upon this girl remaining here at least until his return, which must be very soon. Then the dog question will ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the forecastle of the steamer floated aft: "Port your helm," "Starbord," "Steady." In this intricate navigation the captain leaves the bridge to the officer of the watch, and temporarily takes the post of the forward lookout. Now we run close in under some towering headland, now sheer off from a green isle so near that none but an experienced pilot would dare to hug the shore so closely. At many points the sea seemed to be completely land-locked, like the Lakes of Killarney, framed in by lofty hills. Too much had not been ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... seemed to me to be a desperate one. If my pony, which was going at full speed, should step into a badger hole, I should be thrown to the ground and trampled under foot in an instant. If I were to stop, they would knock me over, pony and all. Again, it seemed as if my horse must fall from sheer exhaustion; and then what would ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Q. was nervous of us. They suggested that our private letters should be tested for writing in invisible ink between the lines. They were afraid that, either deliberately for some journalistic advantage, or in sheer ignorance as "outsiders," we might hand information to the enemy about important secrets. Belonging to the old caste of army mind, they believed that war was the special prerogative of professional soldiers, of which politicians ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... is a regular lion! After all, you will admit that it is sheer folly to come and attack him in his cage and pull his whiskers through the bars. And that is what you are doing. To be in love with his wife and pay court to her in Paris, when he is a hundred leagues from you, is all very well, but to install yourself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— 'Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... From place to place, through nineteen States, he had traveled, sowing as he went the seeds of his holy purpose, and watering them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone nor Stanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer physical exertion and endurance the labors of this wonderful man. He belongs in the category of great explorers, only the irresistible passion and purpose, which pushed him forward, had humanity, not geography, as their goal. Where, in the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... sheer bigotry for my own notions, but I prefer to the Atlantis, my notion of plants and animals having migrated from the Old to the New World, or conversely, when the climate was much hotter, by approximately the line of Behring's Straits. It is most important, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... out on parallel courses, and the Platform dwindled behind them. Night flowed below until the hull of the artificial satellite shone brightly against a background of seeming sheer nothingness. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... long as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot, but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day—of course he has. But if he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the man says in the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... no hope; he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has dominion and power ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... by which we had left the house, standing slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to exercise my will than from any thought ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... her home, since all despaired of her recovery, her nervous system being utterly shattered, and her pains incessant by day and by night; the least touch was a torment. At last she sank into a state of insensibility from sheer exhaustion, so that she was supposed to be dying, even to be dead; and her grave was dug, and the sacrament of extreme unction was administered. She rallied from this prostration, however, and returned to the convent, though in a state of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... sea-water, which was poured over my head out of a full skin. All doctrines of ethics are in disgrace with me, and I have long considered all the dramatic poets, in whose pieces virtue is rewarded and crime punished, as a pack of fools; for my pleasantest hours are all due to my worst deeds; and sheer annoyance and misery, to my best. No hyena can laugh more hoarsely that I now speak; some portion of me inside here, seems to have been turned into a hedgehog whose spines prick and hurt me, and all this because I allowed myself to be led away into doing things which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into it by sheer accident, and it fits me like an evil habit, and under the circumstances is as inconvenient to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... down into the warmth of the blankets and stretched her weary limbs in delicious rest. She did not mean to go to sleep for a long time. She had much to think about. So she looked up the black sheer canyon walls to the deep blue, starry sky above, and relived her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... sitting on the sand looking off over the blue water veiled with the soft haze of Indian summer. A point covered with pine trees stretched boldly out into the lake, its rocky cliffs rising perpendicularly eighty feet above the beach, a sheer precipice from whose summit a pebble dropped would strike the water below. On the west a stream came rippling over the stones between bluffs high and massive enough for a deep rapid river—bluffs of wild majesty worn into varied outlines, as though a mighty torrent had once surged between them, forcing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, Anna Myhrman, the youngest daughter of the family, he soon became attached by the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sitting-room and I sat down in my chair. Her maid, named Henriette, had taken her cloak and hat in the hall, and I suppose from sheer nervousness, and to cover the first awkward moments, Alathea buried her face in the big bowl of roses on a table near another arm chair, before she sat down ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... by Durtal's surprise she went on: "You must have seen for yourself that excepting a little plot of ground where the gardener plants a few carrots and cabbages for the Bishop's table, the whole of the garden is left to run wild; it is sheer waste and of no use to anybody. Now instead of buying vegetables, I mean to grow some, since Monseigneur gives me leave to turn over his ground, and by the same token I will give ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... potato had escaped their sharp eyes. They retraced their steps, and again they passed through throngs of listless, glassy-eyed, starving soldiers, strewing the ground with their debilitated forms, falling by hundreds in the bright sunshine from sheer exhaustion. They were themselves many times overcome by fatigue and forced to sit down and rest; then their deep-seated sensation of suffering would bring them to their feet again and they would recommence their wandering, like animals impelled by ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... experience o' life, and I never saw yet a sensible man insensible to the touch of yellow metal. If there may be such a man, it is demonstrable that he is no sensible man. Fideelity! quotha, it's sheer obstinacy. They just see that ye want something oot o' them, and they're so damned selfish and thrawn they winna pairt. And with the natural inabeelity o' their brains to hold mair than one idea at a time they ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... thy slave that's here, I know my duty, Sir. I would not have thy fortunes farred to save my single heart, although I think 'twill break. I will go, I will die, and deem the hardest accident of life but sheer prosperity ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... and—a circumstance concealed from all but me—Heathcliff spent his nights, at least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication with him: still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could; and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He did not omit to avail ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Gray," which is scarcely a tale for children but rather a classic novelette, he gives the story of a young orphan girl living at Widford in Hertfordshire with her blind grandmother. The girl is beloved by young Allan Clare, and one evening, wandering in sheer joy over the scenes of past delightful rambles, she is assailed by a villain. Her blind grandmother finding her gone from the cottage dies of a broken heart, and poor Rosamund, disgraced and terrified, seeks the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... tearing up the flowers on the table, twisting and breaking into bits the wax out of the standish, and performing a hundred mad freaks of passionate folly; seeing his mistress at last quite pale and tired out with sheer weariness of compassion, and watching over his fever for the hundredth time, Esmond seized up his hat, and took his leave. As he got into Kensington Square, a sense of remorse came over him for the wearisome pain he had been inflicting upon the dearest and kindest friend ever man had. He went ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It hurt him not a little. Only a few days ago the British had been advancing, as they thought, to certain victory. All had been sunshine, or at any rate hope. How the villagers had shouted and cheered them! How the women had wept with sheer joy, and shy young girls had thrust flowers into their buttonholes! What heroes they had felt swinging forward to meet the enemy, to defend the homes of their friends and Allies, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... true—one can't create the spirit of religion. If one hasn't it——" He broke off, and added with a smile, "I think I have a certain amount of enthusiasm. But when one has seen a good deal of the world, it's so very easy to feel discouraged. Think how much sheer barbarism there is around us, from the brutal savage of the gutter to the cunning savage of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Second Aspiring Political Economist. Sheer nonsense. How does the quantity of money you possess affect the price you pay for a commodity? The fact of your having twenty sovereigns in your purse won't make your butcher charge you an extra halfpenny a pound for a leg of mutton! That must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... said, that while they were confident of producing a working substitute, they did not pretend to offer in every case the precise quality which seemed to be the special gift of the German, or Belgian, or Austrian trader. Perhaps it was not after all only sheer laziness on the part of the British manufacturer, and sheer lack of patriotism on the part of British governments which induced our commercial leaders to concentrate on one field of production and abandon another. To each nation, as to each man, his gift. Some realization of this ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... attack of a fleet of enormous intergalactic, matter-driven, fighting ships lasted but an instant under the driving power of half a million million suns, concentrated in one enormous ray of energy. The sheer energy of the ray itself, molecular ray though it was, heated the material it struck to blinding incandescence even as it hurled it at a velocity close to that of light into outer space. With little sparkling flashes battleships of the void after giant cruisers flashed into lux, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... soil; then glazed ware, with cloudy brown stripes on a creamy slip; then regular Mycenaean ware, with the familiar marine and plant designs; and, uppermost, bronze. The lower grotto has at first a sheer fall from the upper one, then slopes away for some 200 feet to an icy pool surrounded with a forest of stalagmites; and in this gloomy cavern the evidence was manifest of an ancient cult of a divinity to whom the Double ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... perilous accident. My conversations with Augustus grew daily more frequent and more intensely full of interest. He had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean (more than one half of which I now suspect to have been sheer fabrications) well adapted to have weight with one of my enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination. It is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him showed that he ought to be a soldier. Cabrera followed this advice and took part in Carlist conspiracies on the death of Ferdinand VII. The authorities exiled him and he absconded to Morella to join the forces of the pretender Don Carlos. In a very short time he rose by sheer daring, fanaticism and ferocity to the front rank among the Carlist chiefs who led the bands of Don Carlos in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia. As a raider he was often successful, and he was many times wounded in the brilliant fights in which he again and again ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... "Bien muss," ["The bee must"—referring to a joke in the German Punch (Kladderadatsch).] is, for ordinary mortals, much more applicable—and over this "bee must" one at last becomes quite idle from sheer weariness. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done the mass ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... all in our bodies. The outer condition of the body is accepted as the symbol of the inner. If it is unlovely, or repulsive, through sheer neglect or indifference, we conclude that the mind corresponds with it. As a rule, the conclusion is a just one. High ideals and strong, clean, wholesome lives and work are incompatible with low standards of personal cleanliness. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... potentials of their talents. In theory, a telekineticist could move any object with his mind that he could move with his hands. That was a rough rule of thumb, but it worked. The larger objects were barred by sheer mass; no matter what kind of force you're using, there's a limit to how much of ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer
... to ask the way. In front of the hotel the narrow Silser See filled the valley. Close behind lay the crest of the pass. A picturesque chateau was perched on a sheer rock overhanging the Vale of Bregaglia and commanding a far flung prospect almost to the brink of Como. On both sides rose the mountain barriers; but toward the east there was an inviting gorge, beyond which the lofty Cima di Rosso flung its eternal ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... knows! Why ask her at all? I should certainly upset her into the canal from sheer irritation if she ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... greatest things might have been accomplished; but Pompeius was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party, and, if it still kept together, it did so—in like manner without his action—through the sheer force of circumstances. In this, as in other things, he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... down the Ridge in wind-tattered spray. With the glass, too, she could see a little blue wreath of man-made smoke curling up from the evergreens; and waves of happiness, absurd warm glowing happiness, broke over her, the sheer gladness of being alive. Whatever sinister thing kept her father apart, it was here she belonged—she knew it now—to the great spacious life-stimulating West; to the world resinous with imprisoned sunbeams; not to the lands of sky shut out by twenty story roofs and pea-soup ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... whom any would notice in a crowd. Character, physical perfection, strength of will all combined to make him stand out from other men. And over it all, like a fire from within there played an overwhelming sadness that had a transparent kind of refining effect, as if a spirit dwelt there who by sheer force of will went on in the face of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the life ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... away from the window, Sally's door opened: she joined him, ready for the walk. Her spirits had rallied, assisted by the cheering influence of dressing to go out. Her charming smile brightened her face. In sheer desperation, reckless of what he did or said, Amelius held out both hands to welcome her. "That's right, Sally!" he cried. "Look pleased and pretty, my dear; let's be happy while we can—and let the future ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... soon deep in the preparations for her stay in the city. Her meagre wardrobe required replenishment; she wanted to go to Philadelphia with an outfit of which Miss Lee would not be ashamed. Much to her aunt's surprise the girl selected one-piece dresses of blue serge with sheer white collars for every-day wear in cold weather; a few white linens for warm days; and these, with her blue serge suit, her simple white graduation dress, and a plain dark silk dress, were the main articles of her outfit. Aunt Maria expressed her relief and wonder at the girl's choice—"Well, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... whichever of their parents gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense to deny it. Marcello had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... that she was never allowed to gratify. I think she secretly longed for the freedom that had been hers under the broader roof of her father's stately mansion on High Street. But she had, I suspect, neither the courage nor the force of mind to raise an issue, and from sheer inertia remained faithful to the life ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... when the host of Dmitri was wavering between panic and courage, the men ready to drop their swords through sheer fatigue, an unlooked-for diversion inspired their shrinking souls. The grand prince had stationed a detachment of his army as a reserve, and these, as yet, had taken no part in the battle. Now, fresh and furious, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... distaste for the ugly messes which he had to cook with his own hands; there were days when he would have risked his life to eat a meal served by the hands of another and cooked by another man. That was the secret of that Thanksgiving dinner at the Foster house, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today, as he made his fire between two stones—a smoldering, evil-smelling fire of sagebrush—the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking his lungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned his stomach. At last he sat down, forgetting ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand |
