"Stave off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... European nations, or of a European alliance. We had but to will it, and British America, and what there was left of Spanish America and Mexico, would all have been gathered in, reaped by that mowing-machine, the American sword. Had our rulers of that year sought to stave off civil war by plunging us into a foreign war, we could have made ourselves masters of all North America, despite the opposition of all Europe, had all Europe been ready to try the question with us, whether the Monroe doctrine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I find him. He was ready to pay two hundred pounds for Bertie to stave off the worst of his creditors, if this marriage had gone on. Bertie must now have the money instead and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... effaced. He was secure as long as Marbran and one or two other big men in the business kept faith with him. Now and then, when the British Intelligence were too hot on the trail, Parrish and Marbran would give away one of the small fry belonging to the organization and thus stave off suspicion. They could do this in complete safety, for so perfect was their organization that the small fry only knew the small fry in the shallows and never the big fish ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... demanded Tom, working himself into a very respectable fit of anger. "I didn't want to go. But that's no reason why you should leave me alone for the rest of the day to—to stave off robbers and ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... heckling him; the settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... customers will give them, and people who have too much money or too little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills, but fifty dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried to stave off customers who do such things: we believe that in the long run it would pay us ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... this stripling have learned what he had taken such pains to conceal? What was he to do? Was he to admit the boy's claims, and surrender the estate? He could not make up his mind to do it. He must stave off the ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... who would be only too glad to shelve him. If he were shelved here his other two Companies would be sure to follow suit, and bang would go every penny of his income—he would be a pauper dependant on that holy woman. Well! Safe now for another year if he could stave off these sharks once more. It might be a harder job this time, but he was in luck—in luck, and it must hold. And taking a luxurious pull at his cigar, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... consideration. Work is at a standstill. Mobiles and Nationaux who apply forma pauperis receive one franc and a half per diem. Now, at present prices, it is materially impossible for a single man to buy sufficient food to stave off hunger for this sum, how then those who depend upon it for their sustenance, and have wives and families to support out of it, are able to live, it is difficult to understand. Sooner or later the population will have to be rationed like soldiers, and, if the siege goes on, useless mouths will ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... sterling qualities. And with this in the hands of Thad Brewster, who was a perfectly fearless chap, according to his churns, who did not know that his boy heart could hammer in his breast like a runaway steam engine, why, they surely ought to be able to stave off any ordinary attack. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... their government. Having ruled themselves for thirty years as they thought best, they were not disposed to admit that the King had any rights in the colony; and they believed that by steady resistance or by dilatory practices they could stave off intervention and that, with the danger once removed, the colony would be allowed to continue in its own course. In a measure they were justified in their belief. The King recalled the commissioners, and, though he wrote a ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... much to stave off the expected storm as to justify himself, proceeded to give a true, though agitated, story of his and Georgie's adventures on the day of the Grandcourt match, appealing to Georgie at every stage in the narration to corroborate him. Which ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... a sudden faintness, anything, and run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she knew were even now on his lips—nothing—she could think of nothing—only that she might have let the Flopper have his way, have let him tell Thornton that she ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout courage. When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre Radisson sat spinning ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans were reduced and the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... are giving an account of your stewardship your year of office may be felt to have been all too short[754]. If you have acted justly, and earned the goodwill of your Provincials, you will have no need of gifts to stave off accusations. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her—reading my own poems—anybody's poems—to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, and ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... society, to protect itself, is bound to con- tinue advancing until it is drawn completely into the net and finds itself encumbered with a lot of unsaleable and useless property. To stave off the evil day when all things must be disclosed to the trusting member, "financing" is restored to, money raised on direct deposit, and advances obtained from banks. The money thus raised tides the society over their difficulties for a time, ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... it was done; and so greatly was he revered for his exalted character, so universal was the confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he remained President, the party that surrounded him was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, to bring that power into pacific and rational relations with the United States. The government aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all foreign politics; to maintain that perfect neutrality which should ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... to divide his time, he can do so; but he can only occupy ten minutes in all. We are called to deliberate, as well as to act. We are asked if we wish to stave off final action? I answer, No. I want speedy action. But at the same time let us have deliberation. I wish to give a vote ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... He saw evil and woe unspeakable fall on that world which he had left behind him, till the earth was filled with blood, and Antichrist seemed ready to appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand. And he had been called to do what he could to stave off this ruin, to make those young princes decree justice and rule in judgment by the fear of God. But he had failed; and there was nothing left to him save self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the blood which had been shed might be required at ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Bacon, a subordinate of the Government, but a very important person in the Commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, and skilfully in smoothing differences and keeping awkward questions from making their appearance. Thus he tried to stave off the risk of bringing definitely to a point the King's cherished claim to levy "impositions," or custom duties, on merchandise, by virtue of his prerogative—a claim which he warned the Commons not to dispute, and which Bacon, maintaining it as legal in theory, did his best to prevent them from discussing, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... me. Blacklisting will be the least of what they'll try to do. They'll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep 'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... can't prevail upon him to wait for me, And to stave off his bargain but three days; Till I obtain the money from my friends, According to their promise.—If I do not Pay it you then, don't wait a ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... A flush ran over her face and down to her neck. Hermione turned away her eyes. But they had read Vere's secret. She knew what her child was doing in those hours of seclusion. And she remembered her own passionate attempts to stave off despair by work. She remembered her ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... lodging-house for homeless men. This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by visiting various free lunches during the day. Every night I arrived with my dollar, and that meant beer and beds for a score. I also brought along a flour sack half full of biscuits, cold pancakes, corn bread, chicken necks and wings and scraps of roasts and steaks. These hungry ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... unfolded every aspect of the science of the management of land, would be assimilated by the intelligent bailiff, and they may even have been influenced by a patriotic desire to reveal to the small holder scientific methods of tillage, which might stave off the ruin that they deplored as statesmen and exploited as individuals. But the lessons were thrown away on the small cultivator; they probably presupposed the possession of capital and labour which were far beyond his reach; and science may have played but little part even in the accumulations ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... exhausted in a theatrical sense; for "life in the clouds" has been long voted "law;" whilst the play-writing craft have already robbed the regions below of every spark of poetic fire; devils are decidedly out of date. In short, and not to mince the matter, as hyenas are said to stave off starvation by eating their own haunches, so the drama must be on its last legs, when actors turn king's evidence, and exhibit to the public how they flirt and quarrel, and eat oysters and drink porter, and scandalise and make fun—how, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... fallen the victim to Cursecowl. I had tried everything to solder up matters which the heart of man could suggest; and knowing that it was a catastrophe which would bring down open war and rebellion throughout the whole parish, my thoughts were all of peace, and how to stave off the eruption of the bloody heathen. I had thought over the thing seriously in my bed; and, reckoning plainly that Cursecowl was not one likely soon to hold out a flag of truce, I had come to the determination within myself to sound a parley—and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... in the cause, whatever it is. What a concatenation now, that you and I should make fools of ourselves in order to stave off the establishment of national education, as if we could, or as if ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knows very well, dropping prices and the loss of foreign markets have devastated too many family farmers. Last year, the Congress provided substantial assistance to help stave off a disaster in American agriculture, and I am ready to work with lawmakers of both parties to create a farm safety net that will include crop insurance ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... astonishment that he could bide his time so patiently, without any pang of anxiety, or hope, or agonizing misgiving. He thought of Irene, but only of her welfare. If he were not brought down by a chance bullet early in the fray, he felt quite certain of being able to stave off the final rush long enough to give Abdur Kad'r a breathing spell, he had sufficient confidence in that wily old Arab's resources to believe that he would outwit his pursuers, provided they lost a good deal of time in ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... long! There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty belly. You can ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Mongols, and were defenceless against them. All the buffer states had gone. The Sung were quite without adequate military defence. They hoped to stave off the Mongols in the same way as they had met the Kitan and the Juchen. This time, however, they misjudged the situation. In the great operations begun by the Mongols in 1273 the Sung were defeated over and over again. In 1276 their capital was taken by the Mongols and the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... and as soon as one gets to Cockleham an irresistible inclination seizes one not to do them to-day. If anybody says it is a good day for bathing you say it is better for boating. And if they agree you wonder if, after all, golf.... And so you preserve your independence and feel rested and stave off for a little while the evil day. But only for a little. Very soon, for lack of alternative suggestions, you are bound to be dragged in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... and I dare say that the money van Heerden paid you this morning will stave off your creditors. Anyway, I'm not running a Pure Business Campaign. I'm running a campaign against your German ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... would be conceded a distinct advantage in many particulars. A very small nest will accommodate a very large family of growing mice; the tighter they are packed in the nest the better off they are in zero weather. Moreover, in a pinch, the parental church-mouse may stave off famine by resorting to a cannibalistic plan of economy, thereby saving its young the trouble of growing up to become proverbial church-mice. It may devour its young when it becomes painfully hungry, and not be held accountable to the law. With commendable frugality, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... that he had squandered the last remnant of the small property which had come to him; and that they were liable to be turned out of the old home, such as it was, at any moment now—his invalid mother, and the sister who had striven so hard to keep things together—unless he could obtain money to stave off matters, at any rate for a time? Pressure was now being brought to bear upon him, and threats used that, unless he paid off the sum of five hundred pounds—a sum there seemed no possibility of procuring—charges of fraudulent borrowing would be brought against him which he might ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the boy. The light in those peering, bloodshot eyes told him that the longshoreman would mistreat that beloved uniform; and Johnnie wanted to gain time. Something, or some one, might interrupt, and thus stave off—what? ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... whether Elizabeth's policy had been dictated by a most consummate, if by no means elevated, state-craft based upon an abnormally astute calculation of risks and chances, or merely by a desperate desire to stave off an immediate contest, whatever shifts might be involved; whether it was in fact peculiarly long-sighted, or opportunist to the last and lowest degree; it had been actually a complete success. She had given the Provinces just that minimum of assistance or ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... by her unexpected good-fortune, Toni showed herself more than usually bewitching; and although she managed to stave off the declaration which still trembled on the young man's lips, she played games with him in the most friendly fashion, and bade him good-night at last with so sweet a smile that he almost fell upon his knees ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the kind that takes you by storm, Captain Kirby is one that will lay siege. He doesn't come so often as the other, he doesn't stay so long, he doesn't say so much; but he is the kind that sticks. I may be able to stave off the lieutenant, but I shall have to have it out with ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... vessel that goes in quest of 'beche-de-mer' takes several expert divers—usually Kanakas, or South Sea Islanders—and having arrived at the ground they propose fishing, a sort of head-quarters is established on some convenient island, where vegetables are planted, to stave off the scurvy that would otherwise soon attack the adventurers. This done the little vessel proceeds to the edge of the reef, and begins ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... struggle incessantly in order to obtain even the bare necessities of daily existence. Unnumbered multitudes never enjoy a sufficiency of food, but have to be contented with whatever Heaven may send them; and profoundly thankful they are when they can be sure of two meals a day to stave off the pangs of hunger from themselves and ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... accepted by Congress in June, 1868; and as their Legislatures at once ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and secured its adoption, they were fully restored and their senators and representatives admitted in July. Virginia and Mississippi managed to stave off final action, hoping to escape the excluding clauses, until after Grant's election to the Presidency in 1868; and their hopes were justified when Grant gave his influence successfully with Congress against the excluding clauses; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the nicht?" asked Walker in hurried alarm, wondering wildly how he could stave off the chastisement which he knew from Geordie's voice he might expect. "Talk sensibly, man. Try an' ha'e some sense. What's the matter ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the sincerity of his devotion to the family he served, he had thought of sacrificing all he possessed in an attempt to stave off final ruin; but a very little reflection had convinced him that all he had would be a mere drop in the flood of extravagance, and would forthwith disappear with the rest into the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... short spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt; but I escaped Squeers and Creakle just as I escaped Johnson and Carlyle. And this is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to learn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery and guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we scribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments—"keeping in" was the phrase in my time—or let a master strike us with a cane and fall back on our pride at being able ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. Ecuador completed its first standby agreement ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... when many deaths among their kith and kin had afforded full proof that the goddess was enraged, they met in solemn conclave and decided to perform every Sunday and Tuesday night for a month such a ceremony as would delight the heart of that powerful deity and stave off further mortality. The limitation of the period of propitiation to one month was based not so much upon religious grounds as upon the fact that a Municipality, with purely Western ideas of sanitation and of combating epidemics, refused to allow the maintenance of the shed, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... he—he broke it. There has been a dreadful scene. I never imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... running with twice the speed of the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane. The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead. Marianne cried out in delight. She had forgotten her hope that the mares might not win. All she desired now was that blood ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... platform may give you time to grip yourself, compose your thoughts, and stave off disaster. Perhaps the surest and most practical method is to begin a new sentence with your last important word. This is not advocated as a method of composing a speech—it is merely an extreme measure which may save you in tight circumstances. It is like the fire department—the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... mind that the conditions that brought him home so unexpectedly were known only to himself and he could stave off unpleasant explanations for ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... penalty for non-appearance at a half-holiday game was a fine of sixpence. Constant absence was likely in time to lead to a more or less thrilling interview with the captain of cricket, but a very occasional attendance was enough to stave off this disaster; and as for the sixpence, to a man of means like Farnie it was a mere nothing. It was a bad system, and it was a wonder, under the circumstances, how Beckford produced the elevens ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... blood, but every time I arose half way I tumbled helplessly back into the snow. The desire to live increased, and when I felt the numbness creep from my limbs into my body, I crawled alongside Peoria Red and snuggled closely against him, hoping that our mutual body warmth would stave off the crisis to the last possible moment. He was groaning, and mustering the last vestige of control I yet had over my benumbed hands, I searched about in the darkness until I found his frozen fingers, and clasping them in my own I placed my mouth close ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... Boer army was occupied and exhausted in futile efforts to take the town and stave off the relieving forces. Four precious months were wasted by the enemy in a vain enterprise. Fierce and bloody fighting raged for several weeks with heavy loss to both sides, but without shame to either. In ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... compulsion. What mad adventure was this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off tomorrow. To-morrow— ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is, if I can help Description; and I won't reflect,—that is, If I can stave off thought, which—as a whelp Clings to its teat—sticks to me through the abyss Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss Drains its first draught of lips:—but, as I said, I won't philosophise, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first, notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would have been an avowal ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... indeed strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old- fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father's wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda's earnings being large enough to stave off the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ill-disguised ways an itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his lips to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave off the real, dreadful truth. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment." The value of Allied unity of command now became apparent, for heavy French reinforcements were brought up in time to help stave off the German ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... sits within her tepee making beaded deerskins for her father, while he longs to stave off her every suitor as all unworthy of his old heart's pride. But Tusee is not alone in her dwelling. Near the entrance-way a young brave is half reclining on a mat. In silence he watches the petals of a wild rose growing on the soft buckskin. Quickly the young woman slips the beads ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... powerless. There come times in man's life when he moves heaven and earth, figuratively speaking: prays until he can pray no more: sacrifices, it may be, his money, his health, his prospects, and does everything that is in the power of a human being in a vain attempt to stave off a threatened disaster. But, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his cries to a pitiless heaven, the relentless march of fate cannot be stayed. It moves forward like a huge juggernaut and crushes his hopes, his dearest idol, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Determined not to be outwitted by the Norman, Ansgar (so the story goes) summoned a meeting of the eldermen (natu majores) of the City—the forerunners of the later aldermen—and proposed a feigned submission which might stave off immediate danger. The proposal was accepted and a messenger despatched. William pretended to accept the terms offered, and at the same time so worked upon the messenger with fair promises and gifts that on his return ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... stave off Higginbotham's suspicions. Evidently, the other was feeling around to learn whether they had flown sufficiently of late to have spied out the secret radio plant or seen the radio-controlled plane ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... with anger. She would stave off as long as possible the principal question—that of marriage. Sudden proposals, too, emanating from others, always nettled her; ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... between the angry woman and her prisoners with such vehemence that he was able to stave off, at least for a time, the execution of the supreme sentence. These men were, he said, friends of the Chief and had come up on his assurance to meet him ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it holding out a stiff, black-banded arm; the two rails curving there, with the flat white glitter ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Napoleon. It proved physically impossible for him to extend the Continental System widely and thoroughly enough to gain his point. In many cases, to stave off opposition, he authorized exceptions to his own decrees. If he could have prevailed upon every Continental state to close its ports to British goods simultaneously and for several successive years, he would still have been confronted with a difficult ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... ambassador; and Cousin George, when he took his leave, promising to be ready to meet Sir Harry at twelve on the morrow, could almost comfort himself with a prospect of success. He might be successful, if only he could stave off the Walker and Bullbean portion of Mr. Hart's persecution! For he understood that the success of his views at Humblethwaite must postpone the payment by Sir Harry of those moneys for which Mr. Hart and Captain Stubber were so unreasonably greedy. He would have dared to defy the ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... to command a strong support when he brought forward his proposition. Winslow, writing to his friend Winthrop at Boston, gives an amusing account of his own and Bradford's consternation, and the expedients to which they were forced to resort in the legislature to stave off a vote upon the petition, when Vassal made his ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... rose wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to, something that would stave off the ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... affairs; say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy—are ready to lay hold of any pretext for delay or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable ruin a few days longer. "Down with such dishonesty," says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy. "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm good sense says to the man that is drowning. "You ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spend such toil, such endeavour, so much money, so much anxiety, watchfulness, and care, in order to live only a little longer, what ought we not to do that we may live for ever? And if we call them prudent who take every possible precaution to stave off death, to live but a few days more, to save just a few days, then how foolish are they who so pass their days as to lose the Day of ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... of the north in the early part of Esar-haddon's reign, public prayers and fasts "for one hundred days and one hundred nights" were ordained by the "prophets" in the hope that the Sun-god might "remove the sin" of the people and stave off the threatened attack. So, again, when Assur-bani-pal had suppressed the Babylonian revolt and taken Babylon after a long siege, he tells us that "at the instance of the prophets he purified the mercy-seats and cleansed the processional roads that had been ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... inflation-which fell in 1997 to 38%. The macroeconomic adjustments, bolstered by strong oil prices, resulted in strong growth in 1997. However, the East Asian financial crisis and the decline of international oil prices toward the end of 1997 brought pressure on the currency, which Caracas was able to stave off. Caracas readjusted its exchange rate bands and began to allow quicker depreciation of the Bolivar; the government also tightened monetary policy. Concerned over potential revenue shortfalls from soft oil prices for the 1998 budget, Caracas has implemented ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... newspapers and talk about equality all the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the product of the harvests—thousands and thousands of duros paid for oranges by the Englishmen and the French—should belong to all." But to stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramon, the scourge of the wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... knowledge that for the nonce he was clear of his enemies, several other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the need of food ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... him too far he had an answer to her reproaches which would effectually reduce her to silence. But Billy knew that answer, and the reason for the gleam which played like heat-lightning in his eyes, and she hastened to stave off disaster. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... want to take him something wherewith to stave off the pangs of hunger," says the younger Miss Beresford, with that grandeur of style she usually affects in moments of strong excitement, and with the vigor that distinguishes her. "I see; certainly." She grows abstracted. "There's a leg of mutton ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... immense advantage at the start, but it is proved that, once the plan has gone wrong, they are at the best not better in warfare than ourselves. Their zest for discipline, and their reserves, have enabled them to stave off a catastrophe longer than perhaps any other nation could have staved it off. But time is now showing that excessive discipline and organization produce defects which ultimately outweigh the qualities they spring from. The tenacity of the Germans is remarkable, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... apathy with Hurstwood, resulting from his inability to see his way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had only five hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling as if he could stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite period. Sitting around the house, he decided to wear some old clothes he had. This came first with the bad days. Only once he apologised in the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of St. John's realized that a crisis had come in his life, —a crisis he had tried to stave off in vain. And yet there was a period during which he pursued his shrunken duties as though nothing had happened to him; as a man who has been struck in battle keeps on, loath to examine, to acknowledge ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... majority in the House, led by Madison, were ready to sequester British debts, declare an embargo, build a navy, and in general prepare for a bitter contest; but by great exertions the administration managed to stave off these drastic steps by promising to send a special diplomatic mission to prevent war. During the summer the excitement grew, for it was in this year that Wayne's campaign against the western Indians ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... one hand and Normans on the other, while the crusaders who passed through his territory proved more troublesome than either. He managed to hold the empire together in spite of these troubles, and to stave off the doom that impended all through his reign ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... find mops and Dame Partingtons to stave off the deluge. Colonel Morley has obeyed Lady Montfort's summons, and has entered the carriage. Before she can speak, however, he has rushed into the subject of which he himself is full. "Only think—I knew it would be so when the moment came; all depends upon Guy Darrell; Montfort, who seems always ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn his thoughts ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... To stave off the ordeal he saw himself forced to invent a new set of doubts and objections. On his next visit to the house of Mitri, he owned himself convinced of the vanity of the Protestant faith, but hinted at an ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... himself to the movement for "Life and Liberty," has established a strong claim on the respect of those who differ from him. I state on p. 198 my reason for dissenting from Mr. Temple's scheme. To my thinking, it is just one more attempt to stave off Disestablishment. The subjection of the Church to the State is felt by many to be an intolerable burden. Mr. Temple and his friends imagine that, while retaining the secular advantages of Establishment and endowment, they can obtain from Parliament ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard durable metal, and upon that ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... practically suggesting to them the policy, or rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North Borneo Company, the British Government no longer called for the observance ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... of disappointment. Somehow, he had hoped that his father and his friends might have been able to stave off ruin. As he approached nearer Tom was made aware that the crowd ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... it has been any particular element," she broke in, trying desperately to stave off what she felt in his tone. "I love the wild, where I can ride, and ride, and never meet a human being—where I can dream and dally and feast my eyes on a landscape man has not touched. I have lived most of my life in New York, and I love nature so well that I'm inclined to be jealous ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... eat six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... these two hundred millions, but that, on the contrary, Great Britain would be likely to say to us, 'We will go to war to recover the money you owe us,' That is one of the questions which we must settle if we go to war, but which we might otherwise, at least for a time, stave off. But, if we go to war, what must be the effect of the peace that follows? We must pay our two hundred millions, with the interest. As to our debt from Mexico, I believe the way to recover it is not to go to war for it; for war, besides failing to recover the money, will ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... settlement, under the threat of an arrest for the amount. Of course there were no funds forthcoming, and credit was quite exhausted. Something was necessary to be done; the scandal of being seized would probably damage his hopes of success with Kate Waring; and he felt that if he could only stave off this difficulty for a week or a little more till the affair was concluded and her property in his power, that all might yet be well. When other persuasions, entreaties, and promises had failed to move his obdurate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, that the failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas the whole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to bolster up the impossible, to stave off the inevitable, to postpone the end. And it had all been in vain. The end! It would come, as surely as day followed night—had perhaps indeed already come; for how else could the nervous aversion be explained, which had seized her that day? What, during the foregoing weeks, she had tried ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he now understood ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... social order. He is their embodiment: he is the most emblematic figure in the modern world that I know—in this country, at any rate—representing so much that is good in the great traditions which have got to go. And to stave off that day he will do almost anything. He would even—if he thought it would enable him the better to prick some of his bubbles—he would even take ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... "recourse to each other;" and when the amateur players had played themselves out, and exhausted their powers of contributing to each others' amusement, it is probable that "recourse to ourselves," in the exact sense of the phrase, was found ineffective—in Sterne's case, at any rate—to stave off ennui. To him, with his copiously if somewhat oddly furnished mind, and his natural activity of imagination, one could hardly apply the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... fellow to take away from me, so build your dam and be damned to you. Of course, if you complete your contract eventually, you will force me to pay you for it, but in the interim you will have had to use clam-shells and woodpecker heads for money. I know I can stave off settlement of your judgment for a year; after that, should I acquire title to the Rancho Palomar, I will settle ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... tale, of a somewhat grisly character, which Abner had composed during the holiday season. Bond had taxed him with using this work as a buffer to stave off other work of a practical nature such as was abundantly offered by Giles and his father about the farm; and, to tell the truth, Abner had limited his physical exertions to half-hour periods that most other men would have charged to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... cause, and in fact was so strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill; that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to stave off ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Autocratic Hydro and Mackenzie the loosening octopus; New Ontario preaching up the old plaint of secession; better roads and prodigal Mr. Biggs; what to do with Education that Cody had not started to do; how to stave off commissions on reform of the school system; the constant queues of moral reformers; the new menace of the movies and the censorship farce; the timber stealers; disconcerting Dewart and redundant Ferguson; returned soldiers and khaki members; the Reds and the plain ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... would not be silenced or cajoled), perhaps if Brown had been less confident and truthful—if he had had less faith in his old companion's powers as a man of business—it would have come easier to tell the truth. And how futile a thing it was to stave off discovery for a single day! How doubly ashamed he would have to feel after that poor pretence of responsible solidity! If he had only been disposed to be tempted at all—here surely was an added reason for ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... she had made up her mind to nothing, except, that it would be very difficult for her to say either yes or no. Naturally enough, she dreaded the being obliged to say anything; and was ready to seize every expedient to stave off the moment of emergency. As long as she was talking to Miss Broadus, she was safe; but conversations cannot last always, even when they flow in a stream so full and copious as that in which the words always poured ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... to remain here any longer!' There spoke the owl. And here the lion, when the bad news came: 'I had asked for my recall after Ticonderoga. But since the affairs of Canada are getting worse, it is my duty to help in setting them right again, or at least to stave off ruin so long as ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... expression in the opening words of the essay (published a few months later, with one or two additions that were made after I had read two of Mr. Bradlaugh's essays, his "Plea for Atheism", and "Is there a God?"): "It is impossible for those who study the deeper religious problems of our time to stave off much longer the question which lies at the root of them all, 'What do you believe in regard to God?' We may controvert Christian doctrines one after another; point by point we may be driven from the various beliefs of our churches; ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant |
