"Emprise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind!— Cradled in truth, and 'mid distractions born To pure emprise on that despotic morn When freedom yearned along the westering wind, And tyranny, that hound among the blind, Bayed toward the deep where ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... both rich in traditionary story, our northern ballad poetry is wider in its compass, and far more varied in the composition of its material. The high and heroic war-chant, the deeds of chivalrous emprise, the tale of unhappy love, the mystic songs of fairy-land,—all have been handed down to us, for centuries, unmutilated and unchanged, in a profusion which is almost marvellous, when we reflect upon the great historic changes and revolutions which have agitated the country. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... country! The soul patriotic Ye fill with the wishes of mighty emprise, Till conquers he tyranny harsh and despotic, Or first in the front of the battle he dies. Ye offer him laurels, ye crown him with praises, Who falls in the fight with his face to the foe, And gratitude over his sepulcher raises The marbles ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... inform) arise chastise circumcise comprise compromise demise devise disfranchise disguise emprise enfranchise enterprise exercise exorcise franchise improvise incise merchandise premise reprise ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... all sound, Ye distant nursery of rills, Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;— Firm argument that never stirs, Outcircling the philosophers,— Like some vast fleet, Sailing through rain and sleet, Through winter's cold and summer's heat; Still holding on upon your high emprise, Until ye find a shore amid the skies; Not skulking close to land, With cargo contraband, For they who sent a venture out by ye Have set the Sun to see Their honesty. Ships of the line, each one, Ye westward ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 35 In the dim; unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Are they changed also? It is most wonderful. Now am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily, fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than I wend." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our Hope? Doth not the holy love of country swell within thy heart? Canst thou dash the cup of Freedom from thy lips and bear to drink the bitter draught of slaves? The emprise is great; maybe it shall fail, and thou with thy life, as we with ours, shalt pay the price of our endeavour. But what of it, Harmachis? Is life, then, so sweet? Are we so softly cushioned on the stony bed of earth? Is bitterness and sorrow in its sum so small and scant a thing? ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... either uninteresting or unimportant. They are neither the one nor the other. For all that it is intended to be, the book is a whole, and is supremely precious, because it is manifestly a part of the larger whole of Christ's great emprise. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... sat in musing mood, Determining her life's emprise, The sunlight flushed the distant wood, Then, coming closer, filled her eyes, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... one mad, With children joyless, elders sad, Young men unmanly, girls going by Bold-voiced, with eyes unmaidenly; Christ dead two thousand years agone, And kingdom come still all unwon; Your own slack self that will not rise Whole-hearted for the great emprise,— Well, all these dark thoughts of the day As thin smoke's ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... whom we find again on a distant shore, tossed up like the carcass of a wrecked ship which still seems to have life in her. We ask ourselves if that derelict could ever have held goodly merchandise or served a high emprise, co-operated in some defence, held up the trappings of a throne, or borne away the corpse of a monarchy. At this particular time Clement des Lupeaulx (the "Lupeaulx" absorbed the "Chardin") had reached his culminating period. In the most illustrious lives as ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... take as fleshly woof, Being spirit truest proof; Whose spirit sure is lineal to that Which sang Magnificat: Chastest, since such you are, Take this curbed spirit of mine, Which your own eyes invest with light divine, For lofty love and high auxiliar In daily exalt emprise Which outsoars mortal eyes; This soul which on your soul is laid, As maid's breast against breast of maid; Beholding how your own I have engraved On it, and with what purging thoughts have laved This love of mine from all mortality Indeed the copy is a ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... Column is the Adventurous Bowman, past human achievement behind him, seeking a new emprise in the West, whither he has loosed his arrow. At his back is a figure of Humanity, signifying the support of mankind. By his side is the woman, ready to crown his success. (p. 58.) The question has often been asked, why there is no ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... him once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one. Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... in a second set of Odes et Ballades, he announced his vocation in unmistakeable terms. He was a lyric poet and the captain of a new emprise. His genius was too large and energetic to move at ease in the narrow garment prescribed as the poet's wear by the dullards and the pedants who had followed Boileau. He began to repeat the rhythms of Ronsard and the Pleiad; to deal in the richest ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... dreams of the adventure girl who had beckoned him from the forests to deeds of emprise. He had found his adventure girl, but he would not consider that he had won her yet. He little knew that night that his opportunity was close at hand, and that the shadow which the coming event had cast before it had lurked there in the ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... having got rid of my lady after all. That is not to be belittled even now. It is a triumph to succeed in any undertaking, more especially when one has abandoned one's own last hope of such success. The unpleasant character of this particular emprise made its eventual accomplishment in some ways the greater matter for congratulation in my eyes. At least I had done my part. I had come to hate it, but the thing was done, and it had been a fairly difficult thing to do. It was impossible not to plume oneself ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... collar round his neck every Thursday. The jousts continued for thirty days, and the doughty champions fought without shield or target, with weapons bearing points of Milan steel. Six hundred and twenty-seven encounters took place, and one hundred and sixty-six lances were broken, when the emprise was declared to be fairly achieved. The whole affair is narrated with becoming gravity by an eye-witness, and the reader may fancy himself perusing the adventures of a Launcelot or ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... tower to your skies. 'Gainst wind and wave we pile our stone and mold. Powered of genius, panoplied of gold, We build the bastions of our high emprise. But yet, but let the plunging torrent rise, The winds awake on glutted rivers rolled— We die as the reft robin fledgeling dies— We perish as the beast in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... was exasperating enough; for when deeds of desperate emprise are toward it is well to carry them through before the enthusiasm has time to cool. But it could not be helped, the wind was dead, and the ship could not be handled now until the sea breeze sprang up; and, after all, the delay was not an unmitigated misfortune, for it ensured to the crew time ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... superfluous," Buck interrupted amiably, glad to dispose of the matter so promptly. Again he favoured the Mayor with his bright smile, and the latter, now fully convinced that here was a young man of vast emprise whom it behooved him to receive in a whole- hearted and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... would only contribute to render more distinct the bright and glorious meridian of his protracted day,—while I aimed to exhibit its morning promise and its evening lustre;—endeavoring to give some account of what he was and did forty-four years before he commenced "the great emprise," and where he was and how occupied forty-two years after ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... out safe standing-ground for the men that are raising the waggon? Which of you is it who stands in converse with a burgher form? Thanks and blessings! the lads are safe, and full knightly hath been their first emprise. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... falter in the great emprise— Who, turning off upon some poor pretence, Some worthless guerdon or some ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... not forgotten that the only perfect peace he had ever experienced was there, and he remembered that peace as something which seemed to blend all the assuaged passion and confirmed dignity of old age with that energy of high emprise which thrills the nerves of manhood. He had tasted as many sources of earthly pleasure as any man I ever knew; but the ecstasies of form and color, wine, Eros, music, perfume, all the luxuries of surrounding which wealth could purchase ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... that to high and low The noble story openly were knowe In our tongue, about in every age, And written as well in our language As in Latin and French it is; That of the story the truth we not miss, No more than doth each other nation; This was the fine of his intention. The which emprise anon I 'gin shall In his worship for a memorial. And of the time to make mention, When I began on this translation, It was the year, soothly to sayn, Fourteen ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... so very happy," repeated Felix. His black eyes sparkled and he flung up his hands in the gay spirit of emprise. "You must not care because some have run away. They would not be good in a crew if they feel that way now. We feel good. We shall work for ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... flannel-shirt life, however, Baden-Powell is not always on the serious emprise of soldiering. Most of his holidays, at any rate while he is abroad, are spent in shirt-sleeves. His periods of rest from the duties of soldiering are given over to expeditions which carry him far away from the smooth fields and trim hedges of civilisation; ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... And yet we may gaze at our ease, when the thinnest of clouds o'er it lies. The honey's protected, forsooth, by the sting of the bees of the hive: So question the guards of the camp why they stay us in this our emprise. If my slaughter be what they desire, let them put off their rancours and stand From between us and leave her to deal with me and my life at her guise; For, I wot, not so deadly are they, when they set on a foe with their swords, As the eyes of the fair with the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... sweet, Borne on the breath of the balmy air, Charms my heart and dispels my care. The beetling crags that block my way, The storm cloud's gloom, where the lightnings play, But give me strength for each new emprise, And joys my soul as I slowly rise; For snares and cliffs, to a boy like me Should only incentives to action be. I'm bound to rise—If I earnestly try I know I can reach the hilltops high. But I have no time to loiter and ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... and unselfish, often mistaken, but always high-minded and just; not free from the credulity that characterised his generation, but with a spirit of romantic endurance which leaves the New World still his debtor; with a love of high emprise unsullied by lust of gain or by cruelty or vain-glory. Like Moses, he went forth into a land of promise; and, like Moses, the place of his sepulchre is not known. It is, however, recorded that his remains were placed "dans un sepulcre particulier." During the administration of Montmagny a small ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... was banished—even weariness forsook me. I felt fresh as if I had slept; my nerves were strung for emprise. It was but the excitement renewed by what I had read—the impatience of a new ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... lo, a blade for a knight's emprise Filled the fine empty sheath of a man— The Duke grew ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Corydon had been taught to play as many "pieces" as the average American young lady; but Thyrsis had tried to persuade her to a new and desperate emprise—he insisted that there was nothing to music until one had learned to read it at sight. So now, every day when their landlady had gone out, he moved his music-stand into the little parlor, and they went at the task. Thyrsis proposed to achieve it by a tour de force—the way ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... soul, growing clearer, Sees God no nearer; When the soul, mounting higher, To God comes no nigher; But the arch-fiend Pride Mounts at her side, Foiling her high emprise, Sealing her eagle eyes, And, when she fain would soar, Makes idols to adore, Changing the pure emotion Of her high devotion, To a skin-deep sense Of her own eloquence; Strong to deceive, strong to enslave— ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... still alive in our midst; and all of us who are not perverted or debased by the malign "wizardry" of the PRIME MINISTER will spring to the defence of MARY "the Sweetheart of the World," and DOUGLAS "tender and true," in their hours of peril. In that high emprise the gentlemen of the world, however humble, stand, as of old time, side by side ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... a glory out of heaven Or add a height to Babel; oftener they That in the still fulfilment of each day's Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, And leap like lightning ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... abhorred Of all true men. He sits above the rest, The fox-red Agamemnon, round his crest The circlet of his kingship over kings, And at his thigh the sword gold-hilted swings Which Zeus gave Atreus once; and in his heart That gnawing doubt which twice had checkt his start For high emprise, having twice egged him to it, As stout Odysseus knew who had to rue it. Beside him Nestor sat, Nestor the old, White as the winter moon, with logic cold Instilled, as if the blood in him had fled And in his veins ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... with knights-errant when they set out on their adventures. Thus pacing along and dreaming of mighty deeds, he gave vent to his feelings in the following rhapsody: "What a theme for the eloquence of some great master of style—the feats of high emprise wrought by the valiant arm of Don Quixote de La Mancha! Happy the pen which shall describe them, happy the age which shall read the wondrous tale! And thou, brave steed, shalt have thy part in the honor which is done to thy master, when poet ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... now crown; The patriot-Soldier's, in fierce battles won; The "Pen's," than the "Sword's," mankind's greater boon, The bold Explorer's finding where was born The rivers' King, till now, like Nile's, unknown. * * * * * May years of high emprise increase thy fame, And with thy death arise a ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the rising race not to despair, but to seek in a right understanding of the history of their country and in the energies of heroic youth—the elements of national welfare. The present work advances another step in the same emprise. From the state of Parties it now would draw public thought to the state of the People whom those parties for two centuries have governed. The comprehension and the cure of this greater theme depend upon the same agencies ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli |
