"Gripe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know too well that by such frank confession, they would soon lose their hold on Catholic populations, especially on women, by whom, through confession, they rule the world. They much prefer to keep their gripe on benighted minds, frightened consciences, and trembling souls. No wonder, then, that they fully endorse and confirm the decisions of the councils of Latran and Trent ordering "that all sins must ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... forefathers' care, Hear and attend! while I the means reveal To enjoy those pleasures, for the weak too strong, Too costly for the poor: to rein the steed Swift-stretching o'er the plain, to cheer the pack Opening in concerts of harmonious joy, 110 But breathing death. What though the gripe severe Of brazen-fisted Time, and slow disease Creeping through every vein, and nerve unstrung, Afflict my shattered frame, undaunted still, Fixed as a mountain ash, that braves the bolts Of angry Jove; though blasted, yet unfallen; Still can my soul in Fancy's mirror view Deeds glorious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... love and mortal's agony, With an immortal's patience blending:—vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... appear the cat had eat me. He took me home, and called his dog into the garden, where he let me go, and sent the dog after me. The dog presently caught me, and lucky it was, he did not kill me the first gripe; for his master (seeing he caught me so soon, as he wanted to have had some fun, as he termed it) threw a stone at him, which hit him on the head, and laid him flat on the ground. I seized the opportunity, and ran up the garden wall, from whence I jumped, ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous
... striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,—Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy to his works in sculpture, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could hardly be detected in company with a niggardly temper. Wishes which cost nothing; pity which expires on the lips; be ye warmed and be ye clothed, from a cold heart and an unyielding gripe, never imprinted their disgraceful brand upon Isabella Graham. What she urged upon others she exemplified in herself. She kept a purse for God. Here, in obedience to his command, she deposited the first-fruits ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... twistings bound; and threatening shakes Her tresses: loud the serpents noise, disturb'd; Sprawl o'er her shoulders some; some, lower fall'n, Twine hissing round her breasts, with brandish'd tongue, Black poison vomiting. With furious gripe, Two from her locks she tore;—her deadly hand Hurl'd them straight on; the breasts of Athamas, And Ino, hungry, with their fangs they seiz'd; Fierce pains infixing, but external wounds Their limbs betray'd not: mental was the blow, So ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Thoughts unspeakable Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems, Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him? I wrestled with the lion, when a boy, 260 In play, till he ran roaring from my gripe. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... to our port. Where I must Caesar's message loud proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures with a smile Doth like a colic make mine honor gripe, Machiavelian methods were in sooth The better physic for the patients' needs And I like good physician must the probe Thrust in and sound the ugly, gaping wound. Quezox: Most noble sire, if I may caution speak It were to all this filthy, croaking brood Ne'er lend an open ear, ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... castle gates, the truce and parley, The sack of an old city in its time, The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust, The power ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider press's gripe; 130 And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... scene. It was then I saw the young girls in the act of being hurried off by their captors. It was then my heart was wrung, by the spectacle of Gabriella struggling in the arms of the chief. I was helpless to interfere. I was prostrate upon the earth, and held fast in the gripe of two brawny savages—one kneeling on each side of me. I expected them at every instant to put an end to my life. I awaited the final blow—either the stroke of a tomahawk or the thrust of a spear. I only wondered ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... charged,—had they understood him, they would have seen in him a young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less ardently for the veil of reserve that covered it; who would shrink from no danger, but would not court it in bravado; and who would cling with an invincible tenacity of gripe to any purpose which he might espouse. There is good reason to think that he had come to Canada with purposes already conceived, and that he was ready to avail himself of any stepping-stone which might help to realize them. Queylus, Superior of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... the muttered answer, as Mrs. Manners clutched the child—a little, thin-limbed, cunning-eyed girl, of eight or ten years old—and pressed her to her breast, with a strain more like the gripe of a lioness ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a cockatrice's dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws, Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... freed Rashleigh from my hold, and securing me, notwithstanding my struggles, in his own Herculean gripe, he called out, 'Take the bent, Mr Rashleigh—make ae pair o' legs worth twa pair o' hands; ye hae done that before ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... alliance with many evil things, may strive to counteract this progressive self emancipation from cruel falsehoods and superstitions, but in vain. The terms of salvation are seen lying in the righteous will of a gracious God, not in the heartless caprice of a priesthood nor in the iron gripe of a set of dogmas. The old priestly monopoly over the way to heaven has been taken off in the knowledge of the enlightened present, and, for all who have unfettered feet to walk with, the passage to God is now across a free bridge. The ancient exactors may still sit in their toll house creeds and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Prince of Darkness had thee and all the other diabolicals of these woods in his own good gripe!" muttered the messenger between his teeth; and then, as if guided by a spirit that could not long be quelled, he assumed something more of his unbridled and natural air, boldly declining to join in the prayer on the plea of haste, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... when explained, turned out to be simply this—The good housewife, when she knew that a docket had been struck against her husband, had taken care to conceal some of her choice cherry brandy, from the rapacious gripe of the messenger to the Commissioners of Bankrupts, on some shelves in a closet up stairs, which also contained, agreeably to the ancient architecture of the building, the trunk of the pump below; and, in trying to move the jars, to get at a drop for the party at the kitchen fire, the shelf ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... answer my question!' exclaimed her tormentor; and he attempted to extort the confession by shaking her, and remorselessly crushing her slight arms in the gripe of his ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... spangin' away before him on the road. What it wer he could not think; but he never consayted there was a freet or a bo thereaway; so he kep near it, watching every spang and turn it took, till it ran into the gripe by the roadside. There was a gravel pit just there, and Tom Ettles wished to take another gliff at it before he went on. But when he keeked into the pit, what should he see but a man attoppa a horse that could not get up or on: and says he, 'I think ye be at a dead-lift ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... together, when youngsters, and I was the better chap until my friend reached his eighteenth year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply the term of "extraordinary" to anything about myself, but the word escaped me unconsciously, and I shall let it ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... his weapon on its nose with such force that the creature staggered and sank to the ground, thus allowing Tom to get back his club. Before, however, either of them could repeat the blow, the seal, recovering, again dashed at Tom, who had to leap out of its way, narrowly escaping an ugly gripe on the leg. Willy had again loaded, but was afraid to fire lest he might hit either of the seamen. The seal now stopped, seeming doubtful at which of his assailants he should next rush. When they stopped the creature stopped also; ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... up!" quoth Little John. "Disgrace, sayest thou? Methinks it is more disgrace for one of our garb to wring hard-earned farthings out of the gripe of poor lean peasants. ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... upon his suggestion, but I did. I bundled the sugar into my pocket with a grim satisfaction; and Halicarnassus paid his thirty cents, looking—and feeling, as he afterwards told me—as if a policeman's gripe were on his shoulders. If any restaurant in Boston recollects having been astonished at any time during the summer of 1862 by an unaccountably empty sugar-bowl, I take this occasion to explain the phenomenon. I gave the sugar afterwards to a little beggar-girl, with a dime for a brace of lemons, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... England) is good sport. You go to a stony shallow at night, a companion bearing a torch; then, stripping to the thighs and shoulders, wade in; grope with your hands under the stones, sods, and other harbourage, till you find your game, then gripe him in your "knieve" and toss ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... together, an exclamation for mercy burst from his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glad to see our suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather to the ear of the directory, to make it unclinch the fist; and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does not require much sagacity to discern that no power wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state of things it can neither keep nor hold. No! It cannot even long make war if the grand bank and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... noses together placed, Then their blood was scatter’d on every side; Desperate the fight, and the fight did last ’Till the brave black dog in Bran’s gripe died. ...
— King Hacon's Death and Bran and the Black Dog - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... and still are drawcansirs in England, Ireland and Scotland—that Dublin particularly was once full of them; but that they were soon brought to manners by the just resentment of the audience—the gripe of the constable, and the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... me to and fro, with his septuagenarian gripe on my collar, as if instead of a patient much bored friend, I was his deadly enemy. When he let go, I found myself in a ring of spectators. 'Shame, shame! to insult an old man like him!' was the general cry. 'Young puppy!' said an elderly merchant, whose good opinion was my heart's ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... was on his feet in a twinkling, thrust out his hand, gave his ancient crony the gripe of a giant, and slapping the other hand on a bench, "Sit down there," cried he, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... battle was a short one. The guaco, using its wings, succeeded in striking its antagonist upon the upraised head, and quickly following up the blow, planted his talons so as to encircle the throat of his victim. The effect of his gripe was instantly apparent. The reptile unfolded itself, and the slender coral body was seen writhing and twisting along the ground. But it did not remain long upon the ground, for in a few moments the guaco rose into the air, and carried the struggling victim into the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... my lord!" cried the trembling Harwold, quaking under the gripe of Thaddeus, and shrinking from the terrible brightness of his eye,—"my ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... him, while Atwell and Church came down and struck him with a pump break and a club; he was then dragged upon deck; they called for Dawes to come to them, and as he came up the mate seized his hand, and gave him a death gripe! three of them then hove him overboard, but which three Dawes does not know; the mate when cast overboard was not dead, but called after them twice while in the water! Dawes says he was so frightened that ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... empty terror thrills Of woods and whispering wind. Whether 'tis Spring's first shiver, faintly heard Through the light leaves, or lizards in the brake The rustling thorns have stirr'd, Her heart, her knees, they quake. Yet I, who chase you, no grim lion am, No tiger fell, to crush you in my gripe: Come, learn to leave your dam, For ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Fulfil your dread intent, and stain with blood The holy altars of your household gods;— These halls that gave you birth, the stage where murder Shall hold his festival of mutual carnage Beneath a mother's eye!—then, foot to foot, Close, like the Theban pair, with maddening gripe, And fold each other in a last embrace! Each press with vengeful thrust the dagger home, And "Victory!" be your shriek of death:—nor then Shall discord rest appeased; the very flame That lights your funeral pyre shall tower dissevered In ruddy columns to the skies, and tell With horrid ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... senna tea with prunes which render it palatable, confection of senna, syrup of senna, and the sweet essence of senna are generally very readily taken by children, but all have the disadvantage of being liable to gripe. The German liquorice powder, as it is called, which is composed of powdered senna, liquorice powder, fennel, and a little sulphur with white sugar, is freer from this drawback than any other preparation, and when mixed with a little water is not generally ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... Warriours, arm for fight; the foe at hand, Whom fled we thought, will save us long pursuit This day; fear not his flight; so thick a cloud He comes, and settled in his face I see Sad resolution, and secure: Let each His adamantine coat gird well, and each Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield, Borne even or high; for this day will pour down, If I conjecture aught, no drizzling shower, But rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire. So warned he them, aware themselves, and soon In order, quit of all impediment; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of a second repast, and heap the altars with loaded platters. Then the Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing, their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand labours by Juno's malign ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Against the obdurate pane, of thy small wing;— He hears thee not—he heeds not—but, at morn, The ice-enamoured schoolboy, early afoot, Finds thy small bulk beneath the alder stump, Thy bright eyes closed, and tiny talons clench'd, Stiff in the gripe of death. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... had not failed me, I might have quoted that line often and appropriately enough. But every agent in the "robbery"—from the vainglorious Virginian, my chief captor, down to the smooth Secretary, whose velvet gripe was so loth to unclose—seemed provokingly bent on exaggerating the importance of their prize. Perhaps the very interest felt in my release, and the exertions unsparingly used—especially in Baltimore—to secure it, strengthened the false ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hail'd him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... on the heath, As he did gripe and hold it from his breast, He cut my blade with fifty pallid fingers, On his knees, crying out He had at home an old and doating father; And yet I slew him! There was a ribbon round his neck That caught in the hilt of my sword. A stripling, and so long a dying? ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves ... when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority ... when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,— Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once crimson, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Carlists at their comrade's terror and this sudden attack, was such, that, although men of action and energy, they were for a moment paralysed, and thought not of rescuing their friend from the iron gripe in which he was held. Already his eyes were bloodshot, his face purple, and his tongue protruding from his mouth, when a gendarme came up, and aided by half-a-dozen of those agents who, in plain clothes, half-spy and half-policeman, are to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... in long hassock grass. Oh Aira caespitosa, most stately and most variable of British grasses, why will you always grow where you are not wanted? Through you the mare all but left her hind legs in that last gripe. Through you a red-coat ahead of me, avoiding one of your hassocks, jumped with his horse's nose full butt against a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we—as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators—when the blood trickles we are tickled, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 'kilt.' Thus, 'I'm kilt with the cold,' is nothing to 'I'm kilt all over with the rheumatism.'] and they lifted her into a cabin hard by, and the maid was found after where she had been thrown in the gripe of a ditch, her cap and bonnet all full of bog water, and they say my lady can't live anyway. Thady, pray now is it true what I'm told for sartain, that Sir Condy has made over all to your ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... in, increasing to a gale, and the wretched brigantine, her sails close-reefed, tossed among the savage billows at the mercy of the storm. A heavy sea rolled down upon her, and threw her on her side. The surges broke over her, and, clinging with desperate gripe to spars and cordage, the drenched voyagers gave up all for lost. At length she righted. The gale subsided, the wind changed, and the crazy, water-logged vessel again bore slowly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the barrel was swayed down from the opposite side. A shipwrecked man, whose long wet hair streamed down over his face, fixed his nails, as it were the talons of a vulture, on the hoops of the barrel; and by the energy of his gripe—it seemed as though he would have pressed them through the wood itself.—He was aware of his competitor: and he shook his head wildly to clear the hair out of his eyes—and opened his lips, which displayed ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... policie in thieves, to place chamberlains in such great inns where cloathiers and graziers do lye; and by their large bribes to infect others, who were not of their own preferring; who noting your purses when you draw them, they'l gripe your cloak-bags, and feel the weight, and so inform the master thieves of what they think, and not those alone, but the Host himself is oft as base as they, if it be left in charge with them all night; he to his roaring guests either gives item, or shews the purse itself, who spend liberally, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... overtake, snatch, capture, discover, grip, secure, take, clasp, ensnare, gripe, seize, take hold of. clutch, entrap, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... novels, published a few months ago, he has the insolence to insult Hungary in the person of one of her sons. He makes his great braggart, Coeur de Lion, fling a Magyar over his head. Ha! it was well for Richard that he never felt the gripe of a Hungarian. I wish the braggart could have felt the gripe of me, who am 'a' Magyarok kozt legkissebb,' the least among the Magyars. I do hate that Scott, and all his vile gang of Lowlanders and Highlanders. The black corps, the fekete regiment of Matyjas Hunyadi, was worth all the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... with other landsmen, crowded in the small and malodorous fishing-vessels that were made to serve as transports, was now in the gripe of the most unheroic of maladies. "A terrible northeast storm" had fallen upon them, and, he says, "we lay rolling in the seas, with our sails furled, among prodigious waves." "Sick, day and night," ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... foeman round.— Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own! No maiden's hand is round thee thrown! That desperate grasp thy frame might feel, Through bars of brass and triple steel!— They tug, they strain! down, down they go, The Gael above, Fitz-James below. The Chieftain's gripe his throat compressed, His knee was planted on his breast; His clotted locks he backward threw, Across his brow his hand he drew, From blood and mist to clear his sight, Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright!— —But hate and fury ill supplied The stream of life's exhausted tide, And ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... more general outcry than any which had been elicited even by the religious persecution. There were many inhabitants who were earnest and sincere Catholics, and who therefore considered themselves safe from the hangman's hands, while there were none who could hope to escape the gripe of the new tax-gatherers. Yet the Governor was not the man to be daunted by the probable unpopularity of the measure. Courage he possessed in more than mortal proportion. He seemed to have set himself to the task of ascertaining ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... assure you that I shall always bear it in mind," said Rodney, stopping long enough to give the operator's hand a cordial gripe and shake. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... tree, all unconscious that another figure is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,—but Death, who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the common ancestors of all men, laboring for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... to myself that my pet term "cultural queer" did not describe to my own satisfaction members of a culture which could create things like this cabin. Not that I liked making the admission. It's hard to admit an exception to a pet gripe ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... here, Sir." She held her weak gripe on his hand still, with the vague outlook in her eyes that came there sometimes. "Was it fur me yoh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... I can show the indent—dent—dentures, Sir. But I was born to be a comedian, Sir: so I ran away, and listed with the players, Sir; and I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age; and he did not know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with clean hands,—with clean ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I'll teach you to keep a taughter gripe of the beef for the future, you spalpeen," exclaimed O'Grady, recovering himself, and about to hurl back the joint at the head of the unfortunate boy, when his arm was grasped by Devereux, who cried out, laughing,—"Preserve the beef and your temper, Paddy, and if boy Gerrard, after proper trial, ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... of shining steel was raised aloft; and the gripe of the powerful hand clutching its hilt ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Granted; don't draw back; come, a cordial gripe. We are friends; we have both suffered from the same cause. There, that's right—honest palm to palm. Now, how say you—have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Gripe and Charles Mr. Johnston. Sir George Airy and Whisper Mr. Deans. Sir Jealous Traffic and Marplot Mr. Jones. Miranda and Scentwell Mrs. Deans. Patch and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... have been known to reach the surface from a depth of nearly three hundred feet; some of the wide-spreading weeds looking like tanned hides extended on the surface. Its roots cling with a powerful gripe to the rocks, on which alone it grows. Some of the stems are sufficiently strong to moor a boat with. I had a knife, the handle of which was made by simply sticking the hilt of the blade into a piece of the root while it was ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... without applause. In times past, when those of Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture to our first sight, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... lead which we earnestly hope Will be followed beyond its original scope; For the more German books that in Gothic are printed The more will the spread of Hun "genius" be stinted, And the larger the number, released from its gripe, Of the students ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... and wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess neither conscience nor sentiment, and they will kill for a half-sovereign, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... ought to say—in that vicinity, that speaking disparagingly of him would have appeared like assailing Christianity. It is true, that many an unfortunate fellow-citizen in Suffolk had been made to feel how close was the gripe of his hand, when he found himself in its grasp; but there is a way of practising the most ruthless extortion, that serves not only to deceive the world, but which would really seem to mislead the extortioner himself. Phrases take the place ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and with me oft she sat: Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 'You are not Ida;' clasp it once again, And call her Ida, though I knew her not, And call her sweet, as if in irony, And call her hard and cold which seemed a truth: And still ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... he all saints; as a boy his kite, Which ever struggles higher for his hold. It is a silly devil to gripe so hard;— He should let go his hold, and then he has you. If you'll not come, I'll leave the light with you. Hark to the chorus! Brother ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... still saw her, and the vision troubled him. They came in again at night, when the fire was sending red and yellow lights up and down the tepee walls, and the more he watched Oachi the stronger there grew within him something that seemed to gnaw and gripe with a dull sort of pain. Oachi was beautiful. He had never seen hair like her hair. He had never before seen eyes more beautiful. He had never heard a voice so low and sweet and filled with bird-like ripples of music. She ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... snatch from the gripe of the gambling spendthrift, or beastly drunkard, unmindful of his offspring, the fortune which falls to her by chance; or (so flagrant is the injustice) what she earns by her own exertions. No; he can rob ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... fired; but is more satisfied that "it might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the deck of his ship to defend his companions from the descending fangs of Scylla, or rather, with indignation and anguish, seeing them already snatched up, and writhing in the mysterious gripe." In such fanciful humours, it might be made to mean any thing or any body. And we are, after all, quite at a loss to know whether the conjecture is offered as a specimen of "invention." He considers the cartoon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... man, who, when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy stopper, and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... of any people I'd rather have on it. But what I want to gripe about is calling our new home world such a horrible name as 'Fuel Bin,' as though it were a wood-box or a coal-scuttle or something. And just think of the complexes it would set up in those super-children we're going ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... most officious senate, I shall straight Delude thy fury. Silius hath not placed His guards within him, against fortune's spite, So weakly, but he can escape your gripe That are but hands of fortune: she herself, When virtue doth oppose, must lose her threats! All that can happen in humanity, The frown of Caesar, proud Sejanus' hatred, Base Varro's spleen, and Afer's bloodying tongue, The senate's servile flattery, and these Muster'd to kill, I'm ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... by my holidame! Heavy of heart she seems, and sore afflicted. But thus it is when rude calamity Lays its strong gripe upon these mincing minions; The dainty gew-gaw forms dissolve at once, And shiver at the shock. What says her paper? [seeming to read. Ha! What is this? Come nearer, Ratcliffe! Catesby! Mark the contents, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... bamboo poles lashed together, and to let one or two at most at a time dive for fish, which are taken from them the moment they bring them to the surface. These birds, not much larger than the common duck, will seize and gripe fast fishes that are not less than their own weight. When the proprietor judges the first pair to be pretty well fatigued, they are suffered to feed by way of encouragement on some of the fish they have taken, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... hoped hee, ere long that hardy guest, If ever covetous hand, or lustfull eye, Or lips he layd on thing that likte him best, Or ever sleepe his eie-strings did untye, Should be his pray. And therefore still on hye He over him did hold his cruell clawes, Threatning with greedy gripe to doe him dye, And rend in peeces with his ravenous pawes, If ever he ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... referred to, and, the creek widening out considerably, we began to feel the true breeze, when the schooner, even under the short and ill-set canvas we had been able to give her, at once increased her speed to about six knots. At the same time, however, she began to "gripe" most villainously, and with the helm hard a-weather it was as much as I could possibly do to keep her from running ashore among the bushes on our starboard hand. The people in the cabin were still pertinaciously ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... scabbard at his belt another man leaped upon him like a tiger, fastening both hands upon his throat and bearing him backward upon the prostrate Governor, still struggling to rise. This man was promptly spitted upon the bayonet of a Federal sergeant and his death-gripe on the captain's throat loosened by a kick upon each wrist. When the captain had risen he was at the rear of his men, who had all passed over and around him and were thrusting fiercely at their more numerous but less coherent antagonists. Nearly all the rifles on both sides were empty and in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary, Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe,— And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... river during the heat of the day,—made me believe myself proof against malaria. But, at length, a violent pain in my loins, accompanied by a swimming head, warned me that the African fever held me in its dreaded gripe. In two days I was delirious. Ormond visited me; but I knew him not, and in my madness, called on Esther, accompanying the name with terms of endearment. This, I was told, stirred the surprise and jealousy of the Mongo, who forthwith assailed the matron of his harem with a torrent of inquiries ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... am still disturbed by my cough; but what thanks have I not to pay, when my cough is the most painful sensation that I feel? and from that I expect hardly to be released, while winter continues to gripe us with so much pertinacity. The year has now advanced eighteen days beyond the equinox, and still there is very little remission of the cold. When warm weather comes, which surely must come at last, I hope it will help both me ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... horsemen and as many dogs, who chased him till he took refuge in the water. A boat now put off, and soon overtaking the tired animal, he was tied securely. When towed ashore, one rope was fastened round his horns, and another to his fore-foot, each held by a negro, while a third took a strong gripe of his tail. In this manner, they led and drove him along, the fellow behind occasionally biting the beast's tail, to quicken his motions; until at length the poor creature was made fast to an anchor on the beach, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... art of cheating at cards, composed of the following associates: bankers, those who play booty; the gripe, he that betteth; and the person cheated, who is styled the vincent; the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... if ye know the accursed thing And know it accurst, for the Gift is yours Of Sight where the prophets of blindness sing By the brink of death. And the Gift endures; Ye shall see the last of the sharpened lies That rivet privilege's gripe. Be still, then, ye with the opened eyes, Come away from the thing till the time ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... latter kingdom was in the habit of adopting the politics of France, and [end of page 261] embracing its interests, there seems to have been some repelling principle that kept the little nation out of the gripe of the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... argument from numbers. Certainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be innocuous to the interests of the nation, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the nationalty—that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say—for the nation's use.—I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and perishable use. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... nothing, but shook hands with them both, and bade them good-night. Weir could not speak a word; he could hardly even lift his eyes. But a red spot glowed on each of his pale cheeks, making him look very like his daughter Catherine, and I could see Miss Oldcastle wince and grow red too with the gripe he gave her hand. But she smiled again none the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine Of waves ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... in the undebased human mind, it was the hope to restore the fallen fortunes of his ancient house, and repossess himself of the long alienated lands that surrounded the dismal wastes of the mouldering hall. And now to hear that those lands were getting into the inexorable gripe of Levy—tears of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... with one gripe of his, made hers fly open. Margaret could no longer endure to expose any of her feelings to the notice of a stranger of this character. "Be patient a moment," said she; and she drew off the ring after its guard, made of Hester's hair, and put them into ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... in the streets Do prophesy upon it dangerously: Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths: And when they talk of him, they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist; Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... affright, and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the hues of death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath I enjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth suddenly, and stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I had done; I heard your step advance; I fled by a path that led from the garden to the beach; and I reached my home without retaining a single recollection of the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seed like Mustard-seed, This they grind to meal or beat in a Mortar, and so make Cakes of it, baking it upon the Coals in a potsheard, or dress it otherwise. If they which are not used to it, eat it, it will gripe their Bellies; When they are minded to grind it, they have for their Mill two round stones, which they turn with their hands by the help of a stick: There are several sorts of this Corn. Some will ripen in three months, and some require ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... which purpose we wrapped ourselves in blankets between its feet, and placed the hatchets within our reach. The night was stormy, and apprehension kept me long awake; but finding my companion in so deep a sleep, that nothing could have roused him, except the actual gripe of a wolf, I thought it advisable to imitate his example, as much as was in my power, rather than bear the burthen of anxiety alone. At day-light we shook off the snow, which was heaped upon us, and endeavoured to kindle a fire; but the violence of the storm defeated all our attempts. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... cross the Atlantic tides, Loading the gallant decks which once Roared a defiance to our guns, With peaceful store; Symbol of peace, their vessel rides!* O'er English waves float Star and Stripe, And firm their friendly anchors gripe The father shore! ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doth the cannon. Bear your wrongs conceal'd, And, patient as the tortoise, let this camel Stalk o'er your back unbruis'd: sleep with the lion, And let this brood of secure foolish mice Play with your nostrils, till the time be ripe For th' bloody audit, and the fatal gripe: Aim like a cunning fowler, close one eye, That you the better ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... part with Harris. Nearly two hundred hours (as we had calculated it) had we walked the ship's deck together, at anchor watch, when all hands were below, and talked over and over every subject which came within the ken of either of us. He gave me a strong gripe with his hand; and I told him, if he came to Boston, not to fail to find me out, and let me see my old watchmate. The same boat brought on board Stimson, who had begun the voyage with me from Boston, and, like me, was going back to his family and to the society in which he had been born ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... your Cock carefully, or what you have hitherto done, is nothing. And here observe the Length, and Strength of Cocks. The Length is thus known: Gripe the Cock by the Waste, and make him shoot out his Legs, and in this Posture compare, And have your Judgment about you. The Strength is known by this Maxim, The largest in the Garth, is the Strongest Cock. The Dimension of the Garth is thus known: ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... visiters, her house was deserted; and, at the expiration of the year, the proud fair, awakened from her golden dream by the clamours of her importunate creditors, found herself without one friend to rescue her valuables from their rapacious gripe. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... king Have done their homage to the lofty gallows, And he himself lies in captivity. Be rul'd by me, and we will rule the realm: In any case take heed of childish fear, For now we hold an old wolf by the ears, That, if he slip, will seize upon us both, And gripe the sorer, being grip'd himself. Think therefore, madam, that imports us much To erect your son with all the speed we may, And that I be protector over him: For our behoof, 'twill bear the greater sway Whenas a king's name shall be ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... can make him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me." Just such a creature was Barere. In the hands of the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins; he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not very delicate lover in Congreve's lively song valued the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plainly that he was in my power; it's apt to make sprats of his size flounce desperately, in the mere hope of proving themselves whales after all, if it's only to their miserable selves. Never mind; he can't break my tackle; and besides, that gripe of the hand seemed to indicate that the poor wretch was beat, and thought himself let off easily—as indeed he is. We'll hope so. Now, zoophytes, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... seemed half merged in the pale gloom of the trench. A cool wind whipped at Dorn's hot face. Surcharged with emotion, the nature of which he feared, Dorn followed the corporal, stumbling and sliding over the wet boards, knocking bits of earth from the walls, feeling a sick icy gripe in his bowels. Some strange light flared up—died away. Another rumble, distinct, heavy, and vibrating! To his left somewhere the earth received a shock. Dorn felt a wave of air that was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... by the wrist with the other, and carried him over the yard to the stable, where, kicking open the door, he threw him on a heap of stones, adding, "If you stir now, I'll break every bone in your body;" a threat that seemed certainly considerably increased in its terrors, from the rough gripe he had already experienced, for the lad rolled himself up like a ball, and sobbed as if his heart ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Gripe fast your Bandilier or Charger, hold it even with the Muzzle of the Musket underneath, about an ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... powerful machine for lifting large bodies, and placed against the gripe of a ship to be ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... please your honour? I would not use any jantleman so ill, BARRING I could do no other,' replied the postillion, coolly; then, leaping across the ditch, or, as he called it, the GRIPE of the ditch, he scrambled up, and while he was scrambling, said, 'If your honour will lend me your hand till I pull you up the back of the ditch, the horses will stand while we go. I'll find you as pretty a lodging for the night, with ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Munkir, [302] who were come to question me; and I likewise heard the rustling of a rope, as if some one had let it down there. I was wondering, and began to feel about me on the ground, when some bones came into my gripe. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli |
