"Pluck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfect miracle that you have come back alive! We have good reason to be thankful as long as we live that you didn't miss your footing or get killed by that savage vulture. But what I wonder most at is that you could muster up the pluck for such a risky business. It ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dinner, to ramble up and down the gravelly paths (whose occasional boulders reminded me of the dry bed of a somewhat circuitous mining stream), smoking a cigar, or inhaling the rich aroma of fennel, or occasionally stopping to pluck one of the hollyhocks with which the garden abounded. The prolific qualities of this plant alarmed us greatly, for although, in the first transport of enthusiasm, my wife planted several different kinds of flower-seeds, nothing ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... to have sixty dollars a month and board. The company operated a commissary store, a regular "pluck-me" concern, and I shortly understood the incentive in offering me such good wages. All employees were encouraged and expected to draw their pay in supplies, which were sold at treble their actual value from the commissary. I had been raised among negroes, knew how to humor and handle ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... sought distraction in evil and dissipated courses, nor death by any of those foolhardy and rash exploits which have far too often been glorified as "courage" or "pluck." ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the devil!" said Forgue; "there's an old crow, I suspect, yet to pluck between us! For me you may take her, though. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... woman gladly complied, was cured of her eye-trouble, and loaned the charm to another woman, similarly affected, who also soon experienced relief. Thereupon a natural curiosity prompted them to examine the mystic spell, and this is what they read: "May the Devil pluck out thine eyes, and replace ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... she was twenty-three and on her way to meet relatives in Nome. She had named certain people. And he had believed her. It was impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... no matter how hungry Fido might be. So he kicked out and barely touched him. Instantly the brute set up a terrible "ki-yi-ing!" and shot off the porch and disappeared into the darkness. Evidently the Blodgetts kept the animal for its bark, for it did not have the pluck of a woodchuck! ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... many joyful hours had flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the country. Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate others. They see through Claud-Lorraines. And how dare any one, if he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage effects, and ceremonies, by which they live? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection, and its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the same in each case. It is faith that makes the lesson different. It is a want of faith that makes us expect the lower in life to explain the higher, the outward to shed light upon the inward. We pluck with foolish, aimless fingers at this strange tangle of human life. We judge God's way with us as far as we can see it, and we think we have got to the end of it. We draw our shallow conclusions. Faith teaches us that God's way with us is a longer and a deeper way, and the end of that way is ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that his cousin's final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment—for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... sufferers pluck up a good heart; let them not be afraid to trust God with their souls, and with their eternal concerns. Let them cast all their care upon God, for ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... are gardens full of flowers that I feared to pluck. There are eyes full of promises that I dared not believe. There are lips full of sweetness, from which I turned away. I wonder if Paradise holds anything for me, one-half so beautiful As the joys I have renounced for ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... cattle feed, My gentle kind supply the milk we need; Sweet cream and cheese are daily on our board, And clothing warm my snowy sheep afford. There are the flowers my Annie loves to tend,— How often do I see her smiling bend To pluck the weeds, or teach the graceful vine Around the string or slender pole to twine. How often when the toils of day are done, And I return just at the set of sun, She comes to meet me down the verdant lane— Sweet partner of my pleasures and my pain— With snow-white buds amid her sunny hair, To ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... and what do you? You lean from your window and watch life's column Trampling and struggling through dust and dew, Filled with its purposes grave and solemn; An act, a gesture, a face—who knows? And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows, And down it flies like my red, red rose, And you sit and dream as away it goes, And think that your duty ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... "I'll agree to cook it for you in the ashes so it won't smell of smoke. Didn't you ever catch larks in the fields, and haven't you cooked them between two stones? Ah! true! I forget that you never tended sheep! Come, pluck that partridge! Not so hard! you'll pull off ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... hands may pluck the strings, Making even Love in music audible, And earth one glory. I am but a shell That moves, not of itself, and moving sings; Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed, A tremulous murmur from ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. S'blood! Do you think I am easier to be played on than a ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honor of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... me, Jock Calder of West Inch, to feel that though now, in the very centre of the nineteenth century, I am but five-and-fifty years of age, and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear, yet I have lived in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as though it were another planet from this. For when I walk in my fields I can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell me of this strange ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... animal shook the little figure as though it must fall from the saddle. But Hiram could see that she hung with phenomenal pluck to the broken bridle and to the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... said Alice, tenderly, as Ellen's anxious face and glistening eyes were raised to hers, "if you love Jesus Christ, you may know you are his child, and none shall pluck ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hoped all the time that she could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was impossible. Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her. By Jove, what pluck she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so lightly, it could mean only that her short life had been full of misadventures beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial. She could "play ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... did not refuse. He gave him another two months. No longer term could be conceded; but, yes, he would give him another two months. "Just for the almighty fun of the thing. If there's one thing I like to see," said Dicky, "it's pluck." Dicky was more than ever sure of his game. He argued rightly that Rickman would never have sold his books if he could have sold his articles or borrowed from a friend; that, as he had nothing else to sell or offer as security, his ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... answers, as was supposed, to the spirits who afflicted them; and when the patients from time to time recovered, they furnished the counterpart by telling what the spirits had said to them. The names of the spirits were Pluck, Hardname, Catch, Blue, and three Smacks, who were cousins. Mrs. Joan Throgmorton, the eldest (who, like other young women of her age, about fifteen, had some disease on her nerves, and whose fancy ran apparently on love and gallantry), supposed that one of the Smacks was her ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... glanced at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Horne Tooke, who after enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left posterity to pluck out "the heart of his mystery." I will say at once what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the individual; ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... listened to the bees' drowsy hum from the old tree trunk close by, and watched the busy ant stagger home, under the weight of his well earned morsel—and how she made a bridge of stones over a little streamlet to pluck some crimson lobelias, growing on the other side, and some delicate, bell-shaped flowers, fit only for a fairy's bridal wreath,—and how she wandered till sunset came on, and the Lake's pure breast was all a-glow, and then, how she lay under that old tree, listening ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... despite a general badness, or what may be called a 'smirchiness' of feature, he had learned to assume an air of superiority, which by its sheer audacity prevented a casual observer from setting him down as the vulgarian he undoubtedly was; and his amazing pluck, boldness and originality in devising ways and means of smothering popular discontent under various 'shows' of apparent public prosperity, was immensely useful to all such 'statesmen,' whose statesmanship consisted in making as much money as possible for themselves ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of course very foolish; and if the driver had given him a few sharp cuts with his whip, it might have done Alcibiades a great deal of good. But the man was so amused by the little fellow's pluck, that he actually turned around ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... by traitors in Paris to send a leader to his followers in La Vendee. It is thought that Barras is betraying the Republic. At any rate, Pitt and the princes have sent a man, a ci-devant, vigorous, daring, full of talent, who intends, by uniting the Chouans with the Vendeans, to pluck the cap of liberty from the head of the Republic. The fellow has lately landed in the Morbihan; I was the first to hear of it, and I sent the news to those knaves in Paris. 'The Gars' is the name he goes by. All those beasts," he added, pointing to Marche-a-Terre, "stick on names which ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the Civil War made! How those veterans could fight! What pluck, what coolness, what nerve, what daring they displayed! There was one stormy night beyond the Mississippi, when a band of jayhawkers, believing the two men carried a few hundred dollars, formed a plan for shooting both for the sake of the plunder. There were six of the outlaws at the opening of ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... you he believes as I do, but he hasn't pluck to act up to it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... intrusion was limited solely to the nursemaid. Swooping suddenly upon Sarah Walker's too evident deshabille, she made two or three attempts to pluck her into propriety; but the child, recognizing the cause as well as the effect, looked askance at me and only stiffened herself the more. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... "Does justice to the pluck and determination of the British soldiers during the unfortunate struggle against American emancipation. The son of an American loyalist, who remains true to our flag, falls among the hostile red-skins in that very Huron country which ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... there is yet that which thou wilt not get. There is no one in the world that can pluck it out of his head except Odgar the son of Aedd, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... You are a lying, ill-favoured knave! Keep the door, friends, this rogue has insulted me. Pluck out ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... call to mind two cases of persons found murdered in London—and the assassins have never been traced. I am a person, too; and I ask myself if my turn is not coming next. You're a nice-looking fellow and I like your pluck and perseverance. Come here as often as you think right; and say you are my visitor, if they make any difficulty about letting you in. One thing more! I have nothing particular to do, and I am no fool. Here, in the parlors, I see ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... own. Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student. I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... such a noble fellow," he said, "that all of us loved him, and would have done anything for him. I, as a young man in those days, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and was more pleased to be seen in his company than in that of the Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal for pluck and daring and all the qualities of a soldier"; and Dobbin told the old father as many stories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements of his son. "And Georgy is so ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the kind Ascestes ran, [9] And pitying rais'd from earth the game old man. Uncow'd, undamaged to the sport he came, His limbs all muscle, and his soul all flame. The memory of his milling glories past, [10] The shame that aught but death should see him grass'd. All fired the veteran's pluck—with fury flush'd, Full on his light-limb'd customer he rush'd,— And hammering right and left, with ponderous swing [11] Ruffian'd the reeling youngster round the ring— Nor rest, nor pause, nor breathing-time ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... dramas; the Masti or dancers; the Kommu or tellers of stories; and the Dekkala or genealogists of the caste. It is said that Kommu really means a horn and Dekka a hoof. These last two are the lowest subdivisions, and occupy a most degraded position. In theory they should not sleep on cots, pluck the leaves of trees, carry loads on any animal other than a donkey, or even cook food for themselves, but should obtain their subsistence by eating the leavings of other Madgis or members of different ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... one thousand houses. It is fortified in the common African manner, by a surrounding high wall built of clay, and an outward fence of pointed stakes and prickly bushes; but the walls are neglected, and the outward fence has suffered considerably from the active hands of busy housewives, who pluck up the stakes for firewood. I obtained a lodging at one of the king's near relations, who apprized me, that at my introduction to the king, I must not presume to shake hands with him. It was not usual, he said, to allow this liberty to strangers. Thus instructed, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now From my high nest of penance here proclaim That Pontius and Iscariot by my side Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay, A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my sleeve; [5] Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again. In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest: They flapp'd my light out as I read: I saw Their faces grow between me and my book: With colt-like ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... soft-glowing from the sunny field, eyes revealing the heart at one with nature. Others there were, women of many worlds, only less beautiful; but by these three the young man was held bound. He could not satisfy himself with looking and musing; he could not pluck himself away. An old experience; he always lingered by the print shops of the Haymarket, and always went on with troubled blood, with mind rapt above familiar circumstance, dreaming passionately, making wild forecast of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. Meeting him for the first time, and knowing Robertson's "wish to pluck the heart from my mystery, from pure nervousness I would only talk of beer." This kind of shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl (and a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, nec diversa, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But his speech was ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... face, knowing that all he had to do was to reach out his hand and pluck her, fell to pondering whether, after all, there was any real worth in refined, grammatical English, and, so, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... moralist at his heart's core), the field of human endeavour was overstrewn by a multiplicity of mere "scarecrow sins," one's duty in respect of which was simply to march up to them, one after another, and pluck them up, every stick of them individually, with its stuck-on old hat ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... you have the skill to paint, And pluck to labor and to wait; And too much sense to pine and faint, Because the world ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I was just as much at home in that century as I could have been in any other; and as for preference, I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. The grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities; whereas, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there, and Will is improving, every day. I can't see why he won't be walking a little, in a week or so. I hope so, for he's had a long pull of it, and he has shown splendid pluck." ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Philibert is a game-cock, De Pean," exclaimed Cadet, to the savage annoyance of the Secretary. "He has pluck and impudence for ten gardes du corps. It was neater done than at Beaumanoir!" Cadet sat down to enjoy a broad laugh at the expense of his friend over the second carrying ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... those left at home, there is distinctly less of the matinee hero business than in either England or France. The high official in the civil government who said that the women were the best fighters in the German army was not so far from the truth. The pluck of the women is astonishing. There isn't the slightest display of sorrow or call for sympathy. You see them everywhere in the streets, cafes, and shops of Berlin; not in such great numbers, however, as in the lesser provinces and the smaller towns, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... such strange things of the meeting of Witches, as is reported by many that thou dost relate, or did not some person teach thee to say such things of thy self? But the two men not giving the Boy leave to answer, did pluck him from me, and said he had been examined by two able Justices of the Peace, and they did never ask him such a question, to whom I replied, the persons accused had therefore the more wrong."—Webster's ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... blood of the mother, and his mother, who had brought him over hill and water from the banks of the Ohio, was of humble origin. If Joseph wished, therefore, to rise among his fellows, he must hew out his own path to greatness. By pluck and wisdom alone could he win a lasting place in the hearts of his people. As we tell his story, we shall see how he gathered strength and became a man ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... she made no answer, but taking a rose from out of a vase near her began to pluck the petals in an absent manner and lay them beside her. When a woman's wits are pitted against those of a man it is well for him to disregard nothing, and, slight as this action was, I took note of it. I counted the petals as she ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... better eye for a horse, or is a finer shot. The best at driven grouse for your age, my boy, I have ever seen. You are full of force, Michael, and ought to do some decent thing—instead of which you spoil the whole outlook by fooling after this infernal woman—and you have not now the pluck to cut the Gordian knot. She will drag you to ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up, without being at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a fancy to one of the same trees for a walking stick, he would have had no more to do than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger and strip down the leaves and twigs with the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... never has. Harry, on the other hand, thrashed Simpkins Minor thoroughly and scientifically on the first opportunity; but he did not thrash him extravagantly: he tempered pluck ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... You may have some statistical objections to my technique tonight, but I'm not looking for fringe effects. If this hot-eyed swain of yours is any good at all, he'll bat a thousand." He got a deck of cards out of his desk drawer and fanned it out face up so that he could pluck the two of spades and the two of hearts from the deck. The rest he put back in ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... of circles. In conversation we pluck up the termini[703] which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this Pentecost.[704] To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... He had to confess he had good pluck. The idea of a set-to with Colina's father was unthinkable. There was nothing for him to do but swallow the affront. He bethought himself ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... furze. He was so fond of the water that he became a rapid, untiring swimmer; and the boys trained him, in intervals of rat-hunting, to dive to the bottom of the river and pick up a white pebble thrown from the bank. Like Joker, also, he gained a name for pluck and ability; and one night the village sportsmen, at an informal meeting in the "private room" of the inn, decided to hunt in the river on Wednesday evenings, with Bob and Joker at the head of a pack including nearly every game-dog in the near neighbourhood, except certain aristocratic ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... plain; Nor brazen trump, nor bended horn were seen, Helmet, nor sword; but conscious and secure, Unaw'd by arms the nations tranquil slept. The teeming earth by barrows yet unras'd, By ploughs unwounded, plenteous pour'd her stores. Content with food unforc'd, man pluck'd with ease Young strawberries from the mountains; cornels red; The thorny bramble's fruit; and acorns shook From Jove's wide-spreading tree. Spring ever smil'd; And placid Zephyr foster'd with his breeze The flowers unsown, which everlasting bloom'd. Untill'd the land its ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... readily understood by the average man when it is first explained to him than if it were spoken in Hindoostani. Perhaps this is because we do not eagerly devour the fruit of experience when it is impressively set before us on the platter of authority; we like to pluck fruit for ourselves—it not only tastes better, but we never forget that tree! Fortunately, this is no difficult task, in this instance, for the trees ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... shooting out at last into a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere: ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... these spontaneous utterances. The after-dinner speaker needs to find somewhere some unworked joker's quarry, where some jokes have been left without a label on them; he needs to acquire the art of seeming to pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have passed it and to have plucked it casually,—but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it. [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to Totski to have divined all this, and to be preparing something on her own account, which frightened him to such an extent that he did not dare communicate his views even to the general. But at times he would pluck up his courage and be full of hope and good spirits again, acting, in fact, as weak men ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... but in undertaking the defense of Mr. Nichols you showed a pluck and courage which most boys would not have exhibited. I am interested, like all good citizens, in the prevention of theft, and in this instance I am willing ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... at Paris. A great part of her youth she passed in war, wearing man's apparel and assuming the name of "Captain Loys"; at an early age, she left home with a company of soldiers passing through Lyons on the way to lay siege to Perpignan, where she showed pluck, bravery, and skill. Upon her return, she married a merchant ropemaker, whence ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... "boy extra" was a favorite with the men. They liked his pluck in undertaking such work, and when it was seen that he took pride in executing orders promptly, he became a favorite with the bosses as well. In part his work was play to him; he welcomed an order as a break in the monotony of the daily march, and hailed the opportunity ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... of the crowded halls, and the symposia, where both mind and body had equal refection. There had been days when he had a part in these things, and when to "strive with things impossible," or "to pluck honor from the pale-faced moon," had not been unreasonable or rash; but now it almost seemed as if Mr. Buckle's dreary gospel was a reality, and men were machines, and life was an affair ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... whiteness of this blossom is only rivaled by the angels' garments. Its spotless purity enters ever into the soul of him who plucks it, making it white as their robes. To all who persevere to the mountain top and pluck this flower, into all does its purity, its essence, enter and remain forever. For is it not the reward of the toiler, who pauses not till the ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... exclaimed Zapote the instant after, raising his hand to his head, as if about to pluck out a fistful of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... oh dear!" he moaned, in a voice full of pity. "What a position, Chief! How did you manage it all? Yes, I see: you must have dug down, where you lay, and gone on digging—for more than a yard! And it took some pluck, I expect, on ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Winter. "He was earnest to have his sister's husband warned, and said he would not pluck forth not another stiver without our ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Horsemanden had pluck as well as sentiment, and he went on. Moreover he had his revenge, for at bottom the 65th was itself tender-hearted, not to say sentimental. It believed in lost loves and lost blossoms, muslin dresses, and golden chains, cypress ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... lake, and had fished up a drowning child from its depths and borne it to the shore in safety. In doing so he had been compelled to swim through a swift and strong current which would have swamped any swimmer with one particle less strength, endurance and pluck. At another time, hearing his landlady say, at dinner, that an execution was in the house of a sick man with a large family, at the other end of the town, he left his dinner untouched, trudged off to the place indicated, and—though the debtor was an utter stranger to him—paid off the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Cattle Influence Sanguine Turmoil Sinecure Waist Shrew Potential Spaniel Crazy Character Candidate Indomitable Infringe Rascal Amorphous Expend Thermometer Charm Rather Tall Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor Jimson weed Courteous Wanton Rosemary Cynical Street Plausible Grocer Husband Allow Worship Gipsy Insane Encourage Clerk Disease Astonish Clergyman Boulevard Realize Hectoring Canary Bombast Primrose Diamond Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... as she threw herself against the stubborn door and pounded upon its panels with her hands. Something dreadful seemed to be crawling up from behind, out of the cavernous hole that was always night. The paroxysms of fear and dread finally gave way to despair, and despair is ever the parent of pluck. Impatiently she again undertook the task of lighting the lantern, fearing to breathe lest she destroy the wavering, treacherous flame that burnt inside her bleeding hands. Her pretty knuckles were bruised and cut in the reckless pounding on ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... always been fond of flowers. Stealing was prohibited by her father as wicked and dangerous, and she had never transgressed his commands. When she picked up the costly rosary in Nuremberg, she had intended to return it to the owner. But to pluck the flowers and fruit which the Lord caused to grow and ripen for every one was a different thing, and had never troubled her conscience. So she carelessly gathered a few pinks. Three should go to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Donnelly knocked his opponent over the ropes and won the world's championship for the Emerald Isle. The spot where the battle came off has ever since been known as Donnelly's Hollow, and a neat monument there erected commemorates the Dublin man's pluck and skill. A ballad recounting the incidents of the fight and, as ballads go, not badly composed, had a wonderful vogue, and was sung at fair and market and other meeting place within the memory of men who are ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... said the old woman. "But place yourself here, and when Death comes—I expect him every moment—do not let him pluck the flower up, but threaten him that you will do the same with the others. Then he will be afraid! He is responsible for them to OUR LORD, and no one dares to pluck them up ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... good comfort, and pluck vp a good heart, and tell me how thou commest hither, and by what meanes, and how thou diddest escape that mortall and horrible Dragon? and how thou diddest finde away out of that odious and blinde darkenes, I haue beene tould of it: But I maruell ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... speck on the surface of chaos, darted and checked and swerved lightly at the imperious bidding of unguessed forces, reaching up from the depths to pluck at it in elfish sportiveness. Only when Ban thrust down the oar-blades, as he did now and again to direct their course or avoid some obstacle, was Io made sensible, through the jar and tremor of the whole structure, how swiftly they moved. She felt the spirit ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in his moral pluck Without reproach or fear, A quiet venerable duck With fifty pounds ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... him back were unavailing. Nothing in the world should carry him up the mountain again, now that he had happily got so far down. I worked his best and his worst feelings with equal want of success; even national jealousy failed, and he was content to know that a French maire had not pluck to face three-quarters of an hour of climbing, when an English priest was ready to lead the way. The schoolmaster declined to go alone with me, on the ground that neither of us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around. When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the hearts of the people. The outrages committed at Lexington and Bunker's Hill had, in truth, exasperated the people at large, and this exasperation was increased tenfold when, at a later period, news arrived of the invasion of Canada. They saw that it was a rude attempt to pluck a jewel from the British crown, and it excited feelings of resentment in their breasts deep and lasting. Not a few Englishmen who maintained that the Americans were justified in taking up arms to assert their own ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... might take her measure. Now she had a very beautiful foot and leg; and the Cobler in taking her measure was conscious of sinful thoughts. And he had often heard it said in the Holy Evangel, that if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, rather than sin. So, as soon as the woman had departed, he took the awl that he used in stitching, and drove it into his eye and destroyed it. And this is the way he came ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... had emerged. Into this we presently followed him, and after another shot or two he expired, and I have the skin at homo with the mark of the sword-cut on the back. It had cut through the shaggy hair, and only penetrated the skin sufficiently to leave a scar. The man who had shown so much pluck was a young farmer from the adjacent village, and I at once offered him the sword with which he had defended me. But he seemed to think he had done nothing, and positively declined it, saying that his neighbours would be jealous of his having such a fine-looking thing. I had, however, a knife made ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... music of the hammer and the anvil in the smithy at the entrance to the village? No wonder the children love to stand at the open door and see the burning sparks that fly and hear the bellows roar. I would stand at the open door myself if I had the pluck, for I am as much a child as any one when the hammer and the anvil are playing their primeval music. It is the oldest song of humanity played with the most ancient instruments. Here we are at the very beginning of our story—here we stand in ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... out to help us. Such is the law, not only because the next moment is always necessarily dark, nor because God will deal with us in any arbitrary fashion, and play with our fears, but because it is best for us that we should be forced to desperation, and out of desperation should 'pluck the flower, safety.' It is best for us that we should be brought to say, 'My foot slippeth!' and then, just as our toes are sliding upon the glacier, the help comes and 'Thy mercy held me up.' 'The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... moonlight nights like this, walking in the garden. It wasn't much of a garden in his day; only palms and orange trees: but a rose-bush he planted and loved is alive still. I've just asked one of my officers —one whom I particularly want you to meet, Miss Gilder—to pluck a rose from Gordon's bush and bring it to you here. He knows where to find us; and when he comes, I must go back to the ballroom and leave you—all three—to his guidance. Lord Ernest and he used to be friends as boys, I believe. Perhaps you've heard ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... orchards left by the French settlers. Here a division was made in the party. The women and children were sent to the head of the Bay by a series of ferries, and the men pushed on to Annapolis, and later joined their families at Chignecto. To the pluck, loyalty, and industry of the Yorkshiremen Judge Morse paid many a tribute. To them do we owe our present connection with the Mother Country. When this country from north to south was rent by the rebellion, when the rivers ran blood, and when the prestige of English arms ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... had never meant to countenance any personal attack on Ferrier or his leadership. Yet he uncomfortably admitted that the meeting had told badly on the election. In the view of one side, he had not had pluck enough to go to it; in the view of the other, he had ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Heaven overlays The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun, Scorching against the blue flame of the sky. Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine Within a granite basin, under one The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... a long, shivering breath as she thought of the magnificent courage of that painful passing up San Juan Hill, wounded, crawling on, with a pluck that the shades of death could not dim. Would she be proud ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... has spoken so well that I have little to add. I agree with him, and if you want an example of what girls can do, why, look at Jill. She's young, I know, but a first-rate scholar for her age. As for pluck, she is as brave as a boy, and almost as smart at running, rowing, and so on. Of course, she can't play ball—no girl can; their arms are not made right to throw—but she can catch remarkably well. I'll say that for her. Now, if she and Mabel—and—and—some ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... ["Let us pluck life's sweets, 'tis for them we live: by and by we shall be ashes, a ghost, a mere subject of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Dr. Connor, "I didn't mean all I said. It was a brave thing to do—not that your pluck mitigates the offence! Be a little more considerate; think a little faster; don't take to your legs on the first impulse. Some fool told me you'd been killed—and that made—made me—most damnably angry!" he burst out with a roar to cover ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the full particulars from the coxswain, whom he had summoned into his presence while Frank was in the wardroom eating his dinner. The sailor described all that had happened in glowing language, dwelling with a good deal of emphasis upon the "pluck" displayed by his young officer, and the ignorance and cowardice of the lieutenant, and ended with saying, "He didn't think of nothing, sir, but them dispatches; and it an't every man that could have saved 'em, sir." The captain fully agreed with the coxswain, and when the latter was dismissed, ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... Marseilles. In that dear town I spent my happy youth. For years and years I washed the dishes at the Hotel Continental. Ah, those were golden days!' and he sighed. 'I am a Frenchman. Need I say, messieurs, that I admire beauty? Nay, I adore the fair. Messieurs, we admire all the roses in a garden, but we pluck one. I plucked one, and alas, messieurs, it pricked my finger. She was a chambermaid, her name Annette, her figure ravishing, her face an angel's, her heart — alas, messieurs, that I should have to own it! — black and slippery as a patent leather boot. I loved to desperation, I adored ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... my cheeks with crimson, The praise of my pluck and calm; Though that band seemed blending "Kafoozleum" With a touch of the Hundredth Psalm. But my joy soon turned into sorrow, My calm into mental strife; For my record was "cut" on the morrow, And it cut me, like a knife. A fellow had done the distance In the tenth of a second less! And henceforth ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... the winds blew, and the rain descended and fell upon the roof, as if the very windows of heaven had been opened. There followed such a scene as no tongue, nor pen, nor pencil can describe,—it baffles all description. Judge Barrett, with the true pluck of an Ethan Allen, stood by his colors, and the more the wind blew and the storm raged, the louder he read his poetry. But he was obliged at length to cease, and with his slouched hat and dripping garments left ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... no one to care for her, and, having been threatened with the auction-block, Sarah mustered pluck and started out in search of a new home among strangers beyond the borders of slave territory. According to her story, she "was born free" in the State of Delaware, but had been "bound out" to a man by the name of George Churchman, living in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... small prairie farm was certainly hard for a woman; for a man it was bracing, although it needed pluck and resolution. Festing had both qualities, perhaps in an unusual degree, and his point of view was essentially practical. He had grappled with so many difficulties that he regarded them as problems to be solved and not troubles ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... most abundantly. In order to practice asceticism, it is the rule to make this time of rest a period of strictest fasts, most diligent study of the holy writings, and deepest meditation. This duty also necessitates the ascetic to pluck out in the most painful manner his hair which, according to oriental custom, he must do away with at his consecration—a peculiar custom of the Jainas, which is not found among other penitents ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... down to posterity as a teacher and preacher of the gospel of not grace, but—"the graces, the graces, the graces." Natural gifts, social status, open opportunities, and his ambition, all conspired to destine him for high statesmanship. If anything was lacking in his qualifications, he had the pluck and good sense to work hard and persistently until the deficiency was made up. Something remained lacking, and not all his consummate mastery of arts could conceal that ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... her silver path, she goes to where the lilies grow, in a bed close by the hedge. But, before she comes to them, she notes in the hedge itself a wild convolvulus, and just a little beyond it a wild dog-rose, parent of all roses. She stays to pluck them, and then— ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Manufacture thro' the Southern Provinces. This wou'd soon enrich us, and impoverish at the same Time, the great Enemy to the repose of Europe; for 'tis by her Wines and our Money chiefly, that France has been enabled, to soar towards Universal Monarchy, and if this Feather was pluck'd from her, she wou'd soon shorten her Flights, and droop ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... his memorandums one entitled, "Of the abuse I received of Mr. Attorney-General publicly in the Exchequer." A specimen will complete our model of his forensic oratory. Coke exclaimed—"Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth against me, pluck it out; for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good." Bacon replied—"The less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it." Coke replied—"I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... morals need fear. This suddenly brought her to her senses, when she indulged in a few of those epithets females, however delicate, will use when resolved to show their lords the length they may go in asserting a priority of rights. In truth she threatened to pluck out all her hair, which would have been a performance much to be regretted, seeing that it floated over her shoulders like tresses of silk, and was so luxuriant that a Delhian maid might have envied it. She also cursed the hour she took him for her husband, saying ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man—courage, endurance, and skill—in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy,—be he ever so fond himself of fighting,—if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest, that all boys and men have in witnessing intense ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... that I was in was foremost of all the company, and as we travelled, I being alone in the waggon, began to try if I could pluck my hands out of the manacles, and as God would, although it were somewhat painful for me, yet my hands were so slender that I could pull them out and put them in again, and ever as we went when the waggons made ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... Light Horse went on four days ago, with one or two other colonial corps, and occupied Springfield, and the baggage train followed them; and after occupying the place, instead of waiting for infantry to come up, he moved on to a river. Some of his men, with extraordinary pluck, swam across and managed to bring the ferry-boat over under a very heavy fire. Then a number of them crossed, scattered the Boers like chaff, and took possession of a rough hill called Swartz Kop, and held it till support ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... lofty mountains. Build me there a little hut by the side of a bubbling spring, and let there be a little garden in front of the little hut. Let me stroll beneath the leaves of the cedar-trees, where I may hear no other sound but the cooing of the wood-pigeon; let me pluck flowers on the banks of the purling brook, and spy upon the wild deer; let me live there and die there—live in thine arms and die in the flowering field by the side of the purling brook. If thou wert to ask me, whither shall I take thee, so ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... We'll pluck two leaves, dear friend, to-day. The green, the russet! seems it strange So soon, so soon, the leaves can change! Ah me! so runs all life away. This night-wind chills me, and I shiver; The Summer-time is almost past. One ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "'Tis pluck y' have," said the Irishman. He turned the buggy with some difficulty, for the track was narrow, and they spun off on the return journey to Cunjee, while Norah, between the two boys, was once more on the way ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... The teamsters, seeing the Indians and hearing the shots, came rushing forward to our assistance, but by the time they reached us the red-skins had almost disappeared from view. The teamsters eagerly asked us a hundred questions concerning our fight, admired our fort and praised our pluck. Simpson's remarkable presence of mind in planning the defense was the general topic of conversation among all ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... was not such a dolt! I marvel who would, when asked to spend another man's money, and pluck his fruit, and lie of his best bed! But I tell thee one thing, Tom—I'll pay thee never a stiver of rent for mine house that I hold of thee—the rather since I let it to this new doctor for two pound more, by the year, than I have paid to thee. I'm none so sure that he'll ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... to pay a visit to Coningsby Castle, feast the county, patronise the borough, diffuse that confidence in the party which his presence never failed to do; so great and so just was the reliance in his unerring powers of calculation and his intrepid pluck. Notwithstanding Schedule A, the prestige of his power had not sensibly diminished, for his essential resources were vast, and his intellect always made the most of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Mickel, the lament of Amy Robsart, who had been won and thrown away by the Earl of Leicester. She says if roses and lilies grow in courts, why did he pluck the primrose of the field, which some country swain might have won and valued! Thus sore and sad the lady grieved in Cumnor Hall, and ere dawn the death bell rang, and never more ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... head gently, but made no answer. On the table before her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one or two buds from the last winter rose, which she had been arranging into a simple nosegay; she took up these, and abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the rose-leaves. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... market's the circle for frolic and glee, Where tastes of all kinds may be suited; The dasher, the quiz, and the "up to all"—he, Pluck sprees from the plants in it rooted. If the joker, or queer one, would fain learn a place, Where they'd wish for a morning to "lark it," They need go no further than just shew their face, In that region of mirth, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Padua," and of this picture there is one of those absurd stories meant to illustrate the perfection of art. It is said that the lilies in it are so natural that the birds flew down the cathedral aisles to pluck at them. Many artists have painted this saint, but Murillo's is ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... relentless years that led up to a career of outlawry—a memory that cuts like the sword blades of a squadron of cavalry. The outlaw is like a big black bird, from which every passerby feels licensed to pluck a ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... cherry blossoms on trees larger than many of our largest apple trees—wonderful double-flowering, beautiful trees, just one mass of pink blossoms as far as the eye can reach. They do so reverence these blossoms that they rarely pluck them, but carry about bunches made of paper or silk tissue that rival the natural ones in perfection. No person is so poor that he cannot, on this great festal day, have his house, shop, place of amusement or, at least, umbrella bedecked with these delicate ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... any connection with either Whigs or Tories, and as for the Radicals, they were then out in the cold. He stood, as he himself said, on his own responsibility, and as a perfectly independent candidate. It is not too much to affirm that it was his pluck and independence that carried him through. He had little difficulty in forming a committee, including, for the most part, gentlemen of considerable local influence, and that sine qua non having been obtained, the rest was comparatively smooth sailing. Mr. Hastie, his ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... kindness, have veiled all vision of the rising and the setting day, of sea-limits, and of the stars of the night, whose ears are thickened against the voice of music, whose thought finds nowhere mystery. Thyrza Trent was not of those. What joys were to be hers she must pluck out of the fire, and there are but few of her kind whom in the end the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... The pluck and ready wit for which the Kentucky girls have been so celebrated is well illustrated by this adventure, which, after threatening consequences of the most tragical nature, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... is a pound of this poor merchant's flesh), Thou wilt not only lose the forfeiture, But touch'd with human gentleness and love, Forgive a moiety of the principal; Glancing an eye of pity on his losses, That have of late so huddled on his back, Enough to press a royal merchant down, (c) And pluck commiseration of his state From brassy bosoms, and rough hearts of flint, From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train'd To offices of tender courtesy. We all expect ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... on sometimes better, and sometimes worse, till to-day I mustered up pluck, and came to hear what your father has got to tell me: and all ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... against a stone, in order to kill it, or at least to stop it struggling; it might otherwise in its struggles escape, as the kingfisher can only swallow a fish head first. There are stories which tell how herons sometimes pluck small feathers from their breasts and, floating these feathers upon the water, catch the trout as they rise to it; it is supposed that the trout takes the feather for a fly. Personally, I do not think that much credence should be attached ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... lad!' said Black Thompson; 'he's got his father's pluck after all, as I've always told thee, Davies, and we'll see him righted. He's got his eyes in his head, ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... dear," said his mother. "See how many thorns it has on its stem. You must not touch it. If you should try to pluck a rose like this, you would be ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that from the mark-boat homeward he was no better than a passenger—an eighteen-stone passenger, mind you. The only man to keep it lively was little Jago at bow, and Seth Ede—to do him justice—pulled a grand race for pluck. He might have spared himself, though. Another hundred yards settled it: the Indefatigable Woman made her overlap and went by like a snake, and the Irishman pulled in his ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years; your rule, applied with skillful disguise, straightens each perverse habit; nature is molded by reason, and struggles to be subdued, and assumes under your hands its plastic lineaments. Ay, well I mind how I would wear away long summer suns with you, and pluck with you the bloom of night's first hours. One work we had, one certain time for rest, and at one modest table unbent from ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... moment or two the Professor glared steadily at Finn. He undoubtedly had pluck, seeing that he believed the Wolfhound to be as ferocious and deadly a beast as any tiger. Then, slowly, Finn rose from his crouching position, prepared to come forward and to treat his visitor as a friend, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... been altogether lacking in the pluck he had displayed thus far had he been deterred by physical suffering from pushing his efforts to the utmost. He would have kept on through torture tenfold worse, and he showed himself ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... said Sancho, "that your worship did not get upon the old fellow and bruise every bone of him with kicks, and pluck his beard until you didn't leave a ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ever hear of such pluck? A sort of heroic madman, something absolutely wonderful! And then there's that nickname of Arsene Lupin which he earned among his messmates for the way in which he used to boss them and astound them! ... How long is it since ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... on his sweating palm, The precedent of pith and livelihood, And, trembling in her passion, calls it balm, Earth's sovereign salve to do a goddess good: 28 Being so enrag'd, desire doth lend her force Courageously to pluck him from ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... would probably give her money, if she asked for it; but her mother would ask questions later. She would ride to town, one mile south on Blue, and ask credit of her old friend, Billy Little, to the extent of a sheet of paper and a small pot of ink. For a pen she would catch a goose, pluck a quill, and ask Billy to cut it. Billy could cut the best pen of any one ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... tear us to pieces. To-day her sovereign power is limited: she can but let loose a host of angry critics upon us; she can but scoff at us, take away our literary reputation, and turn away the eyes of a public as fickle as herself from our pages. Surely that were hard enough! Can Fortune pluck a more galling dart from her quiver, and dip the point in more envenomed bitterness? Yes, those whose hard lot is here recorded have suffered more terrible wounds than these. They have lost liberty, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... myself, have I repented of those cruel, scornful words I addressed to Dolores at our last interview; and now once more "I come to pluck the berries harsh and crude" of repentance and of expiation, to humble my insular pride in the dust and unsay all the unjust things I ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... hats are pluck'd about their ears, And half their faces buried in their cloaks, That by no means I may discover them ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... she feels an inward motion, Come fill'd with reverence and devotion. The bashful maid, to hide her blush, Shall creep no more behind a bush; Here unobserved she boldly goes, As who should say, to pluck a rose,[16] Ye, who frequent this hallow'd scene, Be not ungrateful to the Dean; But duly, ere you leave your station, Offer to him a pure libation, Or of his own or Smedley's lay, Or billet-doux, or lock of hay: And, O! may all who hither come, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Let God's portion be the best, and give it to the poor." The will of the translator Judah Ibn Tibbon (about 1190) contains at least one passage worthy of Ruskin: "Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight." ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... rolled over into the abyss. The stag, for the second time, saved its murderer's life; for it broke his fall. He came out of the hospital into which he had been carried, a crippled, patched-up wretch, but able to crawl on hands and knees to wherever his "pluck" might be appreciated, and earn a beggar's livelihood by telling how ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Malays came on, and although swept by volleys of musketry reached the bamboos, which they strove in vain to pluck up or climb. In the meantime the eighteen pounders had never ceased their fire, the sailors working them steadily, regardless of the fight that was going on on either flank. Here the little brass guns did good ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... itself to be mounted, and on the sixth he marched as well as any of us. This case is mentioned in order to illustrate what we have often observed, that moving the patient from place to place is most conducive to the cure; and the more pluck a man has—the less he gives in to the disease—the less likely he ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... that of sensual gratifications, when not lamented, are as implacable enemies to Christ as Judas and Herod were. How can ye believe, seeing ye seek the honour that cometh from men? Hew, then, your Agags in pieces before the Lord. Run from your Delilahs to Jesus resolutely. Cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye that offends you. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and I will receive you.' Nevertheless, when you strive, take care not to make yourself a righteousness of your own striving. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... clearing, he held his gun under his arm and plucked carelessly a wood-pigeon which he had killed; three others were hung at his belt by a snare; he threw them to Peter, who immediately began to pluck and clean them with wonderful dexterity. These wood-pigeons, of the size of a partridge, were plump, fine and round as quails. As fast as Peter had one ready, he cut off its head and feet and put it to cook in the thick and abundant sauce which filled the boar's belly. When Master Rend-your-Soul ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... fit, tantrums. burst, explosion, paroxysm, storm, rage, fury, desperation; violence &c. 173; fire and fury; vials of wrath; gnashing of teeth, hot blood, high words. scowl &c. 895; sulks &c. 901a. [Cause of umbrage] affront, provocation, offense; indignity &c. (insult) 929; grudge, crow to pluck, bone to pick, sore subject, casus belli[Lat]; ill turn, outrage. Furies, Eumenides. buffet, slap in the face, box on the ear, rap on the knuckles. V. resent; take amiss, take ill, take to heart, take offense, take umbrage, take huff, take exception; take in ill part, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... was coming. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of the same window. "Merciful God!" he cried, sinking on knees. "Heavenly Father, Thou seest this evil in my heart. Thou knowest that my weak hand cannot pluck it out. My strength is breaking, and still Thou makest my burden heavier than I can bear." He stopped, breathless and trembling. The same visions were flitting across his closed eyes; the same silence gaped like a dry crater in his soul. "There is no help in earth or heaven," he said, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... here. In the north-east the hardy Catalans had risen against the invaders, and by sheer pluck and audacity cooped them up in their ill-gotten strongholds of Barcelona and Figueras. The men of Arragon, too, never backward in upholding their ancient liberties, rallied to defend their capital Saragossa. Their rage was increased by the arrival of Palafox, who had escaped in disguise from ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... they left you out of all this, eh? Thought you'd turn up in the middle of the banquet, like the spectre bridegroom—'the worms they crawled in, and the worms they crawled out,' eh? Well, I like your pluck, but, ahem—I'm afraid you'll find they've rather an unpleasant way of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... trust me? [Vernon comes down, R.] Oh, Harry! I wish he would find out what a lot of pluck and common sense there is in ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... lozenge-shaped divisions. It was of various colours, from light pea-green to brown and rich yellow. Jack said that the yellow was the ripe fruit. We afterwards found that most of the fruit-trees on the island were evergreens, and that we might, when we wished, pluck the blossom and the ripe fruit from the same tree. Such a wonderful difference from the trees of our own country surprised us not a little. The bark of the tree was rough and light-coloured; the trunk was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... least beautified by the hand of art. We cannot look on these smiling and flowery valleys, and believe that such lovely scenes are always untenanted—that there are no children occasionally picking up these apricots—no village girls to pluck these bright, fragrant flowers. We fancy that they are out in the fields, and will be there in the evening, and that their hamlet is hid behind the slope of the next hill; and it is only when we come to some Indian hut, or cluster of poor cabins in the wilderness, that we are startled ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... that night he patrolled before Ellaphine's home and tried to pluck up courage enough to twist that old door-bell again. Suddenly she ran into him. She was sneaking through the front gate. He tried to talk to ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the Columbia, from the mouth of that river to the falls, that is to say, on a space extending about 250 miles from east to west, are, generally speaking, of low stature, few of them passing five feet six inches, and many not even five feet. They pluck out the beard, in the manner of the other Indians of North America; but a few of the old men only suffer a tuft to grow upon their chins. On arriving among them we were exceedingly surprised to see that they had almost all flattened heads. This configuration is ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... more successful in the discovering line than Christopher Columbus. Living as he did in a day when a great many things were still in an undiscovered state, the horizon was filled with golden opportunities for a man possessed of Mr. C.'s pluck and ambition. His life at first was filled with rebuffs and disappointments, but at last he grew to be a man of importance in his own profession, and the people who wanted anything discovered would always bring it to him rather than take ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... her brothers, and went to the great, wide moor, where the witches lived. There stood a great crop of thistles, all nodding and nodding in the breeze, while the down floated and glistened like gossamer through the air in the moonbeams. The Princess began to pluck and gather it as fast as she could, but she saw long skinny arms outstretched toward her, and, among the thistles, she saw a host of wicked faces all looking at her. Her heart stood still then and she grew icy cold, but never a sound did she utter, only plucked ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... they had about them. One lady, tall and slender, very beautiful and very dark, wrenched her watch from about her neck, pulled off her rings, and threw everything upon the carpet. Had it been possible, they would have torn away their flesh to pluck out their love-burnt hearts and fling them likewise to the demi-god. They would even have flung themselves, have given themselves without reserve. It was a rain of presents, an explosion of the passion ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... nor by the touch, for He was impalpable. How then did I know that He was present? Because He was a quickening power. As soon as He entered He awoke my slumbering soul. He moved and pierced my heart, which before was stony, hard, and sick. He began also to pluck up and destroy, to build and plant, to freshen the inner drought, to enlighten the darkness, to open the prison-house, to make the crooked straight and the rough smooth; so that my heart could bless the Lord with all that was ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer |
