"Pluck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tonsberg was also much higher than I had paid in Sweden, and much higher than it ought to have been where provision is so cheap. Indeed, they seem to consider foreigners as strangers whom they shall never see again, and may fairly pluck. And the inhabitants of the western coast, isolated, as it were, regard those of the east almost as strangers. Each town in that quarter seems to be a great family, suspicious of every other, allowing none to cheat ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... distances apart? I pushed on to the next rising ground, ten miles, being nearly twenty from where I had camped. The view from here was precisely similar to the former ones. My horse had not travelled well this morning, he seemed to possess but little pluck. Although he was fat yesterday, he is literally poor now. This horse's name was Pratt; he was a poor weak creature, and died subsequently from thirst. I am afraid the putrid water has made him ill, for I have had great difficulty in getting him ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... my lad. The brave defender of his country cannot be dispensed with, and we give him all honor. Still, the use of defence and protection is not so high as the use of building up and sustaining. The thorn that wounds the hand stretched forth to pluck the flower, is not so much esteemed, nor of so much worth, as the blossom it was meant to guard. Still, the thorn performs a great use. Precisely a similar use does the soldier or naval officer perform to society; and it will be for you, my lad, to decide ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... she had been brought up made pluck a paramount virtue. She pushed from her the desire to weep in self-pity over her lot. Though her throat was raw and swollen, she called at regular intervals during the morning hours while the sun climbed ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... fought it. And I tell you, 'tis a hard thing to bring the living flesh and the leaping blood to submit to such as that. At first I thought indeed, it could not be borne, and I must reckon upon your or Renny's friendship for a secret speed. I should have had the pluck to starve myself if need be, only I am so damned strong and healthy, I feared it could not have been managed in the time. At any rate, I could have dashed my brains out against the wall—but I see it otherwise now. The prison ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Nisida disport in Nature's mighty bath until the heat of the sun became so intense that she was compelled to return to the shore and resume her apparel. Then she took some bread in her hand, and hastened to the groves to pluck the cooling and delicious fruits whereof there was so marvelous an abundance. She seated herself on a bed of wild flowers on the shady side of a citron and orange grove, surrounded by a perfumed air. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... its death, that American plan should serve all the purposes, and give all the satisfaction for which they claim to follow the hounds: the keen pleasure of a gallop across country, the excitement of its danger, the pluck and pride of taking a bad fence, and equally, too, the pleasure of watching the hounds cleverly at work with their mysterious gift of scent. All the same, I suspect there are few sportsmen who would not vote it a tame substitute. Without something being killed, the zest, the 'snap,' is gone. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... first acts of a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend to know; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame Partington—that they had best "pluck a few feathers from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of asking myself uneasy and metaphysical questions about the Why and the Wherefore and the What." The necessity? Ah, no! But if one is forced, against one's will and hope, to go astray in the wilderness out of the way, to find oneself lonely and hungry, one must needs pluck the bitter berries of the place for such sustenance as one can. I doubt, indeed, whether one is able to compel oneself into and out of certain trains of thought. If one dislikes and dreads introspection, one will doubtless be happier for ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the cocoa-palm and the majestic plantain. There are gardens upon its banks, and orchards filled with the fruit-trees of the tropics. I see the orange with its golden globes, the sweet lime, the shaddock, and the guava-tree. I ride under the shade of the aguacate (Laurus Persea), and pluck the luscious fruits of the cherimolla. The breeze blowing over fields carries on its wings the aroma of the coffee-tree, the indigo-plant, the vanilla bean, or the wholesome cacao (Theobroma Cacao); and, far as the eye can reach, I see glancing gaily in the sun the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 180 The service pass'd, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd, 185 Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distress'd; To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... said Borotte; "it ain't no use." Presently the elder brother broke out laughing. "Damned if I thought the girl had the pluck, an' damned if I thought Borotte was a crawler. Put an eye out of him, Liddy, an' come to your brother's arms. Here," he added to the others, "up with your popguns; this shindy's off; and the girl goes back till the old man tucks up. Have a drink," he added to Pierre, as he stood his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is a dead silence till pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in: then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country: then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of us ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... don't believe you would," said Flagg; "but we can't have any left behind. One in for it, all in for it. Pluck up your courage and come along, Percy. If you don't,"—meaningly—"you and I'll have some old ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... preparation which have been given to 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. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... inwardly. "Ought it to be? Here am I, eager to gratify her every wish, while he can give her only the dry, crushed remains of his manhood, a bare scrap of his past affluence. He scorned the sweetest flower of womanhood that ever bloomed, and now crawls through his own mire to pluck it. It isn't right—it isn't right! God knows it isn't right to her; leaving me and my hopes out altogether—it isn't ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of the phone that I'm here. To-day you are talking to me Because of the grit and the pluck of a boy. His title was Runner McGee. We were up to our dead line an' fighting alone; some plan had miscarried, I guess, And the help we were promised had failed to arrive. We were ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... Berow, who went beside me while I took them out, scarce could hold them all in her apron; and at the other end old Pagels pulled nearly as many out of his doublet and coat pockets. My daughter then sat down with the rest of the womankind to pluck the birds; and as there was no salt (indeed it was long since most of us had tasted any), she desired two men to go down to the sea, and to fetch a little salt-water in an iron pot borrowed from Staffer Zuter; and so they ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... past. Gerome gave vent to his feelings with a succession of roulades and operatic airs; for my little friend had a very good opinion of his vocal powers, which I, unfortunately, did not share. But he was a cheery, indefatigable creature, and of indomitable pluck, and one gladly forgave him ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... confusion the boat got adrift," said Brisket. "You've got their own word for it. Not that they didn't behave well for landsmen: Mr. Chalk's pluck was wonderful, and Mr. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... been 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
... And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... more concern about yourself. Say to yourself, "I shall and will get well under this treatment," as you certainly will. Pluck is half the battle. Mind acts and reads directly on the sexual organs. Determining to get well gets you well; whilst all fear that you will become worse makes you worse. All worrying over your case as if it were hopeless, all moody and despondent feelings, tear the life right out of these organs, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... fresh as mine, Pluck'd at rose of morning By our Lady's shrine. Those that first I gather'd Laid I at her feet, That is why my roses Still are fresh and sweet. Roses, Donnas, roses! Roses waxen fair! Acolytes ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... making a profession without possessing what you profess? If there is anything you detest it is hypocrisy. Do you tell me God doesn't detest it also? If it is a right eye that offends, make up your mind that you will pluck it out; or if it is a right hand or a right foot, cut it off. Whatever the sin is, make up your mind that you will gain the victory ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... admires your plain speaking. Enough of evasion and sneaking! Let fact, logic stout, And sound pluck fight it out. Truth's "at home" to right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... for a boy of seventeen. But they were not idle boastings. Before a year had passed, young Olaf's pluck and courage had won the day, and in harvest-time, in the year 1015, being then but little more than eighteen years old, he was crowned King of Norway in the Drontheim, or "Throne-home," of Nidaros, the royal city, now called ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to represent the frost. The light and dark so life-like harmonise with the figure of those there in the wind, That when I've done tracing their autumn growth, a fragrant smell issues under my wrist. Do you not mark how they resemble those, by the east hedge, which you leisurely pluck? Upon the screens their image I affix to solace me for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and unfettered in its opinions. The New Yorker and the Log Cabin were merged in the new journal. The expenses for the first week of the Tribune's existence were $525, and its income $92. Greeley was thirty years old, full of health and vigour, pluck and determination. He never knew when he was defeated, and when events knocked him down, he quietly got up again. In seven weeks the Tribune had a circulation of 11,000. Fertile in resources, full of plans to advertise his journal, he gained ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... shall we deem him ancient, right and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once, At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce? 'We shall not quarrel for a year or two; By courtesy of England, he may do.' Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, And melt down ancients like a heap of snow: While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe, And estimating authors by the year, Bestow a garland only on a bier. Shakespeare, (whom you and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... "The splendid pluck, spirit and endurance shown by my troops in the desperate fighting which has continued for so many days against vastly superior forces fills me with admiration. I am confident in the final results of their noble efforts ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... years of age his first thrilling adventure occurred, and it gave the boy a name for pluck and nerve that went with him to Kansas, where his father removed with his family shortly after the incident ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... Ogowe rapids, for I have done so already sufficiently to make you understand the sort of work going up them entails, and I have no doubt that, could I have given you a more vivid picture of them, you would join me in admiration of the fiery pluck of those few Frenchmen who traverse them on duty bound. I personally deeply regret it was not my good fortune to meet again the French official I had had the pleasure of meeting on the Eclaireur. He would have been truly great in his description of his voyage ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was said that between Saint-Denys and Saint-George there had been born to King Henry V and Madame Catherine of France a boy, half English and half French, who would go to Egypt and pluck the Grand Turk's beard.[894] On his death-bed the conqueror Henry V was listening to the priests repeating the penitential psalms. When he heard the verse: Benigne fac Domine in bona voluntate tua ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... know what to do with; for if tradesmen will run up houses on spec in a water-meadow, who can stop them? There ought to be a law for it, say I; but I say a good many things in the twelve months that nobody minds. But, my dear boy, if one man in a town has pluck and money, he may do it. It'll cost him a few: I've had to pay the main part myself, after all: but I suppose God will make it up to a man somehow. That's old Mark's faith, at least. Now I want to talk to you about yourself. My ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Sir Piercie, "had I abidden with him, I should have been complimented out of every remnant of my wardrobe—actually flayed, by the hospitable gods I swear it! Sir, he secured my spare doublet, and had a pluck at my galligaskins—I was enforced to beat a retreat before I was altogether unrigged. That Border knave, his serving man, had a pluck at me too, and usurped a scarlet cassock and steel cuirass belonging to the page of my body, whom ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed, not quite so convenient for me to spare money as it once was, but I know your situation, and, I will say it, in some respects your worth. I have no time to write at present, but I beg you will endeavour to pluck up a little more of the Man than you used to ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the heroic days of his youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings in his head, and little besides for baggage: "Muscle and pluck!—Muscle and pluck!" and "Go ahead for ever!" That was the sort of thing to be done when a man or a woman ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... disposal of the big car, cheerfully enough, but she could not leave behind some absurd little tricks of thought that she had always indulged in. She was as strange to the road as any Picardy peasant and as bewildered, with—shall I say it?—considerably less pluck and spirit than some of them, when the landmarks she had lived by were swept away. But they, you see, had a dim notion of what was happening to them. Elliott had none. She didn't even know that she was being evacuated. She knew only that ways which had ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... gallant and brave; innocent though he knew himself to be, yet it required a very high courage to listen to the damning accumulation of evidence against him, and if there is one thing that the ordinary man appreciates more than sensation, it is pluck. Then, but not for a long time, the uproar subsided, and the silence descended again. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... children," he said, smiling gravely. "See an old child whom thou hast made happy with a toy. But we are men too soon again; the King bids thee come with me before him. And, my son, if thou wouldst please me more than by any gift, I pray thee pluck that spear-head from thy helmet before thou comest into ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... then from my Pocket pluck Some friendly dear Companion of a Book, Whose homely Calves-skin fences did contain The Verbal Treasure of some Old good Man: Made by long study and experience wise, Whose piercing thoughts to Heavenly knowledge ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... lives, and I live in him. This is the deep abyss where I hide myself in these many persecutions. O, abandonment! blessed abandonment! Happy the soul who lives no more in itself, but in God. What can separate my soul from God? Surely, none can pluck me from my Father's hands. All is well, when the soul ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... minute. They wanted to see their enemies, to get at grips with them, to pit their brawn and muscle, their wit and courage against the best the enemy could bring forth. It was the way their ancestors had fought, man to man, bayonet to bayonet, where sheer pluck and power would give the victory to the men who ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... be so constructed, and (if large) so much of it hidden, as to admit of its being gently incorporated into the scenery of Nature—should also determine its colour. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, 'If you would fix upon the best colour for your house, turn up a stone, or pluck up a handful of grass by the roots, and see what is the colour of the soil where the house is to stand, and let that be your choice.' Of course, this precept given in conversation, could not have been meant to be taken literally. For example, in Low Furness, where the soil, from its strong impregnation ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... After building the nest she feathers it with down plucked from her own breast. Immediately the hunter, or rather the trader, comes and robs the nest, and the female recommences her work. This goes on as long as she has any down left. When she has stripped herself bare the male takes his turn to pluck himself. But as the coarse and hard plumage of the male has no commercial value, the hunter does not take the trouble to rob the nest of this; the female therefore lays her eggs in the spoils of her mate, the young are hatched, and next year ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... seem to think so. He "fixed" the Red Dog as one knowing the power of the master's eye to quell. Red's reply, unimaginably bold, was, as the Boy described it to the Colonel, "to give the other fella the curse." The Boy was proud of Red's pluck—already looking upon him as his own—but he jumped up from his ingratiating attitude, still grasping the dried fish. It would be a shame if that Leader got chewed up! And there was Red, every tooth bared, gasping for gore, and with each passing second seeming to throw ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... to pluck the quils With which I make pens, out of a Lions claw. The King! shoo'd I be bitter 'gainst the king I shall have scurvy ballads made of me Sung to the Hanging Tune[201]. I dare ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the idea was applied to bottles that will keep the stuff warm forty hours; and contrivances to gradually cook meats and other things. So here goes to get busy with the oven. Nick, you and Herb and Jimmy each pluck one of the ducks in the meantime, so they ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... aptly said. But prithee, maid, Why thus your garden fill When ev'ry field the same flowers yield To pluck them as ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... a state, would not a Caesar rise, And chain the nation to his gory car, And pluck from out the blue of our bright skies, To form his diadem, that falling star? Then, one by one, each brilliant light would fall, And primal chaos desolate them all— While Tyranny, with loud prophetic shout, Would wave his bloody sword, as each ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... and we three stood there on the brick floor staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own fashion, how in the name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all. And each was silent—myself from sheer incapacity and befuddlement, the Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little, and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of thought rather ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... then, find the inexorable daily half-hour stand in the way of something else,—shall not the very thought of Him whose Voice you have deliberately resolved to hear daily at that fixed time, make you full amends? Shall you resolve to pluck so freely of the Tree of Knowledge, and yet begrudge the approach once a day to the Tree of Life, which grows in the midst of the Paradise of GOD? Shall ample time be found for works of fiction,—for the Review, and the Magazine, and the newspaper,—yet ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon, Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune! The pluck of LORD NELSON on board of the VICTORY - Genius of BISMARCK devising a plan; The humour of FIELDING (which sounds contradictory) - Coolness of PAGET about to trepan - The grace of MOZART, that unparalleled musico ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Howel!" said John Effingham; "you are but fifty, like Ned and myself. We were all boys together, forty years ago, and yet you find us, who have so lately returned, ready to take a fresh departure. Pluck up heart; there may be a steam-boat ready to bring you back, by the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... you to your Lodgings, I had deliver'd you to a Constable, who had made you sit up all Night in the Round-house, and sent you next Morning to Bridewell, to beat Hemp for your Living. The young Slut nothing daunted by what I had said (says the Constable) presently pluck'd up her Coats, and told me she'd find me other Business to do. I seeing that pull'd out my Short Constables Staff, and told her she didn't know her Danger, and had therefore best forbear her Impudence, or I should quickly make her sensible that I had Power to punish her. This put both the Old Woman ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... 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
... the young cleric was neither troubled by imagination nor lacking in pluck. His habitual outlook was sensible, literal and direct. But, it must be owned, this wide indistinct landscape, over which pale vapours trailed and brooded, the immense loneliness of the felt rather than seen, expanse of water, marsh and mud-flat of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... seeks to pluck the fragrant rose From the bare rock, or oozy beach, Who from each barren weed that grows, Expects the grape, or blushing peach. With equal faith may hope to find The truth of love ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... all kinds for the hero and his friends, whose pluck and ingenuity in extricating themselves from awkward fixes are always equal to the occasion. It is an excellent story full of honest, manly, patriotic efforts on the part of the hero. A very vivid description of the battle ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... brightens up on a normal plane. To the one who finds it a narcotic, the abandonment of tobacco means inviting the height of all nervousness. To George Henry tobacco had been a narcotic, and now his nerves were set on edge. He had pluck, though, and irritable and suffering, endured as well as he could. At length came, as will come eventually in the case of every healthy man persisting in self-denial, surcease of much sorrow over tobacco, but in the interval George Henry had a ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... which nevertheless does remind us that there are limits to the number of cubits an individual can add to his stature morally or physically, and that it is silly as well as cruel to torment a man five feet high for not being able to pluck fruit that is within the reach of men of average height. I have known a case of an unfortunate child being beaten for not being able to tell the time after receiving an elaborate explanation of the figures on a ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... fragrant, single roses (real roses) set in the midst of the handsomest of glossy green leaves. I was delighted to find it still in flower. A hundred miles farther south I had seen it finishing its season a full month earlier. I stopped, of course, to pluck a blossom. At that moment a female redbird flew out of the bush. Her mate was beside her instantly, and a nameless something in their manner told me they were trying to keep a secret. The nest, built mainly of pine needles and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... succeeded in her wish to graft a bit of her nerve on to his backbone, for he felt a new sense of self-reliance and resolution. Once married to Sheila, and with the immediate future provided for by the generosity of Miss Ocky, he had no doubt of his ability to pluck a pearl necklace from the world that was his oyster! He knew quite a bit about the tanning business, a knowledge acquired casually during summer vacations, and he also knew—from Sheila—something of Graham's disappointed ambitions in ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Bent on the earth: the unfrequented woods Are her delight; and when she sees a bank Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell Her servants what a pretty place it were To bury lovers in, and make her maids Pluck'em, and strow her over like a Corse. She carries with her an infectious grief That strikes all her beholders, she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh, and sing again, and when the rest Of our young Ladies in their wanton blood, Tell mirthful tales in course that ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was no doubt that he was scared. The American's morbid details had been enough to frighten anybody. He was so frightened that he had the pluck to tell ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... hungry look in her eyes; it was because she discovered certain signs of lassitude or impatience in me, a desire to get up and go away and refresh myself in the sun and wind. Poor old woman, she could not spring upon and hold me fast when I attempted to move off, or pluck me back with her claws; she could only gaze with fiercely pleading eyes and say nothing; and so, without being fascinated, I very often sat on listening still when I would gladly ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... to pluck sweet flowers I bend my brow, Thou bendest, too—then risest when I rise;— Say, mute, mysterious Thing! how is't that thou Thus comest between me and those blessed ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... armed with this, Archie, like a true hero, started to find a good place and build another house. Surely nowhere, save in the histories of the great Boston and Chicago fires, is record to be found of parallel pluck ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... "She is full of pluck and mettle like a thoroughbred horse!" said old General von Bergen, who, with his daughter and his adjutant, had come up from the barracks on a visit. "It is a pleasure to provoke her; her eyes light up so. Pohlen," he said, turning to the adjutant, "you ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... has seen a cornfield. If you pluck up one of the innumerable wheat plants which are fixed in the soil of the field, about harvest time, you will find that it consists of a stem which ends in a root at one end and an ear at the other, and that blades or leaves are attached to the sides of the stem. The ear contains a multitude ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... a tiny 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 of the great motion, of which ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... college green, 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 to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... gun shot a great number of times but killed only the number mentioned. as the elk were scattered we sent two parties for them, they returned in the evening with four skins and the flesh of three Elk, that of one of them having become putrid from the liver and pluck having been carelessly left in the animal all night. we were visited this afternoon by Delashshelwilt a Chinnook Chief his wife and six women of his nation which the old baud his wife had brought for market. this was the same party that ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... previous speaker that they were prepared to go to any lengths to save these Irishmen. They were not. He wished they were. If they were, if the men of England, from one end to the other, were prepared to say, "These men shall not be executed," they would not be. He was afraid they had not pluck enough for that. Their moral courage was not equal to their physical strength. Therefore he would not say that they were prepared to do so. They must plead ad misericordiam. He appealed to the press, which represented the power of England; to that press which in its panic-stricken moments ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... with their families, and their right to their own bodies? Why do they take them, if they do not desire them? They COVET them for purposes of gain, convenience, lust of dominion, of sensual gratification, of pride and ostentation. They break the tenth commandment, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are written in the book. Ten commandments constitute the brief compend of human duty. Two of these brand ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... pretentious. By their code they're paragons of honour. Courage—they're all right about that; no end of it; honesty, truthfulness, and so on—high. They have a kind of horsey standard of smartness and pluck, too, that isn't bad, and they have a fine horror of whiskers and being unbuttoned. But the mistake they make is to class thinking with whiskers, as a sort of fussy sidegrowth. Instead of classing it with unbuttonedupness. They hate economy. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... possesses a number of other curious birds, which in the eyes of the ornithologist almost serves to distinguish it as one of the primary divisions of the earth. Among its thirty species of parrots are the Great Pluck Cockatoo, and the little rigid-tailed Nasiterna, the giant and the dwarf of the whole tribe. The bare-headed Dasyptilus is one of the most singular parrots known; while the beautiful little long-tailed Charmosyna, and the great variety of gorgeously-coloured lories, have ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... such good humour as a successful rifle. While they are on their long and slow march, they speculate upon the good luck that may attend the master's gun, and upon arrival at the general bivouac in the evening they are always on the alert to skin and divide the antelopes, pluck the guinea-fowls, &c. &c. We now travelled in this delightful manner; there were great numbers of guinea-fowl throughout the country, which was the same everlasting flat and rich table land, extending for several ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... his cause be right and his conscience clear, his position is precarious: that the world, if it knew the truth, would regard him almost as an imposter. The feeling may be unreasonable, the fear cowardly; but there it is, and it had cost the Commandant all his pluck to face the encounter out. Moreover, his conscience was ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... ["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
... for the maiden's pillow, Far beyond the Atlantic's billow, Love's apple, and when we have found it, Draw the magic circle round it;(1) Fearless pluck it, then no charm That it bears may do us harm; Place it near the sleeper's head, It will bring love's visions nigh, And when the pleasing, dreams are fled, The waking, pensive maid will sigh, Till her bosom has possessed, The form that made her dreams so blest. And when a maiden ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... do most faithfully, being possessed of a stronger sense of duty than of imagination. The clear, direct vision of such people has its merit. There are others who both see and feel, to whom the simplest object in its suggestiveness may be full of beauty. It is the latter who pluck delightful mysteries out of travel; and who, after viewing nature, it may be in her calmest moods, bring away with them upon the tablets of memory a Claude Lorraine. The eyes will operate automatically, but it is of little avail unless ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... beauty by the clearness of these waters, and the reflected lights from the snow-white sandy bottom, which is dotted here and there by delicate shells of various shapes and colors. One longs to descend among these coral bowers,—these mermaid gardens,—and pluck a bouquet of the submarine flora in its purple, yellow, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... came out, his young face glowing with excitement, and made his bow, the crowd of spectators greeted him with enthusiastic applause. His fellow actors joined in the ovation. They feared he had overrated his ability, but were ready to applaud his pluck. ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... of it was music, some poetry, the bulk prose. At last she threw it suddenly on the bright fire which good Mary O'Reilly had providentially provided in her room; then, as it flared up, stricken with remorse, she tried to pluck the sheets from the flames; only by scorching her fingers and raising blisters did she succeed, and then, with scornful resignation, she instantly threw them back again, warming her feverish hands merrily at the bonfire. Rapidly looking through ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... me. I'm only a poor devil of a newspaper man. There are plenty of fatter fowl to pluck. Denver's full of softheads ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... smile, a straightening of his collar, and a general arming-for-conquest expression, as some of the "ladies of the chorus and ballet," appeared from the side door. "Isn't she pretty?" he went on, in an audible aside to me. "I've a crow to pluck with her too. Tag, Fraeulein!" he added, advancing to the young lady who ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... who will show us the hard path of sacrifice, not asking us to do what they are not willing to do themselves; not pointing the way, but traveling in it; men of heroic mould who will say, "If my right eye offend me, I will pluck it out"; men who are willing to go down to political death if the country can be saved by that sacrifice. We need men at home who are as brave as the boys in the trenches, who risk their lives every day in a dozen different ways, without a trace of self-applause, who have laid all their equipment ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... moon-lit eves, Its harvest-time has come, We pluck away the frosted leaves, And bear the ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he had never seen. The brow was wrinkled as with centuries of pain, and the little drawn mouth looked as though the spirit within had fought its inheritance without a murmur, and would fight on that way to the end. It was the pluck of the face that drew Grayson. "I'll take it," he said. The doctor was not without his sense of humor even then, but he nodded. "Cradle and all," he said, gravely. And Grayson put both on one shoulder and walked away. He had lost the power of giving further surprise in that town, and had he met ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... soon as his van had weathered the British, which the shift of wind enabled him to do, he bore away along their line to windward and commenced a heavy cannonade, but at so cautious a distance that his shot did little damage. The Terrible's opponent soon sheered off, and, having more speed than pluck, quickly got out of the range of her guns, greatly to the disgust of ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out—sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me—and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries and the fir apples, which were good ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Marietta, Rarely has been A sweeter or better Face or form seen; My chestnut tresses, And my Spanish fall, Would eclipse all the dresses At the masked ball. Then why, Marietta. Dally?—ah, no! Pluck up, you'd ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... plunder of a land is given, When public crimes inflame the wrath of Heaven. But what, my friend, what hope remains for me, Who start at theft, and blush at perjury, Who scarce forbear, though Britain's court he sing, To pluck a titled poet's borrow'd wing; 70 A statesman's logic unconvinced can hear, And dare to slumber o'er the Gazetteer;[4] Despise a fool in half his pension dress'd, And strive in vain to laugh ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... commotion was going on in the school-room, Mr Root was active in the field, endeavouring, with the aid of the men-servants, to pluck as much fuel from the burning pile as possible. The attempt was nearly vain. He singed his clothes, and burnt his hands, lost his hat in the excitement and turmoil, and sadly discomposed his powdered ringlets. Advices were brought ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... away, And in the garden let us play; But do not pluck the pretty flowers, Because you know ...
— Harrison's Amusing Picture and Poetry Book • Unknown
... me into my jacket, shook hands with me, and said I had no science, but the devil's own pluck-and-lights. Then he, too, faded away into the night; and I found myself alongside of Doggy Bates, marching up the street after Mr. Stimcoe, who declaimed, as he went, upon ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... got farther away from the scene of action, and struck the road running south, it would be better not to enter any place where they would be questioned. Choosing an open space among the trees, Leigh took off the bridles to let the horses pluck what grass they could, after giving to each a hunch of bread from their store. Then he returned, with the blankets that had been rolled up and fastened behind ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... heart beat fast at the beautiful phrase; She had not intended it, I suppose, But I felt I could love her all my days, If under the stars I might pluck one rose! ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... must now be near the coast. His enterprise is full of hazard, but a hazard wisely incurred as it seems to me. I ardently hope that 'out of the nettle, danger, he will pluck the flower, safety.' ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... are overrun with pirates and that no ship is safe. Our vessels are being fired upon and sunk. I would not mind being captured by a good Yankee captain, if it were carefully done. But cannons are so noisy and impolite! I have a lot of British pluck in me, but I fear that you would not like to marry a girl who limped because she had been shot in the war. And, just think of the possible effect on my disposition. So before we start Doctor Franklin will have to promise not to fire his cannons ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... Muir beforehand for Morely's coming. He had written to him how "the Lord had most surely given him this brand to pluck from the burning,—this poor soul to save from the roaring lion that goeth about seeking whom he may devour;" and, reading it, his friend never doubted that Stephen's words were the words of Stephen's Master; and from the moment that Morely stood before him, pale and weary, ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... day my love of a woman should be rendered fair in her eyes by these borrowed colours; and now I have failed and lost; and what I would give, you have accounted as light and insufficient. Is there no speech left to tell you all the truth? I am a little bewildered, and have not been able to pluck up heart of courage. Write me some word of familiar consolation; do not quite shut the door upon me until my eyes grow accustomed to this darkness. All the light is with you, and the beauty that God ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... knocking? How is 't with me when every noise appals me; What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... what is best for its own. Love is nearly always right. But if you wish to keep your own views, to worship God in your own way, well, there are other creeds. Protestantism, it seems to me, lets out its followers, as it were, on strings and lets them wander about a little, laugh and pluck flowers, in the certainty that at the last she can draw her own to her. Well, that is one way of serving God, and in the Kingdom of God there is no right or wrong way, provided the service be sincere. There are many ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... from whom Dick had inherited much of his own pluck, was not the kind of woman to faint. She quickly followed ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... away his tears, and holding his flat cap in his hand, was marshalled across the mead, hot, shy, and indignant, as the jester mopped and mowed, and cut all sorts of antics before him, turning round to observe in an encouraging voice, "Pluck up a heart, man! One would think Hal was going to cut oft thine head!" And then, on arriving where the king sat on his horse, "Here he is, Hal, such as he is come humbly to crave thy gracious pardon for hitting the mark no better! He'll mend his ways, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... methinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... rosary. It follows her, gathering its immense body into horrible and hideous heights. How will she save herself? She will pluck roses, and build a wall between her and it. She collects huge bouquets, armfuls of beautiful flowers, garlands and wreaths. The flower-wall rises, and hoping to combat the fury of the beast with purity, she goes to where beautiful and ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... doing at that window?" demanded Washburn, to a man he had collared near the door of the engine-room, for he had pluck enough to pick up a water moccasin, if ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p-ss on.- -And, ye fair mystic nymphs! go each one PLUCK YOUR ROSE, and scatter them in your path,—for Madame de Rambouliet did no more.— I handed Madame de Rambouliet out of the coach; and had I been the priest of the chaste Castalia, I could not have served at her fountain ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... not minister to a mind diseas'd; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... kind biographer La Mara writes me a few charming lines telling me that she is shortly sending me her volume "Studienkopfe" ["Studies of heads"]. "Das junge Volk hat Muth," ["Young folk have pluck"] as you say, and I quite approve of their not letting themselves be intimidated. Courage is the vital nerve of our best qualities; they fade away when it is wanting, and unless one is courageous one is not even sufficiently ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. "Yes, he sees it all, he understands it all, and in these words he's telling me that though I'm ashamed, I must get over my shame." She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... referred the following paragraph in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a 'time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal: a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... surrounded by two hundred other slave-girls, and was playing with a tiny dwarf. They were singing and dancing all around her and swinging censers. Above her head was a large fruit-tree made entirely of sugar, and covered with sugar-fruit of every shape and hue, and from time to time the Sultana would pluck off one of these fruits and taste a little bit of it and give the remainder to the tiny dwarf, who ate up everything greedily. Here Irene was seized by a black eunuch—a horrid, pockmarked man, ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;— Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,—but if I could understand What you are, root and all—and all in all, I should know what God ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... spite of your many virtues, are slower to understand than we Southerners are. Would you have me pluck the fruit for you as well as show you the tree? Sturatzberg may be in open rebellion before a week is out, and Frina Mavrodin may have to leave it. I will say no more. Even my generosity ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... my hand all but dipped into the waves. A stream of water did once run up my sleeve. Looking round and seeing Tony smile, I yelled back aft: "What be smiling 'bout, Tony?" He replied: "I was a-gloryin' in yer pluck." ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... which Disraeli's government fell he gave the House of Commons a last proof of his unconquerable "cheek and pluck." The Marquis of Hartington had delivered a speech which everybody knew to have sealed the fate of the party in power, but the great Jew statesman rose up imperturbable and audacious to the last "There is, sir," he said in that veiled voice of his which sounded as if it were ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... storm, or time, Of death can rob the just! None pluck from their unaching heads Soft ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the Enterprise, and could hardly believe my eyes," said he, "but I always thought you would find some one to appreciate your pluck. I'm mighty glad for you, my lad, and you must always let me know how you are getting along." This Archie promised to do, and returned to his lodging ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... sharp lances, with which they essay to kill the bull while protecting themselves and their steeds from his horns. As the bulls in these encounters have not been weakened by many wounds and tired out by much running, the performances of the gentlemen fighters are remarkable for pluck and dexterity. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... tears Till we be old; Young we are, and of our years Till youth be cold Pluck the flower; while spring is gay In this happy month of May, Love me, love; Fill our joy in brimming measure; In this world he hath no pleasure That will ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... I believe," cried the 'Squire, who, notwithstanding age and infirmity, retained a good deal of that original pluck, which had formerly distinguished him as an officer in his Majesty's military service. "Yes, it is the devil, I verily believe; and there is no way but to send for the priest, to get him out of a house that never ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough, and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by Gramoplanz (Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its branches (TOS ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... his chair and eyed him disdainfully. "For a great, big chap like you are, John Blundell," he exclaimed, "it's surprising what a little pluck you've got." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... bush, Big with many a coming rose, This early bud began to blush, And did but half itself disclose; I pluck'd it, though no better grown, And now you see how ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... owd parson's lass. A little wench not much higher nor thy waist, an' wi' a bit o' a face loike skim-milk, but steady and full o' pluck as an ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he said, "I'm rather glad you're not a common thief. You've lots of pluck—plenty. You're as clever as a cobra. It isn't every poisonous snake that is clever," he ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Abner Joyce. He claimed as a matter of course the right to be present at such conferences. Joyce himself had the strength and the pluck to tackle anything. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... settling this point, Juliet was repeatedly called for by her nurse, and went in and returned, and went and returned again, for she seemed as jealous of Romeo going from her, as a young girl of her bird, which she will let hop a little from her hand, and pluck it back with a silken thread; and Romeo was as loth to part as she: for the sweetest music to lovers is the sound of each other's tongues at night. But at last they parted, wishing mutually sweet sleep and rest for that night. The day was breaking when they parted, and Romeo, who was too full ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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
... pluck, my lad, and can, perhaps, give you a lift. Skip shall have a flea in his ear before the whistle sounds again; but, of course, it's none of my business what ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... nun; 'but who shall dare to scrutinize my thoughts—who shall dare to pluck out my opinion? God only is his judge, and to that judge ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... under-ventilated muscles, lack of sunlight, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, excess of work, or bad habits. In other words, it is the danger signal, the red light showing the open switch, and we will disregard it at our peril. Unfortunately, by that power of esprit de corps of the entire system, known as "pluck" or "grit," or the veto-power, physiologically termed inhibition, we may ignore and for a time suppress the symptom, but this in the long run is just as rational as cutting the wire that rings a fire alarm, or ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... do. Look alive, senor," the turnkey ordered, and to emphasize his words reached a hand forward to pluck away the sobbing lad. Bucky caught his wrist and tightened on it like a vise. "Hands off, here!" ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... told—the whole kept at a high level, if you understand me. Give Lady Calmady a great part and she will play it nobly. Let this come upon her from a mean, wet-nurse, hospital-ward sort of level, and it may break her. What we have to do is to keep up her pluck. Remember we are only at the beginning of this business yet. In all probability there are many years ahead. Therefore this announcement must come to Lady Calmady from an educated person, from an equal, from somebody who can see ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why it is I—the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door was closed to within ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Extra large pieces of spawn are apt to produce large clumps of mushrooms, but this is not always an advantage, as when many mushrooms grow together in a clump they are apt to be somewhat undersized, and in gathering we can not pluck them all out clean enough so as not to leave a part of the "root" in the ground to poison the balance of the clump, in cases where several or many of them spring from one ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... entitled to make me presents, was only equalled by my pleasure at the possession of my first earnings, the knowledge that I was at last capable of earning something, that at last the tree of life was bearing fruit, which I might reach and pluck ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... admit that he has pluck," he remarked critically. "At the same time I cannot see that a single effort of this sort entitles a man to be considered a sportsman. He doesn't shoot, nor does he ever ride except when he is on military ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... encounters poorly calculated to bring victory to either side. One of Carey's men lay near the barricade, insensible from a crack over the head from a rifle butt. His plight was causing uneasiness among his comrades, who began drawing back toward the shadows. Carey, seeing that their pluck was ebbing, cursed them. Only seven of the Governor's party had entered the barricade, the others having been left outside to prevent a retreat toward Heart o' Dreams in case the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... driven in upon one another in one close body, they were thus hit and killed, dying, not by a quick and easy death, but with miserable pains and convulsions; for writhing upon the darts in their bodies, they broke them in their wounds, and when they would by force pluck out the barbed points, they caught the nerves and veins, so that they tore and tortured themselves. Many of them died thus, and those that survived were disabled for any service, and when Publius exhorted them to charge the cuirassiers, they showed him their hands nailed to their shields, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his alleged neglect and avoidance of Claire. He called himself names and more names. He plumbed the depth of repentance and remorse. Proceeding from this, he eulogized her courage, the pluck with which she presented a smiling face to the world while tortured inwardly by separation from her little brother Percy. He then turned to ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... human being, and how pathetic that curiosity is, in so far as it suggests our own ignorance and helplessness, and we see at once that people may flock to public executions for other purposes than the gratification of morbid tastes: that they would pluck if they could some little knowledge of what death is; that imaginatively they attempt to reach to it, to touch and handle it through an experience which is not their own. It is some obscure desire of this kind, a movement of curiosity not altogether ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... civilities with a politeness which was natural to him, but which had received great improvements since his arrival in France. She was no less charm'd with his conversation than she had been with his person, and impatient to know who he was, made an offer of shewing him her face on condition he would pluck off his mask at the same time: but this he would by no means agree to, because still hoping to get rid of her, and have some discourse with mademoiselle Charlotta, he did not think proper he should be known by any other, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... said, softly. "I am bearing in my heart the funeral crape of the monarchy. These raging partisans want to pluck it out, deride it, and fasten it to their own foreheads. And this compels them to break my heart, and this they have done!" [Footnote: Mirabeau's own words.—See "Memoires sur ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... mass, He's a squire for Queen Bess, And in Parliament an ass; Fair Charlecote is ruined By this bluffer of the state, And only his dependents Will dare to call him great. The deer and hares and pidgeons Are imprisoned for his use, Yet, poaching lads from Stratford Pluck this ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the minister, Mr. Thomas resolved, if pluck and energy were of any avail, that he would leave no stone unturned in seeking employment. He searched the papers carefully for advertisements, walked from one workshop to the other looking for work, and was eventually met with a refusal ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... me into the field, and I called them all, and they all stood ready in their several ranks. Then he said unto them; let every one pluck up his rod, and bring it unto me. And first they delivered theirs, whose rods had been dry ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... whether this is the sole cause, although it may well be requisite for the kind of variation desired by man, namely increase of size and vigour. No doubt horticulturalists, when they wish to raise new seedlings, often pluck off all the flower-buds, except a few, or remove the whole during one season, so that a great stock of nutriment may be thrown into the flowers which are to seed. When plants are transported from high-lands, forests, marshes, heaths, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... misjudged the courage and the pluck of two American boys like Thure Conroyal and Bud Randolph; and, judging from the scowls that disfigured their faces and the ugly light that flashed into their eyes, at the sight of Bud's actions, in their disappointment, ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... the love and friendship of years disappear, and in the place of two human beings transparent to each other, there are two who are opaque and indifferent. Bitter, bitter! If the cause of separation were definite disagreement upon conduct or belief, we could pluck up courage, approach and come to an understanding, but it is impossible to bring to speech anything which is so close to the heart, and there is, therefore, nothing left for us but to submit and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... nevertheless, he is beguiled away from Palermo by some trickery of Bertram's, and fails to put in an appearance at the tournament. The only means, therefore, left to him of obtaining the hand of Isabella is to visit the tomb of his mother, and there to pluck a magic branch of cypress, which will enable him to defeat his rivals. The cypress grows in a deserted convent haunted by the spectres of profligate nuns, and there, amidst infernal orgies, Robert plucks the branch ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... his arms. I got between his two legs, as if I had been a horse between the shafts, and we went downstairs, while his wife lighted us. When we got outside, I held the body up, so as to deceive the coachman, and said: 'Come, my friend; it is nothing; you feel better already, I expect. Pluck up your courage, and make an attempt. It will soon be over.' But as I felt that he was slipping out of my hands, I gave him a slap on the shoulder, which sent him forward and made him fall into the carriage, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to disengage his weapon, but Hordle John bent his arm slowly back until, with a sharp crack, like a breaking stave, it turned limp in his grasp, and the mace dropped from the nerveless fingers. In vain he tried to pluck it up with the other hand. Back and back still his foeman bent him, until, with a roar of pain and of fury, the giant clanged his full length upon the boards, while the glimmer of a knife before the bars ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... supposed to pluck a twig from the sacred oak-tree and the act of picking the branch is supposed to be the challenge. But, in practice, the King of the Grove watches the sacred oak so carefully, that nobody remembers any challenger who succeeded in pulling a twig ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and to satisfying her appetite with scraps of garbage. When she first saw a daisy on the green, she gazed longingly, and then asked plaintively, "Please, might I touch that?" When she was told that she might pluck a few daisies she was much delighted. After her first experiences in the botanising line she formally asked permission to pluck many wild flowers; but she always seemed to have a dread of transgressing ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, I love thee! And I'd like to see any ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor |
