"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discovered by Lelio Pasqualini speaks of a Leopardus, lector de Pudentiana, in the year 384; and in the mosaic of the apse the Redeemer holds a book, on the open page of which is written: "The Lord, defender of the church of Pudens." In course of time the ignorant people changed the word Pudentiana, a possessive adjective, into the name of a saint; and the name Sancta Pudentiana usurped the place of the genuine one. It appears for the first time in a document ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... apt to be an exacting husband, in the end the heavy predominance of Oliver might wring much sincerer tears from her than she had ever shed for himself. But that generosity was but the bright edge to a mainly possessive jealousy. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... for a prompt benediction on the day. Like no other strong solicitation, among artistic appeals to which one may compare it up and down the whole wonderful country, is the felt neighbouring presence of the overwrought Cathedral in its little proud possessive town: you may so often feel by the week at a time that it stands there really for your own personal enjoyment, your romantic convenience, your small wanton aesthetic use. In such a light shines for me, at all events, under such an accumulation ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... The form of expression adopted by the savage, as in "Water, give me," is the simplest type of the approximate arrangement. In pleonasms, which are comparatively prevalent among the uneducated, the same essential structure is seen; as, for instance, in—"The men, they were there." Again, the old possessive case—"The king, his crown," conforms to the like order of thought. Moreover, the fact that the indirect mode is called the natural one, implies that it is the one spontaneously employed by the common people: that is—the ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... that Cynthia was driven into an intimate and possessive tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted, and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, and ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... church is that she has lost her interrogation point. At the day of Pentecost people were saying, "What do these things mean?" To-day they never think of saying it. I have been told in a little pamphlet issued by an English writer that the church has lost her possessive case, which means that somehow she has gone on without realizing that the risen, glorified Christ is her blessed Lord. It is a great thing to say "Jesus"; infinitely greater is it to say "My Jesus." The church has lost her imperative mode. In days that are ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... repeated she, laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a free ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... ... characteristics of the poetry are the use of archaic forms and words, such as mec for m, the possessive sn, gamol, dgor, swt for eald, dg, bld, etc., after they had become obsolete in the prose language, and the use of special compounds and phrases, such as hildendre (war-adder) for 'arrow,' gold-gifa (gold-giver) for ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds. |
