"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... content to drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tangling each other in silly talk out of mere wantonness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer effervescence of animal delight; falling into periodic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence of which we consulted our maps and our watches in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... a garden is that it should be beautiful from end to end, and not start off in front of the house with fireworks, going off at its farthest limit into sheer sticks. The standard reached beneath the windows should at least be kept up, if it cannot be surpassed, right away through, and the German popular plan in this matter quite discarded of concentrating all the available splendour of the establishment into the supreme effort of ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the sea broke right on the face of it, so that all passage was stopped. Woody mountains hemmed the place all round; the barrier to the east was particularly steep and leafy, the lower parts of it, along the sea, falling in sheer black cliffs streaked with cinnabar; the upper part lumpy with the tops of the great trees. Some of the trees were bright green, and some red, and the sand of the beach as black as your shoes. Many birds hovered round the bay, some of them snow-white; and the flying-fox ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself might call its infinitely fugacious quality, contrasts effectively with the deliberate, somewhat mannered beauty of the setting. Mr. MACKENZIE is an overlord of words, old and new, bending them to strange and unexpected uses, yet always avoiding affectation by the sheer vitality of his strength. As for the matter of these first chapters, one might say that nothing whatever happens in them. They are an epic of adolescence wherein growth is the only movement. Events are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... me and compelled me to stay, or rather my conscience compelled me. It was a damp night, and I had a little fire made. The wine, fruit, flowers, and candles I had ordered made the bare place for the time being bright and fragrant. Aunt Martha dozed in her chair from sheer fatigue—she had watched many nights—but Miss Grief was awake, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... and wearied brain refused to respond longer to his will would he throw himself fully dressed upon a cot in his tent for an hour's sleep. His face grew haggard and deeply lined with anxious care, his hollow eyes—dark-rimmed—were bloodshot and burning as if with fever, his jaws were set as if by sheer power of his will he would beat the river into submission. And he barked his orders shortly in a hoarse strained voice that told of nerves stretched almost to the breaking point. In critical moments, when it looked as though the river in the next instant ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... shopkeeper! It is sheer calumny. All he did was this: he was extremely kind and obliging, and understood different kinds of stuff very well; therefore he used to go everywhere and choose some; then, he had them brought to his house, and was ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... disappointments for the inexperienced and pitfalls for the unwary. It is the study of a lifetime; no one can say he is a master of Hearticulture. Many of the most successful gardeners give it up as they become older: some from disappointment over a trifling failure, others from sheer weariness; still more take up a branch of nursery-gardening called Matrimony, which demands such close attention and care that it has come to be regarded ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... you. You have now an opportunity, on easy terms, of placing yourself in a much higher position than you ever could, by remaining here; which would only be imputed, by people who didn't know you, to sheer dogged, wrongheaded, brutal obstinacy; nothing else, my dear Sir, believe me. Can you hesitate to avail yourself of it, when it restores you to your friends, your old pursuits, your health and amusements; when it liberates your faithful and attached servant, whom you otherwise doom ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... pistol-bullet, or cutlass-gash. Smellie and I happened to make a dash for the same spot, but being the lighter of the two I was jostled aside by him and narrowly avoided tumbling overboard. He succeeded in gaining a temporary footing on the chain-plate, and was evidently about to scramble thence upon the sheer- pole, when I saw a pike thrust out at him from over the topgallant bulwarks. The point struck him in the right shoulder, passing completely through it; the thrust upset his balance, and down he came by the run into the boat. Our lads meanwhile were cutting and hacking most desperately at the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... were growing older, and they, too, had lost for the father that feeling of reverence and respect which is right. They had been more than a year away from Austin's influence and restraint, and while they out of sheer thankfulness yielded themselves to him when he returned, yet as the weeks went by Austin saw that he should have a very big undertaking on his hands just to hold them in control. Besides this was his father's antagonism. The men did not quarrel, but cutting and sneering remarks, ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... Terry. I am fond of Terry, but I have only need of you. I will tell you what happened the night Terence was killed. I had been praying and pleading with him to right Bridyeen, for I knew that there was a baby coming. Never had I so pleaded with any one. I remember that I sweated for sheer anguish, although the night was cold. I don't know what possessed Terence, unless it was the whisky. He told me to go and marry you and leave his affairs alone. And then he laughed. A laugh can be the most terrible and intolerable thing in the world. It ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... variety, as also of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a mair curiouser cratur." Sidney Smith's summary of this strange animal is that it moves suspended, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... and in five minutes came back in a soft, gray silken gown, narrow and quite short in the skirt, a kerchief of sheer mull muslin crossed on her bosom, and all her hair gathered under a plain cap. Madam Wetherill was hardly through explaining that she had always been a Church of England woman, and one thing she had admired in Mr. Penn more ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly favourable light. It is likely to be the means of healing a family feud. Hitherto Madame Fosco has chosen to forget her obligations as Laura's aunt out of sheer spite against the late Mr. Fairlie for his conduct in the affair of the legacy. Now however, she can persist in this course of conduct no longer. Sir Percival and Count Fosco are old and fast friends, and their wives ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... fascination of horror as the flying body struck a tree trunk, shot sidewise, ploughed through the snow, struck a rock, bounded high into the air, struck another rock and, gaining momentum with every foot, shot diagonally downward—rolling, whirling, sliding—straight for the brink of a rock ledge with a sheer drop of twenty-five or thirty feet. Over the edge it shot and landed with a loud thud among the broken rock ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... came down to dinner, Kurt was again visibly impressed by her appearance. She wore another of her recently acquired gowns, a black one of sheer filmy material. Her hair, rippling back from her brows, was coiled low. Her face was pale and yet young and flowerlike. There was a new touch of wistfulness about her—a charm of repose, almost ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... emotions of the starved inhabitants who have gone—all the passions that must have so drearily burnt themselves out here, with nothing to note but the shifting of the winds or the digging of some well! They who were obliged, from sheer ennui, to create dramas out of their Puritan prejudices. Can't you breathe contagion in the very atmosphere? Julia, I've had enough of it; I'm glad we're going. If I stayed here a month longer, I should get to feel as indigenous as that gnarled old apple-tree; the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... saddle-girth. He looked furtively over the mare's shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air that ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... accomplished a work that—apart from God—seemed miraculous. He had broken down the eternal division between East and West, coming himself from the continent that alone could produce such powers; he had prevailed by sheer force of personality over the two supreme tyrants of life religious fanaticism and party government. His influence over the impassive English was another miracle, yet he had also set on fire France, Germany, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... by bit, out of his salary in a real-estate office) he drew actually near the shining horizon. But London, his first stopping-place, had given him some dreadful days. He knew nobody, and had not understood how heavily sheer loneliness—which was something he had never felt until then—would weigh upon his spirits. In Cranston, where the young people "grew up together," and where he met a dozen friends on the street in a half-hour's walk, he often said that ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... and knee. Bringing the edges of the end designed for the stem into apposition, using a device on the principle of the harness-maker's clamp, he sewed them together with strips of freshly cut cane. Two stretchers gave to the craft beam, and the necessary sheer and thwart-ship stays of twisted cane stiffness. Gunwales of cane were sewn on, the stitches being cemented with gum made plastic by frequent renderings over the fire on a flat stone, and then the canoe was complete save for the hand-paddles, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... people who must be saved without warning, and against their will. I know Prosper: he is just the man to let himself be murdered without a struggle, without speaking a word—to give himself up through sheer ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the doctor replied. "Drive that gypsy lassie out of the town before the soldiers reach it. She is firing the men to a red-heat through sheer devilry." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... bowsprit," cried the captain; "do not let the enemy sheer off. Now place me on the deck; I fear that I am mortally wounded, but do not let the people know it. In a few minutes the Frenchman's frigate will be ours. See, they are attempting to board, but drive them back and they will not long keep their ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... young. So for a short week or two Catherine did her best to be young, and climbed the mountain grass, or forded the mountain streams with the energy and the grace of perfect health, trembling afterwards at night as she knelt by her window to think how much sheer pleasure the day had contained. Her life had always had the tension of a bent bow. It seemed to her once or twice during this fortnight as though something were suddenly relaxed in her, and she felt a swift Bunyan-like terror of backsliding, of falling away. But she never confessed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... problem end with the construction of these marvel-roads. It was necessary to transport very heavy war material across stretches where the building of any roads whatever was a sheer impossibility. Often it was necessary to take heavy guns as far as might be upon sleighs and then drag them for considerable distances by hand; quite as often it was imperative that across chasms great cables ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... chaps, I'll make it up to you to-morrow, if you sheer off quietly; if you don't, not a blessed thing shall you have out ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... thought floated across my brain. I repelled it at first as sheer madness; but remembering, within the field of my somewhat extended experience, certain facts that lent probability to that thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost ready to ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... been introduced, these conditions have been changed. The strains, though less severe, and less tending to explosive rupture, last longer, and are more fully transmitted through the body of the gun. Sheer strength of material now tells more, and signs have not been wanting that coils of wrought iron afford insufficient support to the lining. It becomes, therefore, advantageous to thicken the inner tube, and to support it with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... was accepted as axiomatic by all. "Understanding" is the best word I can find for it. It differed from a philosophy or a belief, because it contained no abstract ideas; thinking or theorizing had no part in it; it was a sheer perception and recognition of the circumstances as they were. The people might dispute about details; but the general object to be striven for in life admitted of no disagreement. Without giving ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... hundred souls. At that time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one imagined that a time would come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... As a whole everything connected with the corps was "a hell upon earth." Field days consisted of a long march, a sublime mix-up, a speech from Rogers, a bad tea, then a long march home. No one knew what was happening; no one cared. It was a sheer waste of time. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... sloping rock, ruining, on the way, any quantity of huckleberry bushes and pennyroyal. This started the cow, who made another furious charge at the soldier, who this time, by a well-directed blow, cut one horn sheer off. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Pennsylvania. There a little red-haired girl, barefooted, her short gingham skirt tucked up unevenly here and there, was wading in the cool, shallow waters of a creek that was tree-bordered and willow-arched. Her clear, rippling laughter of sheer joy broke through the Sabbatical calm of that quiet spot and echoed up and down the meadow as she ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... as we are now, Ready, for want of water, how can we possibly keep up our strength to meet them in a suffocating smoke and flame? we must drop with sheer exhaustion." ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... partaking of physical food and pleasure, it was perfectly natural to believe it susceptible of material imprisonment and material torments. Such was the common belief when the doctrine of a physical hell was wrought out. The doctrine yet lingers by sheer force of prescription and unthinkingness, when the basis on which it originally rested has been dissipated. We know great as our ignorance is, we know that the soul is a pure immateriality. Its manifestations depend on certain physical organs and accompaniments, but are not identical with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... WARD, of New-York, and naturally also Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. Mr. WARD was astonished to see any member standing up in defence of polygamy in the nineteenth century. If some member should stand up in any other century and defend it, it would not astonish him at all. It was sheer inhumanity to refuse to come to the rescue of our suffering brethren in Utah. How a man who had one wife could consent to see fellow- creatures writhing under the infliction of two or three each, was what, Mr. WARD remarked, got ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... shining, large, lustrous, and wistful, as they looked out of the white thin face, where the once glowing colour had dwindled to two burning carnation spots. It was so piteous a change that as he took her hand he was silent, from sheer inability to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... something tremendously vital and insistent was speaking to her. He released her with a short laugh. "We won't do any more of this here, but, remember, you belong to me," he said, as he turned and walked nonchalantly down the hall. Jennie, in sheer panic, ran to her mistress's room and locked the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... The Sufferings of Young Werther, a tragic tale of a weak-willed sentimental youth of hyperesthetic tendencies, who commits suicide because of disappointment in love. The story was the greatest literary triumph that Germany had ever known, and in point of sheer artistic power it remains to this day the best of novels in the tragic-sentimental vein. These two works carried the name of Goethe far and wide and made him the accepted leader of the literary revolution which long afterwards came to be known, from the title of a play by Klinger, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "Perhaps! but you can never be sure of men. They are about as uncertain calculations as the hatching of guinea eggs, or the sprouting of parsley seed. What is theirs can't be worth much; but what belongs to somebody else, is invaluable; moreover, they are liable to sudden tantrums of sheer obstinacy, that hang on like whooping-cough, or a sprain in one's joints. Did you never see a mule take the sulks on his way to the corn crib and the fodder rack, and refuse to budge, even for his own benefit? Some men are just that perverse. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was almost sheer in places, for in Kentucky gulch the hills huddled close to the little town and rose in precipitous inclines almost before the city limits had been reached. Beside the road a small stream chattered, milk-white from the silica deposits of the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... and contrasts it with the spirit of those negro troops in the same movement. They are to be used, moreover, in a country which they know perfectly. Merely from their knowledge of wood-craft and water-craft, it would be a sheer waste of material to keep them in garrison. It is scarcely the knowledge which is at once indispensable and impossible to be acquired by our troops. See these men and it is easier to understand the material of which the famous ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... a woman! Sheer senseless vanity—as if that mattered! Isak sniffed contemptuously. Though perhaps he himself would not have been displeased if Oline had ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... did the evening seem to the listening sisters. Eight, and no tidings; nine, the boys not come; Tom obliged to go to bed by sheer sleepiness, and Ethel unable to sit still, and causing Flora demurely to wonder at her fidgeting so much, it would be so much better to fix her attention to some employment; while Margaret owned that Flora was right, but watched, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... in upon the enemies' rear. From the hill they could sight a stone-fence barricade glistening with the metal of waiting musket barrels. Then, suddenly, the old miracle came. Men who had clung through the hours to their saddles by sheer will power alone, tightened their lines and were ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... opened her eyes she could not realize for a moment where she was. Instead of the plain white walls of her room, she saw the soft gray tints of silk and the sheen of silver, and her hands touched a silken-covered eiderdown quilt. She closed her eyes in sheer happiness, and then opened them again to be sure that it was not all a mirage. At last, not being used to lying in bed, she arose and, putting on the dressing-gown, went to one of the windows and raised the shade to look out. She stopped with her hand still on the shade, looking in wonder ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... in sheer vexation. He had reasoned that this irregular freight train would already be at Kingston on his arrival, and he hated the idea of a delay. The loiterers on the platform were listening eagerly to the conversation; he felt that he was attracting too much attention. But there was no help for ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... at them with sheer grit," replied the captain gravely. "Fellows, they've beaten us so far, but they haven't worn us out any. Big fellows as the Hannistons are, they may not have the endurance to hang to us through all of the ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... course has a general flow from north-west to south-east, approaches within a few miles of Vienna. Here, at Nussdorf, it breaks into two or three shallow and tortuous channels, which meander directly away from the city, as if in sheer willfulness, and reunite at the Lobau, as far below the city as Nussdorf is above it. The "regulation" consists in a new artificial channel, cut in a straight line from Nussdorf to the Lobau. In length it is about nine miles, in breadth about twelve hundred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... acting from sheer force of habit; his sluggish, deliberate nature, methodical, obstinate, refusing to adapt ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... be interested, not merely for the sake of gossip. He shakes hands with you one day, and next day, for no earthly reason, he returns your hospitality by slapping you on the cheeks in the face of all decent society, if the fancy takes him, out of sheer wantonness. And what's more, the fair sex is everything for them, these butterflies and mettlesome-cocks! Grand gentlemen with little wings like the ancient cupids, lady-killing Petchorins! It's all very well for you, Stepan Trofimovitch, a ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... demeanour, and a respectful reserve, which are indispensable. To these, good sense, good temper, some self-denial, and consideration for the feelings of others, whether above or below them in the social scale, will be useful qualifications. Their duty leads them to wait on those who are, from sheer wealth, station, and education, more polished, and consequently more susceptible of annoyance; and any vulgar familiarity of manner is opposed to all their notions of self-respect. Quiet unobtrusive manners, therefore, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by a snow-storm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten metal; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... to make remarkably rapid progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, Anna Myhrman, the youngest daughter of the family, he soon became attached by ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... fishing boats could be seen, but it was seldom that a distant sail was visible across the water; for not one vessel in those days sailed for the west to every fifty that now cross the Atlantic. The rocks upon which he sat rose in most places almost sheer up from the edge of the sea; but occasionally they fell away, and a good climber could make his way over the rough rocks and bowlders down to the water's edge. As, however, there was nothing to be gained by it, ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... it safe?" she called, shuddering at the thought of the perilous descent of nearly three, hundred feet, sheer through the darkness. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... snugly in bed, cuddled beneath the comforting down coverlet, she let herself go, and cried to her heart's content; great, soul-satisfying sobs that quieted her throbbing pulses and exhausted her strained nerves, until she fell asleep from sheer weariness. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... blood. Even as he looked, they broke into a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of the combat. The assailants ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Puritans of England, were all reviled for the same cause—but they conquered. God never punishes men for common-sense, nor did it ever yet blind zeal, though it may prevent zeal from degenerating into sheer madness. The war, while it has crippled industry, has also kept it alive,—it has become a great industrial central force, giving work to millions. Again, in the creation of a debt we shall find such a stimulus to industry as we never ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... pass to the left on a bench along the wall; then up again over broken rocks; then we reach more benches, along which we walk, until we find more broken rocks and crevices, by which we climb; still up, until we have ascended 600 or 800 feet, when we are met by a sheer precipice. Looking about, we find a place where it seems possible to climb. I go ahead; Bradley hands the barometer to me, and follows. So we proceed, stage by stage, until we are nearly to the summit. Here, by making a spring, I gain a foothold in a little crevice, and grasp an angle of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... you to realize that he is simply enslaving you, ruining you, seeking to crush your personality out of sheer egoism. Oh, think of the Margaret you were in the old days! Think of the freedom you had to develop your ego when you loved me! Think of the choice spirits who were your associates then, of the disciples ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... 10th, 1924.—A sensation was caused at the Circle last night when an old man jumped unannounced into the ring and offered to fight anyone living to a finish for five pounds and a pint of beer for the sheer fun of the thing. The disturber, who was obviously out of his senses, was quickly removed. His identity has not so far been established, but he is thought to be a fighter of the old school ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... the opportunity to grip them both in the fingers of disgrace, and make instant mock of all their plans. In spite of every effort, every lurking hope, some way I could not rid myself of the thought that Beaucaire—either through sheer neglect, or some instinct of bitter hatred—had failed to meet the requirements of his duty. Even as I sat there, struggling vainly against this suspicion, the Judge himself came forth upon the lower deck, and began pacing back and forth restlessly beside the rail. It was a struggle for ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... pitiable. They received no help from home, and were depending solely on German food. A Russian can live on much less than a Britisher, but they literally starved to death on what the Germans gave them. They were made to work, and when they could go no longer and fell down from sheer weakness the Guard would beat them till they died. I have seen this happen again and again, and there was an average of fifteen deaths every day among the Russians alone. Our parcels came just in time to ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... Touches us not; have we not smiled, Mocking, at Mrs. OSCAR WILDE? And shall we welcome with delight Queer robes that make a girl "a fright?" Pooh-pooh! We're simply imperturbable, The Reign of Fashion's undisturbable. The "Coming Dress?"—that's all sheer humming, We only care ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... swelled on his neck, but he kept silent. He looked the cowboy in the eye and was met by a gaze as steady as his own; an aggressive and insolent gaze that had for its backing sheer physical courage and nothing more. It became a battle of mental endurance ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... expectant argonauts was grand but not reassuring. Mountains rose to wondrous heights above and on all sides of them, while those directly in front, and barring them from their desired route and destination in sheer contrariety loomed heaven-high, as though they would rend the azure sky with their jagged and snowy peaks. Steep and precipitous rose the sides of those giant hills directly from the water's edge except where, at the foot of the Grand Canyon, trending northward, a small tract of wet and ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... The western half is bordered by a hilly rampart, broken only here and there, in the bays where the larger streams find their outlet, by flat and sandy plains. Between Dellys and Philippeville high mountains rise almost sheer from the sea, leaving only a narrow strip of beach. East of Philippeville the mountains recede from the coast, and the rampart of hills reappears. Only between Bona and La Calle is the general character of the sea-board low and sandy. Save near the towns ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... distressed on account of the removal of her sister, who was five years younger, to a hospital. On Monday afternoon a number of persons who had ascended the Saleve, 4299 feet high, by the funicular railway, were horrified to see a woman walk out on to a ledge overlooking a sheer precipice of three hundred feet, and, after carefully wrapping a shawl round her head and face jump into space. The woman was Mme. Simon, says the Times of India, and she was found on the cliffs below in ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... was so fair. She was a bright spot of colour with her pink dress and white shoes and stockings, and lacy parasol and brown hair, and for a little his eyes went after her quite as they would have followed the flight of a brilliant bird. Then, as in sheer youth, as one who during a night of refreshing sleep has been steeped body and soul in the elixir that is youth's own, she yielded her young body up to an extravagant dance, whirling away as light as thistledown across the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... one of those authors who baffle criticism by sheer high spirits. She gives me first and last a prevailing impression that novel-writing must be tremendous fun; and this is so cheering that it is really impossible to be angry with her. Otherwise I might have some very sharp things to say about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... at home and abroad, that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism rouses the honor and evokes the veneration of the alien, and as we have long had a grudge against the English, we would be particularly glad to forget it in a sense of English respect and affection. We would fain believe that the English have essentially ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... and specific orders, which he obeyed unwillingly. No pretence of military necessity, or even of military advantage, can be pleaded. The act, besides being a gross violation of the law of nations, was an exhibition of sheer brutal spite, such as civilized war seldom witnessed until Prussia took a hand in it. It had its reward. It burnt deep into the soul of America; and from that incident far more than from anything that happened in the War of Independence dates that ineradicable hatred of England ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... it is islanded, and its expanse averages about 1200 feet. The Taunus Mountains divert it at Mainz, where it widens, and it flows westward for about twenty miles, but at Bingen it once more takes its course northward, and enters a narrow valley where the enclosing hills look down sheer upon ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... danger; all and every thing else is subordinate to the one selfish idea of escaping future misery. The effect of these appeals, of these harrowing pictures, on some of the young men and women and children was almost too painful to be borne. They were in an hysterical condition,—weeping from sheer nervous terror. When the excitement had reached its highest pitch, an elder rose and told the story of a wicked and impenitent man whom he had visited a few weeks before. The man had assented to all that he told him ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "annihilating time and space" in the articulate intercourse of the human race will forever be associated with the name of Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in 1847. By its means he has promoted commerce, created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr. Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he designed a "submarine chaser" capable of traveling under water at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... kind. But the essentially fine girl, the really well-bred man, the people who, by their poise and dignity have earned for America the envied title of "Republic of the Aristocrats"—they dance these latest creations for the sheer joy of the dance itself, reveling in its newness, enjoying the novelty of its "different" steps, seeing nothing in its slow undulations or brisk little steps, but art—a "jazzy" art, to be sure, but still the beautiful art ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... suddenly, a gurgle of sheer amusement at the sight of the most dreaded man within a hundred miles standing there under the muzzle of a shotgun, receiving instructions from the mouth of the Three Bar cook. For Slade was helpless and knew it. Even if he took a chance with Waddles and won out he would be in worse shape ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... worldly; but I am a woman, womanly,—though I may not care to be thought it. And, therefore, though what you say is, regarded in a worldly point of view, sheer nonsense, regarded in a womanly point of view, it is logically sound. But still you cannot know Lilian as I do. Your nature and hers are in strong contrast. I do not think she is a safe wife for you. The purest, the most innocent creature imaginable, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enough to feel it) of the secret and abominable things he knew. And in his eyes the unknown girl and her behavior became suddenly adorable. She was the darting joy and the poignant sweetness, and the sheer extravagant ardor and energy of life. His tempestuously romantic youth rose up and was troubled at the sight of her. And his eyes, that had stared at her in wonder and amusement and inquisitive interest, followed her now with that queer pathos that they had. It ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... overhanging spruce, almost above her head on the opposite side, and emerged on a pool of clear water in a clay-like basin. This basin was of recent origin, having been formed by a slide of earth and trees. Across the pool arose an almost sheer wall of white. She recognized it for what it was, and looked about for Billy. She heard him whistle, and looked up. Two hundred feet above, at the perilous top of the white wall, he was holding on to a tree trunk. The overhanging ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... desperately with all the limited resources at his command. In spite of his determination to keep his eyes open at any cost, his lids drooped and lifted, drooped and lifted, drooped and were dragged open by sheer will-power. Each time it was more difficult. Just as the water laps inexorably at length over the face of an exhausted swimmer, so these waves of sleep, smothering, clutching, dulled his senses and strove to wrap him in their ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... race, and that too after long years of arduous preparation, had to be assumed by black men without personal or formal fitness. The stronger and more aggressive natures pushed themselves into these higher callings by sheer force of untutored energy ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... drawn up stream, black as their freight, by the horses that are nibbling the hawthorn hedge; while by the wharf, labourers are wheeling barrows over bending planks from the barges to the carts upon the shore. A tug comes under the bridge, panting, every puff re-echoed from the arches, dragging by sheer force deeply laden flats behind it. The water in front of their bluff bows rises in a wave nearly to the deck, and then swoops in a sweeping curve to ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... plenty, and they afforded good sport to a First of September shooting party, provided with a setter. At length the poor quail had their quarters so thoroughly beaten up, that several, in attempting to escape from the island, were observed to fall into the water from sheer exhaustion. Nor did the birds receive all the benefit of the shot, for Captain Stanley, while observing with the theodolite, became unwittingly a target for a juvenile shooter; but, fortunately, no damage was done. Some turtles were seen at night, but they were too wary to ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... boy, it would be sheer folly," he replied. "How is it possible? We are tired out now, and it would be only exhausting ourselves for nothing, and getting a touch of fever, to go ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... where the light of the brilliant sunset was reflected strongly from masses of rosy clouds over all the eastern sky, I could see clearly. In the midst of the opening, not far from the edge of the stupendous precipice, where the bare rock dropped sheer down a thousand feet or more, was a huge bowlder that had been cut and squared with ineffective tools into the rude semblance of a mighty altar. The well-worn path along which I had come told the rest of the story. Here was the temple, having for its roof the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... a hundred and sixty European soldiers. The latter worked with the energy of despair at their task of clearing the deck, in spite of the twofold danger of being burnt and stunned by the hot falling stones. While we were engraved in this struggle, and enveloped in the sheer blackness of a veritable hell, a new and terrible danger came upon us. This was the approach of the tidal wave caused by the final eruption, which occurred about 12.30 to 1 p.m. The wave reached us at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... peaks and died away somewhere among the Ingent glaciers. And just as the last faint note was expiring, a girl's voice, fresh and clear as a dew-drop, took it up and swelled it and carolled it until, from sheer excess of delight, it broke into a hundred leaping, rolling, and warbling tones, which floated and gambolled away over the highlands, while soft-winged echoes bore them away into the ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... he could not command his memories that came crowding round him in that evil-smelling hut, while Babalatchi talked on in a flowing monotone, nothing of him moving but the lips, in the artificially inanimated face. Lingard, like an anchored ship that had broken her sheer, darted about here and there on the rapid tide of his recollections. The subdued sound of soft words rang around him, but his thoughts were lost, now in the contemplation of the past sweetness and strife of Carimata days, now in the uneasy ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Sukk, a bad rough path leads along the base of the Tayyih Ism Mountain; then the cliffs fall sheer into the sea, explaining why caravans never travel that way. Yet there was a maritime road, for we know that Ab Sufyn, on his way from Syria to fight the battle of "Bedr" (A.H. 2), passed by a roundabout ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Gjert's friends, and indeed among the harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... short time in retirement. In 1136, however, we find him once more lecturing, and apparently with much of his former success, on Mont Ste. Genevieve. His old enemies were still on his trail, and most of all Bernard of Clairvaux, to whose fiery adherence to the faith Abelard's rationalism seemed a sheer desecration. The unceasing activities of Bernard and others finally brought Abelard before an ecclesiastical council at Sens in 1140, where he was formally arraigned on charges of heresy. Had Abelard's courage ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... situation for a human being to be in; and any other than an old shark-fighter would, at such a moment, have succumbed from sheer terror. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... mere partial projections. He saw beyond—deep down into the flaming center that gave them birth. The blending of his being with the Cosmic Consciousness was complete enough for this. He describes it as a spectacle of sheer glory, stupendous, even terrifying. The refulgent majesty of it utterly possessed him. The shock of its magnificence came, moreover, upon his entire being, and was not really of course a "sight" at all. The message came not through any small division ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride in width, and moved along it holding Sacnoth naked. And to and fro beneath him in each ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... shop, forsakes his store of shoes, St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the Muse, Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud! How ladies read, and Literati laud! [121] 770 If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest, 'Tis sheer ill-nature—don't the world know best? Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme, And CAPEL LOFFT [122] declares 'tis quite sublime. Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade! Swains! quit the plough, resign ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and divided by great peaky rocks. In the centre rose above them all one solitary curiously-shaped mass, one of the oddest peaks of the Himmalays in miniature. From its top on the further side was a sheer descent to the waters far below the level of the valley from which it immediately rose. It was altogether a strange freaky fantastic place, not without its grandeur. It looked like the remains of a frolic of the Titans, or rather as if reared by the boys and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... by such a highway. The total length of the whole network of canals in Great Britain did not equal that of the waterway which the New Yorkers now undertook to build. The lack of roads, materials, vehicles, methods of drilling and efficient business systems was overcome by sheer patience and perseverance in experiment. The frozen winter roads saved the day by making it possible to accumulate a proper supply of provisions and materials. As tools of construction, the plough ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... surprise she went on: "You must have seen for yourself that excepting a little plot of ground where the gardener plants a few carrots and cabbages for the Bishop's table, the whole of the garden is left to run wild; it is sheer waste and of no use to anybody. Now instead of buying vegetables, I mean to grow some, since Monseigneur gives me leave to turn over his ground, and by the same token I will give some to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wood-choppers!" growled the captain as soon as he had come out on deck and taken in the situation. "Sheer off!" he ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... the most absurd and gratuitous of all. What is there in the words, "nec super eum mittemus," that can be made to mean "nor shall he be condemned before any other commissioner or judge whatsoever."? Clearly there is nothing. The whole rendering is a sheer fabricatin. And the whole object of it is to give color for the exercise of a judicial power, by the king, or his judges, which ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... grimy city slum, and a dilapidated whitewashed house on the edge of a Connaught bog which has somehow got itself called Monte Carlo. But these misfits of names moved me only to mirth mingled with a certain sadness. "Woodbine" is a sheer astonishment. I hear the word and think of the rustic arches in cottage gardens, of old tree trunks climbed over by delightful flowers. I think of open lattice windows, of sweet summer air. Nothing in the whole long train of thought prepares me for or tends in ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenest agonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgot the gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsed into shamed silence, but ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Melbourne was, and how things there differed from the things she and the rest knew and were accustomed to at the South; and about my old June, who had once been an acquaintance of hers. Smiling at me the while, between the thrusts of her curiosity, and over my answers, as if for sheer pleasure she could not keep grave. The other faces were as interested and as gracious. There was Pete, tall and very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... one under way. It takes a little time to get things into proper shape, but once it is going, the work is very absorbing and sheer delight. You were talking of going abroad again. Are ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... murderous feats under the influence of hashish, or Indian hemp; and during the state of ecstasy so induced, according to Deeping, they acquired powers almost superhuman. I read how they could scale sheer precipices, pass fearlessly along narrow ledges which would scarce afford foothold for a rat, cast themselves from great heights unscathed, and track one marked for death in such a manner as to remain unseen not only by the victim but ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... nothing to say on the subject of death and a future state; his theme was consistently this life and its obligations, and he regarded speculation on the unknown as sheer waste of time. When one of three friends died and Confucius sent a disciple to condole with the other two, the disciple found them sitting by the side of the corpse, merrily singing and playing on the lute. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... cleanliness. The earth would be conducted according to our convenience. In short, the day men realize who their worst enemies are, they will form an alliance against them, they will cease to murder one another like wild beasts from sheer folly. Then they will be the true rulers of the planet, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... giving him Mexican money. He brought back two Guatemalan pieces in change, and on our objecting to receive it, assured me, not only that the money was good, but also that here the people were Guatemalans. "Here," said he, "not Mexico: here we are all Carrera's people." This, of course, was sheer treason. Carrera, the pure-blood indian who in the stirring days of 1839 seized the power in Guatemala, a strange and wild being who had a real love for his country, has left a profound impression. At times an exile, he had lived at Comitan, where his name was familiar to all the indians around. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... enjoyment, and he didn't mind at all if now and then he got leaves, and some green berries in his mouth with the big ripe berries. He didn't try to get them out. Oh, my, no! He just chomped them all up together and patted his stomach from sheer delight. Now Buster had reached the Old Pasture just as jolly, round, red Mr. Sun had crept out of bed, and he had fully made up his mind that he would be back in the Green Forest before Mr. Sun had climbed very far up in the ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... think she was a little sister, by the way I try to speak, and if she only knew how I struggle to suffocate the passion that rises within me, when she looks up so earnestly out of her big dreaming eyes; it is sheer folly and I'll go mad if it must continue—and yet—if uncle ever suspected my love he would separate us then and there. But it is dangerous dust I am flinging in his eyes by being free and easy with her in this way. In a little while more I won't be able to trust ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... persist in persecuting me in this heartless manner, I shall inform the police." Nothing, surely, could be further from literature. Yet thrill after thrill is conveyed, by visual means, through situations artfully contrived; and in the sheer excitement of the moment, the audience is made incapable of noticing the pompous mediocrity of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... waves of humanity. Half a dozen of them were dragged down and hurled back into the milling crowd where they were torn limb from limb. The balance of the guards, guided by Havenner's stentorian shouts, closed in around Glavour and the prisoner and battered their way by sheer brute force toward the Viceregal chariot. They had reached in and climbed in when a feminine shout ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... of the rhyming letters of Burns is astonishingly high. They bear, as such compositions should, the impression of free spontaneity, and indeed often read like sheer improvisations. Yet they are sprinkled with admirable stanzas of natural description, shrewd criticism, delightful humor, and are pervaded by a delicate tactfulness possible only to a man with a genius for friendship. They are usually written in the favorite six-line stanza, the meter that ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... then, someone will protest, this is sheer Unitarianism after all; you do not believe in the Jesus who is the object of the faith of Christendom, but in one who was only a man among men; you do not think of Him as very God of very God. Not ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... than ever before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe, is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community for which it is intended. On or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... would be sheer folly to try to run. Her captor would overtake her before she had gone six yards, not to mention the fit of rage her attempted flight would be likely ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb. As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a ship mobbed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... negotiations, and oh, the interminable enduring of negotiations, the struggling against form and "system," against obstinate and cruel delay—for delay in food matters in Belgium was always cruel—and sometimes against sheer brutality! How often did we long to say: Here, take these ten million people and feed them or starve them as you will! We quit. We can't go on fighting your floating mines and too eager submarines, ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... narratives, and may have done so here. I have visited most of the principal capitals of the world, he says in The Bible in Spain. This we would call a palpable lie were not so much of The Bible in Spain sheer invention. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter |
