"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The only truth that he himself will ever practically ACCEPT will be that to which his finite experiences lead him of themselves. The state of mind which shudders at the idea of a lot of experiences left to themselves, and that augurs protection from the sheer name of an absolute, as if, however inoperative, that might still stand for a sort of ghostly security, is like the mood of those good people who, whenever they hear of a social tendency that is damnable, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... He wore a black soft felt hat and a red silk sash which just peeped from beneath his waistcoat—in all, striking, yet not bizarre, and notably of gentlemanlike manner. What arrested attention most, however, was his voice. People who heard it invariably turned to look or listened from sheer pleasure. It was of such penetrating clearness that if he spoke in an ordinary tone it carried far. Among the Indians of the Hudson Bay company, where he had been for six years or more, he had been known as Man of the Gold Throat, and that long before he was called by the negroes on his father's ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... interrupted the other; "there it is again; thrusting in sheer conjectures for evidence! I must call on the court to interpose with the stubborn and wilful fellow. Didn't I tell you, sir, I'd have no more of your guess-work? Facts, sir, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... through sheer will, to lift her eyes to his. They were startled and sullen. With a start he saw, what he had missed before, that this woman, his wife, was a stranger. But he had himself well in hand now and his gaze did not falter. There was no escaping its demands. Her answer came in a little burst ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... at the head of the table. Benny gasped, stood for a moment rooted to the floor, and then, Judith's eyes hard upon him, hastily brought the coffee. From some emotion certainly not clear to him he went a violent red. Perhaps the emotion was just sheer embarrassment. He brought hot cakes with one hand while with the other he buttoned his gaping shirt-collar ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... side of the cliff down which George was slipping was not sheer all the way. It was steep; indeed, so steep that it was impossible for the frightened boy in spite of his desperate attempts to check his flight, to gain a foothold. In his descent some of the loose ground gave way and whenever ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... useful but ghastly by a tapestry of sheep-skins. The only wonder was that a single sheep had survived a storm severe enough to kill wild pigs. Great boars, cased in hides an inch thick, had perished through sheer stress of weather; while thin-skinned animals, with only a few months growth of fine merino wool on their backs, had endured it all. It was well known that the actual destruction of sheep was mainly owing to the two ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... her. For a space she lay listening, every nerve upon the stretch. Then at last there came to her the sound of voices raised in farewell, the crunch of wheels below her window, the loud banging of a door. And with a gasp she turned her face into her pillow, and wept for sheer relief. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... took his leave too, and the four were left looking at each other. The scene had tried their nerves and their courage more than they realised; they felt suddenly very tired and very depressed. Poppy began to sob from sheer weariness. The others felt as though they would like to follow suit, but pride forbade them. The moor and the river and the day seemed suddenly to have grown chilly ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... be followed by the chariotry and heavy infantry for close attack; a reserve of veterans would await around the commanding-general the crucial moment of the engagement, when they would charge in a body among the combatants, and decide the victory by sheer strength ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sheer tyranny! To tell the truth, we locked ourselves in so that no one would disturb us. Is ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... that were shed and the eight hundred million pounds sterling of debt need not have been squandered. All this was done at the bidding of a few men who were entrusted with the government of a great nation, and either by odious deception, or sheer incapacity to judge of the fitness of things, caused it to be believed that they were bound to maintain the balance of power or status quo which was endangered, and that the one man who had upset their nerves and incurred their hatred should ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... that M. de Bois would not have made this inquiry out of sheer, causeless curiosity; and she made known to him the count's request concerning the votes which she was to exert herself to obtain. Gaston caught eagerly at her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... had to stop from sheer want of breath, and on entering the hut Kakaik informed us that it was through the exertions of Manilick that the fiddle had been recovered. He had paid half-a-dozen yards of cotton, the same number of strings of beads, a looking-glass, and a frying-pan, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... came out on the steps of the pagoda with a programme in his hand. Mose bounced into view, handed his tackle to Shanghai, Curry's hostler, and started for the jockeys' room, singing to himself out of sheer lightness of heart. He knew what he would do with that twenty-two-dollar ticket. There was a crap game every ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... dress is not made of the finest of handkerchief linen, French nainsook or a very fine batiste is usually chosen. These are the soft materials, soft as well as sheer. They are the materials on which embroidery is done most successfully and the baby dress de luxe is always hand embroidered. It may have on it the merest touch of hand work—scarcely more than a few eyelets and a tiny blossom and stem and yet follow the prescribed lines. The little round ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... life! They'm coming to life!" shrieked out Cherry, and from sheer fright she fell on the floor in ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and silly creatures, fear-driven and helpless and useless, unhappy or hatefully happy in the midst of squalid dishonour, feeble, ugly, inefficient, born of unrestrained lusts, and increasing and multiplying through sheer incontinence and stupidity, the men of the New Republic will have little pity and less benevolence. To make life convenient for the breeding of such people will seem to them not the most virtuous and amiable thing in the world, as it is held to be now, but an exceedingly abominable proceeding. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to protect him from the cold. His face, naturally grave and placid, was so marred and stained with mud and blood as to be almost inhuman. At every step of the way the people hurled dirt and execrations upon him, laughing at his sorry appearance, and goading on one another to further insult. By sheer force they were carrying him, guillotine, executioner, and all to a great dirt-heap by the river-bank, where only they would permit the deed of death to ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... position peculiarly his own, whether we regard the circumstances of his rise, or the feelings which have followed him in his fall. Born in the middle ranks of life, he raised himself by sheer force of intellect to the loftiest place among the proudest nobles on earth, without ever deserting or being deserted by the class from which he sprung. He effected a sweeping reform without appealing to any sordid or sanguinary motive. No soldier himself, he transformed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... casements were fitted with the heavy, unwieldy shutters necessary in that climate, and held in place by massive iron cross bars. It would have puzzled you to find a more dilapidated house in Angouleme; nothing but sheer tenacity of mortar kept it together. Try to picture the workshop, lighted at either end, and dark in the middle; the walls covered with handbills and begrimed by friction of all the workmen who had rubbed past them for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... single performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba sings the mad scene from Lucia, and that beautiful voice descends by lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands of their companions in ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... she gave a shrill cry, and fell to running at her swiftest away from us, and we followed all we might, but we could not over-run her, though we kept her in sight ever, till we had run all through the wood, and before us was the sheer side of a rocky hill and the mouth of a cave therein, and by the said mouth who should there be but Aurea and Viridis, as we thought, clad in gold and in green, but the fashion of their raiment not otherwise than Atra's. Their bows were bended and they had ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought. These are the sides of him which are revealed with ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the oft-repeated, incredible story of men so accustomed to danger that they throw away their lives in sheer carelessness. A fire down in the third level, five hundred feet underground; delay in putting it out; shifting of responsibility of one to another, mistakes and stupidity; then the sudden discovering that they were all but cut off; the panic and ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... expostulated the girl, as, desperate with mortification, she broke away from the embrace by sheer strength and fled to the other side of the barn. "How dare you think such ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... box your ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look! There is young Hexarly with six years' service and half your talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the Convent! There's McArthurson, who has come to his present position by asking sheer, downright asking after he had pushed himself out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in your service believe me. I've seen Simla for more seasons than I care to think about. Do you suppose men are chosen for appointments because of their special fitness ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... deposit?' asks you. 'Why, of course you can,' reply they; and then you hand over your money, and then they hand you back a little bit of paper. 'That's your receipt,' say they. 'All right,' say you; and off you sheer. Perhaps you feel just a little bit queerish, when you get outside, to think that all your solid cash has been melted down into that morsel of paper; but being a light-hearted, easy-going fellow, you don't think any more of it, till you come home from your next ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer abstraction. There is no such concrete personality or individuality within ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... until you see our frocks for the boat!" she warned him. "Nina has a yellow coat—and I have a black lace and a white embroidery! Really—REALLY I have never seen anything like the white one. SHEER, you know—" ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... more complicated theory necessary. Remembering has to be a present occurrence in some way resembling, or related to, what is remembered. And it is difficult to find any ground, except a pragmatic one, for supposing that memory is not sheer delusion, if, as seems to be the case, there is not, apart from memory, any way of ascertaining that there really was a past occurrence having the required relation to our present remembering. What, if we followed Meinong's terminology, we ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... "It is sheer fanaticism!" said Mrs. Randolph. "I cannot let her encourage it. If I did, she would not be fit for anything by and by. She is fit ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... harness was taken off I did not know what I should do first—whether to eat the grass, or roll over on my back, or lie down and rest, or have a gallop across the meadow out of sheer spirits at being free; and I did all by turns. Jerry seemed to be quite as happy as I was; he sat down by a bank under a shady tree, and listened to the birds, then he sang himself, and read out of the little brown book he is so fond of, then wandered round the ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... for sheer delight, and Hans, smiling, held out his hand to Pelle. "I ought to thank you ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Jewish problems that concern ourselves in particular, that deal with our relations to and with our fellow Jews—problems which I am afraid are not always present in our minds. For one reason or another, they are apt to be forgotten, to slip into the background through sheer negligence. Indeed, in many cases we are fain to put them intentionally into a corner and remove them discreetly from sight. It has needed a great world event at this time, as it has in the past, to bring many of us to reason and to a realization of our duty. The titanic struggle ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... a hill, measuring, perhaps, three thousand paces round its base. It was of no great height, and yet unclimbable, for, after a man had gone up a little way, the sides of it were sheer, offering no foothold except to the rock-rabbits and the lizards. No one was to be seen without this hill, nor in the great kraal of the Halakazi that lay to the east of it, and yet the ground about was trampled with the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... throw himself into the river from sheer love befo' marriage," said Solomon, "an' two weeks arter the woman had taken him, to fall out with her because she'd put too much shortenin' in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... elocutionist, or a new poem fresh from the pen of some celebrated writer. And you have always conversation; that is to say, the wit and sparkle of the wittiest and brightest nation on the face of the earth. In a world that is becoming more and more a Paradise of Fools the charm of sheer brain and brightness is irresistible. To live in such an intellectual centre is in itself delightful. Paris is a veritable Foire aux Idees. Its criticism, keen as the sword of Saladin, overwhelming as the battle-axe of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would scream. "Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children of hell?" And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would return to her place and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... would be sheer nonsense; and when we recollect how easy it is to mistake comit for count, the former word being almost always thus written and often thus printed, we must, I think, be convinced that in copying an interlineated MS., the printer misplaced and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... They then moved his bed to the window that he might look down upon the stately avenue that ran by the flat-house, and watch the people going to and fro about their business. But the change, instead of cheering, cast him into a deeper melancholy. It was nearly a hundred feet, sheer drop, to those healthy people walking so fast, and the mere distance depressed him unutterably. He played with the scores of visiting-cards that his friends had left for him, and he tried to play with the knobs of the desk close to the head of his bed, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... truce to your trash; you sicken me with your fastidiousness; and if you are not mad yourself, you are likely to drive me so. No one unless afflicted with sheer insanity, would allow that black fellow into the store; and then above all things leave him in it. There isn't the slightest use in your attempting to excuse yourself, for you can't improve matters: you are a perfect nuisance in the place; and I declare if it were not for your family, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... was a clear if slender rill. His faults are the more unpardonable since they spring from sheer carelessness and a lack of appreciation of the sacred responsibility of creative power. He took up the literary fashion of the month and tried his hand at it; that done, he was ready for the next mode. He did not wait to perfect his work or ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... so amorous, so toying and fine! and all for sheer Love, ye Rogue! Oh how she lookt and kiss'd! and sooth'd my Heart from my Bosom. I cannot think I was awake, and yet methinks I see and feel her Charms still— Fred.— Try if she have not left the Taste of her balmy Kisses ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... nothing out of these men; they refused to answer our questions from sheer mulish obstinacy, as we thought at first, but we saw at length that they did not understand us. What were we driving at? They assured us they had seen no lady, nor had the unfortunate peer accosted any one, or interfered with any one on his way between the two hotels. He had come straight ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Irish had borne down the defence amidships, where the run of the gunwales was lowest. The sheer weight of them as they clambered, one over the other, on board, listed the ship over, and made the boarding easier for those who followed. The wild Danish war shout rose once or twice, and then it was drowned by the Irish yell. After that there was a sudden ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... 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 path ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... heard of cases, uncle, in which persons fancied themselves about to die at a certain hour, from having had a dream to that effect, or some other supernatural indication of the will of Heaven. And sometimes they actually expired, from sheer fright. But when the clock was put back an hour or two, the time passed without ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... things, and so many more become persuaded, as time goes on, of a personal "mission" to pull down and remake whatever has been once built up, esteeming life a failure unless they have contrived to build each his own monument upon a clearing, that lovers of the old ways are sometimes compelled in sheer self-defence to put on the appearance of being more obstinately set against change than they really are. It ought not to be absolutely impossible to alter a national hand-book of worship (which is what any manual calling itself a Common Prayer must aspire to become), but it is well that ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... sea over broken rock. But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant liner, her face ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... When Tommy was reported wounded, Miss Willmot had a bad day of it with an almost hysterical Nelly Davis. When the wound turned out to be nothing worse than a hole in the calf of the leg, made by a machine-gun bullet, Miss Nelly cried from sheer relief. When, by the greatest good luck in the world, Private 7432 Collins was sent down to 73 General Hospital, no more than a mile distant from the Camp, Miss Nelly ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... make himself withal a body? What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... love without courtship or coquetry had grown under the effulgence of Madame Hayle's immediate presence like a grain-field in sunshine. On her return from the triple burial, through sheer exhaustion, she had fainted away. Borne upstairs by the physician's command and allowed the roof but forbidden the lower deck for twenty-four hours, she had let Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" assume her pious task turn about, going and coming by after stairs. And so love grew on. But so did ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... that," said Harry. "You get us into a precious hobble through sheer wanton foolery, and then you expect ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... open-work stocking soles, and began to paint higher up the flights of steps, and a little crowd of polite Burman children gathered behind her. And a Britisher, a Scot, I think, came down, a little dazed-looking and delighted, and melting, and spoke to me, a stranger, out of sheer wonder and per fervidum at the charm of colour, and of course we agreed that it all "beggared description." I must have seen people of many races and religions going up the steps, Chinese, Shans, Kachins, Mohammedans, Hindoos, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the house, seated upon the sill, a ledge perhaps a foot wide, with his legs swinging above the twenty-foot drop. In order to make it with a chance for safety, he had so to change his posture that he could hang by his hands from the sill, thus reducing the sheer fall by some ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... opinion, even a lost soul may admire the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and man, stood in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... until eleven, every cadging house is in general particularly quiet, for the reasons we have already stated; none ever going out to work on a Sunday (the sweepers of crossings, of course, excepted), but those who are compelled from sheer necessity. ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... accusations; and, unable to find any thing upon which to put a false construction, they have, at last, thrown aside all attempts to discover the means of misrepresentation, and have had recourse to open, unblushing, to sheer invented falsehoods. That love of fair play, for which all orders of Englishmen in all ages have been so famed, finds no place in the bosoms of these degenerate men.—They enter the ring with seeming bravery, but being, round after ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... and execution by a cadet would receive a mere grunt from the cantankerous professor. Such temperament was permissible at the Academy by an instructor only because of his genius and for no other reason. And Professor Sykes fitted the bill. It was by sheer devotion to his work and single-mindedness of purpose that he was able to become a leading scientist in his field. Professor Sykes had been assigned, at his request, to the Roald expedition. As the leading scientist, it was his job to evaluate every new discovery made during the trip ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... another of the aristocratic houses where he had his entries, among them that of Madame de Castries, whom he continued to see, although she confined her worship to his talent, and merely patronized the man. Either from sheer mischievousness, or to revenge herself for some real or fancied slight—perhaps, indeed, to mock at his talk of refinement—she perpetrated upon him the practical joke of getting her Irish governess, a Miss Patrickson, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... twisting himself around so that he managed to land on his back. It hurt and the wind went out of him. He was sliding and rolling. Somehow he managed to stop himself. He lay painfully coughing and trying to get his breath. Below him he could see the wild rushing of a river at the base of the sheer embankment. He looked back up. Glynnis had one leg over the edge but had not fallen. Nelson crawled his way ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... deep silence. And he asked me to be kind enough to close my eyes. Then I heard his voice muttering, in a strange tongue, a queer dark gobbling kind of words, which may have been ancient African spell-words, or sheer gibberish such as magicians in all times and places have employed to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the baby and Lucy, had already disappeared up the staircase, and Madame Vine was disappearing. Archibald lay on the soft carpet of the corridor, where madame had stood; for Joyce, in the act of taking him, had let him slip to the ground—let him fall from sheer terror. She held on to the balustrades, her face ghastly, her mouth open, her eyes fixed in horror—altogether an object to look upon. Archie gathered himself on his sturdy legs, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to the letter of these orders, but such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant manoeuver, it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at the enemy's center. Eugene having acted in perfect concert, Poniatowski ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... pay of labor faster than the growth of population was able to bring it down. This had the effect of establishing, not only a higher standard, but a rising standard, and as one generation succeeded another it became habituated to a better mode of living than had been possible before. It was the sheer force of the new land supplemented by new capital and new methods of industry that accomplished this. It pushed wages upward, in spite of everything that would in itself ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... and I am certainly not going to lose my heart to him," Myra whispered to her reflection in the mirror. "If Aunt Clarissa is right, he is only making love to me for his own amusement, and would sheer off if I took him seriously and expected him to marry me. A pretty fool I should look if I fell in love with him, broke off my engagement to Tony, and then Don Carlos levanted! But I'm not going to fall in love with him.... He certainly is fascinating, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... distance by means of lofty stone walls, and so shut in their palaces and gardens. Here equal seclusion could only be achieved by building flush upon the water, and therefore all the finest palaces rise sheer from the canals; and caffe, shops, barracks, and puppet-shows occupy the Riva degli Schiavoni. Nevertheless, it is the favorite promenade of the Venetians for the winter sunshine, and at such times ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... eye; "I have nothing to do, nobody to attend to, nobody to fight with, nothing to disturb me or put me out of timper; I knew, however, that he would stick to his wickedness to the last—an' so he did, for the devil tempted him, out of sheer malice, when he could get at me no way else, to lave me fifty pounds a year, to kape me aisy! Sich revenge and villany, by a dyin' man, was never heard of. God help me, what am I to do now, or what hand will I turn to? What is there before me but peace and quietness for the remainder ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... unfaithful. If he is compelled to go, the usual course is to write to his wife and tell her that she is free to look out for another husband. Having made up his mind that he will die, I have no doubt that he often dies through sheer funk." (R. Logan JACK, Back Blocks of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... for fifty year an' more, an' I say, I tell thee, that two oars be better than two reefs any day. Le'but the seas take charge o' one o' they boats running afore the wind.... All up! They spins like a top, an' gybes.... 'Tis all up! Howsbe-ever, they'm saafe now, if they don't sheer broadside coming ashore. But they won't learn their lesson; not they. They maakes fun o' us ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... my room, and the consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there, stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt. I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... person on the street, and did Vesey's companions make the customary bow, which blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... each and every day, one saw the winsome maid beside the knight, when she should go to court to meet her kin. This service was done from sheer delight. A great rout of joy and pleasure was daily seen in front of Gunther's hall, without and eke within, from many a daring man. Ortwin and Hagen began to do great marvels. Whatever any wished to play, these lusty knights were fully ready; thus they became well known ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... been murder—sheer murder," earnestly replied the minister. "And we are not Spartans, but Christians, to whom the body is not every thing, and who believe that God can work out His wonderful will, if He chooses, through the meanest means—through the saddest tragedies and direst misfortunes. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was busily engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task,—as good as any boy could have whistled,—and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... felled by the sheer burden of weariness, and no matter how exhausted they might be the Trail continued, springing on with the same apparently tireless energy toward its unknown goal in the North. Gradually they lost ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... a proper old April we've 'ad, Though the cold snap as copped us at Easter made 'oliday makers feel mad. Rum cove that old Clerk o' the Weather; seems somehow to take a delight In mucking Bank 'Oliday biz; seems as though it was out of sheer spite. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... have recourse. Hence with tens of thousands it is literally a case of "steal or starve." I suppose that nine-tenths of the thefts and robberies, besides a large proposition of the other crimes committed in India, are prompted by sheer starvation, and until the cause be removed, it will be in vain to look for a diminution of the evil, multiply our police and soldiery ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... until the bath was full; then, lying in the warm water, he ceased to concern himself with his stepmother's affairs and gave himself up to sheer exultation at the prospect of the month of idleness before him. Since October he had worked with every atom of brain energy he possessed; now he could revel in his holiday, knowing he had earned it. He thought of tennis, of motoring to Monte ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... looking up at the practically sheer walls of rock that hedged the course of the creek. "We can't climb those hills, if we ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... hills and precipices on their western coasts: the Ward Hill of Hoy attains to an elevation of sixteen hundred feet; and there are some of the precipices which skirt the island of which it forms so conspicuous a feature, that rise sheer over the breakers from eight hundred to a thousand. Unlike, however, the arrangement on the mainland, it is the newer rocks that attain to the higher elevations; the heights of Hoy are composed of that arenaceous upper member of the Lower Old Red Sandstone,—the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... a crashing of underbrush, and then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock, appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced forepaws dislodged a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then he transferred his gaze ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... recluse since she was seventeen. The rest of the Wilmots went into Saint X's newly developed but flourishing fashionable society. They had no money to give return entertainments or even to pay their share of the joint, dances and card parties Arthur decided to sheer off. "I came to ask you to the house for sup—dinner to-night," said he. "It's lonely—just mother and Del and me. Come and cheer us up. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... returned in a moment with the girl's bundle. And with his return one glance showed him how nearly his plans were upset. Jessie was clasping Jamie in her arms, kissing him hungrily, tears streaming down her cheeks, while, out of sheer sympathy, little Vada was clinging to her mother's skirts, her small face buried in amongst them, sobbing as though her heart ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... look out from the loopholes of the tower. On the one side, as he had noticed, the rock fell sheer away from the foot of the wall, to a depth of two or three hundred feet. On the other side he looked down into a courtyard, sixty feet below him. This was surrounded by high and very strong walls, bristling with cannon; and with strong circular bastions ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... silver the posts Rear'd on a brazen threshold, and above, The lintels, silver, architraved with gold. Mastiffs, in gold and silver, lined the approach On either side, by art celestial framed 110 Of Vulcan, guardians of Alcinoues' gate For ever, unobnoxious to decay. Sheer from the threshold to the inner house Fixt thrones the walls, through all their length, adorn'd, With mantles overspread of subtlest warp Transparent, work of many a female hand. On these the princes of Phaeacia sat, Holding perpetual ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... and from sheer happiness at thinking that my father was going with us in the fine company of the Colonel and Miss Priscilla. I wonder what we would do, if we had to have somebody go to places with us who thought they had to chaperon us? Miss Prissy is just one of us and would go if we had to ask somebody like ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... beloved Rua, love has a clearer eye, Hence from the arms of love you go not forth to die. There, where the broken mountain drops sheer into the glen, There shall you find a hold from the boldest hunter of men; There, in the deep recess, where the sun falls only at noon, And only once in the night enters the light of the moon, Nor ever a sound but of birds, or the rain when it falls with a shout; For death and the fear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pernambucan; hence one could scarcely blame him for drawing a pistol and shooting the launchman—fatally, according to Mr. Schultz. Of course, after that, to have lingered longer inside the three-mile limit would have been sheer insanity, so Mr. Schultz, taking matters into his own hands, had uphooked and skipped with doused lights from the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... steps seemed to be getting closer and Astro drove himself harder, slashing at the vines and tangled underbrush, sometimes just bursting through by sheer driving strength. But the heavy-footed creature ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... window and looked out. A street-lamp some little distance away gave enough light through the murk of the rain that was again falling in torrents to make it entirely plain that "no one was there." In truth there was nothing but the sheer blank ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... some open well, or gaping ditch; Tho' he call lustily "help, neighbours, help!" No soul regards him, or attends his yelp. Should one, too kind, to give him succour hope, Wish to relieve him, and let down a rope; Forbear! (I'll cry for aught that you can tell) By sheer design he jump'd into the well. He wishes not you should preserve him, Friend! Know you the old Sicilian ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... had recourse to his Paternoster; but perceiving the apparitions approach, he thundered out, "Avast,—avast—sheer off, ye babes of hell, or I'll be foul of your forelights." He accordingly sprung forwards with his hanger, and very probably would have set the spirits on their way to the other world, had he not fallen over a pew in the dark, and entangled himself so much among the benches, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... herded or working in a temperature of about 140 deg.. Nobody could complain of such an ordeal if we'd been defending Lucknow or attacking Shaiba, but to put such a strain on the men's health—newly arrived and with no pads or glasses or shades—gratuitously and merely by dint of sheer hard muddling—is infuriating to me and criminal in the authorities—a series of scatter-brained nincompoops about fit to look after a ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... had rocked his cradle—the Atlantic foaming up the narrow ravine before his door, and withdrawing itself with a loud sucking noise. The cabin was perched on a bleached hillside. A stony, narrow path went by the door and climbed the ravine to the world; a bed of slaty rock slanted sheer below it to the white tossing water. A dangerous place for any one to pass unless he had his eyes and his wits well about him; but Mike Sheehan was such a one, for he had the eye of the eagle over Muckross, he could climb ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the most impregnable positions in all Asia Minor; a regular Gibraltar. It occupies the summit of a precipitous detached mountain peak, which is accessible only from one point, all the other sides presenting a sheer precipice of rock; it forms a conspicuous feature of the landscape for many miles around, and situated as it is amid a wilderness of rugged brush-covered heights, admirably suited for ambuscades, it was doubtless a very important position at one ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... had gone cautiously over the ground beforehand, and decided that if there was any possibility of being knocked overboard unawares, he would prefer to go over the much gentler slope on the right, where one might even at a pinch find lodgment among the rubble and bushes, than over the sheer fall into Coupee Bay, where you could drop a stone almost ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... halls of old Romance Strike through the clouds of clamor: who be these That, paired in rich processional, advance From darkness o'er the murk mad factories Into yon flaming road, and sink, strange Ministrants! Sheer down to earth, with many minstrelsies And motions fine, and mix about the scene And fill the Time with forms of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... was Hindhead, and listens to him praising the bean fields and the turnips here, and the oaks and acacias there, cursing the Wen-devils and place-men and pensioners, the reptiles, toad-eaters and tax-eaters, and yet the sheer honesty and affection of the man shine from every page. There never was such a mixture of execration and the scent of bean-blossom. But Rural Rides remains a book of the library ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... actual contamination. I can tell you, there were those who thought—poor fools—that you had no grasp of etiquette. How gratified we were, we professionals, who could appreciate your virtuosity—when you placed matters on a comfortable basis by spurning the cats'-meat. It was sheer pleasure then, waiting, to see what form ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must not expect from him, for ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... sharp snapping sound, the frail railing gave way, and with wild shouts and oaths the Germans hurtled over the edge for a sheer ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... started on again, heading straight for what looked like a sheer wall of black rock a thousand feet or more in height, up a path so steep that Robertson and I got out and walked, or rather scrambled, in order to ease the bearers. Billali, I noticed, remained in his litter. The convenience ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... over the keys to the new tenant, and Julia Cloud leaned back on the luxurious cushions and laughed. Not from mirth, for there were tears in her eyes; and not from nervousness, for she was never subject to hysteria; but just from sheer excitement and joy to think that she was really going out in the world at last to see things and live a life ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... a state of chaos—political and moral and social. Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must remember this when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... sheer accident. Walking along like this with my head down I always seem to come upon two or three dead hares or now and then a partridge or grouse. Natural mortality, you understand. Well, what could be more humane than to stuff them in my pockets and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... had ever seen, and the most curious. It was just wide enough to admit the passage of a sleigh perhaps; the crumbling and dilapidated old houses, which seemed deserted, were connected overhead by a succession of wooden bridges, and those on my left were built into the solid rock, which rose sheer overhead. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... in the rain, when the professor's great laugh rang out like a boy's for sheer high spirits, and when Margaret was an enchanting vision in her long coat, with her cheeks glowing through the blown wet tendrils of her hair. That day they had tea in the deserted charming little parlor of a tiny inn, and drank ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... the week, people were compelled to be a little more quiet, from sheer exhaustion, but on New Year's Day, when there was a grand dinner at Rich Bar, the excitement broke out, if possible, worse than ever. The same scenes, in a more or less aggravated form, in proportion as the strength of the actors held out, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Iskender, of sheer laziness, was content to humour the old man; and soon acquired such skill in practice that he could have wrought with his eyes shut, as the Sheykh Abu Yusuf virtually did, for he was almost blind. Every morning, before setting to work, he hastened to the Church of the Resurrection and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... send me to my father. He informed me that I was his captive and should so remain until I yielded to his wishes. I repulsed him with scorn, with the energy of desperation. Ultimately he overpowered me by sheer force, and compelled me to yield. Then I saw him no more. I wandered about the hut like one demented. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. I was in despair. Shame and ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... to get at, is this: Where you want a farm to be self-supporting—where you depend solely on the produce of the farm to supply manure—it is a sheer impossibility to adopt high farming on the whole of your land. I want to raise just as large crops per acre as the high farmers, but there is no way of doing this, unless we go outside the farm for manure, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... rule; it requires some genius to make a legitimate exception, and it also involves some temerity. It is like gathering mushrooms; perhaps they are edible, perhaps they are poisonous; for the various fungi look very much alike. If it happens to be right, it is right; if it happens to be wrong, it is sheer disaster. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... year, and in the opera of "Romeo e Giulietta" she exhibited such power, both in singing and acting, as to call from the French critics the most extravagant terms of praise. Mme. Pasta was then laying the foundation of one of the most dazzling reputations ever gained by prima donna. By sheer industry she had extended the range of her voice to two octaves and a half—from A above the bass clef note to C flat, and even to D in alt. Her tones had become rich and sweet, except when she attempted ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... shops on either side, where you could buy anything from an oil painting to a summer hat. In front was a gay little plaza with vines and a fountain, where lunch and tea were served by the prettiest girls in town in bewitching frilled caps with long black streamers and sheer lawn aprons over blue and green frocks. The Tired Business Men declined to lunch anywhere else, and there was a moment when we feared it might have to be given up, as there was some feeling in town on account of the ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Wilhelm, for his part, had got all he claimed from this Expedition: namely, Stettin with the dependent Towns, and quietness in Pommern. Stettin was, from of old, the capital of his own part of Pommern; thrown in along with the other parts of Pommern, and given to Sweden (from sheer necessity, it was avowed), at the Peace of Westphalia, sixty years ago or more:—and now, by good chance, it has come back. Wait another hundred years, and perhaps Swedish Pommern altogether will come back! But from all this Friedrich Wilhelm is still far. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... everyone; but it must be allowed that—at least as long as he was in his tree—he was neither dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise harming himself, and perhaps his fellow creatures, from sheer want of employment. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of the interruptions thus caused, the lower stake was fixed in a few minutes. The Professor then swung his axe vigorously, and began to cut an oblique stair-case in the ice up the sheer face of the precipice. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jesus weeping. "Jesus wept." Why did He weep? Perhaps He wept out of sheer sympathy with the tears of others. And perhaps, too, He wept because some of our tears were needless. If we were better men we should know more of the love and purpose of our Lord, and perhaps many of our tears would be ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... me say that this sin of silence is in sheer contradiction of every principle of Christianity. Why has God given you His grace, do you suppose? For what purpose comes it that you are Christians? Were you converted that you might go by yourselves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I, Elizabeth, no more do I. I cannot think this lavish life is seemly. This table, now! Does thee note its profusion? More bread and honey and cheese and chicken pie than we can eat. Sheer waste— unless we can share it. If there was but some poor traveler in this inn whom we might bid to ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... sea-rovers showed desperate courage and reddened the sea with their blood. There might be inserted here a battle-piece worthy of the Drakes and Morgans of old, if the facts only bore us out. Instead of that, however, we are forced to say that the pirates proved sheer caitiffs when matched against honest men, and the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tea out of a basin and eating his broad with unwashed hands, may be her husband: Heathcliff junior, of course. Here is the consequence of being buried alive: she has thrown herself away upon that boor from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity—I must beware how I cause her to regret her choice.' The last reflection may seem conceited; it was not. My neighbour struck me as bordering on repulsive; I knew, through experience, that I was ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive. This have I known once in Japan, once on the banks of the Columbia, what time the salmon came in and California howled, and once again in the Yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... 6, 1882, that Roosevelt took the floor in the Assembly and demanded that Judge Westbrook, of New bury, be impeached. And for sheer moral courage that act is probably supreme in Roosevelt's life thus far. He must have expected failure. Even his youth and idealism and ignorance of public affairs could not blind him to the apparently ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Sword Of Michael from the Armory of God Was given him tempered so, that neither keen Nor solid might resist that Edge: It met The Sword of Satan, with steep Force to smite Descending, and in half cut sheer— ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
