"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against clan. Kubbee against Hippi, and so on. A Hippi, for example, will go into a ring and plant there a mudgee, or painted stick with a bunch of feathers at the top. In will run a Kubbee and try to make off with the stick; Hippi will grapple with him, and a wrestling match comes off. Into the ring will go others of each side wrestling in their turn. The side that finally throws the most men, and gets the mudgee, wins. Before wrestling matches, there is much greasing of bodies ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... Allied Powers thus made at this crisis to grapple promptly with the French emperor have truly been termed gigantic; and never were Napoleon's genius and activity more signally displayed, than in the celerity and skill by which he brought forward all the military resources of France, which ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... any reason in the man's head, and Frank saw that he must subdue the fellow some way. Miller was determined to grapple with the boy, and Frank felt that he would find the mountaineer had the strength of an ox, for which reason he must keep clear of ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... have seen in a previous chapter how Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he had not ventured to grapple with the institution which gave birth to that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged. It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... that such as these should learn how experience, even under cramped conditions, may be finely and beautifully interpreted, and made rich by renewed intention. Because the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not welter helplessly below it. And the cramped and restricted life is all the grander for this, that it gives us a nobler chance ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the past 10 years due to the growth of the high-tech manufacturing sector, which is dominated by the microprocessor industry. Tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange, as Costa Rica's impressive biodiversity makes it a key destination for ecotourism. The government continues to grapple with its large internal and external deficits and sizable internal debt. Reducing inflation remains a difficult problem because of rising import prices, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. Tax and public expenditure reforms will be necessary to close the budget ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is accustomed to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, fitted to grapple with difficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which lock ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of the criminal class by heredity is a question difficult to grapple with on many accounts. Their vagrant habits, their illegitimate unions, and extreme untruthfulness, are among the difficulties of the investigation. It is, however, easy to show that the criminal nature tends to be inherited; while, on the other hand, it is impossible ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Mothers' Club, around which the change in community feeling has centered, until Mr. Voorhes describes them as "the most important influence that ever came into our school." Yet the kindergarten here, as elsewhere, has had a life and death grapple for existence. In the West End, dominated by its conservative, German atmosphere, the pleas for kindergartens fell on deaf ears. At last, after much preparation, a meeting of mothers and children was held for the ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room till ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... was all with the havoc wrought in his work from the moment when Clara swept into his imagination, but he was soon compelled to brush that aside and to grapple with the more serious fact that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active and demanding its share in his being. Then arose the horror that it was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... evidenced, by the change of his disposition, and his mildness of manner, and simplicity of conduct, that the gospel had taken powerful hold upon his heart; and this he evidenced still more clearly, when early called to grapple with the last enemy. ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... that his left was only half a league distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg. The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with: he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner. We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... He did the bravest deed I ever saw, a deed heroic in its purpose, ferociously sage in its execution; the deed of a man bred of a race that knew no longer-range weapon than an assegai, trained from youth to fight and kill at arm's length or in hand grapple; a deed ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting, and ears red. He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it. It was only when he found himself alone in his little bedroom in Church Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... throughout. At length, when they had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple. Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in places, a score of combatants met sturdily upon the plain, lunging with knife and sabre bayonet, striking with clubbed musket, or discharging revolvers. But at last the broken lines regained the shelter ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... precepts in thy memory— Look thou character.[73] Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought[74] his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... film of roofing thrown over the gulf. You can make up a crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... reaching, the old verbalistic philosophy and metaphysics have lost their reason to exist. They were no more able to understand the "production" of the universe and life than they are now able to understand or grapple with "production" as a means to provide a happier existence for humanity. They failed because their venerated method of "speculation" can not produce, and its place must be taken by mathematical thinking. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... was for his sake that she had braved the night and Farnham's displeasure. What, then, was it that was holding them apart? What was the nature of this barrier beyond all surmounting? The man in him rebelled at having so spectral an adversary; he longed to fight it out in the open, to grapple with flesh and blood. In spite of promise, his heart ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 'You might do murder before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... commonplaces, sat for a moment, silently pondering how to enter upon his communication. But he did not ponder long, however; for his usual way was to rush headlong at whatever seemed to harbour a lion, and come at once to the death-grapple. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... yesterday. I squandered one pound, I keep two to make a fresh start, and you have the rest. While this heart shall beat—yes, while memory holds her seat, as the poet says, you are dear to me. Once more, in the poet's words, I grapple you to my soul with hoops of steel. What has come over me I do not know, and when I wake to the fact of my degradation I go madly to the drink again. But I will try, and I implore your forgiveness. I cannot hope ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... I don't remember ever making the sum what the shop made it, on more than about three occasions. And, what was worse, if I tried a second time, I could not even get it to agree with what I had made it myself the first time. Thank Heaven, I've no difficulties of that sort to grapple with now! Everything's paid for the moment it comes in. If the butcher hands a leg of mutton to the cook over the airey railings, the cook hands him back six and nine—or whatever it is—and takes his bill and receipt. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... fought against brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so grim the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes to all, even the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... discussed Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest were talking. She is a delightful girl—so impulsive, so sensible, so entirely unaffected. She confided in me. She said: 'One of our miseries is that we can't find a gentleman who will grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.' Of course I soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and he shall grapple immediately.'—'Oh heavens! who is he?'—'Mr. Francis Clare.'—'And where is he?'—'In the house at this moment.'—'Will you be so very charming, Miss Vanstone, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... not feel that I shall grapple with the sterility argument till my return home; I have tried once or twice and it has made my stomach feel as if it had been placed in a vice. Your paper has driven three of my children half-mad—one sat up to twelve o'clock over it. My second son, the mathematician, thinks ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... resolved that his attentions should not cease, though undervalued for the moment, but should be continued to the son and heir—whose remainder in tail subsisted still, though it might be hard to substantiate—and when his cousin Lancelot should come into possession, he might find a certain factor to grapple him. Mr. Mordacks hated Lancelot, and had carried out his banishment with intense enjoyment, holding him as in a wrench-hammer all the way, silencing his squeaks with another turn of the screw, and as eager to crack him as if he were a nut, the first that ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... But think, Valeria, of ten particular constitutions to grapple with, ten sets of garments to provide, ten series of ailments to combat, ten—no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their developments and phases, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... employed it only on those high or terrible themes where imagination may put forth all her strength, and fancy scatter all her colors. He associated only with the demi-gods of verse, and roamed through Homer, and Dante, and Shakspeare, and Milton, in search of subjects worthy of his hand; he loved to grapple with whatever he thought too weighty for others; and assembling round him the dim shapes which imagination readily called forth, he sat brooding over the chaos, and tried to bring the whole into ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... for my presence of mind, that would have been the end of me. Now it was all that saved me. As the bear, on his hind legs, came toward me with his arms outstretched, to grapple, I ducked and came up between them, and so close to his body that he was unable to sink ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... is no pain. I don't mean to be sententious, but this is the death-grapple that is coming. They will need me and every ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... medical men only, except for the fact that within the last few years it has broken out in this country and is increasing to a most alarming degree. The disease itself is almost hopeless when once established, physicians being yet utterly unable to grapple with it; and while in Italy, Spain, and Egypt it has been known for a century, there is still a death-rate of over 60 per cent, and these deaths occur after most horrible suffering ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... because in this are enunciated those radical conceptions which he afterwards argues not to, but from; and secondly, because it has been the writer's desire, avoiding all vagrant and indecisive criticism, to have a fair grapple, and come to some clear result,—like that of a wrestler, who frankly proffers himself to throw or be thrown. It only remains to indicate, so far as may be, a comprehensive estimate of Mr. Buckle as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Territory. Senator Toombs declared that the resolution opened up a new page in the history of our country. It was a step in the right direction. He feared that the disease lay too deep for the remedy. Heretofore the people of the United States could grapple and surmount all difficulties, foreign and domestic. A spirit of nationality, a common interest, a common danger, carried the country through revolutions. Now all this has changed. The feeling of loyalty and common destiny is rapidly passing away. Hostility to the compact ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... retired from active business on the eve of that great financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents were well adapted; and when the wars and loans of the Revolution were about to create those families of millionaires, in which he might probably have enrolled his own. That, however, was not our destiny. My ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... can come before the Congress than this of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce is an absolute and unqualified grant, and without limitations other than those prescribed by the Constitution. The Congress has constitutional ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a dread of the words he had come to utter; a wild hope sprang in him that he might yet win her in other ways; he used language recklessly, half believing that his arguments would seem of force. His passion was in the death-grapple ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... about it: it is full of prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism, spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the only type, and much less ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... artillerymen: any error, into which it was possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... close up to the trenches, and some even leaping over the redoubt, to grapple hand to hand with those who so desperately ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... beautiful copper-plate hand, and knocked the bottom out of arithmetic and geography. Then came sheer erudition—the nature of chemical elements, stars in their courses, kings of England with their Magna Chartas and habeas corpuses. Nor content even then, he must needs grapple with Roman emperors and Greek republics, and master the fabled lore concerning gods and goddesses, cloven-footed satyrs, and naked nymphs of the grove. But he understood that, in spite of all this culture, in spite, too, of his greater care for costume and his increased employment of soap and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... vicious women of the community are never in the majority, that for one woman whose feet turn aside from the paths of rectitude that there are thousands of feet that never stray into forbidden paths, and today I believe there is virtue enough in society to confront its vice, and intelligence enough to grapple with its ignorance."[6] ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... and the howlings of storm do not frighten them. Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle joyously with it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is red and strong. Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves up to the skies. Yet they are simple as children, and when they are afraid, it is of things which children fear. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... place, such a state or temptation, as need requires: but withal, as my lord expecteth his son should acquaint him with the present emptiness of his purse, and with the difficulty he hath now to grapple with; so God our Father expects that we should plead by Christ our need at the throne of grace, in order to a supply of grace:[39] 'Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the wise, there needed no conjunction of planets to tell them that the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel between Spain and England would end, once and for all, in some great death-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, to the West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters, in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to have forfeited them by tyranny. But Spain itself had been respected by England, as England had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in which we ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... was accounted very lucky by the neighbouring clergy for having such a man, and not being exposed to all the vagaries of a young schoolmaster, or, perhaps, still worse, schoolmistress, with all the latest musical fancies of the training colleges. Neither had he to grapple with the tyranny of the leading bass nor the conceit and touchiness that seems inseparable from the tenor voice, since Mr Robins kept a firm and sensible hand on the reins, and drove that generally unmanageable team, a village ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... satisfied for; and then, but not till then, thou shalt have life by the law. Tell me, now, you that desire to be under the law, can you fulfil all the commands of the law, and after answer all its demands? Can you grapple with the judgment of God? Can you wrestle with the Almighty? Are you stronger than he that made the heavens, and that holdeth angels in everlasting chains? 'Can thine heart endure, or can thy hands be strong in the day that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... earnest manner, the magic power of his unstudied action, and the thrilling intonations of his deep rich voice, rendered him, in his best days, "before public assemblies, almost irresistible." He managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... remarkable for an affected mode of public speaking. What in dress is termed foppish, would be appropriate as applied to his oratory. He was no admirer of O'Leary, and the feeling of dislike was as mutual as could well be conceived. Him, therefore, O'Leary selected as the opponent with whom he meant to grapple. Those to whom he communicated his intention, and who knew his powers, looked forward with expectation "on tiptoe" for a scene of enjoyment that no anticipation could exaggerate. Disappointment was, however, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... sped to the bed, unconsciously pushing aside the women who, almost frantic with fear and quite out of their bearings, were doing their best to grapple with the problem of life or death so suddenly placed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... them. It is a great mistake to suppose that because he took no great part in politics he had no interest in the practical questions of his time, or that he was so immersed in metaphysics as to live in the clouds. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him. The Analogy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the Kearsarge. A second and part of a third broadside were delivered, with no perceptible effect. All the time, under a full head of steam, Winslow was rushing toward his enemy for the death grapple. Still in peril of being raked, he now sheered when half a mile distant and fired his broadside of five-second shells, at the same time endeavoring to pass under the Alabama's stern, but Semmes defeated ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... on her extravagances amused Ben exceedingly, and by keeping to a line of questioning he drew from her nearly all her salient experiences—excepting, of course, her grapple with the degenerate artist. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... himself squarely. This was his first grapple with the world outside. To his direct American mind the problem was simplicity in the extreme. An idler is a contemptible being. A rich idler is almost beneath contempt. A man's life lies in activity. Activity, outside the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... stratagems, Trunnion's obstinacy was overcome. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and heaving a piteous groan yielded to the remonstrances of Hatchway in these words: "Well, since it must be so, I think we must e'en grapple. But 'tis a hard case that a fellow of my years should be compelled, d'ye see, to beat up to windward all the rest of his life, against the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... would not be denied. When she had sent away her maid, she sat down by the window, and, with the full harvest-moon for company, faced them and asked them what they meant. But they only repeated themselves over and over again. What had they to do with her? Her mind tried to grapple with them in vain. As often as she came to close quarters with them they eluded her and disappeared, only to return with ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... two—though the berquinade tendency, considerably masculated, prevails in one, and the esprit gaulois, decorously draped, in the other—seem to me to run together better than any two other novelists of our company. They do not attempt elaborate analysis; they do not grapple with thorny or grimy problems; they are not purveyors of the indecent, or dealers in the supernatural and fantastic, or poignant satirists of society at large or individuals in particular. But they can both, in their different ways, tell a plain tale uncommonly well, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Matters of paramount importance, deeply affecting the material progress of Sierra, questions touching the absolute integrity of Calaveras and Tuolumne as social communities, were even now waiting expression. Weeks, nay, months, must elapse before that pressure would be removed, and the "Record" could grapple with any but the sternest of topics. Again, the editor had noticed with pain the absolute decline of poetry in the foot-hills of the Sierras. Even the works of Byron and Moore attracted no attention in Dutch ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... our cost," said L'Isle, bitterly. "What made it more provoking was, that we had at that very time the man to mate him;" and, standing up on his stirrups, he raised his clenched hand above his head, exclaiming: "O, for one hour of Peterborough to grapple with his countryman and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... crammed; he knew when to teach and when to let alone. Unfortunately, through very peculiar circumstances, I was removed from the immediate care and superintendence of both parents rather early in life; and, at an age the most dangerous, was left to grapple nearly alone with the wide world and the beings in it, with little of either parental guidance. It was then I saw the immense importance and advantage of early impressions. To me they were of incalculable benefit, and no doubt led, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the Prince's cause was lost. His wife, she poisoned herself. Those are the spurs Mad Harry rode Hellfire on a wager down Crosbie Ghyll with, and broke his neck doing it, besides his young wife's heart. The women who married the Thurstons had an ill lot to grapple with. Even when they settled down to farming, the Thurstons were men who would walk unflinchingly into ruin sooner than lose their grip on their purpose, and Mr. Geoffrey ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... repentance. His Word gives me no encouragement to believe; yea, Himself hath shut me up in this iron cage; nor can all the men in the world let me out. O eternity! eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life, the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand, pointing to serene skies, she opened to him fair ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... her by Augustus manifesting an intention to return and grapple with him. But Miss Pecksniff giving the fiery youth a pull, and Mrs Todgers giving him a push they all three tumbled out of the room together, to the music of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... emotions, was tempestuous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of life. In his wife and children he had centered all affection, and now they were torn from him. The remembrance of their love clung to him like the death grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible, the creeping agony of despair, that brings with it no ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... himself of the powerful constriction by getting at the snake's head. But the serpent had so knotted himself on his own head, that Mr. Cops could not reach it, and had thrown himself on the floor in order to grapple with a better chance of success, when two other keepers coming in broke the teeth of the serpent, and with some difficulty relieved Mr. Cops from his perilous situation. Two broken teeth were extracted from the thumb, which soon healed, and no material ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... state. Will not the progress of industry and happiness cause a steady increase in population, and must not the time come when the number of the inhabitants of the globe will surpass their means of subsistence? Condorcet did not grapple with this question. He contented himself with saying that such a period must be very far away, and that by then "the human race will have achieved improvements of which we can now scarcely form an idea." Similarly Godwin, in his fancy picture of the future happiness of mankind, notices ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... after a while, but our fine new seine was gone, and the big school of fish too. After a hard grapple we got the dories and a little later the seine-boat, and after a lot more work we got them right side up. The dories we pulled the plugs out of to let them drain and then took them on deck, but the seine-boat we had to pump out. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... Nijmwegen against the encroachments of French military aggression. But the design of William was still incomplete. The naval power and financial resources of England were needed to enable the coalition to grapple successfully with the mighty centralised power ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... time to come, in their inability to return in full to that world they had left, or even to take part in the affairs of this. Surely their case was far worse than his, for after a few years he would be freed from the bondage of matter, and would grapple with the mysteries which had become so fascinating; but with them it was different. Unfitted for either world, without a friend and alone, they must drag out their weary existence until the law of Karma was satisfied. But he would not give them up; he could not; for were they ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... as if to grapple freshly with the vague reminiscences that were endeavouring to escape from him, while the Canadian appeared like one suffering the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Mr. Christian, grapple with this? I would with pleasure if there was anything in it to grapple with, but you will see nothing real in your premises, for objects teach nothing without an instructor. There lies a brick, pick it up ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... struggle to keep her blue eyes fixed on the tiresome figures, which would not come right, struggle as she might to make them. It never occurred to her to shirk a difficulty in any sense; her nature was such that she must grapple with a duty, however distasteful, once she felt she was appointed to fulfil it. Her mother had died when Theo, the eldest Carnegy, was fifteen, and Queenie, the younger, only two years old. So, already, she had been for three years her father's ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... I think may justly be said, in favour of the former, they were not men of genius. Capable of conducting, and willing upon the whole to conduct with loyalty and propriety the affairs of their country, while they kept within the beaten channel, they were not born to grapple with arduous situations. They had not that commanding spirit of adventure, which leads a man into the path of supererogation and voluntary service: they had not that firm and collected fortitude which induces a man to look ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... thoughts that a man will not cherish and cannot slay. They may never enter the programme of his life, but there they are, haunting him, waiting, so to speak, at the back of his brain, till he gets used to them. When he seeks to grapple with these enemies his hands close on emptiness. One straight blow, one decisive denial, one stern rebuke, one defiant confession of faith will not suffice for these things. They compass a man's heels. He cannot trample them down. The fashion of the evils that compass ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... obstacle." George Sand often lays her finger on sore places, fails, however, not only to prescribe the right remedy, but even to recognise the true cause of the disease. She makes now and then acute observations, but has not sufficient strength to grapple successfully with the great social, philosophical, and religious problems which she so boldly takes up. In fact, reasoning unreasonableness was a very frequent condition of George Sand's mind. That the unreasonableness of her reasoning remains unseen by many, did so at any rate ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... fight have I fought in my youth," he said, "and now once more will I, the guardian of my people, seek the combat. I would not bear any sword or other weapon against the dragon if I thought that I could grapple with him as I did with the monster Grendel. But I fear that I shall not be able to approach so close to this foe, for he will send forth hot, raging fire and venomous breath. Yet am I resolute in mood, fearless and resolved not to yield one ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... head. A stupor due to the food and the reaction from her nervous and physical exhaustion came over her. She felt too languid to grapple with the problem ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... every interest, the full grapple of every individual—national effort, in short—these the State demands. The coverlet has been thrown back upon the realization that the State has claims upon each citizen which transcend his individual fortunes—that individual prosperity, in fact, is entirely dependent upon ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... they have done little more than squat. But then the introduction of the right type of agricultural settlers, though it will not come about of itself, would not seem to be a task beyond the powers of statesmanship to grapple with. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of the ways for the lover and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... sweet body to one unworthy perhaps—it stung him with a pain as keen as it was unreasonable. It was terrible to be so made, that the past was ever as living as the present! But he must face the situation, he must grapple with his own weakness. Tender memories had lured him from his retreat and made him for a short time almost believe that he could live with them, happy a little while, in his own home again; but now it was these very memories that were rising like ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... cry the fight is done, They bid you send your sword." And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... ladies in distress. I will never again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou be'st indeed a fiend," replied the dying knight; "think not that I will blench from thee. By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me as I have done with mortal danger, Heaven or Hell should never say that I shrunk ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... exact knowledge of mankind that makes leaders; and his shrewdness was the result of caution and suspicion. But like all men of his breed, he hated with peculiar venom the well-born; he loved to grapple with them, to wrest their idleness from them, to compel them to work for a living, to humiliate them. The fiber in McQuade was coarse; he possessed neither generosity nor magnanimity; the very men who feared him held ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... perform it in. We must, as all men must, submit affairs to time, and not think of making time conform to our wishes; and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India,—to bring before your Lordships the direct articles, to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lordships' decision in that manner which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as "too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him;——men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action is languid;——who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many are ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and stood. But Satan smitten with amazement fell As when Earths Son Antaeus (to compare Small things with greatest) in Irassa strove With Joves Alcides and oft foil'd still rose, Receiving from his mother Earth new strength, Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it not, devour'd; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... son sitting silent and motionless by the side of his dead parent. Without rousing the violence of grief by any reference to the sight before him, Wallace briefly communicated his project. Lord Andrew started to his feet. "I will share all the peril with you! I shall again grapple with the foe that has thus bereaved me! This dark mantle," cried he, turning toward the breathless corpse, and throwing his plaid over it, "will shroud thy hallowed remains till I return. I go where thou wouldst direct me. Oh, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... accessible sources, and digested it with judgment and impartiality. Thus he has produced a worthy contribution to that great but yet unwritten work, so full of both tragic and epic elements, the Annals of Labor. What a noble book might be made by some competent writer who should grapple with the whole subject. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... how the mind responds to the need for making an effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once. I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to her what ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... from his official appointment, Professor Lachsyrma, being a married man, searched for some apartment remote from his home, where he might work undisturbed at labours long since become important pleasures. You cannot grapple with uncials, cursives, and the like in a domestic environment. The preparation of facsimiles, transcripts, and palaeographical observations, reports of excavations and catalogues, demands isolation and complete immunity from ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... wrong: let her not continue in error; and, at the same time, let England meet and grapple with the question with enlarged and liberal views—views that look to future times and future circumstances—views such as England ought to entertain, and such as Great Britain only can yet see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... destroyed the shape of Kettle's nose, and had disfigured an otherwise handsome and manly countenance. Hence his name. He was about thirty-five years of age, large-boned, broad-shouldered, and tall, but lean in flesh, and rather ungainly in his motions. Few men cared to grapple with the huge Irish slave, for he possessed a superabundant share of that fire and love of fight which are said to characterise his countrymen even at the present time. He was also gifted with a large share of their characteristic good humour and joviality; ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... chieftains, bravest warriors and the best, Leagued they came to grapple Arjun and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... humorously. He was a spare man of seventy, with thin, pointed, clean-shaven face, and clear blue eyes like Miss Winwood's. "If there's a situation, my dear Ursula, with which you can't grapple," said he, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... successfully executed, that twenty-nine men of Maynard's small number were either killed or wounded by the first broadside, and one of the sloops for a time disabled. But notwithstanding this severe loss, the lieutenant persevered in his resolution to grapple with his enemy, or perish in the attempt. Observing that his own sloop, which was still fit for action, drew more water than the pirate's, he ordered all her ballast to be thrown out, and, directing his men to conceal themselves between decks, took ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... has appeared to paralyze the native instincts of the American heart. This phantom, this siren of secession, with her enticing song, seems to have lulled to sleep the better part of human nature. At the sound of her voice, and the flash of her eye, men have sprung to arms, to grapple with the life of the nation, because it was free! They have followed, at the beck of the siren, over desolated homes; they have trampled over the dead corpses of murdered brothers, and innocent women and children. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... all sure I shall ever try it again while I am so busy with other work as I am now. Often by the time I get to five o'clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a stewed owl, after an eight hours' grapple with Senators, Congressmen, etc.; then I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well mottled with ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... be done therefore was to grapple with the immediate emergencies, and await the arrival of the necessary troops to carry on the war on an altogether larger scale. Natal was the most acute situation. But there were others scarcely ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... problem thus speculatively attempted, Herschel undertook to grapple with experimentally. The upshot of this memorable inquiry was the inclusion, for the first time, within the sphere of human knowledge, of a connected body of facts, and inferences from facts, regarding the sidereal universe; in other words, the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to see the heavy spear flying toward them and then, as he dashed into their midst, Billy Byrne drew his revolver and fired to right and left. The two prisoners took advantage of the consternation of their guards to grapple with them and possess themselves ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him all the bravest of the enemy, He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his ship: he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard: he sunk three fireships, which endeavored to grapple with him: and though his vessel was torn in pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained, near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fireship, more fortunate than ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... at the helm, and keep the wherry alongside, while the rest of us jump aboard," said Hanks. "Stretcher, you must knock down the fellow at the helm; I'll grapple with the ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... chickens that scarce had learned to crow, And veteran roosters of long ago; There was one old turkey, huge and fierce, That was hatched in the days of President Pierce; Of which, at last, with an ominous groan, The parson essayed to swallow a bone; And it took three sinners, plucky and stout, To grapple the evil and bring it out. And still the dinner went merrily on, And James and Lucy and Hannah and John Kept winking their eyes and smacking their lips, And passing the eatables into eclipse. And that was the way The grand array Of victuals vanished on that day, That gave us— ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... for several years, and was, because of it, to some extent acquainted with the grim realities of life. She did not know that while there are certainly hard men in Canada, the small farmers and ranchers of the West—and, perhaps above all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant trees in the forests of the Pacific slope—are, as a rule, distinguished by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is very seldom turned away. Still, watching her companion covertly, she understood ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. As the bees in swarming cling to one another in layers till the few are reached whose feet grapple the bough from which the swarm depends; so with the objects of our thinking,—they hang to each other by associated links, but the original source of interest in all of them is the native interest which the earliest one ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... but as the test of a true theory is, that it accounts for, or at the very least is not inconsistent with, the whole of the phenomena and apparent anomalies of the problem to be solved, it is reasonable to ask that those who deny the origin of species by variation and selection should grapple with the facts in detail, and show how the doctrine of the distinct origin and permanence of species will explain and harmonize them. It has been recently asserted by Dr. J. E. Gray (in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to deal with her perplexities deepened his realization of the ignorance and superficiality he had so long masked even from himself beneath the tricks and pretensions of a gay scepticism. He went away fully resolved to grapple with the entire Hostel question, and he put the patched and tortured manuscript of the new novel aside with a ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... think you have mentioned Dr. Vaughan. I read his books with much interest. He doesn't belong to the Keble theology; but he seems to me to be a thoughtful, useful, and eminently practical writer. He seems to know what men are thinking of, and to grapple with their difficulties. I am pleased with a little book, by Canon Norris, "Key to the New Testament": the work of a man who has read a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... golden age of the religious orders; that the Hildebrandine policy took shape when the Cluniac movement was overflowing the borders of France into all the adjacent countries; that Alexander III was a younger contemporary of St. Bernard, and that the death-grapple between Empire and Papacy followed hard upon the foundation of the mendicant fraternities by St. Francis and St. Dominic. The monks and the friars were the militia of the Church. Not that the medieval orders devoted themselves to a political ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... to pursue farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery forever ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it along, but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with, that she didn't see her way clear to promise to do anything. She said the girls had got to have some new velvet suits, and some sealskin sacques this winter, and they had got to new furnish the parlors, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know what it was—it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did. Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records—" and there was more of it—the old story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from the general ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... if nothing happened, he would be gone, and she would be left behind to grapple alone with Roger—who might at any moment torment her again; with the presence of Dempsey, who was thinking of settling in the village, and for whom she would be called upon very soon to fulfil the hopes she had raised in him; and finally, with the struggle ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at Barcelona and Cadiz. The great mass of the American people would welcome a controversy with any country, with or without good cause. "The glory of the young man is in his strength," and Uncle Sam is young and strong. He longs to grapple with his contemporaries, to demonstrate his physical superiority. He has a cypress shingle on either shoulder and is trailing his star-spangled cutaway down the plank turnpike. While a few mugwumps, like Josef Phewlitzer and Apollyon Halicarnassus ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I don't think there are many men in the force who could hold their own with you, in a grapple. ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... people carried on a discussion thus, what agreement was possible between them? Yet where, upon the Christian side, was the attempt to grapple with the real difficulties now felt by unbelievers? Simply nowhere. All that had been done hitherto was antiquated. Modern Christianity seemed to shrink from grappling with modern Rationalism, and displayed a timidity which could not be accounted for ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... lapped her blood; she who banished and slew the man she would not stoop to love, because he dared to love another; and when death stared her in the face, and open-eyed judgment shook her soul, rose from that death-pallet to grapple and abuse a false woman, penitent for and confessing her falseness; a virgin-monarch, pitiless, relentless, cruel as jealousy; an anomalous woman, were she not a stone-born child ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... on the road; it was she who had killed and half-eaten their driver; it was she—but he could think no more, it was all too horrible, and the revulsion of his feelings towards her clogged his brain. He longed to grapple with her, strangle her, and he could do nothing. The bare touch of those fingers—those cool, white, tapering fingers, with their long, shining filbert nails, all ready and eager to tear and rend his flesh to pieces—had taken all the life from his limbs, and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... in short cut off the gorgon's head at the first struggle. They might term it unnatural, overdone, but at least it would not be to do again; and Harry Jardine's was the temper, that, if you presented an obstacle to it, it itched the more to grapple with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... mutiny, desertion, could not shake his resolution. After more than a year he discovered the strait which now bears his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian, who was with him, relates, he shed fears of joy when he found that it had pleased God at length to bring him where he might grapple with the unknown dangers of the South Sea, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... smooth-flowing iambics broken by the leap of the dactyl, and the difficult double rhyme, sustains the mood of victorious but not lightly won serenity of soul—"too full for sound and foam." It is, among songs over the dead, what Rabbi ben Ezra and Prospice are among the songs which face and grapple with death; the fittest requiem to follow such deaths as those. Like Ben Ezra, the Grammarian "trusts death," and stakes his life ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... that all conventional morality must be reviewed from the standpoint of how conduct affects the actor himself, and what effect it has on his individual growth. The province of art and of all thinking and working is to make these truths clear and to grapple with the problems they ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman |
