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Grope   /groʊp/   Listen
Grope

verb
(past & past part. groped; pres. part. groping)
1.
Feel about uncertainly or blindly.  Synonym: fumble.
2.
Search blindly or uncertainly.
3.
Fondle for sexual pleasure.



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"Grope" Quotes from Famous Books



... tools were kept he remained much longer than he had intended. At first there was scarcely any light at all up here, and, having stupidly forgotten to bring a box of matches, he had to grope about fumblingly; but gradually the light improved. He found a saw, and, attaching it to a light cord, slung it round his neck in the approved woodman fashion. The saw would be carried merely for the sake of appearances. Then he hunted for ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his slippers; and he was in ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... upon him brak And hath him be the bridel sesed, And seide: "O thou, which hast desesed 3010 The Court of France be thi wrong, Now schalt thou singe an other song: Thin enterdit and thi sentence Ayein thin oghne conscience Hierafter thou schalt fiele and grope. We pleigne noght ayein the Pope, For thilke name is honourable, Bot thou, which hast be deceivable And tricherous in al thi werk, Thou Bonefas, thou proude clerk, 3020 Misledere of the Papacie, Thi false bodi schal ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... required for the present session? No, they cannot, and here we are going on in the old way, voting money in the dark, with a thing for our guide called an 'estimate'—a sort of dark lantern with which we are to grope our way through the mazes of legislation. Where is the honourable member for Gloucester who talked so much about the good old rules of our forefathers? I am opposed to the present principle of voting away money; it is, in fact, but giving ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing; you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... as a clap of thunder sent her plunging in headlong. "Why, where—" for grope as she might, clear up to the end, among the clothes and the shoe-bag, no Miss ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... at Boston, waiting aid from England that never came, was not propitious to Phips; nor were the wind and the waves. The voyage to the St. Lawrence was a long one; and when he began, without a pilot, to grope his way up the unknown river, the weather seemed in league with his enemies. He appears, moreover, to have wasted time. What was most vital to his success was rapidity of movement; yet, whether by his fault or his misfortune, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... but Latin. A fewe termes knew he, two or three, That he had learned out of some decree; No wonder is, he heard it all the day. And eke ye knowen well, how that a jay Can clepen* "Wat," as well as can the Pope. *call But whoso would in other thing him grope*, *search Then had he spent all his philosophy, Aye, Questio ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Island of Dominica for Martinique at midnight of Wednesday, and reached St. Pierre about 7 o'clock Thursday morning. The greatest difficulty was experienced in getting into port, the air being thick with falling ashes and the darkness intense. The ship had to grope its way to the anchorage. Appalling sounds were issuing from the mountain behind the town, which was shrouded in darkness. The ashes were falling thickly on the steamer's deck, where the passengers and others were gazing ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... the glimmering window, feeling very humble. She felt that she had let him down, somehow, in not being more wise. And yet she knew very certainly that she was going to grope and grope now, hurting herself and him until she ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... was now where there was an abundance of material with which a raft could be constructed that would obviate this exposure, but the building of such a rude craft, under the circumstances, was next to impossible. He had no implement except his pocket knife, and might grope about in the darkness for hours without getting together enough timber to float them ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... this prolonged arrest, which I insist on prolonging a little further, is doubtless in my instinct to grope for our earliest aesthetic seeds. Careless at once and generous the hands by which they were sown, but practically appointed none the less to cause that peculiarly flurried hare to run—flurried because over ground so little native to it—when so many others held back. Is it that air ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... James. "Neither of you—nor Martha—have any idea of how stultifying it can be to be forced into school under the supervision of teachers who cannot understand, and among classmates whose grasp of any subject is no stronger than a feeble grope in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... frosty air. Eleven o'clock. Father and mother sit silent by the fire. The tree in the corner of the room flashes its tinselry in the dying light. A cinder tinkles on the hearth. Their thoughts are one. "He would be nine years old, if he had lived," murmurs the mother. Their hands grope for each other, meet and clasp. Something aches in their throats. The red coals swell and blur ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... up in bed and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... two, I am suddenly aware Of the angels in the air. All your softly gracious ways Make an island in my days Where my thoughts fly back to be Sheltered from too strong a sea. All your luminous delight Shines before me in the night When I grope for sleep and find Only ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... sounded, at one moment, like a shivering of her whole body; at another, like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out—he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall; then the lessening gasps of her affrighted ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... itself (Alexias, l. iii. p. 93, 94, 95) well deserves to be read. There is one expression which Ducange does not understand. I have endeavored to grope out a tolerable meaning: The first word is a golden crown; the second is explained by Simon Portius, (in Lexico Graeco-Barbar.,) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... dropped the electric light, which promptly went out as the spring was released, and the hold was in darkness. Jack dared not move for fear of the hatchet, and all he could hear was the loud breathing of the terrified Monkey, who carefully began to grope for the lost lamp. The search was vain, and Jack was slowly backing away from the vicinity toward the ladder, intending to bar Monkey's egress when he heard a movement that seemed to indicate that Monkey was climbing ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,—ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... rebuke of a small-minded modernity, that it is very short-sighted to be indifferent to all that is historic. But it is as disastrously long-sighted to be interested only in what is prehistoric. And this disaster has befallen a large proportion of the learned who grope in the darkness of unrecorded epochs for the roots of their favourite race or races. The wars, the enslavements, the primitive marriage customs, the colossal migrations and massacres upon which ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... his walk and pressed his clenched fingers against his lips. She had always believed in him. Through all the hell in which the Fates had cast his destiny, she had been one star towards which he could grope. But now—a drunkard—a renegade soldier of a renegade battalion—to be shot. He had killed her trust! The horrors of the night closed on him like ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... written; And you, poor woman that I made my wife, You have had more of loneliness, I fear, Than I — though I have been the most alone, Even when the most attended. So it was God set the mark of his inscrutable Necessity on one that was to grope, And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad For what was his, and is, and is to be, When his old bones, that are a burden now, Are saying what the man who carried them Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave, Cover ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... succour to the Muse, And, to no rules and orders tied, Roughly deny to be her guide, 830 She must renounce Decorum's plan, And get back when, and how she can; As parsons, who, without pretext, As soon as mention'd, quit their text, And, to promote sleep's genial power, Grope in the dark for half an hour, Give no more reason (for we know Reason is vulgar, mean, and low) Why they come back (should it befall That ever they come back at all) 840 Into the road, to end their rout, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... and empty when Ritter and his following entered. They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man that led them to seats in the parquet. Gradually, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they could distinguish the vast windowless cave, with its rows of seats, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect. Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the pressure was released. With a growing horror of I know not what, I set to work at the second screw, trying to be noiseless, but with hands shaking with excitement. The screw fell out into my palm. In my haste I dropped my knife, and had to grope for it on the floor. It was then that a woman screamed—a low, sobbing cry, broken off almost before it began. I had got my knife by that time, and in desperation I threw myself against the door. It gave ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no care, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand What barbarous invader sack'd the land? But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... meekness is possible; believe that a life of stainless purity is possible; believe that a life of perfect holiness is possible; believe that the realization of the highest truth is possible. He who so believes, climbs rapidly the heavenly hills, whilst the unbelievers continue to grope darkly and painfully in the ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... crown of one's hat; and about that fly, whose leading peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted. We know, too, how instantaneously the lights of the station disappear when the train starts, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which will be an excellent house when the customers come, but which at present has nothing to offer but a liberal allowance of damp ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... ghosts, according to the old sense of the word, and I could grope with comfort through any amount of dark old rooms, or midnight aisles, or over churchyards, between sunset and cock-crow. I can face a spectre. Being at one time troubled with illusions, I have myself crushed a hobgoblin by sitting on its lap. Nevertheless, I do believe that the great mass of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... instincts of conscience. Formerly, if I believed that such or such an action was according to the will of God, I went and did it, or at least I tried to do it, without thinking of consequences. Now, I reason and weigh what will happen if I do so and so—I grope where formerly I saw. Oh, Faith! it is such a relief to me to have the truth known, that I am afraid I have not ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... her hand commenced to grope. It stole into his own and lay there quietly. "Because I couldn't bear to see you hurt. You're so good. In some ways you're so strong; in others you're just as tiny as my Eric. I felt you needed me ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... not hopeless. I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it. We will now leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative. You can imagine that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper into the matter. There were indications as to the direction from which the dead traveler had come. Indian legends would alone ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... substituting faith for science, reverie for experience, the fantastic for the reality; and the inquisitors who for so many ages waged against Magism a war of extermination, have succeeded in shrouding in darkness the ancient discoveries of the human mind; so that we now grope in the dark to find again the key of the phenomena of nature. But all natural phenomena depend on a single and immutable law, represented by the philosophal stone and its symbolic form, which is that of a cube. This law, expressed in the Kabala by the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... are tears? The babe weeps in its cot, The mother singing; at her marriage bell The bride weeps; and before the oracle Of high-faned hills, the poet has forgot Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place, And touch but tombs,—look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... had no more fault to find. She knew that at no modern hotel would he have been treated so considerately and given the liberty of the house. Since he was not banished to the courtyard or turned over to a porter's care, she was willing to climb a dozen spiral stairways, or grope her way through the semi-darkness of a candle-lighted bedroom every night while they were in France, for the sake of having Hero free to come and go ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... be lonely without any one belonging to you," said Lois, trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. "Wouldn't you be happier ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... foot of the wooden stairs she tied her boat, and offered to relight the pine knot, but he would not have it and made her grope up the ascent ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... to hold her hands on such occasion, has to grope his way to her in the dark. Having reached her, she seizes his hands, and passes one of them down her neck and along her ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the kitchen. It was dangerous to grope about in the dark, for some article of furniture might be overturned, and that would probably create an alarm which would be fatal to their plans. The first thing, therefore, was to ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... rock to another, until he reached the depths of the basin. There he paused a moment, looking up, as if to ascertain his bearings. An instant later, he had disappeared under the Fall itself. Grasping the casket more tightly under his right arm, he used his left to grope his way along the cold, wet wall of granite. The rocks underneath his feet, some round, some angular, some flat, were slippery with the ooze of the earth fissures above and the refluent foam of the cascade. Beside these dangers, there was the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... never forget our first exploration. We found nothing down there then but a rough bunk, an old lanthorn, and the leathern scabbard of a sword. But since then Eric has been compelled to hide there twice to escape capture, and we have made the room below more comfortable. You will be obliged to grope your way down the stairs, but at the bottom will discover flint and steel, and a lantern with ample supply of candles. Peter will bring you food, if you need remain ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... this blazing September sun looks dull to me this morning. I have come from such a riotous dream. All last night I walked in a realm of such golden splendor, that I think even in our fullest noon I shall only see enough light to grope by for days ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... in the window and I will train myself to come here at night and sit in the presence of this woman without raising my eyes. I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my way out of darkness ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... veil of smiles. Illusion is the first appearance of Truth. She advances towards her lover in disguise. But a time comes when she throws off her ornaments and veils and stands clothed in naked dignity. I grope for that ultimate you, ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore

... God," exclaimed the laborer; "if we can grope about and find a little dead wood, we shall be able to dry ourselves and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... and some of the dry moss he had put there were lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... appearance, untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Roman times to enrich architecture with a complete and well-ordinated system, which dominated wherever the Latin Church extended its influence."[78] So then, even if the early records of old Craft-masonry in England are confused, and often confusing, we are not left to grope our way from one dim tradition to another, having the history and monuments of this great order which spans the whole period, and links the fraternity of Free-masons with one of the noblest chapters in the annals ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... make more history in Secessia than here. Jeff. Davis overshadows Lincoln. Jeff. Davis and his gang of malefactors are pushed into the whirlpool of action by the nature of their crime; here, our leaders dread action, and grope. The rebels have a clear, decisive, almost palpable aim; but ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... some day she will reach me in spite of my little faith. People who resort to mediums and the automatic writing craze are beyond me: though the temptation I understand. You may remember a sentence of Maeterlinck——' We have to grope timidly and make sure of every footstep, as we cross the threshold. And even when the threshold is crossed, where shall certainty be found——? One cannot speak of these things—the solitude is too great.' That is my own feeling ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... thing either could not or would not move. It was clear that I must leave it, and though hating to do so, I walked a few paces down the narrow path. The fall had shaken me considerably. My head ached, and I had much ado to grope my way along. Three several times in the course of a short distance I stumbled, and the third time fell heavily to the ground, twisting my left foot underneath me. I tried to rise, but could not. Now, what should I do? I dared not call for help, lest the Spaniards should hear me. For two hours I ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... my Chateau, cousin, to locate it on the road to Hell. But we will let it pass. For, between us, it is a good road and an easy; and they, who travel it, are a finer lot than the superstitious dreamers who grope, in darkness, along the bleak and stony path they fancy leads upward to ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... The story has been brought to light by chance, and has been rendered intelligible by close study and interpretation of fragmentary and widely separated facts, capable of being read only by one conversant with the text of human affairs, and who has the patience to grope through the trackless intervals of time, and the skill to supply the lost words and syllables of history by careful collation with those which are spared. How faithfully this accidentally found MS. typifies such a labor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... scarce reached it, however, ere they found that the wooden joists and planks of the flooring were already on fire. Dry and worm-eaten, a spark upon them became a smoulder, and a smoulder a blaze. A choking smoke filled the air, and the five could scarce grope their way to the staircase which led up to the very summit of the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in the night, or suddenly seized for death in those pale hours when the day hovers, half-born, over the slumbering earth, Fra Pacifico must rise and wake his acolyte, the baker's boy, who, going late to bed, was hard to rouse. Along with him he must grope up and down slippery steps, and along dark alleys, bearing the Host under a red umbrella, until he had placed it within the dying lips. If a baby was weakly, or born before its time, and, having given one look at this sorrowful world, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... endured and what they had escaped—all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his bare feet until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. I don't care to see anything like that again—even if it is my ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... darkness, we grope for Somewhat far off, yet to hope for, That through some future repentance, Justice may ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... being "searched"—clang of iron cell door, and I grope for and crawl on to the slanting plank. Period of oblivion—or the soul is away in some other world. Clang of cell door again, and soul returns in a hurry to take heed of another soul, belonging to a belated drunk on the plank by ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... bodyguard, while inside there flitted to and fro a cloud of familiars, who have been compared by the enemies of the great Committee to the mutes of the court of the Grand Turk. Any one who had business with this awful body had to grope his way along gloomy corridors, that were dimly lighted by a single lamp at either end. The room in which the Committee sat round a table of green cloth was incongruously gay with the clocks, the bronzes, the mirrors, the tapestries, of the ruined court. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... or evil, Rome is profoundly stirred. The pale monk, in all his filth and poverty, is the master of the best hearts in the capital. Every one in whom aspiration is still alive, who longs for some new light, and all who vaguely grope after a higher life, hear his voice and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... first time I had heard the roar of the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and knees, and pick up whatever we ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice - he knows it well - but comforted by his assurance that ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... in the midst of our highly developed and complex civilisation of to-day. The thought of early man on the problems of his being—for after all his superstitions reveal thought—deserve respect, for in his efforts to think he was trying to grope towards ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... kind Grave Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, In that black bridewell working out his term, Hanker and grope and crave? ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... forbid! Then how was I, a man, to interpret the world to women? Truly, I had been an owl of the night, and blind to the honest light of truth when I yielded to the counsel of ambition, that I had no time for courtship and marriage. In my stupid haste I would try to grope my way through subjects beyond a man's ken, rather than seek some such guide as yonder maiden, whose intuitions would be unerring when the light of reason failed. In theory, I held the doctrine that there was sex ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk, touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little one's head, and would call to him: "Do ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one bound,—never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do. What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint. He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... to-day, that he is still quite a good walker, but that a blind man finds it very troublesome to go anywhere; for at every step he is obliged to grope about, so that he may feel sure of his ground before he firmly plants his foot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... with yearning hands that longing grope And straining eyes that search to pierce the doom, I creep the path-ways of my only Hope, And seek the Loved One passed ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... of more "civilized" countries are at least as horrifying to the "savage" as his can be to us. Nevertheless, it is true to say that as civilization advances, and especially where the position of women improves, the movement has been towards a more stable and exclusive form of marriage. We grope uncertainly towards it: we fail atrociously. Yet we do not abandon an ideal which asks so much of human nature that human nature is continually invoked ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... Those highly magnify Him whose judicious inquiry into His acts, and a deliberate research into His creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause and some positive end both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope after in the works of Nature; on this hangs ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... of the world are launched each year these myriads of tiny ships. Under a sky of cloud and stars they grope out to the great waters and the great winds—little sloops of life, on whose voyaging the future hangs. They go forth blind, feeling their way. Mothers, and you who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their chance, bless them with a gem—light their ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... shall believe you false—not dead; "False, false!—And I? O, she shall find me true— "True as a fabl'd devil to the soul "He longs for with the heat of all hell's fires. "These myths serve well for simile, I see. "And yet—Down, Pity! knock not at my breast, "Nor grope about for that dull stone my heart; "I'll stone thee with it, Pity! Get thee hence, "Pity, I'll strangle thee with naked hands; "For thou dost bear upon thy downy breast "Remorse, shap'd like a serpent, and her fangs "Might dart at me and pierce my marrow thro'. "Hence, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... his greatcoat, with much care, three or four matches. By lighting, first one and then the others, he was able to grope around until he found the hearth of the cabin. Cold ashes marked the remains of a fire long since extinguished. His foot struck against something which proved to be a small piece of dry pine-wood. With the flame from his last match Watson succeeded in lighting this remnant ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... ascended to the Staked Plain, and are now nearly across it. Guided by the traitor, they had no need to grope their way, and have made quick time. In a few hours more they will pounce upon the prey for which they have swooped ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... the shifting strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators came ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... went into the water, feeling very carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little Boy ran on as hard as he could, to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... where to grope for it, and I felt it almost the first thing," he said. "Please forgive ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... when he landed, and the moon having gone behind a bank of cloud, he had to grope his way to Mrs. Prettyman's cottage, shouldering the axe. The isolated position of the house alone made the adventure possible, he reflected; he could not have cut down a tree in the hearing of neighbours, and as to old Elizabeth herself, he hoped she was deaf. Most old women ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of dawn's aerial cope, With eyes enkindled as the sun's own sphere, Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, And makes for joy the very darkness dear That gives her wide wings play; nor dreams that fear At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope. Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the discarded rags of a Fogarty twin, it would have taken keen eyes indeed to recognize in the little outcast the radiant "Guardian Angel" who had flashed upon Glory's amazed sight that day in Elbow Lane; yet something about it there was which made the near-sighted colonel grope hastily for his eyeglasses and in his haste overlook them, so that he muttered angrily at ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... temporarily quiescent, smoking a woodbine, heaves a resigned sigh, extinguishes the woodbine and places it behind his ear; hitches his repairing-wallet nonchalantly over his shoulder, and departs into the night—there to grope in several inches of mud for the two broken ends of the wire, which may be lying fifty yards apart. Having found them, he proceeds to effect a junction, his progress being impeded from time to time by further bursts of shrapnel. This done, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready to serve his punch, or pass to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the pieces of mechanism: brass gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and springs, ship-glasses, compasses, the manifold parts of little things by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a human watch and the crystal shell of the embossed heaven. Chronometers were with Minuit attractive and yet awe-giving subjects. The legend of his childhood, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... at what she found there. Vic, sleeping on the couch behind a screen in the living room, yawned himself awake and proceeded reluctantly to set his feet upon the floor and grope, sleepy-eyed, for his clothes, absolutely unconscious that in the night sometime Peter had passed a certain mountain of difficulty and had reached out unafraid and pulled wide open the door ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... grope t' anticipate The cabinet designs of Fate; Apply to wizards to foresee What shall and what shall never be. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... de Venelle was so used to her trade of watching us, that she rose even in her sleep to see what we were doing. One night, as my sister lay asleep with her mouth open, Madame de Venelle, after her accustomed manner, coming, asleep as she was, to grope in the dark, happened to thrust her finger into her mouth so far that my sister, starting out of her sleep, made her teeth almost meet in her finger. Judge you the amazement they both were in to find themselves in ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... great head under water till only his antler tips showed, and nose around on the bottom till he found a lily root. With a heave and a jerk he would drag it out, and stand chewing it endwise with huge satisfaction, while the muddy water trickled down over his face. When it was all eaten he would grope under the lily pads for another root ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... poet is intelligible and lucid, we ought not to grope and grub about his work in search of obscurities and oddities, but should, in the first instance at all events, attempt to regard his whole scope and range; to form some estimate, if we can, of his general purport and effect, asking ourselves, for this purpose, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... away, pulling down her veil, and he saw her grope blindly for the fastening of the door. It shut gently behind her, and he was alone. He sat down by the table with its litter of books and newspapers, and stared dully round the room which her passing had left more hopeless and ugly ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... in his pocket-book of the man's number. Having added to it the name of the street, and the names on the two brass plates, he quietly opened the cab door. "We are quite in the dark, thus far," he said. "Suppose we grope our way back to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... I should miss her so much! Indeed, we all missed her: it seemed to me now that I had undervalued her. True, she had not been a congenial companion to me in my dark days; but even then I had wronged her. Why should I have expected her to grope among the shadows with me, instead of following her into the sunshine? Sara could not act contrary to her nature. Sad things depressed her. She wanted to cause ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... stream below the slope, Where the women wash their webs at noon, A form like a shadow seems to grope, Doubtful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... whether they may be called successive polygamies; with several other inquiries which often add scruples to scruples with men of a reasoning spirit. In order therefore that those who are curious in such researches, and who only grope in the shade respecting these marriages, may see some light, I have conceived it would be worth while to present for their consideration the following articles on the subject: I. After the death of a married partner, again to contract ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... to the effort required to assimilate the essential truth. They very nearly failed to assimilate the Copernican cosmogony. For sixteen hundred years after it was first offered to mankind the race preferred to grope in the darkness and confinement of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... pinioned by Sow Nance; but, by a desperate effort, the old man succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the place was ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... Science has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all depend ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... by conviction and glowing with a fervent faith, thoroughly knows what he is about. Strong in his faith, and by his faith, he clearly sees his way, and steadily walks in it, while others grope hither and thither amidst shadows and darkness and bewildering doubts! Such a man boldly takes the initiative, marches onward, and is as a beacon-light to a nation, to a people; often, sometimes, even for all humanity. A man who has a profound ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... the year is getting late, And autumn has no pity for the slain. Twining like serpents, the lean arms of fate Grope toward you through the blackness and the rain, Then Death, and the obliterating snow.... A vase, red-wrought in ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... said Agricola; "my verses! in which I only praise the love of labor and of goodness! To arrest me for that! If so, justice would be but a blind noodle. That she might grope her way, it would be necessary to furnish her with a dog and a pilgrim's ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... general principles, child; that your father and cousin have been parties concerned, instead of vigilant sentinels; and, with all their pretended care, that you have been left to grope your way in the darkness of female uncertainty, with one of the most pleasing young men in the country constantly before you, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... His power, He lays hold not on angels, but He lays hold on the seed of Abraham. By our lowly trust, by the forth- putting of our desires, we stretch 'lame hands of faith,' and, blessed be God! we do not 'grope,' but we grasp His strong hand and are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... But whatsoever paths we find, The ties of fellowship shall bind Our constant souls; and soon or late— We laboring still in harmony— The grand results for which we wait Shall crown the mighty years to be! Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset, We grope in twilight darkness yet, We who would found the age of gold, Based on the universal good, And forge the links that yet shall hold The ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... (experiment) 463. V. try, essay; experiment &c. 463; endeavor, strive; tempt, attempt, make an attempt; venture, adventure, speculate, take one's chance, tempt fortune; try one's fortune, try one's luck, try one's hand; use one's endeavor; feel one's way, grope one's way, pick one's way. try hard, push, make a bold push, use one's best endeavor; do one's best &c. (exertion) 686. Adj. essaying &c. v.; experimental &c. 463; tentative, empirical, probationary. Adv. experimentally &c. Adj.; on trial, at a venture; by rule ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... dinner," thought Jack with a chuckle, as he also dipped his hand to grope for the finny delicacies. He had less than a minute to wait when something cold and smooth touched his fingers. He made a desperate clutch, sinking his arm to his elbow, but the fish was too quick, and darted beyond his reach, just as Ogallah landed ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... see far enough through the blurring snow to judge in which general direction the least dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I caught of mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from encouraging either as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen ...
— Stickeen • John Muir

... These questions are more or less frequently asked in our day, and asked in reference to that general spirit of reform and progress of society which seems to characterize our age, and in relation to which, just in proportion as men forget to listen to the Word of God, they grope about in the darkness of ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes. Before we set ourselves to right the house, The first thing in the morning, ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... interesting that from trying to learn from the child in the library we listen to the mother in the home, and often to the father from the factory; and from these gleanings of their life in the home and their habits of thought we try to understand the nature of the strange child and grope about for what he most needs and how to make the greatest appeal ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... standing out in the yard and saw a giant coming across the hraun. He walked with long, unsteady strides (she takes a few steps forward; her voice sounds distant and threatening), and seemed to grope as if he were blind. Then I saw him standing right by the house— with arms stretched out; he bent down over the farm and stood there like a stone cross. (Makes the sign of the cross ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson

... congruous with each other; and lastly comes opinion, which does not deal at all with things, but only with thoughts about things. By faith we see God; by knowledge we become conscious that we see God; by belief we arrange in order what we see; and by opinion we feel and grope among our thoughts, seeking what we may find of his works and ways. Every act of faith brings us into the presence of God himself, and makes us partakers of the divine nature. Thus faith is strictly ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... Afghan defenders, who had recovered from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing. But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was neither time nor space for methodic ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... of these manifold miracles which the Saviour wrought may be taken as parabolical. You and I grope in darkness as the blind. You and I have ears deaf to hear, and lips dumb to speak, the praises and the love and the word of God. We are lame in the powers of mind and spirit to run in the way of His commandments, and to walk unfainting in the paths of duty. The fever ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... refuge, then, behind duty that is obscure, difficult, contradictory. And these are certainly words to call up painful memories. To be a man of duty and to question one's route, grope in the dark, feel one's self torn between the contrary solicitations of conflicting calls, or again, to face a duty gigantic, overwhelming, beyond our strength—what is harder! And such things happen. We would neither deny nor contest the tragedy in certain situations or the anguish ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... to resort to his own good providence or his arbitrary will. How grand the description of this magnificent universe written by the Omnipotent hand! Of man it should set forth his relations to other living beings, his place among them, his privileges, and responsibilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last; but it should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the physical science, physical power, and physical well-being of our own times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit things that we are still ignorant ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... in those dirty little souls,—no, those clean little souls, overlaid with all outward mire and filth of body, clothing, speech, and atmosphere, for a mile about; through which they could no more grope and penetrate, to reach their own that was hidden from them in the clearer life beyond, than we can grope ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... have left their icy caves To growl and grope for prey Upon the murky sea; The lonely sea-gull skims the sullen waves All ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard

... to be a torch for feet that grope Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze, And kindle altar fires of sacrifice. Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal For high endeavors, causes true ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... to the words of the daily papers, were such creatures. Perhaps we should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel revived with the sun a little warmer on our backs, and snuff up a pleasant smell which we remembered; begin to whistle, and grope for ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... Barbara's clear child-faith; Barbara, to whom God was as real and certain as I; never shall I attain to the steady confidence of Roger. I can but grope dimly with outstretched hands; sometimes in the outer blackness of a moonless, starless night; sometimes, with strained eyes catching a glimpse of a glimmer in the east. I can but feel after God, as a plant in a dark place feels after ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... easy to be known," says Grettir; "hast thou not heard that I have ever been a treasure-hill that most men grope ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, that are a burden to age and experience even when lightened by the helping hand of a common sympathy, I ceased before long to struggle against these abstract foes that made a mockery of my childish ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however, with much composure. I am generally glad enough to fall back again, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... separations took place, language of course cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines. On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the cloud; but, though Walter steered well, the downward way was exceedingly rough and broken, and we had wandered from the path. I retain a faint but painful recollection of a scraggy moor, and of dark patches of planting, through which I had to grope onwards, stumbling as I went; and then, that I began to feel as if I were merely dreaming, and that the dream was a very horrible one, from which I could not awaken. And finally, on reaching a little cleared spot on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... and so it will go on ever growing and growing with your disgrace, that ye will never get rid of it until ye bring yourselves into a strait, and have to fight your way out with weapons; but in that there is a long and weary night in which ye will have to grope ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy was in its infancy, and aerial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... forced it on him, partly. Sitting now in his room, where he was counting the cost of becoming a merchant prince, he could look back to the time of a boyhood passed in the depths of ignorance and vice. He knew what this Self within him was; he knew how it had forced him to grope his way up, to give this hungry, insatiate soul air and freedom and knowledge. All men around him were doing the same,—thrusting and jostling and struggling, up, up. It was the American motto, Go ahead; mothers taught it to their children; the whole system was a scale of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... far greater than the resemblances between them. Giant force was in both of them; both were enigmas; but the deeper we penetrate into Borrow, the more we like him; not so with the blue-eyed Dean. Borrow's depths are dark and tortuous, but never miasmic; and as we grope our way through them, we may stumble upon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... the window. 'Oh heavens,' said the fair frighted trembler, 'here is the Count of Clarinau.' For he always came up that way, and those stairs by which I ascended were the back-stairs; so that I had just time to grope my way towards the door, without so much as taking my clothes with me; never was any amorous adventurer in so lamentable a condition, I would fain have turned upon him, and at once have hindered him ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... when Baxter, having disassociated himself from the contents of the table he had upset, began to grope his way toward the electric-light switch, the same being situated near the foot of the main staircase. He went on all fours, as a safer method of locomotion, though slower, than the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... evening, and Falkenberg was still tuning, I took a bit of something to eat in my pocket and went off for a walk, to be out of the way so they should not ask me in to supper. There was a moon, and the stars were out, but I liked best to grope my way into the dense part of the wood and sit down in the dark. It was more sheltered there, too. How quiet the earth and air seemed now! The cold is beginning, there is rime on the ground; now and again a stalk of grass creaks faintly, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... I saw an immense black mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front of the Austrian camp. This ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... may know how to instruct and direct those (if such we should meet with) who are being afflicted and tormented by such thoughts of the devil to tempt God, when he entices them to search the devious ways of God outside of revelation, and to grope about trying to fathom what God plans for them—whereby they are led into such doubt and despair that they know not how they will survive. Such people must be reminded of these words [Rom. 11], and be rebuked with ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente



Words linked to "Grope" :   fondle, assay, try, caress, search, seek, look for, touching, attempt, essay, touch



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