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More "Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1783, with our recognition of your right and power to be a free and independent people. Of those who fought against you I say nought. But I must speak of those who fought for you—who brought to naught, by sheer hard blows, that family compact of the House of Bourbon, which would have been as dangerous to you upon this side of the ocean as to us upon the other; who smote with a continual stroke the trans-Atlantic power of Spain, till they placed her once vast and rich possessions at your mercy to this ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... Here also there has been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness of the human debacle. The only aspect of the powers above them has seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... sportsman," his mother observed. "I wish you could convert your friend, Mr. Furley. There's a perfectly terrible article of his in the National this month. I can't understand a word of it, but it reads like sheer anarchy." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile. Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless—as his uncle had proved—for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right! He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage—there was no luck in it—he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... she excused herself. She rested her cheek on the child's head and looked over at the doctor. She wore a dark crimson silk, the bosom filled with sheer white muslin that was caught together under her soft chin by a little pearl pin; her lace undersleeves were pushed back so that William could see the lovely lines of her white wrists. Her parted hair fell in soft, untidy waves down over her ears; she was staring absently across David's head into ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... head with a look of apprehension). The devil is a sly rogue. Their worships might perhaps desire my company a little longer than I should wish; and, for sheer farce sake, I may ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bronte never could go on the moors. She was frail and weak, poor woman, when she came to live in the oblong grey stone parsonage on the windy top of the hill. The village ran sheer down at her feet; but she could not walk down the steep rough-paven street, nor on the pathless moors. She was very ill and weak; her husband spent nearly all his time in the study, writing his poems, his tracts, and his sermons. She had no companions but the children. And when, in a very few ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento, and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara facade that is sheer ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... in the month of August, Mr. Benjamin Staff sat at table in the dining-room of the Authors' Club, moodily munching a morsel of cheese and a segment of cast-iron biscuit and wondering what he must do to be saved from the death-in-life of sheer ennui. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Internet access in public libraries uniquely promotes First Amendment values, by offering low barriers to entry to speakers and listeners. The content of speech on the Internet is as diverse as human thought, and the extent to which the Internet promotes First Amendment values is evident from the sheer breadth of speech that this new medium enables. To survive strict scrutiny, a public library's use of filtering software must be narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest, and there must be no less restrictive alternative that could effectively ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... this text is true, the text itself will tell me why. It is 'the God of peace' that is going to 'bruise Satan.' Do you keep yourself in touch with Him, dear friend? And do you let His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit and life? It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you do not take the medicine. The slow process by which, at the best, many Christian people 'bruise Satan under their feet,' during which he hurts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sinister effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and there have been such words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... apartment lay that mutilated head, a sheer fabrication of papier-mache. He wondered if Mrs. Cassidy had swept it out ... the head that had meant so much to him. There was no hope any more. If he were still free in Paris he would have one look at that tomb, and then ... well, he had had ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fierce Spirit of the Hurricane himself, the sea Azrael, in storm and in darkness, came thundering on with stunning violence, tearing off the snowy scalps of the tortured billows, and with tremendous and sheer force, crushing down beneath his chariot wheels their mountainous and howling ridges into one level plain of foaming water. Our chainplates, strong fastenings, and clenched bolts, drew like pliant wires, shrouds and stays were torn away ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... I did not mean to deceive you—at least not at first. Neither did Branwen. I knew nothing about it till she came home, after being with you at the Swamp, and told me that she was impelled by sheer pity to follow you, intending to nurse you; thinking at first that we had let you go to die alone. Then she was caught in the woods by robbers, and she only escaped from them by putting on a boy's dress and running away. They gave chase, however, caught her up, and, had it not been for you, would ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Conrad moved from group to group, leaving a wake of energy. By sheer personality and grit he gained his ends, though railway construction was as foreign to his life's plans, past ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... asked the momentous question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the sheer pole we passed within a foot of a figure lounging across the rail at the poop break, and we knew it was Swope. There had been no word from ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... among us are in the habit of holding up as a perfect model, is not the character of a benefactor but of a martyr, a spirit from a higher world lacerated in its passage through this uncomprehending and perverse existence, healing and forgiving out of sheer compassion, sustained by his inner affinities to the supernatural, and absolutely disenchanted with all earthly or political goods. Christ did not suffer, like Prometheus, for having bestowed or wished to bestow any earthly blessing: the only blessing he bequeathed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... so great, were the barbarous excesses committed by the savages upon the whites in their power, that the minds of those who were actors in those scenes, were deprived of the faculty of discriminating between what was right or wrong to be practised towards them. And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... general colouring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side, and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessary matter, always poured itself forth in writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was sheer pleasure to him." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... grateful to you for having been the occasion of this little outing. What good travellers we are, if we had only faith; no man need stay in Edinburgh but by unbelief; my religious organ has been ailing for a while past, and I have lain a great deal in Edinburgh, a sheer hulk in consequence. But I got out my wings, and have taken a change ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my evil deeds by blowing out my brains if I ever ill-treated her again. These periods of exaltation sometimes lasted several hours, during which time I exhausted myself in foolish expressions of love and esteem. Then morning came; day appeared; I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and I awakened with a smile on my lips, mocking ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... them round his arms and with sheer strength Swing down the hammer, clinch him to ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... was forced through Congress under party pressure, and by the sheer weight of a large Democratic majority in both branches, it met from the first a decided and unmistakable popular condemnation in the free States. While the measure was yet under discussion in the House in March, New Hampshire ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the head of the table not been the mother of a large family, she might possibly have dropt the carving knife and fork, in sheer astonishment at the unaccountableness of the question, but as it was, she had heard so many other odd ones before, that she did not by outward sign demonstrate the amusement she felt at this, but simply said,—"Perhaps he could"—for she knew ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... out to Febrer certain window-like caves in the most sheer and inaccessible cliffs of the smaller island. Neither goat nor man could reach them. Uncle Ventolera knew what was hidden within those dark passages. They were beehives; beehives centuries and centuries old; natural retreats of bees that, crossing the straits between Iviza and the Vedra, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had lost. It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone out of it. Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... John Kemp—here you be on the brink of eternity, above the old quarry. There's a sheer drop of a hundred feet. We'll tie your legs and hang you by your fingers. If you hang long enough, you'll have time to say your ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... himself. Had she come to him with some scheme for changing everything about the place, making him think that the alterations were a matter of taste or of mere personal pleasure, he would probably have given his assent at once, thinking nothing of the money. But all this was sheer display. Then he walked up and saw the flag waving over the Castle, indicating that he, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, was present there on his own soil. That was right. That was as it should be, because the flag was waving in compliance with an acknowledged ordinance. Of all ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... measure. "It is all the work of God" and Nicholas had passed into his cell well pleased. And the next evening he had called softly to the masterpiece of the Creator, as she went by, and the girl, startled and fearful at first, had spoken a few words out of sheer pity for the hungry, lonely soul looking out so wistfully at her; and then how soon had come other meetings, the plan to escape—that final vision which had seemed to justify ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... of northern Romanism. If Catholics are wrong and on the way to perdition and blisters there are 33,000 of them here moving in that very awkward direction at the present. A number so large, whether right or wrong cannot he despised; a body so great, whether good or evil, will, by its sheer inherent force, persist in living, moving, and having, a fair share of being. You can't evaporate 33,000 of anything in a hurry; and you could no more put a nightcap upon the Catholics of Preston than you could blacken up the eye of the sun. That stout old Vatican gentleman who storms this fast world ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... wept unrestrainedly. To tell the truth, I knew not what to do, and Pierrebon kept his head well to the front, looking neither to the right nor to the left. In sheer desperation I asked her not to weep, whereat she wept the more; and then I touched her shoulder with my hand, as one would caress a child; but she shook me off, turning a face that seemed scared with terror to me, and I could only stammer out an ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark—so, it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... your energies be bent on occupying the advantageous position first. So Ts'ao Kung. Li Ch'uan and others, however, suppose the meaning to be that the enemy has already forestalled us, sot that it would be sheer madness to attack. In the SUN TZU HSU LU, when the King of Wu inquires what should be done in this case, Sun Tzu replies: "The rule with regard to contentious ground is that those in possession have the advantage over the other side. If a position of this kind is secured first by the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. When submitting corrections or updates to the Factbook, please include your source(s) of information. At least two Factbook staffers review every submitted item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... strongest men and Nations: all this is as a road to thee, paved smooth through the abyss,—till all this end. Till men's bitter necessities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience with thee is done; and there is no road or footing any farther, and the abyss yawns sheer!— ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... rejected by Duhm and Cornill, along with XI. 22b, 23, XII. 3b, XVII. 18 for no textual or metrical reasons, but only because these scholars shrink from attributing to Jeremiah such outbursts of passion: just as we have seen them for similarly sheer reasons of sentiment refuse to consider as his the advice to desert to the enemy.(724) Yet they admit inconsistently the genuineness of VI. 11, XI. 20, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... to the plunging beast, and began to belabor it with his quirt, to take the spirit out of it. The wolf had never felt the sting of a whip before. It was such a new experience to it that it stopped bucking in sheer amazement. But Ted did not discontinue, and the wolf slunk upon the ground, its wild nature thoroughly tamed ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... rich yellow sand seen nowhere south of Assouan in such glorious colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a shaduf to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or stony hills on each side. Grand beyond thought ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... of women who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... night at Newcastle and went forward next morning to Alnmouth, which according to a map with which I had provided myself, was the nearest station to Ravensdene Court. And soon after arriving at Alnmouth the first chapter of my adventures opened, and came about by sheer luck. It was a particularly fine, bright, sharply-bracing morning, and as I was under no particular obligation to present myself at Ravensdene Court at any fixed time, I determined to walk thither by way of the coast. The distance, according ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... regular motion; by which change of direction, order succeeded to confusion in the arrangement of its component parts. The philosopher adds that the deluge was produced by an uncourteous salute from the watery tail of another comet; doubtless through sheer envy of its improved condition; thus furnishing a melancholy proof that jealousy may prevail even among the heavenly bodies, and discord interrupt that celestial harmony of the spheres so ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... disturbed the civil rights deputy. The services had fortuitously avoided several (p. 565) potentially embarrassing incidents when officials were invited to attend segregated functions, and Fitt warned Paul that "if we don't erect a better safeguard than sheer chance, we're bound somewhere, sometime soon to look foolish and insensitive."[22-33] He wanted McNamara to issue a policy statement on the subject, admittedly a difficult task because it would be hard to write and would require ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... those which Sir Walter Scott used to thread the wilds of Scotland to gather up; but we value them not. By-and-by, posterity will anathematize us for letting our old national stories die in blind contempt or sheer ignorance of their value. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and declared that old Mrs. Scratchard was envious, because she had lost all her own tail-feathers, and looked more like a worn- out old feather-duster than a respectable hen, and that therefore she was filled with sheer envy of anybody that was young and pretty. So young Mrs. Feathertop cackled gay defiance at her busy rubbishy neighbour, as she sunned herself under the bushes on fine ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the English prayer meeting Sabbath evening, February 18th, in that desponding state that sometimes follows intense and protracted desire, when its object is not attained. At such times, the sensibilities seem paralyzed, and emotion dies of sheer exhaustion. The pupils had retired; so also had Miss Rice; and she was left alone. Her thoughts brooded over the state of her charge, but she had no strength to rise and carry those precious souls to ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... assured myself that such deductions were of little or no use, and yet, I could not help minutely examining the pretty trifles lying on the desk. I scrutinized the handkerchief for a monogram or an initial, but it had none. It was dainty, plain and fine, of sheer linen, with a narrow hem. To me it indicated an owner of a refined, feminine type, and absolutely nothing more. I couldn't help thinking that even Fleming Stone could not infer any personal characteristics of the lady from that blank square ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... had overcome many things in her life by the sheer force and persistency of her will. But she could not get the better of heredity. Rachel was her father's daughter at all points, and Isabella Spencer escaped hating her for it only by loving her the more fiercely because of it. Even ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Clare started again in sheer surprise. She had expected tears, fainting, angry words, a passionate appeal—anything rather than what she heard. Brook produced a silver case which gleamed in the moonlight. Lady Fan took a cigarette, and her companion took another. ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... was from the no'th, an' I went over every bit o' landscape in the country until at last I figgered out the' was only one place in Texas that filled the bill. A path swung around a crag an' the' was a shelf of stone ten feet below it an' eight feet wide, then it cut off sheer, fifty feet to the rocky bank of a creek. I reached out with my hand an' felt the edge of it, an' it give me an awful chill. I don't like to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, out of sheer mischief, that he should employ the dormant energies of the crew in hauling both cables up on deck and turning ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... readily be able to see that these two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... prospect," said the sculptor; "for it was from this point—at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose—that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kind to you also personally. (2) The next is, instead of a good deal of unnecessary abuse, to have the Navy so organised that it can and must be superior to the French. All beyond these two points is sheer nonsense. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... contentions. If it feels itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... passed into the inner room, and returned in a moment with the girl's bundle. And with his return one glance showed him how nearly his plans were upset. Jessie was clasping Jamie in her arms, kissing him hungrily, tears streaming down her cheeks, while, out of sheer sympathy, little Vada was clinging to her mother's skirts, her small face buried in amongst them, sobbing as though ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... pessimism is too well known to most of us to be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly, as a Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What really saved me was the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... on his way South. He spent a week in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days. On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with panic—an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning to him with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... little. But she had listened to all Monsieur had said, and if he continued to talk she would not think of going to sleep. Whereupon she closed her eyes, and when I opened mine I saw that her head had slipped along the smooth wooden back of the carriage and rested on Paragot's shoulder. Through sheer kindliness and pity he had put his arm around her so as to settle her comfortably as ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... would be solemnly decided. Note well. Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie—they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural—the little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest, lawful bantling all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and as you are the legitimate urchin, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is very curious," said Inspector Walters, dropping his hands on his knees in sheer amazement at such an extraordinary statement from a man whose clearness and accuracy of perception had been so fully justified by ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... heard at the Futurist, and between us and Harris and Ike the Dropper several couples were one-stepping, each in their own sweet way. As the music became more lively their dancing came more and more to resemble some of the almost brutal Apache dances of Paris, in that the man seemed to exert sheer force and the woman agility in avoiding him. It was an entirely new phase of afternoon dancing, an entirely new "leisure class," this strange combination of Bohemia ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up the rocks to a cleft—a hole in the sheer rock overhung by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... all her might; and telling her to eat all that was left upon the dish, sat by, watching her with the utmost satisfaction in her countenance, though she certainly had not had a very capital dinner herself. Poor little Tibb! She looked as if she hardly knew how to eat, for sheer joy! However, she did finish at last; and then, running up to Friskarina, called her her only friend—her deliverer from starvation—and said many other very affectionate things besides. But Friskarina cut them short, by begging her ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... leaving us unscathed? To suppose any such thing would be—to say the least of it—foolishness. The probability was that they would attack us, sack the place, carrying away everything that took their fancy, including the treasure-chests, murder Billy and me, and burn down the house out of sheer ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... and from almost every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident—I shouldn't value it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... evening service again! Only fifty people out, and it was a sheer waste of fuel and light. The sermon was one of the dullest I ever heard. I believe Mr. Jones is growing too old for our church. We need a young man, more up with the times. He is everlastingly harping on the necessity of doing what we can in the present to save souls. To hear him talk ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... the church of St. Sophia, and were therein, besought their lord and the emperor to come to their relief; for if they received no help they could not hold out, especially as they had no provisions. Through sheer distress and sore need, the Emperor Henry and his people agreed that they must once more abandon thought of going to Adrianople, and cross the straits of St. George, to the Turkish side, with as many people as they could ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... northern blue, and the mist of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over all—confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher and a higher altitude of human lights—what a wonderful sight rising sheer out of the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... belief he may ask, "How can God see so many condemned in hell when He can save them all in an instant from pure mercy?" And more such things, which can only be called an atrocious indictment of the Divine. From the above it may be evident that belief in instantaneous salvation out of sheer mercy is the flying fiery serpent ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... cried Paul, dropping the morsel he was sucking, from sheer reluctance to abandon the hump, and casting a fierce and direct look into the very teeth of the unconscious physician. "I reckon, stranger, you have a mind to bag ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; but the invulnerable armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... the cutter's crew remains mute, not one essaying to speak a word. They are silent, less from surprise than sheer stark terror. Fear is depicted on their faces and observable in their attitudes, as no wonder it should. What they have just seen is sufficient to terrify the stoutest hearts—even those of tried tars, as all of them are. A ship manned by ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... sheer youth of her (he realized) more than in aught else, lay her chiefest charm. She could be little more than a child, indeed, if he were to judge her by the purity of her shadowed eyes and the absence of emotion in the calm and direct ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of his life when he was at New York, living in that little cottage at Fordham, where his poor wife died. He was always borrowing money, from sheer necessity, to keep himself and his wife from starvation. Once while in New York he was so hard pressed that Mrs. Clemm went out to see if she could not get work for him. She went to the office of Nathaniel P. Willis, who was the editor and proprietor of The Mirror. Willis was then ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... that their total number of one hundred and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight "gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, 1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition arrived with reinforcements and supplies, only thirty-eight were ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... schooner, without firing or showing any unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... which, partly doubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and partly ambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the Gothic bridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in sheer descent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which shot along the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and bleeding, and half drowned with the water which in their terror and surprise found easy way into their ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... was still crouching in the corner, his face uplifted and torn with agony. He gave one fearful sob, and then he sank forward; drawing himself by the sheer force of his arms he crawled again into sight, and lay clinging to the sofa. Then he gave ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... quaint words, the curious phrases I had learnt during our exile at the Pescadores Islands—by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar book, without attaching the least sense to them—should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... she was "Lorelei," and had no concealments from the world, "Mascotte" never sped more bravely. Through the wide Noord Canal she took us as unconcernedly as if our hopes and fears for the future were nothing to her. Out of sheer spite at her lack of sympathy, I enjoyed my private knowledge that, whatever happens to her, she is certain to lose her companion, "Waterspin." But she didn't know that; so she jogged on, purring, in blissful ignorance of the separation in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... talent, treason against treason—in all this Randal Leslie would have risen superior to Giulio di Peschiera. But what now crushed him was not the superior intellect,—it was the sheer brute power of audacity and nerve. Here stood the careless, unblushing villain, making light of his guilt, carrying it away from disgust itself, with resolute look and front erect. There stood the abler, subtler, profounder criminal, cowering, abject, pitiful; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to where the ledge ended in a sheer drop down to the sea; and putting something very carefully in his pocket, he rose to his feet ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... his heart he knew it would not be she he saw. He slept little during this period, and looked a good six or seven years older than his real age. This was succeeded by one of the phases of numbness when partly reaction, because the mind cannot keep stretched too tautly, and partly sheer physical fatigue from the hard work he drove himself to every day, made for a merciful slough of the spirit in which it all the time deceitfully gathered itself together for ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... for the palanquin that finally came in sight showed by its richness that it could belong only to royalty, and by its beauty and grace, only to a woman. Made of silver and rock crystal, studded with diamonds and pearls, and hung about with sheer curtains of embroidered yellow silk, the palanquin belonged without doubt to a young girl of the royal house. As it appeared under the high arch of the outer gate, a roar of joy and greeting arose from the waiting ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... for the office, and, being defeated in the court below, appealed to the Supreme Court. He then became very much exercised over his appeal, because I was one of the Justices. There were not wanting persons who, out of sheer malice, or not comprehending any higher motives of conduct than such as governed themselves, represented that I would improve the opportunity to strike ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... in truth, is itself an islet, being cut off from Brefar by a channel, scarcely eight feet wide, through which the seas rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the headland rises grim and stark—a very Gibraltar of the birds, that roost in regiments ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... water. And then, when one hand was loosed in the struggle, she twisted it through his long hair, and dragged back his head till his eyes were nearly starting from their sockets. Anastasia Bergen had hitherto been a sheer woman, all feminine in her nature. But now the foam came to her mouth, and fire sprang from her eyes, and the muscles of her body worked as though she had been trained to deeds of violence. Of violence, Aaron Trow had known much in his rough life, but never had ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence was intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to find her in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer horror ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... is far more artificial, far more an embodiment of mathematical convenience, than is commonly believed by those who philosophise on physics. Thus even if (which I cannot for a moment admit) the persistence of some entity were among the necessary postulates of science, it would be a sheer error to infer from this the constancy of any physical quantity, or the a priori necessity of any such constancy which may be empirically discovered. In the third place, it has become more and more ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... another, and a third on both. At last, and whether by design or accident, the bows of the Good Hope were liberated; and the ever-ready Lawless, who had maintained his place at the helm through all the hurly-burly by sheer strength of body and a liberal use of the cold steel, instantly clapped her on the proper tack. The ship began to move once more forward on the stormy sea, its scuppers running blood, its deck heaped with fallen men, sprawling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of magic comes out most clearly in magical dances. We think of dancing as a light form of recreation, practised by the young from sheer joie de vivre and unsuitable for the mature. But among the Tarahumares (Carl Lumholtz, "Unknown Mexico", page 330, London, 1903.) in Mexico the word for dancing, nolavoa, means "to work." Old men will reproach young men saying "Why do you not go to work?" meaning ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... "I have heard of your bravery, but this is sheer recklessness. And to pretend you have forgotten the inn! I ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... did not last very long, the opposing forces being so unequally matched; so, as soon as Frank and his coadjutors had been borne down by the sheer weight of numbers, their conquerors hustled them into the corner of the deck under the break of the poop, where the captain was still lying, throwing them down beside him and telling them they had better keep quiet now they had had ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and licked sheer out of go an' grit, From the times of Pharaoh down to the Khe-dive; Till you 'ardly feel yerself one bloomin' bit, And I almost wonder you are left alive. But we've got you out of a good deal of that, Sir EVELYN and the rest of us. You foller; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... of sheer military genius and derringdo combined resulted in his all but single-handed winning of the fracas between Continental Hovercraft and Vacuum Tube Transport, and thus inflicting defeat upon none other than Marshal Stonewall Cogswell ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... has happened to make you so merry?' she said, as he threw up his cap in sheer exuberance ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... never thought of their wearing out like that, and he leaned up, gazing at the stocking in sheer astonishment. His mother mistook the look on his face for another kind of surprise. "How can they have got into such a state? They were quite sound when I bandaged your ankle. Were they sound when you ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... pair of eyes belonged to a boy of twelve, though he looked older—a street urchin—dirty, ragged, with a pinched face and a starved, ill-clad form. A look of sheer desperation came into these eyes when their owner saw the money, and he trembled with excitement as a certain bold and wicked thought came into his mind—a thought born, not of a bad ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... Ark swept onward, and by the time the scene with the torches was enacting beneath the trees, it had reached the open lake, Floating Tom causing it to sheer further from the land with a sort of instinctive dread of retaliation. An hour now passed in gloomy silence, no one appearing disposed to break it. Hist had retired to her pallet, and Chingachgook lay sleeping in the forward part of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... shut the field against simple merit; anyhow, discouraged it. A person might have all the qualities for a Governorship, except part and parcel in the peerage. On the other hand, it was injurious to the Colonies, because it set up men on an eminence, not for sheer merit, but because they happened to be born to rank. How did Napoleon Bonaparte make his army? By opening the very highest places to ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... make the customary bow, which blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit better than ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... great and small shot charge him, board him thwart the hawse, on the bow, midships, or, rather than fail, on his quarter; or make fast your grapplings to his close-fights and sheer off' [which would tear ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... became swollen and visible. He was reduced to only skin and bones. Indeed, it has been heard by us that the righteous-souled Matanga, while practising those austerities at Gaya, dropped down on the ground from sheer exhaustion. The lord and giver of boons, engaged in the good of all creatures, viz., Vasava beholding him falling down, quickly came to that spot and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals, diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. Par exemple, madame, par exemple!" And, with a frantic gesture and a roar of laughter, he literally tore off his huge moustache with both his hands, at a single pluck. "And my chevelure also, madame. See, here it goes—all for despair—hurra, hurra, hurrah! ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... metaphor, being its motto. It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black wall of cloud seemed to rise sheer from the water and join the gray sky that arched over the great flat spaces. And in the absence of stars, the earth itself seemed to gain in vastness and mystery, its own awfulness, as it sped round, unlessened by those endless perspectives of vaster planets. And from the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... we were caught by one of the sudden southwesterly gales which are the terror of the Mediterranean, and more dangerous than a full-grown Atlantic gale. The cliffs to the north of Argostoli were in sight, looming sheer rock above the sea line, and the wind, rapidly increasing, blew directly on shore, bringing with it a quick, sharp sea, and getting up before long a cross sea by the repercussion from the cliffs, so that in the complicated tumult of waters ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of every calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of increase, and the like; its human history, discovery ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... set out on his exacting adventure. On the voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips that he must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader with his fists and triumphed by sheer strength of body and will. A second mutiny he also quelled, and then took his ship to Jamaica where he got rid of its worthless crew. His enterprise had apparently failed; but the second Duke of Albemarle and other ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, Anna Myhrman, the youngest daughter of the family, he soon became attached by the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... contrast, as far as outward characteristics went, was offered by the other great orator of the same time. Sheil was very small, and of mean presence; with a singularly fidgety manner, a shrill voice, and a delivery unintelligibly rapid. But in sheer beauty of elaborated diction not O'Connell nor any one else could surpass him. There are few finer speeches in the language than that in which he took Lord Lyndhurst to task for applying the term "aliens" to the Irish in a speech on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... who does the actual thing which brings you within the power of the law. I am not over-scrupulous, you know. I hate wrongdoing, but I have never been able to treat as equal criminals the poor man who steals for a living, and the rich financier who robs right and left out of sheer greed. I agree with you that crime is not an absolute thing. The circumstances connected with every action in life determine its morality or immorality. But, Peter, it isn't worth while ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morbid imagination—diseased and disturbed with long brooding, sick with the monotony of repeated sensation—to be disengaged from all this immensity, a sense of a vast oppression, formless, disquieting. The terror of sheer bigness grew slowly in her mind; loneliness beyond words gradually enveloped her. She was lost in all these limitless reaches of space. Had she been abandoned in mid-ocean, in an open boat, her terror could hardly have been greater. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... forget this sensitive nature of the animal, and to treat it as a mere thing.—We have a perfect right to sacrifice the pleasure of an animal to the welfare of ourselves. We have no right to sacrifice the welfare of the animal to our capricious feelings. We have no right to neglect an animal from sheer unwillingness to give it the reasonable attention which is necessary to provide it with proper food, proper care, proper shelter, and proper exercise. A little girl, reproved for neglecting to feed her rabbits, when asked ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... "Better sheer off and give it a wide berth, then," counseled his chum. "If it were the captain or the chief, you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... words on any given subject, but wholly non-communicative as regards himself. He perhaps was possessed of more intuition than his manner would reveal, although he gave every appearance of arriving at his conclusions by the sheer force of logic. His words and deeds never betrayed his whole mind, of that she was certain, yet he could assert himself rather forcibly when put to the test, as in the painful incident at the Coffee House. He would never suffer from ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... Marx rose and left the room. I was seized with one of those sudden and unaccountable panics, and from sheer embarrassment—my mood was far too tragic to admit of flippancy—blurted out, 'You must come to America, Mr. President, as soon as all this trouble is settled, and see how ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... on their hind legs, and then not only butt, but "make a cut down and a jerk up, with the ribbed front of their scimitar-shaped horn, as with a sabre. When the O. cycloceros attacked a large domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of the head, and then bounding out of the way before the blow could be returned." In Pembrokeshire ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... extend fifteen miles from Fort Lee to Piermont, a sheer wall of trap rock from 300 to ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... her, through sheer will, to lift her eyes to his. They were startled and sullen. With a start he saw, what he had missed before, that this woman, his wife, was a stranger. But he had himself well in hand now and his gaze did not falter. There ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Parliament, the view of the Government being that they must cut their legislative Ulster according to their Protestant cloth. Mr. CLYNES announced the intention of the Labour Party to wash their hands of the Bill, which he regarded as a sheer waste of time. Undeterred by the prospect of this calamity the House passed Clause I. by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... invested instrumental music with a wonderful poignancy and power of expression, elevating it to the point of being the medium of expressing some of the greatest thoughts we possess. In so doing, however, he shattered many of the great idols of formalism by the sheer ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... called to see her the following afternoon and found her surrounded with women and gowns and flowers. The women fled when he approached, but the gowns and flowers remained, and there was talk upon them till at last, in sheer desperation, Clement said: ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... to her tirade, carelessly rocking back and forth on the two rear legs of his tilted chair. When finally she stopped for sheer want of breath ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... did not stop to consider, but vanished on the instant, and Devine, breaking into a little laugh from sheer relief, fancied that they had jumped behind adjacent trees. Saunders, who stood gazing into the shadows, waved ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... from sheer exhaustion, he threw himself on his couch, and fell into a troubled sleep, filled with broken and distorted visions of the scenes that had occupied his waking hours. But he gradually became quieter, and it ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay bright under the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Exaggeration or false coloring is as much a violation of integrity as a direct falsehood. Equivocation is often falsehood. Deception in all forms is opposed to integrity. Mock manners, pretended emotions, affectation, policy plans to secure attention and respect are all sheer falsehoods, and in the end injure her who is guilty of them. Respect and affection are the out-growth of confidence. She who secures the firmest confidence will secure the most respect and love. No love ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... almost cruel to have denied this mother a share in the triumphs of that evening. And with that, she realized that Mrs. Condor had ceased singing. A hum broke loose, followed by applause. Claire grew faint. Her head began to swirl. She clutched the piano stool and by sheer terror at the thought of creating a scene she managed to keep her consciousness as she felt Mrs. Condor's hand upon her shoulder and heard a voice that ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... like, so long as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot, but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day—of course he has. But if he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Bo-tree, that he began his career as "The Enlightened." He was now a Buddha, and claimed to have attained Nirvana. All that has been written of his having left his palace with the purpose of becoming a saviour of mankind, is the sheer assumption of the later legends and their apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... a moment all the house would be laughing ... at first out of sheer nervousness over the delay in the progress of the play—then ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... lusty freshmen had shouted together as they leaped forward, and the prolonged yell was repeated when all the assembly had instantly turned and for a moment in sheer astonishment were gazing at the startling approach of men ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... batteries of trench mortars, until the front line of German trenches had been reached. Then, wave after wave, the advance was continued, in the face of a furious British fire, until the defenders were compelled to draw back through sheer force and weight of numbers. The German waves moved forward at the calculated rate of 200 yards every four minutes, wherever it was found possible to do so. Each wave, on reaching its objective point, dropped to the ground and opened fire with rifles and machine guns, placing a barrage ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... again in sheer misery. "I dunno, I'm sure, whatever made me take and do it. I've stood so much more from all of 'ee and never so much as opened my lips. I reckon 'twas the weather made me ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... is always regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself being good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil for sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the good that is willed in ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... an ever higher and more tragic key. Nobody indeed of the party was the least tragic. Everybody walked, fished, flirted, and laughed from morning till night. Yet every newspaper, every post, brought news of some death that affected one or other of the large group; and amid all the sheer physical joy of the long days in the open, bathed in sun and wind, there was a sense in all of them—or almost all of them—that no summer now is as the summers of the past, that behind and around the laughter and the picnicking there lay the Shadow ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would make the Snail let go his support and, at the very least, precipitate him from the tall stalk whereon he is blissfully slumbering. Now any game falling to the ground would seem to be so much sheer loss, for the Glow-worm has no great zeal for hunting-expeditions: he profits by the discoveries which good luck sends him, without undertaking assiduous searches. It is essential, therefore, that the equilibrium of a prize perched on the top of a stalk and only just held in position by a touch ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... blew—not up the road or down it, though that's bad enough, but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines they used to rule in the copy-books at school, to make the boys slope well. For a moment it would die away, and the traveller would begin to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... their hob-nailed brogans, you would think they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set, who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals; now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them something of the dignity of their animals; ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... grinding intellectual labour that could be completely obviated by Inspiration. I did it myself, so I know what it's like. Up till the time I was thirty-eight I was a writer like you—a writer without Inspiration. All I wrote I squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work. Why, in those days I was never able to do more than six-fifty words an hour, and what's more, I often didn't sell what I wrote." He sighed. "We artists," he said parenthetically, "we intellectuals aren't much appreciated here in ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... occupied a flat plateau, slightly elevated above the surrounding country, and on the brink of a sheer drop of some six or seven thousand feet to an arm of the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... mercuryball game. Was there some reason behind his companion's strange actions? In vain, Tom racked his brain to find the answer. There had to be some explanation. Yet what could it possibly be? He tossed and turned and worried and finally—comfortable as the monorail car was—he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... adventurers determined, at all hazards, to cross to the opposite side, in hopes of finding a country that might afford them sustenance. A frail bridge was constructed by throwing the huge trunks of trees across the chasm, where the cliffs, as if split asunder by some convulsion of nature, descended sheer down a perpendicular depth of several hundred feet. Over this airy causeway the men and horses succeeded in effecting their passage with the loss of a single Spaniard, who, made giddy by heedlessly looking down, lost his footing and fell ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... energy of despair at their task of clearing the deck, in spite of the twofold danger of being burnt and stunned by the hot falling stones. While we were engraved in this struggle, and enveloped in the sheer blackness of a veritable hell, a new and terrible danger came upon us. This was the approach of the tidal wave caused by the final eruption, which occurred about 12.30 to 1 p.m. The wave reached us at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... to expose the sheer foolishness of this argument. The first absurdity is that the women who are in comfortable circumstances could continue to be cultured and of social value if they were the mothers of large families. Neither could they maintain their ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... and the substance of his thoughts was that this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet, innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the world in general she was still the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Dunstanborough Castle. As the wind fell light, we pulled in to have a look at it, papa being anxious to do so, as he had visited it in his younger days. The weather-beaten ruin stands on the summit of a black cliff, rising sheer out of the ocean. Three towers, one square, and the others semicircular, remain, with the greater portion of the outer wall, enclosing several acres of green turf, over which, instead of mail-clad warriors, peaceable sheep ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... minutes before we could get her clear. In the meantime the fire began to blaze up in a very alarming manner under the mizzen chains, where, by the attraction of the two floating bodies, she seemed resolved to continue; but on our putting the helm up, and giving the vessel a sheer the contrary way, as soon as we were before the wind, she parted from us, to our great joy, and was soon in a volume of flame. Our reason for setting her on fire alongside was to save time, as we wanted to go in chase ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... visible track. Stonor searched the beach for half a mile in either direction without being able to find a single track in any wet or muddy place, and without discovering any place where one had struck up the bank into the bush. On the down-river side he was halted by a low, sheer wall of rock washed by the current. He made sure that no one had tried to climb around this miniature precipice. From this point the rapids still swept on down out ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... in the trim skirt and stainless blouse, clipped by the close belt; and with the bit of narrow black velvet ribbon round her throat. Even in the morning she appeared once more with a clear parting in her brushed and burnished hair. Even in the morning her soft skin was once more sweet in its sheer cleanness. And in the evening there soaked through and fell and hung about her that old fragrance of violets that invariably ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... generally, I think, to the latter. Life everywhere appeared to me as blocked from the full delivery of its sweet and lovely message. Some counter influence stopped it—suppression; or sent it awry—exaggeration. The house itself, mere expression, of course, of a narrow, limited mind, was sheer ugliness; it required no further explanation. With the grounds and garden, so far as shape and general plan were concerned, this was also true; but that trees and flowers and other natural details should share the same deficiency perplexed my logical soul, and even dismayed it. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... impossibility. It was startling, grimly thrilling. There was the sense among some about the table of struggling mentally to break the spell which this coldly unemotional creature of science had cast. At length Dane spoke as though by sheer physical effort. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the lookout for him, suddenly increased. He grew afraid, at last, to look up—What if the Eyes should be there! He bore the ever-increasing horror as long as he could, then—better starve and have done with it than die like a dog from sheer fright!—he stepped cautiously, softly, starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked carelessly towards Third ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... life and death. No doubt she was right. Both she and the neighborhood had to wait, and her efforts did something to make the period more bearable for both of them. The only sufferer was poor Mr Gainsborough, who was driven from Blentmouth and the curiosity shop by the sheer terror of encountering ladies from villas who told him all about what his daughter was going ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... hours upon the grass, And gazed into the tenderest blue of heaven— Cleansed as with dew, so limpid, pure and sweet— All flecked with silver packs of standing cloud Most beautiful! But watch them narrowly! Those clouds will sheer small fleeces from their sides, Which, melting in our sight as in a dream, Will vanish all like phantoms in the sky. So melts our heedless race! Some weaned away, And wedded to rough-handed pioneers, Who, fierce as wolves in hatred ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... certain shock. Some sort of pedestal had hitherto been needful to her existence; she was learning that Dunstone was an unrecognized elevation in this new country, and she had seen a woman attain to a pinnacle that almost dazzled her, by sheer ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reins into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of sheer compassion, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... teeth. I must lift his head from the water, and cover him up with my own coat while I fetched help. But when I stooped down a deadly faintness came over me. My fingers were palsied with horror. I had a sudden irresistible conviction I could not touch him. It was a sheer impossibility. There was something between us more potent than the dread of a dead man—something inimical between us two, the dead and the living. I staggered away and ran reeling to the road, plunging blindly through ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could take it, and charged again, roaring curses. By sheer weight he bore Hanlon back across the floor, and got in a couple of heavy blows. Hanlon's right cheek was badly bruised, and that eye almost closed. But he was fighting methodically, almost viciously. He was in and out, slashing and ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... of their hands, but scarcely saw them through the tears of sheer weakness that filled my eyes. The capacity for deep emotion was deadened in me; the strain had been too great; the reaction had left me scarcely capable of realizing the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of the blusterer. She set him down as a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low, good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... house there was a balcony. And just as the boy walked by, the doors were thrown open, and a yellow light streamed through the fine, sheer curtains. Then a pretty young fru came out on the balcony and leaned over the railing. "It's raining; now we shall soon have spring," said she. When the boy saw her he felt a strange anxiety. It was as though he wanted to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... eye the possessor of the same, the tiny Freddy, an imp of mischief uncontrollable by other hand or look than hers. A little lower down, poking into the invisible brook through the paling, was the eldest boy, silent from sheer delight in the unexpected pleasure of coating himself with mud without remark from Nettie. This unprecedented escape arose from the fact that Nettie had a visitor, a lady who had bent down beside ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... abandon her, and we had to drag her with a bull camel and beat her along, until she crossed this instalment of Gibson's Desert: but she never left this spot, which I have named Buzoe's Grave. I don't think this old cow had been poisoned—at least she never showed any signs of it; I believe it was sheer old age and decay that assailed her at last. The position of this welcome watered spot was in latitude 24 degrees 33', and longitude 123 degrees 57'. It was by wondrous good fortune that we came ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... not," she declared. "While Aunty was alive, to paint seemed to be the only way to be free. It gave me the excuse for coming here, for getting away a few hours a day. Now—well, just to be free seems enough. I don't suppose a man knows how a woman hungers for that—for just sheer, ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the entire planet. Their problem was one of application of power. The rotation of the planet made it impossible to use a series of driving apparatus, even could these be anchored, but again the sheer immensity of the task ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... lake, and shut out all the neighbourhood. Even if they had climbed to the loftiest known turret, they would have found it swathed in a garment of clinging vapour, affording no refreshment to the eye, and no hope to the heart. There was one lofty tower that rose sheer a hundred feet above the rest, and from which the fog could have been seen lying in a grey mass beneath; but that tower they had not yet discovered, nor another close beside it, the top of which was never seen, nor could be, for the highest clouds of heaven clustered continually around ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... in the universe, is the only home of life, then the disproportion of mechanism to result seems absolutely appalling. If, on the other hand, all the million million of suns are pouring out vital heat to a like number of inhabited planetary systems, the sheer quantity of life, of struggle, of suffering implied, seems a thought at which to shudder. We are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience: "Since this ingenious combination of yours was at best such a questionable boon, surely you might have been ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow, Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere upon earthe: for Nash inveyed ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all concerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to the silence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it was not at him, after her first wide glance, that she looked, but, still as if through the crystal bottle, at her mother, and the look was, at all events, a confession of utter inadequacy to deal with ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... where she was expected, and she framed a story for her delay, by having met such a very polite young man. Your father returned to his regiment, and thus did they, like two privateers, who when they meet and engage, as soon as they find out their mistake, hoist their colours, and sheer off by ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compasses. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... form always. But many people, though they feel the tremendous significance of form, feel also a cautious dislike for big words; and "reality" is a very big one. These prefer to say that what the artist surprises behind form, or seizes by sheer force of imagination, is the all-pervading rhythm that informs all things; and I have said that I will never quarrel with that ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... acquiescence of the other seamen in this act of retributive justice. Jackson, with a loud oath, attempted to spring into the boat, but was repelled by the seamen; again he made the attempt, with dreadful imprecations. He was on the plane-sheer of the brig, and about to make a spring, when a blow from a handspike (the same handspike with which he had murdered the unfortunate seaman) struck him senseless, and he fell back into the lee-scuppers. The boat then shoved off, and had not gained more than two ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... hour drew on, Barry's head, from sheer weariness, sunk upon his breast. In his sleep he became aware of some one near him. He sat up, dazed and stupid from his exhaustion and his grief, and found ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... and graceful schooner with a magical turn for speed, she mounted sixteen long twelve-pounders and carried a hundred officers, seamen, and marines, and was never outsailed in fair winds or foul. "Out of sheer wantonness," said an admirer, "she sometimes affected to chase the enemy's men-of-war of far superior force." Once when surrounded by two frigates and two naval brigs, she slipped through and was gone like a phantom. During his first cruise in the Chasseur, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... "—So in sheer desperation he turned nurse to Squawk and ran errands for its mother, wondering the while how it was that some men had all ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... I caught my horse and made my way to the gate, to discover that my worst fears were realized; a large section of the cliff had split off the Mesa and slid down into the narrow gateway completely filling the space and leaving a wall of over one hundred feet of sheer precipice for us to climb before we could ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... visible; thick trees and hanging creepers intervened; between and through the foliage we first saw the water glancing and shining in its descent. The effect was perfect. After some little further and more difficult progress, we stood beneath the fall, of about 150 feet sheer descent. The wind whirled in eddies, and carried the sleet over us, chilling our bodies, but unable to damp our admiration. The basin of the fall is part of a circle, with the outlet forming a funnel; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... spots; "but if I disappeared, and couldn't be found, I just guess the whole town would take a fit. But I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen. Whew, come near doing it right then, on the left. I must sheer off more the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... body with as much ease as the little humming-bird. But this is not all. We are informed that this enormous bird possesses a power in its wings, so far exceeding what is necessary for its own conveyance through the air, that it can take up and fly away with a whole sheer in its talons, with as much ease as an eagle would carry off, in the same manner, a hare or a rabbit. This we may readily give credit to, from the known fact of our little kestrel and the sparrow-hawk frequently flying off with ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer, and with a parting shot and a laughing "Farval!" he leaped from the sinking boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out, he swam twice round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy; now ducking to escape the pursuing stream, or now, while floating on his back, sending a return shot with telling force against the men at the pump—for he still ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... forth the infamy of the government, and louder and louder he yelled, till one marvelled at his endurance. Rougher and hotter grew his repartee till, by sheer abuse, he gained the ascendancy; but there was no sane statement of what he would propose as a remedy. Grandma Clay happened to rise as he neared the finish to see about a reticule she had dropped, and proved a target for those ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the battery, the fight raged. The Plothow battalion, which had been stationed in advance of it, had been attacked and enveloped on all sides by the Austrians; but had defended themselves splendidly and, though forced back by sheer weight of numbers, had maintained their order and done heavy execution by their fire. The battery had been lost, but those who had been driven out rallied and, with the Plothow men, made so furious a rush forward ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... I have no right to interfere in your affairs. Still, we're old friends. To wait, Henschel, just on account of what people will think—that's sheer nonsense, no more, no less. If you are quite seriously thinking of marrying again, it would be better both for you and for the child if you did it soon. You needn't be overhasty; assuredly not! But if you've quite made ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... knew he was directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Poivre, where they hoped to drive in their wedge, and to further shorten that line across which French troops must retreat if indeed the salient was to be evacuated. And towards the east, towards the apex of the salient, outlying advance-parties of the French had been driven in by sheer weight of guns and numbers, and were now back on the heights of the Meuse, their line drawn from that held by their comrades in the neighbourhood of Louvemont, close to the Cote du Poivre, round about Douaumont and its village, and so to Vaux and south of it. Here, indeed, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... anticipated. She had persuaded Phillips to take a small house and let her furnish it upon the hire system. Joan went with her to the widely advertised "Emporium" in the City Road, meaning to advise her. But, in the end, she gave it up out of sheer pity. Nor would her advice have served much purpose, confronted by the "rich and varied choice" provided for his patrons by Mr. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... he lived not long. Soredamors had such grief thereat that she could not live after him. For sheer grief she died when he died. Alis and Cliges both mourned for them as they were bound; but in time they ceased to mourn. For all mourning must come to an end; all things needs must cease. Ill is it to prolong mourning, for no good ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... taken her tweezers. He picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking with furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too far for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer folly to have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders, Stafford put the little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and, after a moment or two of consideration, made for the inn by the nearest way, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the air lock. She was right. At the moment they outnumbered the enemy, but when the others returned the Agronians could overpower them by sheer weight of number. And they could return ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... shutters,—the window looked on the little backyard I have before described; there was no ledge without,—nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ceremony with them, and that he need not hesitate to eat his fill. Morgan thought it extraordinary she should so persistently refuse to believe in the sincerity of his small consumption of food, but, attributing her solicitude to sheer good-nature, he was sorry to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... construction days. He's been here ever since steel was laid. They say he averted a bad smash once by sheer nerve or pure Irish luck. Anyway, he has a sort of guarantee of his job for life. Not a bad old boy when ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... "Sheer off there," roared Jack at the top of his lungs, to the occupants of the other boat; "do you want to ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer physical numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream, seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed to them, bounding over the corpses of their countrymen, and with yells of wild joy ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cultivator's village. Behind it, rose another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue with air, whilst in the background towered range upon range, here rising abruptly into points and peaks, there ramp-shaped or wall- formed, with sheer descents, and all of light azure hue adorned with glories ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... criminals, and of big world people. An hour's intense mental concentration told me nothing; the dark of the hour before dawn gave way to the cold breaking of morning light, and yet I tossed in an agony of blank and futile reasoning. I must have slept from the sheer blinding of the brain somewhere about that hour; and in my dreaming I got what wakefulness had denied to me. There in my sleep was the whole history of the stones written for me. I remembered the Liverpool landing-stage; the departure of the Star liner, City of St. Petersburg, for New York; ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... could suggest would be for him to put in the first and second teams at the same time," declared Phil. "Then we might have a chance to win by sheer weight of numbers!" ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... gasped involuntarily, incredibly. Sheer wonder survived his instinctive recoil. It was the bolt, striking ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... argument. He looked satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Leonard, "is with ourselves. We assume every boy to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for music. We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin, and put our daughters down to strum at the piano. Nine times out of ten it is sheer waste of time. They sent me to Cambridge, and said I was lazy. I was not lazy. I was not intended by nature for a Senior Wrangler. I did not see the good of being a Senior Wrangler. Who wants a world of Senior Wranglers? Then why start ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... part in Carlist conspiracies on the death of Ferdinand VII. The authorities exiled him and he absconded to Morella to join the forces of the pretender Don Carlos. In a very short time he rose by sheer daring, fanaticism and ferocity to the front rank among the Carlist chiefs who led the bands of Don Carlos in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia. As a raider he was often successful, and he was many times wounded in the brilliant fights in which he again ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... an altitude, from the clearing where they stood, of at least a thousand feet sheer up, dazzled their eyes in the bright sunshine. To the left of the peak, the sides dropped down almost perpendicularly to the level floor of a valley many thousand feet below. To the right, the snow-fields stretched across ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Science of Language;" but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, amere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you want to know and to understand the method by which they have been obtained. You want ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... two other parties (how sad that they must be so called!) are enfeebled, mine, to all appearance, has been strengthened, nevertheless I well know that, whenever I go beyond my duty, God will no longer bless me; and I shall do so whenever, without reason and in sheer lightness of heart, I attack my king and trouble the repose of his kingdom. . . . I declare, then, first of all to those who belong to the party of the king my lord, that if they do not counsel him to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is a fascinating stocking for evening wear. It is sheer, almost cobwebby, and will enhance any evening gown. The colors are gold, silver, light blue, corn, pale green, black, and white. It is splendid ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... had taken quick note of the surroundings, the location of the home itself, the arrangement of the grounds. There was a spreading lawn on all four sides, unbroken by plant or bush or tree—sheer prodigality of space, the better to display a rambling but most artistic pile of gray granite. Masking the road and the adjoining grounds was thick, impenetrable shrubbery, a ring of miniature forest ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... confess it in the general, yet promptly and pointedly deny it in every particular, if our hearts retained more than the "magni nominis umbra," when we preached up the Protestant principle? Is it not sheer wantonness and cruelty in Baptist, Independent, Irvingite, Wesleyan, Establishment-man, Jumper, and Mormonite, to delight in trampling on and crushing these manifestations of their own pure and precious charter, instead ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... for more? The extraordinary devotion to a volume of natural history, which after generations of use has become more like a mop-head than a book, may be seen in the reproduction of a "monkey-book" here illustrated; this curious result being caused by sheer affectionate thumbing of its leaves, until the dog-ears and rumpled pages turned the cube to a globular mass, since flattened by being packed away. So children love picture-books, not as bibliophiles would ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... oar, until I was twenty-seven years of age. During that time I was at the fishing every day, summer and winter, when it was fishing weather, and living in the midst of the ocean; and I have no hesitation in saying that if fishermen had been dependent on fishing alone, they would have died from sheer want, leaving their families out ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... each one o' them two mush-heads was tryin' to act the part of a ole cow which has had her calf took. They goes a-moonin' about the boat that mournful it 'ud make you yell jus' out o' sheer nervousness. First one 'ud up an' hold his head on his hand an' lean on the fence-rail that ran around the boat, and sigh till he'd raise his pants clean outa the top o' his boots. An' then the other 'ud go off in another part o' the boat an' he'd sigh an' moon ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless—as his uncle had proved—for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right! He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage—there was no luck in it—he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully as ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... house was built against the sheer yellow stone facing at the base of Lost Chief range, known incorrectly as the Yellow Canyon. The house of half a dozen rooms was the most picturesque cabin in the valley, for Grandfather Rodman had built the roof with an overhang, giving the house the hospitable shadows of a little Swiss ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... answered, slowly drawing my thread through the sheer cloth. "No, Nickols will live his own way regardless of the cogs on which it grinds. I shall have an enormous task in keeping up with the social side of his life, but Nickols is not the kind of a man who takes a woman into ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Soda made the ward-kitchen seem like heaven. Alas, the supply of soda considered sufficient by the Dry Store authorities never lasted beyond Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the dinner-tin had to be cleaned out not by alkaline agency, but by sheer slogging hard labour. And when at last I stood it on edge to dry, and thought to go off duty with a clear conscience, I generally found that I had overlooked ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... been destined to exhibit the humanity which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is "donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... individuals in both classes who never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to join in any concerted action ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... inquest I met him, and asked him about it. 'Do you really mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'I know perfectly well what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.' The doctor was usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... almost the happiness of these two. It swept from him the sense of loneliness which had oppressed him a short time before, and when at last, after they had talked for a long time beside the fire, the colonel's wife lifted her pretty head drowsily and asked if she might go to bed, he laughed in sheer joy at the pouting tenderness with which she rubbed her pink cheek against the grizzled face above her, and at the gentle light in the colonel's eyes as he half carried her ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... sky, like ocean blue, gleamed between the treetops. Hardly a rustle of wind in the fine-toothed green branches disturbed the quiet. When I got fully out of sight of camp, I started to run as if I were a wild Indian. My running had no aim; just sheer mad joy of the grand old forest, the smell of pine, the wild silence and beauty loosed the spirit in me so it had to run, and I ran with it till ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... had no hope; he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... ago he had been quite unknown—a struggling journalist savagely treated by Fate. And for sheer need once of saner employment for his leisure hours, he poured out some of the bitterness that a severe attack of indigestion had deposited on the wholesome substratum of his nature in perhaps as fierce a novel as had yet ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... toil? Are they coming again? Will they bring those terrible white soldiers who broke the hearts of the Hadendoa and almost destroyed the Degheim and Kenana? What should draw them up the Nile? Is it for plunder, or in sheer love of war; or is it a blood feud that brings them? True, they are now far off. Perchance they will return, as they returned before. Yet the iron road is not built in a day, nor for a day, and of a surety there are war-clouds in ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the ridges where the coast abrupt Dips greyly westward, Circe's strong-armed son Swept down the foam of sharp-divided straits And faced the stress of opening seas. Sheer out The vessel drave; but three long moons the gale Moaned round; and swift, strong streams of fire revealed The labouring rowers and the lightening surf, Pale watchers deafened of sonorous storm, And dipping decks ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... stretch of sand. Next, the river, smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... this intention. There evolves not a selected group of strong individuals, but a strong community, strong because both full of life, or rich {134} in incentive, and also harmonious. And within such a community the strength of individuals lies not in a sheer power to resist the strain of competition, but in the rational and moral capacity to utilize the resources of the entire community. Through moral organization the strong are made stronger at the same time that the weak ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... You actually suspected him of taking my coins? Why, Paul, whatever put that notion into your head?" demanded Jack, in sheer astonishment. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt sheer into the glistening water. Now they were floating slowly towards the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of white tents, and the smoke of a fire was ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... above the other one, and at the moment of impact with the ball it should just have resumed its original position slightly below the left. It often happens, however, that even very good golfers, after a period of excellent driving, through sheer over-confidence or carelessness, will fall into the way of dropping the right shoulder too soon, or, when they do drop it, letting it go altogether, so that it fairly sinks away. The result is exactly what is to be expected. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... saw, she was too wise to allow this to be noticed, and feigned the utmost coolness and indifference, even when they went from Germany to Paris, where the brilliancy and luxury of the shops almost took away her breath for sheer wonderment. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... speaking is rest. I have often noticed that speakers at exhibitions have in many cases failed to do themselves justice from sheer exhaustion. A day or two of repose previous to speaking, enables the speaker to bring to the performance that vigor of the faculties which is indispensable to the highest success, Webster told the Senate, and truly, no doubt, that he slept soundly on the night previous to the delivery of his second ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in sheer misery. "I dunno, I'm sure, whatever made me take and do it. I've stood so much more from all of 'ee and never so much as opened my lips. I reckon 'twas the weather made me a bit ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Prince,' is the most perverse and passionate being in the whole world. What is more, he throws money away as if it were dust. The day on which he gave the thrashing with blows like falling leaves and flowing water, he dragged (lit. pull alive, drag dead) Ying Lien away more dead than alive, by sheer force, and no one, even up to this date, is aware whether she be among the dead or the living. This young Feng had a spell of empty happiness; for (not only) was his wish not fulfilled, but on the contrary he spent money ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there flattened into interminable, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... agent. But bad generalization a priori is fully as common; which is properly called false theory; conclusions drawn, by way of deduction, from properties of some one agent which is known or supposed to be present, all other co-existing agents being overlooked. As the former is the error of sheer ignorance, so the latter is especially that of semi-instructed minds; and is mainly committed in attempting to explain complicated phenomena by a simpler theory than their nature admits of. As when one school of physicians sought for the universal principle ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... they moved a few feet down-stream and stood looking at the frothing cataract that dropped the great river a sheer ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... conclusion, that I fully agree that it is "sheer fiscal stupidity" and "socially inexpedient as well" to permit "mushroom fortunes" to be built out of war profits. I believe there ought to be imposed a large excess war profits tax on the English model upon a fair and well conceived ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... at the end selected for the bow, and two inches and five-sixteenths at the stern; the stern-post (s t) is laid off, and the outer line of the stern (t f); and finally the curved lines a f and a v are drawn, completing what is called the sheer plan. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker than the Arabs could follow them. Mr. Damer started off at a pace which soon brought him to the end of his tether, and from that point was dragged up by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby accomplishing the wishes of the men, who induce their victims to start as rapidly as possible, in order that they may soon find themselves helpless from want of wind. Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... miles and miles, in pieces of every size—large, flat, and broken cakes, with here and there an island rising twenty and thirty feet, and as large as the ship's hull;—this, it is very difficult to sheer clear of. A constant look-out was necessary; for any of these pieces, coming with the heave of the sea, were large enough to have knocked a hole in the ship, and that would have been the end of us; for no boat (even if we could have got one out) could have lived in such a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... each other. They could not say to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it was sheer precipice without trees. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... folly, sheer folly. How could she look like Mrs. Urquhart? Imagination carries me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle temper have produced a like result in sweetening the expression. That is all, and yet I remember the one woman when I look at the other, and ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... promise, no matter what Mr. Bennett or any one else says, if I tell you that I'm worrying over your being here? I don't feel it's the right thing for you. And it's certain Grandma will change her will if she hears you're living with me. It's a miracle I didn't dry up in my part to-night from sheer anxiety and absent-mindedness. You'd hate me to fail through you, dear ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... each other a long searching look; then Perkins resumed, "That's right, Leftenant, take yer bearin's. I don't see ez you kin do me any special good, ner harm nuther. Ef yer want no news or help from me, we kin sheer off right yere ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... steadiness of nerve to the greatest test, by keeping the precipice constantly in view, except when hidden by the fog. Indeed, they could drive their alpenstocks through the overhanging rim of frozen snow, and look sheer down through the hole thus made to the amphitheatre below. One of the guides left them, unable longer to endure the sight of these precipices so close at hand. As they neared their goal they feared lest the mist might, at the last, deprive them of the culminating moment for which they ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Sheer instinct seemed to have stirred them to this animosity against animals whose aspect, in some respects, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... preside over a Ladies' Art Club of two hundred souls. At that time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one imagined that a time would come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... She was beautiful, strong, and graceful, presenting a most striking appearance. Loved by all, she felt love and devotion only for her country. Desperate and determined, she set out to fulfil her mission. She was a mere expression of the conservative element which acts only when driven by sheer necessity. Her reason impressed her with her duty and circumstances; the time acted upon her mind. "Easy, calm, resigned, she looked upon the angry masses of people who cursed her," confident that she had done her country ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... bed and stared at him in sheer amazement. For a long time words wouldn't come to me. Simpson backed nervously to ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... must not must," nevertheless the saying of Kladderadatsch, "Bien muss," ["The bee must"—referring to a joke in the German Punch (Kladderadatsch).] is, for ordinary mortals, much more applicable—and over this "bee must" one at last becomes quite idle from sheer weariness. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... common end, all must make sacrifices, but also because he was supported by a body of the most remarkable men whom America has ever produced. Men who, though doubtless in a numerical minority, taking the country as a whole, by sheer weight of ability ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... If so, he was in no haste to let realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer joy of living. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... noble, unselfish woman," sobbed Mrs. Johnson, "and she taught Jackanapes to be the same; and that's how it is that my Tony has been spared to me. And it must be sheer goodness in Miss Jessamine, for what can she know of a mother's feelings? And I'm sure most people seem to think that if you've a large family you don't know one from another any more than they do, and that a lot of children are ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... for Sophie Carr's immortal soul, nor for the beauty and sweetness of her spirit, when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the melody of her voice and the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a desperate dash towards the companion, and by sheer strength fought his way out through the white and native seamen with his fists, striking out right and left, and felling a man at each blow. Calling loudly upon his Solomon Islanders, he gained the deck, where he was met by Billy Onotoa, who presented a Snider ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... to me that the calculation of chances, where there are no data grounded either on special experience or on special inference, must, in an immense majority of cases, break down, from sheer impossibility of assigning any principle by which to be guided in setting out the list of possibilities. In the case of the colored balls we have no difficulty in making the enumeration, because we ourselves determine what the possibilities shall be. But suppose a case ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... by crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of these houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer from the pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions, necessitating a pleasing chassez-dechassez movement to the time-pressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve other Terpsichorean ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of water—the wash of a light sea over broken rock. But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant liner, her face full ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make permanent conquest. I am confident that the nations that have learned the discipline of freedom and that have settled with self-possession to its ordered practice are now about to make conquest of the world by the sheer power of example and of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... could volleys be so well sustained, how else so deadly? And how fast they themselves were dropping! The thing was not like bullets, but as the earth caving under them. The charge turned to panic. They plunged on downward, indeed, and even sheer into the cross fire of Driscoll's six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way through and fled on down the hill, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... it. I dozed uneasily with horrid dreams as I sat on three inches of hard box, with my head jogging sideways. Always I was conscious of the evil smell about me, but when the peasant was still I was able to suffer' it, because of sheer weariness, which deadened my senses. It was when he moved, disturbing invisible layers of air, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... rule, addressed to the young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of local compassion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an able-bodied man, shrew-ridden through sheer supineness and "polthroonery." But what Lisconnel often said that it "thought badder of" was the stepmotherly treatment which seemed to be the lot of the little girl Katty. Of course the situation ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... At last, from sheer exhaustion, he threw himself on his couch, and fell into a troubled sleep, filled with broken and distorted visions of the scenes that had occupied his waking hours. But he gradually became quieter, and it appeared in his ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the deep-toned camel-bells. Finally we reached a sluggish river, but did not dare to satisfy our thirst, except by washing out our mouths, and by taking occasional swallows, with long intervals of rest, in one of which we fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. When we awoke the midday sun was shining, and a party of Persian travelers ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... that it was said he sat down only twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously, thin. To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer curiosity, to refrain from asking him ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... city, where everything is manufactured or sold ready-made, a person simply goes to the store and buys whatever he needs. In the country this cannot be done, and one is driven by sheer necessity to devise ways and means of supplying his needs, himself. He simply has to invent or devise a remedy. Necessity is ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... by Mr. Gladstone. The object of Sir William was to initiate a broad and liberal line of policy in colonial affairs on principles which, it appeared to the government, would be adverse to the interests and subversive of the authority of the parent country. Mr. Gladstone was actuated by sheer party opposition. Only forty-two votes were found in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... endowed with a will strong enough to conquer death; and a striking narrative effect could certainly be produced by setting forth this moral conquest. This, then, became the purpose of the story: to exhibit a character with a superhuman will, and to show how, by sheer force of volition, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... placed with a relative of the name of Seymour, to study the profession of the law; but this dry kind of study was soon found to have no attractions for one of his volatile turn of mind. Something, however, was to be done to rescue from sheer idleness a youth of nineteen, with very narrow means, few friends, and no definite prospects; and, by the kindness of Dr. Wheelock, the pious founder of Dartmouth College, who had been the intimate friend of his grandfather, he was enabled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... follow the present prevailing fashion, I think they ought to give me a testimonial for the paper on Dinner-giving Snobs, which I am now writing. What do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner-service of plate (NOT including plates, for I hold silver plates to be sheer wantonness, and would almost as soon think of silver teacups), a couple of neat teapots, a coffeepot, trays, &c., with a little inscription to my wife, Mrs. Snob; and a half-score of silver tankards for the little ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so desolate. From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room. The afternoon had so darkened that electric light already burned, and there were the usual dozen of players seated among the shaded gleams falling decorously on dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the little gilded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at rest. It's a slow place where—where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one thing's done—the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... steamboatmen intensely describe with the phrase 'as dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caught the sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that we had good hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious family stood ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... north, centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals, diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... received in a duel, during their stay at Plymouth. Next day, they fell in with five ships of Biscay, well manned, coming, as they supposed, from the great bank of Newfoundland, which attacked the Desire; but Mr. Candish gave them so warm a reception, that they were glad to sheer off, and continued their course without giving him any farther disturbance. As it grew dark, and he feared losing sight of his consorts, Mr. Candish ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... that the head hunters had paused to sever Number Twelve's head, Bulan had gained fifty yards upon them, and then, of a sudden, he came to a sheer wall rising straight across the narrow trail he had been following. Ahead there was no way—a cat could scarce have scaled that formidable barrier—but to the right he discerned what appeared to be a steep and winding pathway up the canyon's ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... think it sheer lunacy, but—I've a sort of idea that if I'm to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines. Modern poetic drama—It's that or nothing, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... or a flute at the same time. One sees representations of girls, their heads thrown back and their long hair flying, merrily twanging a guitar as they skip round the room. In the civil and religious processions many of the participators danced along as though from sheer lightness of heart; and on some occasions even the band footed it down the high-road, circling, jumping, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... pleasant paths, to encounter no obstacles, to wrestle with no difficulties and hardships—such has absolutely no fascination to him. He meets obstruction with the keen delight of a strong man battling with the waves and opposing them in sheer enjoyment, and the greater and more apparently overwhelming the forces that may tend to sweep him back, the more vigorous his own efforts to forge through them. At the conclusion of the ore-milling ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... thoroughly was I recover'd that, waking early next morning, and finding my sweet nurse asleep from sheer weariness, in a corner of the hut, I stagger'd up from my bed of dried bracken, and out into the pure air. Rare it was to stand and drink it in like wine. A footstep arous'd me. 'Twas Mistress Delia: and turning, I held ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if need be; an art which has rendered so celebrated ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... added to this is that the later Christian slavery represented a distinct retrogression, deliberately revived from motives of sheer cupidity, and accompanied by more revolting features than the slavery of ancient ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... had come from Sharon, Illinois, to perform the thankless task of starting a weekly newspaper in a town already undernourishing one. By sheer stubbornness he had at last established it. Twelve hundred subscribers, their little printing jobs, advertisers who bought liberal portions of space at ten cents an inch—all had enabled him to give his children a living ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism rouses the honor and evokes the veneration of the alien, and as we have long had a grudge against the English, we would be particularly glad to forget it in a sense of English respect and affection. We would fain believe that the English have ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... thoughts and marshalled in orderly array all the facts he had already gathered. There was nothing to do now but to follow up a given path step by step and he could no longer reproach himself that he might have cast suspicion on an innocent soul. No, his bearing towards Mrs. Bernauer had not been sheer brutality. His instinct, which had led him so unerringly so many times, had again shown him the right way when he had thrust the ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... that he would some day find his way out of it. He knew that the four years would pass away in less than five; and as he had turned student to avoid hard labor, why should he fatigue himself by digging at the roots of hard language! It was either from sheer indolence, or because he had completely exhausted himself in his preparatory studies, that he made no farther advances in literature, although he kept within its flowery walks. I have already mentioned a snug little orchard, which, in truth, was one of ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... followed was a mixture of boxing, football tactics and sheer Yankee grit that Dave and Dan now employed as they faced more than half a dozen scoundrels armed with the long, thin knives ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... gently sloping hill-sides, covered with farms, then it pierces the sheer rock, then again borders the cliff, fifty or one hundred feet from the lake below. The trees are in full leaf and some are in bloom. The grass is high where we walked, but up towards the tops of the mountains, the snow still lies. One of the strange sights is to see large, splendid ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... activity associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of exceptional usefulness ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... they themselves are hardly conscious of them and overcome them in the course of the evening. Yet the public, even critics, usually forget this fact and condemn an entire performance for faults which are due at the beginning to sheer nervousness. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... Results of the Science of Language;" but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, amere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you want ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... shutters—the window looked on the little backyard I have before described; there was no ledge without—nothing but sheer descent. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Iowa undoubtedly originated in the mind of one who is laboring to modify the ferocity of "the uninformed public opinion of the West." No Governor of Iowa ever made any such statement, nor ever entertained any such sentiment. It is a sheer fabrication. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... manner the "three F.s," which the Land League demanded, and which were secured by the Act of 1881, were conceded against the will of the Government by sheer force of circumstances. A rumour which gained currency early in 1880, that the Bessborough Commission would report in their favour, was stigmatised by Mr. Gladstone as incredible, and the adoption of the principle enunciated by the Commissioners resulted in the resignation ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... permitted at length to struggle through his narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the particulars which Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this was done the discussion was renewed, and raged, with no little violence, for a full hour. At length it ceased through the sheer exhaustion of the parties. Calvert was the first to withdraw from it, as he soon discovered that such was the bigotry of old Hinkley and his wife, and even of John Cross himself, that nothing short of divine revelation ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... chair and got to his feet, overcome by a choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He must get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in his own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither, unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct the process ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Abramko let them loose; and by a cunning device the old Jew kept each animal at his post in the courtyard or the garden by hanging a piece of meat just out of reach on the top of a pole. The animals guarded the house, and sheer hunger guarded the dogs. No odor that reached their nostrils could tempt them from the neighborhood of that piece of meat; they would not have left their places at the foot of the poles for the most engaging female of the canine species. If a stranger by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John Guy's the night before, sans merci. True, I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the protestations of a drunkard. Her reasonings are mere sophisms; they could persuade no man. It is not by them, it is by personal appeals, through the admiration she extorts from him, and through sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyes are fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to the consequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains is invented on the spur of the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... while a highly-coloured sandstone of various vivid hues, often ferruginous, forms a conspicuous feature in its cliffs. Along its eastern edge these present to the lower champaign of Texas a precipitous escarpment several hundred feet sheer, in long stretches, tending with an unbroken facade, in other places showing ragged, where cleft by canons, through which rush torrents, the heads of numerous Texan streams. Its surface is, for the most part, a dead horizontal level, sterile as the Sahara itself, in places ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... and Cully. For they know that the deflection of a single point upon the prairies—above all, upon the Staked Plain—will leave the traveller, like a ship at sea without chart or compass, to steer by guesswork, or go drifting at sheer chance. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe, is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community for which it is intended. On or near the Indian reservations there ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a wonderful change in the scenery. The islands were high and broken, rising like towers and pyramids from the water, and grouped together in the most fantastic confusion. Between their jagged pinnacles, and through their sheer walls of naked rock, we could trace the same formation among the hills of the mainland, while in the rear, white against the sky, stretched the snowy table-land which forms a common summit for all. One is bewildered in the attempt to describe such scenery. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... but though Handel wrote more great choruses, his debt to Purcell is enormous. His way of hurling great masses of choral tone at his hearers is derived from Purcell; and so is the rhetorical plan of many of his choruses. But in Purcell, despite his sheer strength, we never fail to get the characteristic Purcellian touch, the little unexpected inflexion, or bit of coloured harmony that reminds that this is the music of the open air, not of the study, that does more than this, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... above you in your humble position, and there is so little room that two people can with difficulty stow themselves in the narrow seat. If a brother and sister or a husband and wife drive together, the man, in sheer self-defence, is obliged to put his arm around the woman, no matter how distasteful it may be. Not that she would ever be conscious of whether he did it or not, for the amount of clothes one is obliged to wear in Russia ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... white person on the street, and did Vesey's companions make the customary bow, which blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit better than his black slaves, and that for ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... so close that I might see the place very well; a smallish island with sheer cliffs very jagged and grim where the seas broke in foam and crowned with many and divers trees, beyond which rose greeny slopes with more trees that mounted up and up to a lofty summit of rocks ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... on horseback. He recognized Superintendent Finnan. Uttering a cry of hope, he headed for him. At sight of the desperately running figure, with its grimy face and flapping rags, the superintendent pulled up in sheer amazement. When the stream of men broke through the train and poured after, yelping like a pack of hounds, he urged his ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... the acquiescence of the other seamen in this act of retributive justice. Jackson, with a loud oath, attempted to spring into the boat, but was repelled by the seamen; again he made the attempt, with dreadful imprecations. He was on the plane-sheer of the brig, and about to make a spring, when a blow from a handspike (the same handspike with which he had murdered the unfortunate seaman) struck him senseless, and he fell back into the lee-scuppers. The boat then shoved off, and had not gained more than two cables' lengths ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... with his wicked, selfish smile, trotted back with Billy Mink's duck, but he dropped it in sheer surprise when he discovered that his plump chicken had disappeared. Now Reddy Fox is very suspicious, as people who are not honest themselves are very apt to be. So he left Billy Mink's duck where he had dropped it and trotted ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... who from sheer goodness of heart are undertaking to alter this fatal resolution? I admire your zeal, and I thank you for it; but I do not think there will be any need of all these negotiations. M. Jean de Mauprat claims his share of the inheritance; ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... structure of sacrifice and slaughter from which he alone arose supreme. It was a dramatic dissertation and contained red-blooded sentiments that would have done credit to a man who had actually played the giant game, swapped trick for trick with death, and won out by sheer luck. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... the house just as the judge had finished breakfast. He was shown into the room while the old man still lingered in sheer listlessness over his empty ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... horse-guard (/Hatschiergarde/) itself, in black velvet frocks (/Fluegelroeck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. One scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished to take a ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... inquisitor to have had—that is, not an inquisitor filled with holy zeal for what he mistakenly thought the cause of Christ demanded, but a spleeny, envious, rancorous shaveling, who tortured men from hatred of their superiority to him, and sheer love ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... unto the hill of woe, so call'd Because the legend ran that, long time since, One rainy night, when every wind blew loud, A woful man had thrust his wife and child With shouts from off the bridge, and following, plunged Into the dizzy chasm below. Below, Sheer thro' the black-wall'd cliff the rapid brook Shot down his inner thunders, built above With matted bramble and the shining gloss Of ivy-leaves, whose low-hung tresses, dipp'd In the fierce stream, bore downward with the wave. ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... cockle-shell. With every turn of her wheel she trembled from stem to stern, and with a full head of steam could only stagger along at the rate of three miles an hour. When night came the captain begged to tie up till morning, for breasting that flood in the dark was sheer madness; but Brown cried out, 'Put her ahead, Gineral Jim,' and Garfield clutched the helm and drove her on ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... paddle in his hand, and, without a word, leaped into the mad waters. With a few strokes, he was at the side of the canoe, and put the paddle into Marie's hand. 'Here,' he said, 'Keep away from the mill; that is your only danger, and steer sheer over the fall, getting as close as possible to the left bank.' The height of the fall, as you are aware, was not more than fifteen or eighteen feet, and there was plenty of water below, and not very much danger from rocks. 'Go you on shore now, and I will meet my doom, or achieve my safety,' ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... bill passed both houses without any difficulty, and it received the royal assent by commission on the 22nd of March. It passed from a lack of knowledge of American affairs; from an indifference to the interests of the colonists; and from sheer cupidity. The profits which we had derived from commerce with the Americans, and which were the ostensible object proposed in planting the colonies, were not sufficient: if we could obtain it, we must share in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bandage, and with a raw, red blotch where his right ear had been shot away, he was hideous. There was some kind of power emanating from him, but it was not that which, was so keenly vital and impelling in Kells. It was brute ferocity, dominating by sheer physical force. In any but muscular clash between Kells and Gulden the latter must lose. The men back of Gulden were a bearded, check-shirted, heavily armed group, the worst of that bad lot. All the younger, cleaner-cut men like Red Pearce and ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... succeeded to confusion in the arrangement of its component parts. The philosopher adds that the deluge was produced by an uncourteous salute from the watery tail of another comet; doubtless through sheer envy of its improved condition; thus furnishing a melancholy proof that jealousy may prevail even among the heavenly bodies, and discord interrupt that celestial harmony of the spheres so melodiously sung ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... street; and to the man in the street God, as he understands Him, is neither a very friendly nor a very comprehensible element in life. Instead of mitigating fear He adds to it, not in the Biblical sense of "fearing God," but in that of sheer animal distrust. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... he drew back a trifle for the sheer joy of again catching her to him, it was Hedwig who held out ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Sometimes rioting went rather too far, but for the most part it was harmless. One rather grave incident, shortly before my entry, derived its humor mainly from the way in which it was treated by the superintendent. One of the out-buildings of the Academy, either because offensive or out of sheer deviltry, was set on fire and destroyed. The perpetrator of this startling practical joke was Alexander F. Crosman, of the '51 Date, whom many of us yet living remember well. Small in stature, with something of the "chip-on-the-shoulder" characteristic, often ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small competence which had been the foundation ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worldly; but I am a woman, womanly,—though I may not care to be thought it. And, therefore, though what you say is, regarded in a worldly point of view, sheer nonsense, regarded in a womanly point of view, it is logically sound. But still you cannot know Lilian as I do. Your nature and hers are in strong contrast. I do not think she is a safe wife for you. The purest, the most innocent creature ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... comparatively few, said the world. Frederic Chilton had, nevertheless, fallen in love with her at sight, and considered her, now, the handsomest woman of his acquaintance. Her dress was a simple lawn—a sheer white fabric, with bunches of purple grass bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it; her hair was lustrous and abundant, and her face, besides being happy, was frank and intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Bellow's Falls, on the Connecticut river, we entered the 'Old Granite State,' but too far south to see the 'native mountains' in their wildest grandeur and magnificence. One specimen, however, greets us as we leave the village—a huge, perpendicular mass of granite, rising sheer up from the railroad to the height of a thousand feet or more; while the river, a wild receptacle of tumbled rocks and broken falls, stretches along the other side of the track, far beneath us. The labor expended in the construction of this mountain road (the Cheshire ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contention between himself and his wife. Besides, for Alice's sake, it was clearly his duty to get the fellow out of the way. Girls, Mr. Anthony considered, were always falling in love with the very last people in the world with whom they should do so, and out of sheer contrariety it was more than possible that Alice might take a fancy for this penniless vagabond, and if she did Mrs. Anthony was fool enough to support her in ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... solitary stream; then, in quick succession, rapid followed rapid, till the bed of the Ottawa seemed a slope of foam. Now, like a wall bristling at the top with woody islets, the Falls of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen cataracts; now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but unseen, the crouched wildcat eyed them from the thicket; now through the maze of water-girded rocks, which the white cedar and the spruce clasped with serpent-like ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... he did, he fell into a paroxysm half hysterical, half frantic. I had completed his ruin, he exclaimed, and his unhappy family would have to curse me as the cause of his destruction. He was ready to sink on the floor in sheer terror, and with difficulty could he utter a request that I should instantly leave his house. This was a command, however harsh and heartless, which I dared not resist, for I was forced to admit to myself that under his terrified exterior might lurk ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... had dissolved under a rising sun when Duane made his first halt some miles north of the scene where he had waited for the hounds. A barrier to further progress, in shape of a precipitous rocky bluff, rose sheer from the willow brake. He skirted the base of the cliff, where walking was comparatively easy, around in the direction of the river. He reached the end finally to see there was absolutely no chance to escape from the brake at that corner. It took extreme labor, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... talking sheer rubbish," she said lightly. "You remind me of that absurd play, The Chinese Honeymoon, when the bride took her bridesmaids with her." She laughed; she took Christine's hand and dragged her to her feet. "You might smile ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... wicked-looking eyes that fairly blazed with fury as, catching sight of me, it suddenly halted, glaring at me, emitting a low, angry, hissing sound, and clashing its formidable jaws together in what looked like an access of perfectly demoniac ferocity. Struck motionless for the moment, in sheer amazement, I quickly recovered myself and, believing that the thing was about to spring at my face and inflict a possibly fatal bite, I raised my cutlass and, with a slashing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... urged on by the Lassalleans, into a series of political campaigns somewhat successful at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth his while. Strasser had been elected president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1877, in the midst of a great strike in New York ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn—the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... ousted literature: "the libraries were closed like sepulchres." But fashionable people were interested in an hydraulic organ, and they ordered from the lute-makers "lyres the size of chariots." Of course, this musical craze was sheer affectation. Actually, they were only interested in sports: to race, to arrange races, to breed horses, to train athletes and gladiators. As a pastime, they collected Oriental stuffs. Silk was then fashionable, and so were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... down to dinner, Kurt was again visibly impressed by her appearance. She wore another of her recently acquired gowns, a black one of sheer filmy material. Her hair, rippling back from her brows, was coiled low. Her face was pale and yet young and flowerlike. There was a new touch of wistfulness about her—a charm of repose, almost ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... added the last sentence gravely and his reply was as grave though his voice was still hoarse. "You were sublime goodness and wisdom. When a woman through the sheer quality of her silence saves a man from slipping over the verge of madness he does not forget. While I was sane I dared scarcely utter her name. If I had gone mad I should have raved as madmen do. For ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that our soldiers have made any attack on the life or property of a single Belgian citizen without being forced to it by sheer necessity.... ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... described it in fitting terms. There was the Temple of the Seven Spheres, where the priests offered incense to the Houses of the Planets, to the whole host of heaven, and to Bel, Lord of the Sky. There was the Home of the Height, a sheer flight of solid masonry extending vertiginously, and surmounted by turrets of copper capped with gold. In its utmost pinnacle were a sanctuary and a dazzling couch. There the priests said that sometimes Bel came and rested. For the truth of that statement, however, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... like a Punchinello, then it seemed An hundred widows swept in his small voice, Now tenor, and now bass of drummy war. He smiled, compact of loam, this orchard man; Mused like a midnight, webbed with moonbeam snares Of flitting Love; woke—and a King he stood, Whom all the world hath in sheer jest refused For helpless laughter's sake. And then, forfend! Bacchus and Jove reared vast Olympus there; And Pan leaned leering from Promethean eyes. "Lord!" sighed his aspect, weeping o'er the jest, "What simple mouse ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... dresses and petticoats were yellow with age. There was no distinguishing mark about them. They were of fine sheer linen, and exquisitely made. But thousands of babies over the land might have ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... take that back," he said. "I really don't believe you know yet what the word means, or what you've done to earn it. Are you contented with me as a companion, or would you rather have Douglas, or Norman? I should really like to know, out of sheer curiosity, so you needn't mind telling the truth, for in any case you won't ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... naturally as though it really had been yesterday that we went fishing in the meadow. My heart beat quicker. I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of living in the same world with her. I vowed that I should be very nice indeed to Mrs. Bannister. Had Penelope asked me to be very nice to her friend Medusa I should have given her my pledge. Subtly, by her admonition, she had conveyed to me the promise that this walk ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... or three small white houses overlooking the still, green waters of the sea, and then, following the line of a river, plunged into the heart of a strange and lonely district, in which there appeared to be no life. The river-track took them up a great glen, the sides of which were about as sheer as a railway-cutting. There were no trees or bushes about, but the green pasture along the bed of the valley wore its brightest colors in the warm sunlight, and far up on the hillsides the browns and crimsons of the heather and the silver-gray of the rocks trembled in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... riven in the red rock, which was so narrow in places that three horsemen could scarcely have ridden there abreast. This gorge, that is five miles long, is the high road to the City of Pines, to which there was no other access except by secret paths across the mountains, and on either side of it are sheer and towering cliffs that rise to heights of between one and ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... kept out of harm's way in my own bedroom. Most unluckily—as it afterward turned out—instead of taking the pocketbook to the tea-caddy, I went into my room first to take the tea-caddy to the pocketbook. I only acted in this roundabout way from sheer thoughtlessness, and severely enough I was punished for it, as you will acknowledge yourself when you have read a page or two more ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... that, Colonel!" he admitted. "I suppose it was a good deal like chasing a bird to put salt on its tail. But it was sheer instinct with us—nothing more. We saw that car start up, and we chased it. A fine lot of trouble it's got us into, too! But I guess we'd do the same ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... knows perfectly well that the thing could not be run by a syndicate! It must be a State's own single possession—a State's special secret. If I were as bent on sheer destructiveness as he imagines me to be, I should waste no more time, but offer it to Germany. Germany would take it at once—Germany would require no persuasion to use it!—Germany would make me a millionaire twice over ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... you wanted a man to say rude things to the Governor, it was to Tell that you applied first. Once when he was hunting in the wild ravine of Schachenthal, where men were hardly ever to be seen, he met the Governor face to face. There was no way of getting past. On one side the rocky wall rose sheer up, while below the river roared. Directly Gessler caught sight of Tell striding along with his cross-bow, his cheeks grew pale and his knees tottered, and he sat down on a rock ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... position taken by Kenkenes when he discovered it. A wall built between it and the north would bar the sand and form a nook, wholly closed on two sides and partly closed at each end by stones. All this made itself plain to the mind of the young sculptor at once. With a laugh of sheer content, he turned to retrace his steps and began ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the floor timbers of a first-rate ship buried in a wooded ravine, so evenly were the sides of the rock scooped out; and this impression was assisted by narrow layers of different strata, which ran in slightly curved lines placed at equal distances, giving the effect of the ship's sheer and planking, whilst through her entrance or cloven bow the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... last he stopped from sheer lack of breath, Old Mother Nature spoke, and her voice was very severe. "I'm ashamed of you, Chatterer," said she. "Unfortunately, what Happy Jack has said about you is true. In many ways you are a disgrace to the Green Forest. Still I don't know how the Green Forest could get along without ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-coloured lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come away bodily, planed clean from ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they still ended ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... and stupid, she began to feel positively desperate; and the result of it all was that when Jan van der Welde came, as he was accustomed to do nearly every evening, to see Koosje, Miss Truide, from sheer longing for excitement and change, began to make eyes at him, with what effect ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... a very vigorous barbarian indeed, and the exact type of a turbulent Lowland Scot, without whom the Seminary had missed its life and colour, and who by sheer force of courage and strength asserted himself as our chief captain. After many years have passed, Speug stands out a figure of size and reality from among the Dowbiggins and other poor fleeting shadows. Thomas John, no doubt, carried off medals, prizes, certificates ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... nothing more than a jumble of adobe boxes piled in an indiscriminate heap on a gigantic stone level surmounting the crest of a hill. A sheer rock wall, perhaps a hundred feet in height, descended to the surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... soon find me there, and put me to an end as well, for I am the heir direct, and should be the first to succeed to the property.' So I crawled on to the roof, and there lay hidden behind the chimney-stack, holding on with arms and legs, while unable to speak for sheer terror." ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... with, the very word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the stained-glass ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... "Sheer dreaming and impossibility— Just in four days too! All the seventeen years, Not once did a suspicion visit me How very different a lot is mine From any other woman's in the world. The reason must ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pause. Evidently he was planning to let the force of his exposure be cumulative, until from its sheer momentum it carried everything ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... seen worse days' sport than I saw once when we were out after rattlesnakes, and nothing else. There was a cave, Sir, down under a mountain, a few miles to the south of this, right at the foot of a bluff some four or five hundred feet sheer down; it was known to be a resort of those creatures, and a party of us went out it's many years ago, now to see if we couldn't destroy the nest; exterminate the whole horde. We had one dog with us, a little dog, a kind of spaniel, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when life forsook ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... countenanced for a short time by well-willing men of position, sometimes dwelling with supernatural creatures,—Hallmund, a kindly spirit or cave-dweller with a hospitable daughter, or the half-troll giant Thorir, a person of daughters likewise. But his case grows steadily worse. Partly owing to sheer ill-luck and Glam's curse, partly, as the saga-writer very candidly tells us, because he "was not an easy man to live withal," his tale of slayings and the feuds thereto appertaining grows steadily. For the most part he lives by simple cattle-lifting and the like, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Swift was a clergyman and politician; Addison was secretary of state; other writers depended on patrons or politics or pensions for fame and a livelihood; but Pope was independent, and had no profession but literature. And fourth, by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place, and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly, dwarfish in soul and body. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... cheat first was I made aware, Seeing myself of her forsaken sheer, In whom I hoped alone; For, when I deemed myself most fairly grown Into her favour and her servant dear, Without her thought or care Of my to-come despair, I found she had another's merit ta'en To heart and put me from ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... If he insist upon the definitions as yielding a ground of conceivable difference, he must abandon the inconceivability; but if he insist upon the inconceivability, he must abandon the definition as sheer verbiage, devoid of all conceivable meaning. There is no possible escape from this dilemma. Further, two negations can never contradict; for contradiction is the asserting and the denying of the same proposition; two denials can not conflict. If Illimitation ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded door, and ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the time Elia, as though in sheer idle curiosity, watched the scene, steadily continuing his meal the while. There was no sort of feeling expressed in his cold eyes. Nor did he display the least relief when Jim assured him Eve was alive. Peter watched the boy, and while Jim bathed her wounded ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... shock, that the paint was about two days old. Under what conditions I wondered—for did I not know the ways of paint—could a real Corot have come over so fresh? I more than scented trickery. A sketch overpainted—-or it seemed above the quality of a sheer forgery—or was the case worse than that? Meanwhile not a shade of doubt was in Rosenheim's mind. As I canvassed the possibilities his sotto-voce ecstasies continued, to the vast amusement, as I perceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... as the amazing scroll of that four-day journey unrolled. She found it now, a simple word, one of the simplest in our mother tongue—bigness. Bigness in its most ample sense,—that was the dominant note. Immensities of distance, vastness of rolling plain, sheer bulk of mountain, rivers that one crossed, and after a day's journey crossed again, still far from source or confluence. And now this unending ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to slip into victory; the more she assumes, and the less she argues, the slighter the hold she gives her opponents. She is either perfectly good-humored or blankly innocent; she either smiles you into indulgence or wearies you into compliance by the sheer hopelessness of making any impression on her. She may, indeed, if of the very vociferous and shrill-tongued kind, burst out into such a noisy demonstration that you are glad to escape from her, no matter what spoils you leave on her hands; just as a mastiff will slink away from a bantam hen all ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... in fact, being enacted in Madame de la Baudraye's house, in harmony with her struggles over money matters and her successive transformations—a drama to which no one but Monsieur de Clagny and the Abbe Duret ever knew the clue, when Dinah in sheer idleness, or perhaps sheer vanity, revealed the secret of her ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... smashed their neighbors with clenched fists—not knowing or caring how hard or whom they struck—or that they themselves were being hit. Women screamed frantically, hysterically, tears streaming from thousands of eyes because of sheer joy at the wonderful thing the Gold Dust maverick was doing. Even the stolid Sing Pete was jumping ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... lakes, Livingstone was the first to see the Falls of the Zambesi, which he named the Victoria Falls, after her Majesty the Queen. The water at these falls dashes down in torrents, a sheer depth of 320 feet, the spray rises mountains high and can be seen many miles away, whilst its sound is like the noise ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... in your opinion, Mrs. Creighton. Mr. Taylor is, no doubt, a clever man; and yet he takes delight in every piece of finery about his house. He is more possessed with the spirit of sheer ostentation, than any man ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... manners; but towns with three hundred thousand inhabitants ought to be free from both. Such rigid conditions cannot well be observed, and a consequence already to be traced is, that those forms of society which tend to refine it, and to render it more human and graceful, are neglected from sheer necessity. Carelessness in the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as ungracious in deportment, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dismissed the morning session at quarter to twelve, so that those who lived near enough could go home for a change of dress. Emma Jane and Rebecca ran nearly every step of the way, from sheer excitement, only stopping ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we called Pirate Hall, was magnificent compared to our poor dear Cartref Pellenig, and was made with such rapidity, speed, and neatness, our clerk of the works fell into fits of envy and jealousy. We had visited it very often without being discovered; but the children, from sheer mischief, used to carry off things of all kinds back to our cavern, and we were unable to prevent them, as they almost considered it an act of duty to do so. I would not let them go; besides, we might have been discovered, as, through the loss of different ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... safely, but instead of a kind welcome the old hag began to scold him for being away so long. He begged her to be quiet, and telling of his visit to the sparrows, opened the basket, while the scowling old woman held her tongue, out of sheer curiosity. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the Cambridge guard-ship, lying not far distant from the place where the Amphion blew up; who having a great desire to observe every thing relative to a profession into which he had just entered, was looking through a glass at the frigate, as she lay along side of the sheer-hulk, and was taking in her bowsprit. She was lashed to the hulk; and the Yarmouth, an old receiving ship, was lying on the opposite side, quite close to her, and both within a few yards of the Dock-yard jetty. The midshipman said, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... defence,—for well she guessed my mind, and knew that, though she had consented a thousand times to betray me, I would not stand passive while a man pressed his unwelcome love on her. And now, as if to force a change of theme by sheer vehemence of manner, she turned her back towards Montignac and addressed La Chatre with a fire that ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in the neighbourhood of the village, it is expected of him that he shall make the crops thrive and neither tread them down himself nor allow wild pigs to do so. The expectation is reasonable, yet the conduct of the ghost does not always answer to it. Occasionally, whether out of sheer perverseness or simple absence of mind, he will sit down in a field; and wherever he does so, he makes a hollow where the fruits will not grow. Indeed any fruit that he even touches with his foot in passing, shrivels ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the lights aboard, and the successive discharges of firearms, each looked like a miniature flash of lightning. As they approached the scene of confusion the racket grew in volume,—a dozen men seemed to be whooping things up as though under the impression that the battle could be won by sheer noise—and broken heads. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Boers over the handful of British troops then in South Africa, made it necessary to base the protection even of the most important strategical points on sheer audacity. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... valid argument. Loath to leave his money at the mercy of chance comers, he climbed up and closed the iron shutters of the grated window,—the cliff descended, sheer, one hundred and two feet to the Dnyepr at that point,—double-locked the great iron doors, and there we were in a bank vault, with all possible customers excluded. Luckily, the saints in these caverns, which ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the hearth, till one is fairly stifled, and will touch nothing that is not well-nigh soaked in vinegar. And each time that Frederick comes in with some fresh tale, she is like to swoon with fear, and every time she vows that it is the pestilence attacking her, and is like to die from sheer fright. What is a man to do with such a wife and such ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... include nine counties, instead of six, in the Northern Parliament, the view of the Government being that they must cut their legislative Ulster according to their Protestant cloth. Mr. CLYNES announced the intention of the Labour Party to wash their hands of the Bill, which he regarded as a sheer waste of time. Undeterred by the prospect of this calamity the House passed Clause I. by a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef—the only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles! The spot where the landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could have been found on the shore; everywhere else precipices came sheer down into forty fathoms of water. Also, in all that stretch this was the only spot where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and companion from childhood! Knowing her as well as he did, he had treated her as if she were a mere ball-room coquette; he had forgotten her as soon as if it had been a mere holiday fancy of a boy of fifteen. He had been completely infatuated, dazzled, blinded by a beautiful face. That it was sheer infatuation was now evident; for, absent from both Elinor and Jane, all feeling for the latter seemed to have vanished like a dream. It is said that love without hope cannot live: the question must be ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... His mere counsel, purpose, and will, so that they cannot be saved? Never in all eternity, try as they may, will they prove this proposition from God's revealed Word. For nowhere do the Holy Scriptures speak thus. Yet from sheer foolhardiness they dare employ, contrary to Scripture, such blasphemous doctrine and speech and spread it ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... subject of a sharp canvass from one end of the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity. But if he escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis in another. Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... told her how fiercely and irrepressibly his anger burned. She knew enough of his race to know that no power on earth could stop him striking for revenge. And she trembled, for she knew also that directly he had begun to strike his madness would increase, and that only sheer physical exhaustion would ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment. Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilize this ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talk she did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she domineered every situation. It was her opinion when she married that at any time, with any listener, she could talk cleverly on any subject. As the years passed, during which she added little to her asset of knowledge, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,—the employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically, religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies. The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is almost ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... him to make remarkably rapid progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, Anna Myhrman, the youngest daughter of the family, he soon became attached by the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... chapter presents only the quintessence of Darwinism, fairly bristling with assertions, which are boldly put forth as incontrovertible truths. In view of the author's demand to have at least his sincere love of truth recognized, we can but throw up our hands out of sheer astonishment. To illustrate Haeckel's "love of truth" let it suffice to observe that in the second chapter he asserts that man is not only a true vertebrate, a true mammal, etc.—which indeed is passable—but even a true ape (having "all ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... and benevolence. He visited successively cities and towns so far remote from each other, as Bayonne and Marseilles, Bagneres and Lyons. He placed his talents at the service of the public from motives of sheer benevolence, for the large collections which were made at his recitations were not of the slightest ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... their torturing consciences told them that their own misfortunes were only a fraction of the woe they themselves had inflicted upon their poor, widowed mother, they pleaded with God to assist them in the extremity of their distress and at least not permit them to perish of sheer starvation. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... in a minute, jest a-listenin' to her. To-day she war plum out of her head, an' war goin' to get right up an' go off through the woods after it herself. Mirandy had a terrible time with her; an' it wasn't till she got all wore out from sheer weakness that she quieted down an' fell asleep, jest a leetle before yer 'peared, strangers. What it is she keeps entreatin' an' beseechin' for we never can make out, though I'd cut my hand off to get it ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... reading, everybody spoke at once. "It's almost too good to be true," was Jack's quick exclamation. "What do you suppose the surprise will be?" Norman's eager question. While Mary, clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just love to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... from himself. Had she come to him with some scheme for changing everything about the place, making him think that the alterations were a matter of taste or of mere personal pleasure, he would probably have given his assent at once, thinking nothing of the money. But all this was sheer display. Then he walked up and saw the flag waving over the Castle, indicating that he, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, was present there on his own soil. That was right. That was as it should be, because the flag was waving in compliance with an acknowledged ordinance. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... painting to a summer hat. In front was a gay little plaza with vines and a fountain, where lunch and tea were served by the prettiest girls in town in bewitching frilled caps with long black streamers and sheer lawn aprons over blue and green frocks. The Tired Business Men declined to lunch anywhere else, and there was a moment when we feared it might have to be given up, as there was some feeling in town on account of the vacant stools at their old-time counters! It all went to prove that ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... soon fell in with them, and, getting into the midst of them, fired at a Moorish ship which was next him; but the men-of-war, taking the alarm, bore down upon Kid, and, firing upon him, obliged him to sheer off, he not being strong enough to contend with them. Now he had begun hostilities he resolved to go on, and therefore he went and cruised along the coast of Malabar. The first prize he met was a small vessel belonging to Aden; ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... life? However, the Ego was always the mainspring; each one sought personal happiness. And Pierre was grieved to think that those young people, instead of discarding the past and marching on to the truths of the future, were relapsing into shadowy metaphysics through sheer weariness and idleness, due in part perhaps to the excessive exertion of the century, which had been ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... after making an abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly daring manoeuvre, namely, an attempt to capture the Indian canoe! He called out ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... convulsed by a most tremendous shock—a shock and alteration, as Bacon says, "the greatest and most dangerous that can be in a State," in which old clews and habits and rules were confused and all but lost; in which a frightful amount of personal incapacity and worthlessness had, from sheer want of men, risen to the high places of the Church; and in which force and violence, sometimes of the most hateful kind, had come to be accepted as ordinary instruments in the government of souls. Hooker felt too strongly the unfairness, the folly, the intolerant aggressiveness, the malignity ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... steep inclines with their slender legs. Suddenly sitting down on the ground the child swiftly took off her shoes and stockings. Getting up she undid the heavy shawl and the two little dresses. Out she slipped without more ado and stood up in only a light petticoat. In sheer delight at the relief, she threw up her dimpled arms, that were bare up to her short sleeves. To save the trouble of carrying them, her aunt had dressed her in her Sunday clothes over her workday garments. Heidi arranged her dresses neatly in a heap and joined Peter and the goats. She ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... sure of men. They are about as uncertain calculations as the hatching of guinea eggs, or the sprouting of parsley seed. What is theirs can't be worth much; but what belongs to somebody else, is invaluable; moreover, they are liable to sudden tantrums of sheer obstinacy, that hang on like whooping-cough, or a sprain in one's joints. Did you never see a mule take the sulks on his way to the corn crib and the fodder rack, and refuse to budge, even for his own benefit? Some men are just that perverse. Mr. Dunbar is trailing ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the Teutonic Powers would go on fighting, under the lash of Prussia, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of loyal German and Austrian boys, plunge countless more families into hopeless grief, doom all the children in the land to sheer hunger and tuberculosis. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... Sudermania, afterwards Charles IX, from Riga. In 1604 he captured Dorpat, twice defeated the Swedish generals at Bialy Kamien, and was rewarded with the grand baton of Lithuania. Criminally neglected by the diet, which from sheer niggardliness turned a deaf ear to all his requests for reinforcements and for supplies and money to pay his soldiers, Chodkiewicz nevertheless more than held his own against the Swedes. His crowning achievement was the great victory of Kirkholm (Aug. 27th, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... bitterly to myself—"this is sheer foolhardiness! Keep this up for six weeks more and I'll find myself fallen away to a perfect three-ton truck. Keep it up for three months and I'll be ready to rent myself out to the aquarium as a suitable ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... me was a high vaulted arch. It seemed to open into space; a space filled with lambent, coruscating, many-coloured mist whose brightness grew even as I watched. I passed through the arch and stopped in sheer awe! ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... suddenly awoke. He lifted himself, wagging his sword, showing his great silvery side. Then he began to thresh. I never felt a quarter of such power at the end of a line. He went swift as a flash. Then he leaped sheer ahead, like a porpoise, only infinitely more active. We all yelled. He was of great size, over three hundred, broad, heavy, long, and the most violent and savage fish I ever had a look at. Then he rose half—two-thirds out of the water, shaking his massive head, jaws open, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... and the green light sifted into the room and fell on the faces of those present. But that was no help. Not a breath of wind was blowing; moreover, Pelle's heat came from within. He was sweating with sheer anxiety. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... witches was used, it was thought, to injure people, and their malice towards good, hard-working, honest folk was unmistakable. They afflicted children from sheer love of cruelty, and bewitched animals gratuitously, or for slights which they supposed their owners had shown towards them; consequently their knowledge was considered to be greatly inimical to others, and particularly baneful to ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... all red in his wrath, and interrupted him, brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice is evil—and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred customs ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... manifestly takes great pains to render as contemptible and laughably absurd as possible this type of the very great majority of modern infidels, who disavow religion because they fear it, and ridicule Christianity from sheer, shallow ignorance. Our own country at present abounds in 'Bletsons,' in conceited, ignorant 'infidel' scribblers of many descriptions, in of all whom we can still trace the cant and drawl of the old-fashioned fanaticism to which they are in reality nearly allied, while they appear ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow gorges and side-canons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above. Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose; ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... verge of a precipice more than three thousand feet in height,—a sheer granite wall, whose terrible perpendicular distance baffled all visual computation. Its foot was hidden among hazy green spiculae—they might be tender spears of grass catching the slant sun on upheld aprons of cobweb, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... interfered, and dragging the women apart, pushed Mother Hewitt out, giving her so violent an impetus that she fell forward into the middle of the narrow street, where she lay unable to rise, not from any hurt, but from sheer intoxication. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... them into an uproar of hideous, maimed noises, and a tangle of harness chains, while Salty would sit on the high seat with the sun glare heavy in his eyes, dealing out curses of pacification in a level, uninterested voice until the clamor fell off from sheer exhaustion. There was a line of shallow graves along that road; they used to count on dropping a man or two of every new gang of coolies brought out in the hot season. But when he lost his swamper, smitten without warning at the noon halt, Salty quit his job; he ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... been tormented, hopeless, unhappy? Suddenly she stirred. Was she going to cross over? No. She turned and began to walk slowly close to the curbstone, reminding me of the time when I discovered her walking near the edge of a ninety-foot sheer drop. It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front—only now a small sunshade was dangling from them. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... London life. On the other hand, I knew it could be replied that Keats was not indifferent to the misery of city life; that it bore heavily upon him; that it came out powerfully and very sadly in his Ode to the Nightingale, and that it may have been from sheer torture in the contemplation of it that he fled away to a poetic world of his own creating. Moreover, Rossetti's sonnet touched the life, rather than the genius, of Keats, and of this it struck the keynote in the opening lines. I ventured to think that the second and third lines wanted a little ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... reached Sir James Peel Edgerton in safety, all would be well. But would they reach him? Would not the silent forces of Mr. Brown already be assembling against them? Even that last picture of Tommy, revolver in hand, failed to comfort her. By now he might be overpowered, borne down by sheer force of numbers.... Tuppence mapped out her ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... sufficient to show how right I had been about his circulation. It didn't move one, as I had said; it stopped short in the same place, fell off in a sheer descent, like some precipice gaped up at by tourists. The public in other words drew the line for him as sharply as he had drawn it for Minnie Meadows. Minnie has skipped with a flouncing caper over his line, however; whereas the mark traced by a lustier cudgel has been ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... that it was better to conciliate than provoke those who even for an hour had felt their strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest grow. Theirs was no treacherous assassination—theirs no stupid riot—theirs no pale mutiny. They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... divine—has been inherited and exercised are few indeed. A certain intellectual power will mark the members of a family, and exhibit itself in various attractive ways, but less in the domain of poetry than any other. It would seem that sheer mental force can be communicated, but that the higher qualities of the human spirit are not so readily transmitted; are, in fact, hardly transmissible, at any rate in quite the same degree. Not only are the examples of poetic heredity rare, but there are ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... levies special mention must be made of the Mooltani Horse. These men, Sikhs for the most part, had followed Nicholson from sheer personal devotion. They recognised no head but him, and, it is said, refused to accept pay from the Government. At his death they disbanded, returning to their ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... policeman. In response to his questions, kindly at first but becoming exasperated as he was convinced that she was either "touched in her wits" or "guying" him, he obtained a confused story of the persecutions of the two young men, and in sheer bewilderment he finally took her to the station on the very charge against the thought of which she had ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... the priest, then, to grant this needful gift?" In the Schweitz he is all ready,—he'll give you hearty shrift: Hei! he will give it to you sheer, This blessing will he give it with sharp ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... doors. Hammers, pincers, and crow-bars were at work outside. Quasimodo retaliated by heaving first a great beam of wood, and then stones and other missiles on the besiegers. Finally, when they had reared a tall ladder to the first gallery, and had crowded it with men, Quasimodo, by sheer force, pushed the ladder away, and it tottered and fell right back. The battle only ended on the arrival of a large company of King's Archers, when the vagrants, defeated by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... one warm afternoon at the open window up-stairs, looking over a box of airy trifles, flowers and bows and laces, searching for a parcel of sheer white love-ribbon, a slip of woven hoarfrost that was not to be found. There was none like it to be procured; this was the night of the little masquerade; it was indispensable; and immediately she proceeded to raise the house. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... faces, but they seldom persevered very steadily in subjecting me to this privation. Unhappy beings! they were sadly plain. The awful haggardness that gave something of character to the faces of the men was sheer ugliness in the poor women. It is a great shame, but the truth is that, except when we refer to the beautiful devotion of the mother to her child, all the fine things we say and think about woman apply only to those who are tolerably good-looking or graceful. ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... readers from around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John Guy's the night before, sans merci. True, I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom I ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... The plan worked well as long as the material lasted, but no other wagons than my twenty-five coming on the ground, the work stopped when the bridge was only half constructed. Informed of the delay and its cause, in sheer desperation I finished the bridge by taking from my own division all the wagons needed to make ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is a combination of the single cane and bow system, and the horizontal arm training, which I first tried on the Concord from sheer necessity; when the results pleased me so much that I have adopted it with all strong-growing varieties. The circumstances which led me to the trial of this method were as follows: In the summer of 1862, when my Concord vines were making their second season's growth, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... hardest time of his life when he was at New York, living in that little cottage at Fordham, where his poor wife died. He was always borrowing money, from sheer necessity, to keep himself and his wife from starvation. Once while in New York he was so hard pressed that Mrs. Clemm went out to see if she could not get work for him. She went to the office of Nathaniel P. Willis, who ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... arbitrary government, is his dictator. To reconcile liberty and democracy, then, has been France's problem, as it has been that of America. She has faced the same problems against a handicap that America has not had—the handicap of a discontented nobility. And by sheer force and determination ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Hermione, so that even if they were inconsequent they would not seem offensive; though one might not admire them, one could not despise them. The young girl loves all that is beautiful: not as Chrysophrasia loves it, by sheer force of habitual affectation, without discernment and without real enjoyment, but from the bottom of her heart, from the well-springs of her own beautiful soul; knowing and understanding the great divisions between the graceful and the clumsy, between the true and the false, the lovely and ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... years, after having seen active duty in the suppression of the two Riel Rebellions. I have already made special reference to the work of this officer, with whom I served when he was Adjutant of the Winnipeg Light Infantry. He never advertised or pushed himself forward, but by sheer force of character his merits became known increasingly throughout the years. His death was widely mourned, not only by his comrades, but by the people of the vast country where he had done so much foundation work. At the time of his passing ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... remember the story of Gough and his diamond ring—I am determined not to let any diamond ring get between me and my audience. Writing should not get between the reader and the picture. I take a great joy in sheer lucidity, and if any sentence of mine does not at the very first sight express my meaning, I rewrite it. Obscurity of style indicates that the writer is not entirely master of ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... uttered in quite a simple fashion, there was a ring about them that Berrington did not altogether like. He wanted to flatter himself that he had conquered this murderous ruffian by sheer force of will, as he had done more than once with certain native tribes that he ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... guide led them safely to the shelf rock, a huge slab of granite as level as a house floor, about thirty feet long and ten feet deep. At the back towered a solid sheet of granite for a hundred feet or more, while in front the rocks dropped sheer for ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... same author explains that "of course the German people have not in themselves deserved this calling: it proceeds from the sheer grace of God, so we can maintain it without ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... heart-throb; the same gathering mist Dimming the eye that would be keen as death; The same fixed longing on the changeless face. Over the edge he vanished—came no more: There, as in childhood's dreams, upon that line, Without a parapet to shield the sense, Voidness went sheer down to oblivion: Over that edge ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... an expedition against England, and, if their efforts failed, not to give their suzerain more help than they were strictly bound to. Even at the time when the alliance with France was most cordial, the door was never closed on possible negotiations with England. To call such a policy sheer duplicity would be to misunderstand the spirit of the period and the special position in which the Belgian princes, whether of Lotharingia or of Flanders, were placed. Their diplomacy was the necessary result of the central situation occupied by their possessions. Unless ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... and human will, however powerful, do against a rampant nor'wester? Very soon our hero was forced to rest upon his oars from sheer exhaustion, while his boat drifted slowly out to sea. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie flashed upon him, and, with a sudden gush, as it were, of renewed strength he resumed his efforts, and strained his powers to the uttermost—but ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... But first let me say that you will find very few like instances of success even in Wordsworth; and few indeed to set against innumerable passages wherein either his verse defies his theory and triumphs, or succumbs to it and, succumbing, either drops sheer to bathos or spreads itself over dead flats of commonplace. Let me tell you next that the instances you will find in other poets are so few and so far between as to be negligible; and lastly that even such verse as the above has only to be compared with a passage of ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the suggestion one night, and was quite surprised to find that the Doctor regarded it favorably. All that night she lay awake from sheer joy: at last she was going to be of service—she was going to do something. She tried to tell herself of the hardships of the life, but nothing could dim her enthusiasm. "I hope it will be hard," she cried happily. "I want ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... all the better for its simplicity. The punishment would be probably rendered more effective as a threat, and the moral effect of the punishment, when inflicted, would be much improved. A compulsion to labour (which becomes, in fact, a compulsion of moral motive, as well as of sheer external control) may lead to a permanent habit of industry. There would be all the difference between the listless and disgustful labour of enforced time-work, and a labour in part prompted by the hope of expediting the term of release. An ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... names are spoken with the sneer of contempt, have been led on, step by step, in the path of sin by vanity as the chief motive. Where one woman falls from low and coarse passions, a hundred fall from sheer levity and the love ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hundred feet and more in length, it was even more obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day. But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the rocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet. But nearby, Thorn could see a ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... or a fiddle—more so; and the delight of successful achievement is proportionately great. Linley Sambourne alone, who was originally trained as an engineer, has been able to grapple with the chimney-pot hat; Walker all but succeeded by the sheer ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Afterwards it was adopted (like the name of the Gueux) in a kind of dare-devil mood; and has covered, ever since, a great many varieties of political and social discontent, as well as of philosophical Radicalism. There are Nihilists who, from the sheer hopelessness engendered by a tyranny lasting a thousand years, have come to cultivate a Philosophy of Despair, of Disgust, and of Destruction, without troubling themselves as to the constitution of the Future. These are men that profess a wish to do away with all State organizations, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... indifference of most men to considerations of speculative truth became conceivable. The way in which the axioms of sages slip off from multitudes, as mere vague "glittering generalities," good enough for cherishers of the "intuitions" to lisp of by moonlight, but sheer fiddle-dee-dee to firmly built men,—the commentary of the able lawyer upon Emerson's lecture, "I don't understand it, but my girls do!"—all this appears in a new light. Are not most men working along some cliff, financial or other, after a bird? And do they not honestly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... place. For half an hour or more raged that awful struggle, since the spot being so narrow, charge as they would, the Black Kendah could not win through the spears of despairing warriors defending their lives and the sanctuary of their god. Nor, the encircling cliffs being so sheer, could they ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... a dangerous place on which to stand, that topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, with no parapet and a sheer drop to the street below. Almost against his ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... not," Nigel admitted. "Actually, we cannot put ourselves back into the spirit of those days. You must remember that it was an unprovoked war, a war engineered by Germany for the sheer purposes of aggression. That is why a punitive spirit ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this second marriage, this second leap in the dark? No, she could not honestly pretend that she did; yet it had its sufficiently sinister side, its occasional admixture of sheer horror. But this was only when the mysteries which encompassed her happened to prey upon nerves unstrung by some outwardly exciting cause; it was then she would have given back all that he had ever given her to pierce the veil of her ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... work of revolution finished or begun, they experience fatigue and reaction. In Hawthorne's romance, after Miles Coverdale had passed his spring and summer among the Utopians of Blithedale, he felt that the time had come when he must for sheer sanity's sake go and hold a little talk with the Conservatives, the merchants, the politicians, 'and all those respectable old blockheads, who still in this intangibility and mistiness of affairs kept a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning.' ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... I looked at each other. Kent being the name of my late commander, Captain Giles' whisper, "He's talking of you," seemed to me sheer waste of breath. The Chief Steward must have stuck to his point, whatever it was, because Hamilton was heard again more supercilious if possible, and also ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... and found us awake and quaking, she must have driven us into a clean swoon of terror by the very simple expedient of drawing up the hinder part of her nightdress, and making a ghostly head-dress of it about her face. That I fainted many a time out of sheer horror at this apparition, I am quite certain; but the sense of real fear was, after all, left in reserve. I had rambled alone, as children will, along the High Street on a lovely summer day, each sight, and scent, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... in 'Don Juan,' and strove to take from her the very protection {227}of womanly sacredness by putting her name into the mouth of every ribald, he did a bold thing, and he knew it. He meant to do a bold thing. There was a general outcry against it; and he fought it down, and gained his point. By sheer boldness and perseverance, he turned the public from his wife, and to himself, in the face of their very groans and protests. His 'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were parts of the same game. But the involuntary cry of remorse and despair ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in him was sheer Guruism, for she was one of those intensely happy people who pass through life in ecstatic pursuit of some idea which those who do not share it call a fad. Well might poor Robert remember the devastation of his home when Daisy, after the perusal ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the Prince transferred to Dragon and in company with Dauntless steamed towards St. John's, along the grim, sheer coast of Newfoundland, where squared promontories standing out like buttresses give the impression that they are bastions set in the wall of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... shown, in a degree greater than ever before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe, is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community for which it is intended. On or near the Indian reservations there is usually very little ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... time and space" in the articulate intercourse of the human race will forever be associated with the name of Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in 1847. By its means he has promoted commerce, created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr. Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he designed a ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... poetry composed in the fashion described in the passage preceding. The poet here does not coolly say to himself: "Go to, I will make a poem to relieve my feelings"; he sings, to quote Goethe's own expression, "as the bird sings," out of the sheer fulness of his heart, which insists on immediate expression.[46] True it is that Goethe, like all other poets, frequently wrote under no immediate pressure of inspiration, but to affirm this of the highest efforts of his genius ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... prognostications of to-day's schemes may also fail, and countries which they have doomed to progress still remain as is Guayra, their towns deserted, with but the broken spire of some old church emerging from the verdure of the tropics, as the St. Paul's Rocks rise sheer out of the sea. If there is charm in the unknown, there is at least as great a charm in the forgotten, and the Salto de Guayra is one of the most forgotten corners of the earth. To this wild place ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the road in a slower and wider current than before. To the left, the outskirts of the Dauphine Alps form a singularly wild and fantastic barrier, sometimes rising in abrupt pinnacles, and sometimes rent as if by an earthquake into precipices of some thousand feet of sheer perpendicular descent. The vale inclosed between these rough walls, and in the centre of which the Isere unites itself to the Rhone, appears a perfect garden in point of richness, cheerfulness, and high cultivation. We crossed ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... who was probably going to make a failure of it. He asked himself what could have happened to her. Had she lost courage? Or had her physical strength, not yet fully renewed, given way under the stress? Or had she, in sheer disgust for the turn the affair had been given by that brute Bushwick, thrown up the whole business? He looked round for Mrs. Westangle; she was not there; he conjectured—he could only conjecture—that she was absent conferring with Miss Shirley and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pressed forward and the beast lurched on in its haste to reach the lake with its prey. But now Omega was close to his beloved, and he reached out to grasp her as once more he screamed right into the ears of his enemy. Then perhaps in sheer terror at the audacity of man, the great jaws of the monster relaxed and Thalma fell limp and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... him, or the bear had time to recover himself, Watty was on his active legs, and sprang up a tree like a monkey. Jack caught a branch of the same tree, and by sheer strength swung himself up, but on this occasion with so little time to spare, that the bear, standing on its hind legs, touched his heel lovingly with its protruded lips, as he drew himself out ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back to bed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once made her poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a few minutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bludson and others, now appeared, armed with pistols and cutlasses; but the door leading into the hold was already broken down. Scores of half crazy negroes swarmed into the gangway, bearing back the whites by sheer weight of numbers, notwithstanding the weapons of the crew. Revolver and cutlass played an active part, but the slaves seemed ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... against attack is still not possible, total defensive strength must include civil defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind of protection becomes sheer necessity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... for some time, like butterflies in June; then, from sheer exhaustion, the sisters released him, and wiped their eyes from excess of emotion. Barbara was just assuring herself that the widower's arms did seem to be all right, when he turned round, and, seizing both her hands, began to shake ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... had to take infinite pains to get the right notes, so he was forcibly removed, and Dennison installed in his place. "The Gondoliers" and the noise began again, while Ward, protesting that it was time we went away, was disregarded entirely. From sheer distaste for punch and only a very limited taste for wine I had not been seeking my enjoyment in drinking, but I had smoked far more than was good for me, and my head felt as large as a pumpkin. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... sprang clear of the net. The silvery flash, the sudden splash, startled the gods, so that they almost dropped the net; but it told them what they wanted to know—Loki WAS in the stream. Turning, they dragged the net down the stream, driving Loki nearer and nearer to the sheer drop of the waterfall, down which he dared not plunge. Desperate, he made another leap, and again he almost escaped; but Thor's quick eyes saw him, Thor's strong, iron-gloved hand gripped him. The great salmon struggled, but Thor held it fast by the tail, and finally flung it out upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of All Saints (Bahia de todos os Santos) and proceeded to disembark the troops on a sandy beach a little to the east of the city of San Salvador, commonly known as Bahia. It was strongly situated on heights rising sheer from the water; and, as news of the Dutch preparations had reached Lisbon and Madrid, its fortifications had been repaired and its garrison strengthened. In front of the lower town below the cliffs was a rocky island, and on this and on the shore were forts well provided with ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... you can. I suppose that we have a right to their service while their strength lasts; what we can do with them afterwards I cannot so easily determine. But let us consider. Nobody denies that man has a right first to milk the cow, and to sheer the sheep, and then to kill them for his table. May he not, by parity of reason, first work a horse, and then kill him the easiest way, that he may have the means of another horse, or food for cows and sheep? Man is influenced in both cases by different motives ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to the river, the road climbed three miles up the opposite side—three toiling miles through the ambushes of highwaymen. There was the scene of many a hold-up. And to-day, at his age, he simply must not be robbed. It would break his heart. In sheer desperation he drew his six-shooter, examined it carefully, glanced at his fellow-passengers and sat silent, alert ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... sat with Mrs. Radcliffe in a big low-ceilinged room at Garside Scar, looking about him with quiet interest. He had now and then spent a day or two in huge Western hotels, but he had never seen anything quite like that room. The sheer physical comfort of its arrangements appealed to him, but after all he was not one who had ever studied his bodily ease very much, and what he regarded as the chaste refinement of its adornment had a deeper ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... legs with my stick from the sheer exuberance of living, and nearly cry out. I behave as though the burden on my back had no weight, taking needless leaps, and overexerting myself a little; but an overexertion to which one is driven by ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... money. He was too ill to stay the cravings of his stomach with substantial food. Gin gave him temporary warmth and temporary strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for a little while; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaustion, in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... a sword had pierced her. In a single, blinding instant of revelation she read his thought, and sheer horror held her silent before him. She stood as ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... The sheer impossibility of the thing was only part of the problem it presented. The radar followed it. Moving eastward, far away in the frigid night, it seemed suddenly to put on brakes. According to the radar, ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... fame has endured to the present day, still rested upon the Delhi in which they had dwelt. So Mahomed Tughluk built unto himself a new and stronger city, but he did nothing else to avert the curse. Indeed, he invented a form of man-hunt which for sheer devilish cruelty has been only once matched in the West by the cani del duca when the crazy Gian Maria ruled in Milan. Well may his milder successor, Firuz Shah, have removed to yet another new capital. Well may he have sought to disarm ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... phantasmagoric haze which is thrown around the ship and the lonely voyager leaves their outlines as clear as if we saw them through the sunshine of the streets of Paris. Coleridge triumphs over his difficulties by sheer vividness of imagery and terse vigour of descriptive phrase—two qualities for which his previous poems did not prove him to possess by any means so complete a mastery. For among all the beauties of his earlier landscapes we ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the sheer weight of the native attack, the Heavies had never been completely broken up. They maintained their resistance to the end, jammed up as they were against and among the camels, and thus enabled the men on the two sides of the square to concentrate ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... interpretation to a dance of any kind. But the essentially fine girl, the really well-bred man, the people who, by their poise and dignity have earned for America the envied title of "Republic of the Aristocrats"—they dance these latest creations for the sheer joy of the dance itself, reveling in its newness, enjoying the novelty of its "different" steps, seeing nothing in its slow undulations or brisk little steps, but art—a "jazzy" art, to be sure, but still the ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... his body was stretched in the bottom of the boat. A hard 'pillow' indeed, which only exhaustion could make comfortable! But it was soft enough for the worn-out Christ, who had apparently flung Himself down in sheer tiredness as soon as they set sail. How real such a small detail makes the transcendent ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There is no use talking about it I will not throw that tiny mouthful to all the four winds. It will do no good if divided among so many, but it is a comfort to me, to me alone. No, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... business," the Chief resumed, "is so large, the issues at stake so vital, that we at the top have to ignore the non-essentials and stick to the essentials. By the nonessentials I mean the little potty spies, actuated by sheer hunger or mere officiousness, the neutral busybody who makes a tip-and-run dash into England, the starving waiter, miserably underpaid by some thieving rogue in a neutral country—or the frank swindler who sends back to the Fatherland ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... disrespect to your generation, Sir Patrick: some of you old stagers did marvels through sheer professional intuition and clinical experience; but when I think of the average men of your day, ignorantly bleeding and cupping and purging, and scattering germs over their patients from their clothes and instruments, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... on the steps of the pagoda with a programme in his hand. Mose bounced into view, handed his tackle to Shanghai, Curry's hostler, and started for the jockeys' room, singing to himself out of sheer lightness of heart. He knew what he would do with that twenty-two-dollar ticket. There was a crap game every night at the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... with uninterrupted energy she again turned toward the southeast for another military adventure. Rumania still held fast to her neutrality. In Bulgaria the Central Powers were to succeed in gaining a fourth ally, which in sheer military advantage was probably worth more than the accession of Italy to her enemies. Though Russia had won her freedom for Bulgaria in '76, no sentiment drew her to Russia's assistance when Russia was losing. No statesmanship is more matter ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... he too threw down the gauntlet, became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect called to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Nations, is by far preferable. But that consideration does not touch the actual point, which is that we did not seek to set up the principle of balancing that has given rise to so many questions. It was forced on us and was a sheer necessity of the situation. We did all we could to avoid it by negotiations with Germany, which, had they succeeded in the end, would have relieved France and Russia as much as ourselves and would have ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... place was laid out upon a slope, and at its head, immediately beneath the sheer steps of the mountain side stood two edifices very much larger in size than any of those below. One of these resembled the other houses in construction, and was surrounded by a separate enclosure; but the second, which was placed on higher ground, so far as they could ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch her without a word. Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish vanity in thus being granted her friendship? It is almost too boyish to confess at my time of life. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... an adventure in regions fascinating and remote. It is probable that at the time there was not on the North American continent a man more highly endowed than Clark with gifts of sheer psychological power. Belding, young in his world, could not recognize it as such, but he fell the more completely under the wizard-like spell of his companion's imagination. The days, shortened by late sun and long nights, passed with ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... generally calm and unexpressive, was aglow with excitement. Mamoe recognized her gyratory equal in this giant, and often their bodies met in the ecstasy of their curveting. Landers, towering above her, and bigger in bone and muscle than she in sheer flesh, was like a figure from a Saturnalia. The call of the isles was ringing in his ears, and one had only to glance at him to hear Pan among the reeds, to be back in the glades where fauns and nymphs were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... savages upon the whites in their power, that the minds of those who were actors in those scenes, were deprived of the faculty of discriminating between what was right or wrong to be practised towards them. And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Law do desperate Cures, Sir, And you shall see how heartily I'le handle it: Mark how I'le knock it home: be of good chear, Sir, You give good Fees, and those beget good Causes, The Prerogative of your Crowns will carry the matter, (Carry it sheer) the Assistant sits to morrow, And he's your friend, your monyed men love naturally, And as your loves are ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... in the middle of the century. The French commodore displayed very considerable tactical skill; his squadron was handled neatly, quickly, and with precision. With inferior force he carried off a decided advantage by sheer intelligence and good management. Unluckily, he failed in resolution to pursue his advantage. He probably could have controlled the Chesapeake had ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... break down, and at last we reach the place on foot. I have meanwhile drunk three glasses of tea and annihilated several eggs; the efforts at getting warm have also so perfectly succeeded that I feel the need of fresh air. I should, out of sheer impatience, commence shaving if I had a glass. This city is very straggling, and very foreign-looking, with its green-roofed churches and innumerable cupolas; quite different from Amsterdam, but both the most original cities I know. No German guard has a conception of the luggage people drag ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. When submitting corrections or updates to the Factbook, please include your source(s) of information. At least two Factbook staffers review every submitted item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... extinction with a fall of 670 feet since it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled by it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deep gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... natural, if such a method is indispensable; for no effort, no trouble, ought to be spared for so exalted an aim. But if the only point is the establishment of one opinion in the place of another, then the travelling expenses of even one single Infallible are sheer waste. If you want to spare the two most valuable things on earth, time and money, make all haste to write to Rome, in order to procure thence a lawful decision which shall declare the unlawful doubt. Nothing more is needed; ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... Monck. He and Rupert then became joint admirals for the ensuing campaign. They had the reputation of being two of the hardest fighters alive, and both were convinced of their power of sweeping the Dutch from the sea by sheer hard hitting, a belief which so far at least as Monck was concerned the country enthusiastically shared. The spirit in which the two soldier-admirals put to sea in May 1666 we see reflected in the hitherto unknown 'Additional ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting parties, Cudjoe and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... negroes simply to change the scene of their inaction. Yet it is unquestionably true that quite a large proportion of those who went North in this fashion were men honestly seeking remunerative employment, or persons who left through sheer desperation. In the second stage of the movement the club organizations, special parties and chartered cars did most perhaps to depopulate little communities and drain ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... velvet frocks (/Fluegelroeck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. One scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished to take a view of our own magistracy, who closed the procession in their fifteen ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form—Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo as the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... San Francisco. Immediately behind the town, which lies along the sea, the majestic mass of Table Mountain rises to a height of 3600 feet, a steep and partly wooded slope capped by a long line of sheer sandstone precipices more than 1000 feet high, and flanked to right and left by bold, isolated peaks. The beautiful sweep of the bay in front, the towering crags behind, and the romantic pinnacles which rise on either side, make a landscape that no one who has seen ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the stubborn tug begins. Each boat has her own special course to travel up, and her own special berth of safety, and she knows every jag that will gore her on the road, and every flint from which she will strike fire. By dint of sheer sturdiness of arms, legs, and lungs, keeping true time with the pant and the shout, steadily goes it with hoist and haul, and cheerily undulates the melody of call that rallies them all with a strong will together, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... The block will be cut out to this line and planed up as true as possible. The builder should then project the section lines with a set square on each side of the boat, mark off the profile from the sheer plan, Fig. 65, and cut the block to this line, afterward planing it ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... there a while and stared dejectedly down upon that wild orgy of the earth's upheaval which is the Badlands. She felt as though it was sheer madness even to think of finding anybody in there. It was worse than a mountain country, because in the mountains there is a certain semblance of some system in the canyons and high ridges and peaks. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... resemble. But were it otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere be paralleled. Dulness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to Lottie. With white face and set teeth he sought to keep up to the end. The effort he was now putting forth was less that of muscle than sheer force of will. As with Miss Martell, he, too, was reacting from the tremendous strain that the last hour had brought. He trembled with almost mortal weakness as he slowly mounted the piazza steps. He staggered ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... that nothing could serve his purpose but an exercise of sheer weight and brute force, and he pressed on and on with such fury that Tom almost cried aloud in his fear. But Lord Claud was wary and watchful; he gave way for a while, only parrying the thrusts, and that with not so much ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... expressed with a single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard, with ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... gulch; then pass to the left on a bench along the wall; then up again over broken rocks; then we reach more benches, along which we walk, until we find more broken rocks and crevices, by which we climb; still up, until we have ascended 600 or 800 feet, when we are met by a sheer precipice. Looking about, we find a place where it seems possible to climb. I go ahead; Bradley hands the barometer to me, and follows. So we proceed, stage by stage, until we are nearly to the summit. Here, by making ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... ears, gentle lady," laughed Stephen Strong. "Sheer devilment, mostly. It was the amusement in the beginning to dare him to anything, the maddest feats. He ran off with a nun once, it is said, for a bet, and deposited her in the house of the man she had loved before her vows were taken. That was in Poland. Then he has orgies sometimes at ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... with impatience, stood with Newton, at the head of the men. When the collision of the two vessels took place, the Windsor Castle, conned so as not to run down the pirate, but to sheer alongside, stove in the bulwarks of the other, and carried away her topmasts, which, drawn to windward by the pressure on the back-stays, fell over towards the Windsor Castle, and, entangling with her rigging, prevented the separation of the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... It is selfishness,—sheer selfishness, that has thus far carried on the war with slavery and wrong in all times; and selfishness must break the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... not fought," the jarl answered. "But I have deeper reason for thanking Ranald than for sparing my own life, or for staying a blow in time out of sheer ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... salaries. It is usually assumed that a hundred or more institutions for Negro training are to-day turning out so many teachers and college-bred men that the race is threatened with an over-supply. This is sheer nonsense. There are to-day less than 3,000 living Negro college graduates in the United States, and less than 1,000 Negroes in college. Moreover, in the 164 schools for Negroes, 95 per cent. of their students are doing elementary and secondary work, work which should ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... Betty in sheer desperation. "We can't any more than get drenched, and our rain coats will be some protection. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... the eminence broke away in a sheer fall to the earth below. At its base a scattering of sundered bowlders and fragments lay, veiled by a growth of small, bushy shrubs to which a spring gave nourishment. Behind this the long spine of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not know who sent me this paper or for what purpose; but let me say that it is sheer waste of postage stamps and material. I hope I am not intolerant of the opinions of others, but I confess that when people talk to me about reading the stars and the lines of the hand and things of that sort I shut up like an oyster. I do not speak of the humbugs who deliberately ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... she had lost her father, but all the scenes of his last days were still so clear to her that it seemed to her often sheer incredibility that the room, the bed, the helpless form, the noise of the breathing, the clink of the medicine glasses, the tread of the doctor, the gasping words of the patient, were all alike fragments ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the stretch of the river between two bends. How are they "borne in a mirror"? The high cliff-like banks are mirrored in the surface of the water. Explain the colour "purple gray". It is the colour of the image of the banks in the water. What is meant by "sheer away"? It means that the "river reaches" curve away like a winding road. Try to see the picture of the winding river, apparently growing smaller as it passes curve after curve. As it seems to recede into the distance, the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... apparently set on drying up one source of revenue after another; who did not shrink from sconcing the powerful landed phalanx like other people; and who at the same time boldly used and manfully defended the most unpopular of all the public imposts. In politics the spectacle of sheer courage is often quite as good in its influence and effect as the best of logic. It was so here. While proposing that the income-tax should come to an end in seven years, he yet produced the most comprehensive analysis and the boldest vindication of the structure ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a duty to appearances and to their hostess. Through two courses, at least, there was dead silence between them. It seemed as though every eye in the room were on them and every mind were speculating. At last, in sheer desperation, Barbara turned to him with the first smile he had seen on her face in days. There was no smile in her eyes, however, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... campaign; Most manfully besiege their patron's gate, And oft repuls'd, as oft attack the great With painful art, and application warm, And take, at last, some little place by storm; Enough to keep two shoes on Sunday clean, And starve upon discreetly, in Sheer Lane. Already this thy fortune can afford; Then starve without the favour of my lord. 'Tis true, great fortunes some great men confer; But often, ev'n in doing right, they err: From caprice, not from choice, their favours come; They give, but think it toil to know to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... commanded by General Brown and Brigadiers Ripley, Porter, and Scott—the latter the future hero of the Mexican war. The darkness through this hotly contested engagement was intense, and the English {332} more than once seemed on the point of yielding to sheer exhaustion as they contested every foot of ground against overpowering numbers of well handled troops. The undaunted courage and persistence of the British and Canadian soldiery won the battle, as the Americans retired from the field, though with a remarkable perversion of the facts this memorable ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Memorial to Congress", by jovial old "Anacreon Moore", have we beheld such an invasion of prize-fight philosophy and race-track rhetoric. We learn with interest that a former United member named "Handsome Harry" has now graduated from literature to left field, and has, through sheer genius, risen from the lowly level of the ambitious author, to the exalted eminence of the classy slugger. Too proud to push the pen, he now swats the pill. Of such doth the dizzy quality of sempiternal Fame consist! Speaking without levity, we cannot but censure Mr. Dowdell's ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal child,"—caught him up only to drop him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... not know the way; she only knew that she ran up one street and down another like the wind. Her state of mind was bordering on insanity. At length she paused from sheer exhaustion, and leaned against a doorway—like any poor outraged ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of his Majesty's judges. He had won his position by sheer hard work and commanding ability. He had not stopped in his career to soothe the outraged dignity of those whom he pushed aside; and he had no intention now of delaying his progress along the railway platform to explain to a marchioness why he had jostled her. It was ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... hundred years," says Johnston, "slaves in Barbados were mutilated, tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve to death, burnt alive, flung into coppers of boiling sugar, whipped to death, overworked, underfed, obliged from sheer lack of any clothing to expose their nudity to the jeers of the 'poor' whites."[133] And yet the owners of these slaves were English, of the same stock under which developed the mild patriarchal type of slavery of Virginia. The difference ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... quarters of the crew. As we had expected for days to see it swept away, the hands had been ordered to sleep in the cabin—the only safe place in the ship. The steward, Abraham, however, persisted in clinging to his berth, stupidly, like a mule—from sheer fright I believe, like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in an earthquake. So we went to look for him. It was chancing death, since once out of our lashings we were as exposed as if on a raft. But we went. The house was ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... week. What tempted Sally, however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood. Industry, so Sally knew, was taking the young girls by the million, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... own lives and their neighbors'. Findelkind said never a word; he was as dumb as Theodoric had been to him; he felt stupid, heavy, half blind; his father pushed him some bread, and he ate it by sheer instinct, as a lost animal will do; the cart jogged on, the stars shone, the great church vanished in ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... which Young says prevailed at this time. With a view to remedy this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and through the sheer gauze of her veil ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... it was from this point—at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose—that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... intensifying the unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road this morning? Perhaps five with their women, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... there are no salons now—I suppose we turn all our conversation into "copy"—or the higher education has eliminated the witty woman—and my uncle became more and more distressed. He said a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every lion's den I had access to. But ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... Warm broke the breeze against the brow, Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail: The Lady's-head upon the prow Caught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the gale. The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel, And swept behind: so quick the run, We felt the good ship shake and reel, We seem'd to sail ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... Rutherford the longer he lived in this sin-poisoned world. And, amongst all those who are now home in heaven, I cannot think there can be many who are enjoying heaven with a deeper joy than Samuel Rutherford's sheer, solid, uninterrupted, unadulterated, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... so outraged. It requires all the proverbial beauty of these senoras and senoritas to carry off respectably such combinations as scarlet and yellow, blue and purple, orange and green; but they do it by sheer force of their beautiful eyes and finely rounded figures. It must be acknowledged that the element of native refinement is too often wanting, and that the whole exhibition of the sex is just a little prononcee. They have no intellectual resort, but lead a life of decided ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... promontory 8 to 10 m. wide runs a range 3000 to 4000 ft. high, with the crest towards the western coast and the valleys towards the eastern. Hence the western Cornice road is a terrace along an always steep, sometimes sheer, mountain side, while the eastern crosses a succession of low maquis-covered spurs, which beyond Cap Sagro flatten and become monotonous. Pino is one of the most beautiful sites on the western coast. It is also important as the spot where the cross-road through the vale of Luri, under ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... so universal from the general ignorance of practical physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in other souls ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... was trembling with the knowledge, and with the sheer joy of the adventure. Nothing could check them; neither cruisers nor monsters; nothing of earth or of space. They were free; they were on their way out—out where a new world awaited—where the Dark Moon ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... 'Liab," said Nimbus quickly, with some of his old-time arrogance. "Yer kin an' yer will. You kin use dat er trac' o' lan' an' make it wuth sunthin' ter our people, an' I can't. So, yer sees, I'll jes be a-doin' my sheer, an' I'll allus t'ink, when I hears how yer's gittin' along an' a-doin' good, dat I'se a pardner wid ye in de wuk o' gibbin' light ter our people, so dat dey'll know how ter be free an' keep free forebber an' ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... is not the word—I know it; but you will be found out, and by sheer force of argument you will ...
— The Republic • Plato
... feelings of jealousy, for with me jealousy can only spring from love as we Europeans understand it. I might very likely have killed her if I had surprised her in the act of deceiving me, but I should have done it, just as one half kills a disobedient dog, from sheer violence. I should not have felt those torments, that consuming fire—Northern jealousy. I have just said that I should have killed her like a disobedient dog, and, as a matter of fact, I loved her somewhat in the same manner as one loves some very ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... removing straw). In the dramatic passage in which, returning after being broken in a German prison, he relates some of the horrors of which it is good for us to be reminded, he rose to the height of his fine talent. His exquisite elocution—a remarkable feat of virtuosity—was in itself a sheer delight. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... realized, till those letters came, how entirely the writer of them had gone out of her world. In love and memory she had in a sort still kept him near; without vision she had yet been not fully separated from him. Now these pictures of the other world and of Pitt's life in it came like a bright, sheer blade severing the connection which had until then subsisted between her life and his. Yes, he was in another world! and there was no connection any longer. He had not forgotten her yet, but he would forget; how should he not? how could he help it? In the rich sweep of variety and change and eager ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... and cut ourselves accordingly. At first the cut hurts and stings, and down drops the knife, and we cry out like wounded little babies as we are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fine but very fast rain was falling, which soon made her wet to the bones. The wretched little creature ran for some time, and at last stopped from sheer fatigue. The side wall of the road being low at that part, she sat down, and then began to feel the pain from the blows. She put her hands to her head, then to her face, from which she felt a hot liquid pouring that she thought at ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... a profound turn was the sheer indolence of his temperamental breed. He had no liking at all for labor; spreading fish on the flakes, keeping the head of his father's punt up to the sea on the grounds, splitting a turn of birch and drawing a bucket ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... cruelly," I said: "The frail herb lives, and she is dead." I lay dumb, sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air Thickened with twilight shadows dim: I rose and left. I knew each limb Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit They bear in autumn. What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother—a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from; but the field-ice, floating in great quantities, and covering the ocean for miles and miles, in pieces of every size—large, flat, and broken cakes, with here and there an island rising twenty and thirty feet, and as large as the ship's hull;—this, it is very difficult to sheer clear of. A constant look-out was necessary; for any of these pieces, coming with the heave of the sea, were large enough to have knocked a hole in the ship, and that would have been the end of us; for no boat (even if we could have got one out) ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... I ever set eyes on, and as calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compasses. Any fool could see what ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful to be married to a person like that! ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... nothing to go down these coulees; one need only let oneself glide down, but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed and he did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed or wounded our leader, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... crude method of experimentation in psychological reactions; the teaser desires to discover just how the teased will respond. It degenerates, by easy steps, into a thoughtless infliction of pain in sheer enjoyment of another's misery, and then into brutal bullying. When only two children are together mere teasing will not last long; either the teaser will tire of his task or his teasing will ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... they were very nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... first time began the battle, though it would have seemed clearly his best policy to endeavour to draw Villars from the strong position he held. There was little in the way of fine tactics displayed, or even possible, on either side; it was a question simply of sheer pluck and dogged determination. The Highlanders, for the first time, had joined the army of the Allies, and they and the famous Irish Brigade under Villars specially distinguished themselves, if any detachment can be said to have gained special distinction in a fight where ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... is that pickpocket My Diocleides. He bought t'other day Six fleeces at seven drachms, his last exploit. What were they? scraps of worn-out pedlar's-bags, Sheer trash.—But put your cloak and mantle on; And we'll to Ptolemy's, the sumptuous king, To see the Adonis. As I hear, the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... bed, uttering a deep sigh, or rather one of those exclamations which we cannot tell whether they arise from discouragement or simply from fatigue. His Majesty's countenance was sad and careworn, nevertheless he slept from sheer weariness for many hours. I awoke him to announce the arrival of M. de Rumigny, who was the bearer of dispatches from Chatillon. In the condition of the Emperor's mind at this moment he seemed ready to accept any reasonable conditions which might be offered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... no blueprint of the big Swede's plans. All Hands And Feet, depending on his sheer horse power and superior weight, always fought in mass formation, as it were. His modus operandi was to embrace his enemy in those terrible arms, squeeze the breath out of him with one bearlike hug, then lay him on the deck, straddle him, and pummel ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... it fine; and the photographs he printed up that afternoon was the most horrible collection of mince-pie dreams that ever a sane man run afoul of. Rosy used one of the grass huts for a dark room; and while he was developing them plates, they could hear him screaming from sheer fright at being shut up alone ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nails, and built our boat again; We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn; We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn. O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly; By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky; By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content; By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent. Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars, And round in a ring the dog-nosed ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... of moist earth and the sweetness of growing corn. The colt she was driving held his head high, glancing from side to side with youthful eagerness for a sensation, and shying at nothing now and then in sheer excess of emotion over the demand of ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... follow. I should think not. He will know that others must know it. Your brother-in-law will not tell him only. Lefroy, when he finds that he can get no money here, from sheer revenge will tell the story everywhere. When he left the rectory, he was probably as angry with the Doctor as he is with me. He will do all the harm that he can ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the right place, my sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,—I had spent out of sheer copiousness of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly daring manoeuvre, namely, an attempt to capture the Indian canoe! He ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... all than to have lived so utterly in vain. One by one the struggles of the past came up to him; each had seemed a triumph when he was in the glory of strength and hope. The splendid aims of a higher and nobler government, built by sheer truth and nobility of purpose upon the ashes and dust of present corruption, the magnificent purity of the ideal State of which he had loved to dream—all that he had thought of and striven after as most worthy ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the pursuers now rein up sharply. It seemed to them sheer madness to ride out thus to their ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... followed, and he wondered. At first, he had thought it indicated the presence of warriors, but Indians did not cut down trees and doubtless it was due to some other cause, perhaps an old, decayed trunk that had been weighted down by snow, falling through sheer weariness. In any event he was going to see, and, emerging from his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the ravine of the river, down amid the rocks through which it has cut its channel, and in walking up the bed against the stream, in climbing the sides of the various falls, and sticking close to the river till an envious block is reached which comes sheer down into the water and prevents farther progress. This is nearly two miles above the steps by which the descent is made; and not a foot of this distance but is wildly beautiful. When the river is very low ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and pleasure, it was perfectly natural to believe it susceptible of material imprisonment and material torments. Such was the common belief when the doctrine of a physical hell was wrought out. The doctrine yet lingers by sheer force of prescription and unthinkingness, when the basis on which it originally rested has been dissipated. We know great as our ignorance is, we know that the soul is a pure immateriality. Its manifestations depend on certain physical organs and accompaniments, but are not identical ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... road here must have curved sharply, for they were already so close upon us that, almost simultaneously with the sound, we could distinguish the deeper shadow of a small, compact body of horsemen directly in our front. To left of us there rose, sheer and black, the precipitous rock; to right we might not even guess what yawning void. It was ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I am not ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... soon could have come to recognize them, and so an evening at the opera with her would have meant pleasure to himself instead of stolid endurance. Ultimately it might have meant an effective wedge with which to pry against the waste of time, strength and money on the sheer amusement of herself in society. Once he started searching for them, he found many ways in which he might have made his life with his wife different, if indeed he had not had it in his power to effect a complete change by having been firm ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the spring of 1812 was not an unattractive one. A new party, controlled by a remarkable coterie of brilliant young men from the South, whose shibboleth was war with England, had sprung up in Congress, and, by sheer force of will and intellect, had dragged to the support of its policies the larger part of the Republican majority.[164] President Madison was thoroughly in sympathy with these members. He thought war should be declared before ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was Grace, not Keziah, who opened the shanty door in answer to their knock. She was pale and greeted them calmly, but it was evident that her calmness was the result of sheer will power. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seen the expression more than once; doctors see it often, in the sudden revulsion from terror and agony to certainty and peace; I only marvel where he ever met it: but the general effect is unpleasing, marred by patches of sheer ugliness, like that child's foot. There is the same mistake in all his pictures. Whatever they are, they are not beautiful; and no magnificence of surface-colouring will make up, in my eyes, for wilful ugliness of form. I say that nature is beautiful; and therefore nature cannot have been ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... flat-footed stamping) that people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... veins swelled on his neck, but he kept silent. He looked the cowboy in the eye and was met by a gaze as steady as his own; an aggressive and insolent gaze that had for its backing sheer physical courage and nothing more. It became a battle of mental endurance and Corliss ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... its esteem is to make permanent conquest. I am confident that the nations that have learned the discipline of freedom and that have settled with self-possession to its ordered practice are now about to make conquest of the world by the sheer power of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... obtained an hour's rest, but our leader halted only when our animals showed signs of exhaustion. The Spaniards must have suffered as much as, if not more than, ourselves, as occasionally we came upon a dead horse or a dead man, killed by sheer fatigue. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... say and maintain that all that is sheer nonsense!" exclaimed the Collector with emphasis. "I have examined the old toasting-iron no less than a hundred times, and it isn't five hundred years old! It comes down perhaps from the time of the feud of Soest, when very likely one of the Archbishop's cavalrymen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... nobody goes to a Summer School who could get refreshment through sheer idleness. One of the greatest mistakes of the Middle Ages, and one which has come down to our own time in education, in theology, and in medicine, was that all men's needs, both spiritual, mental, and physical, are the same; and ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were a man of unerring ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... sat in room 407—I in a blue funk from sheer nervousness, Raffles Holmes as imperturbable as the rock of Gibraltar from sheer nerve. It was the usual style of hotel room, with bath, pictures, telephone, what-nots, wardrobes, and centre-table. The last proved to be the main point of interest ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... bows became somewhat sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was almost straight from stem to stern; nor had they learned to divide the topsail into an upper and lower sail, and American vessels were distinguished by their short lower mast and the immense hoist of the topsail. The broadest ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... anxious wits were driven hard. He had drawn to Mr. Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... slowly above the palisade. The anchor dragged on the landward side of the knolls. These were sheer rock that the steel talons clawed ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... this terror of the coasts. His impudent courage and sheer audacity had astonished the world. The wonder was that men were willing to join him in such dare ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... bodies by the recession of the waters has already filled the air with pestilential odors. The worst is feared for the surviving population, who must breathe this poisoned atmosphere. Sharp measures prompted by sheer necessity have resulted in an almost complete subsidence of cowardly efforts to profit by the results of the disaster. Thieves have slunk into places of darkness and are no longer to be seen at their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... for something beautiful, because they had been spiritually starved. And all the riding hard, shooting true and dying game—those poor ethics of the open—had not brought a crumb, not a crumb, of the real bread of life. Nor could mountains of mere energy nor icebergs of sheer nerve! In needing the bread of life—they were different from the others, and so they lingered, unable to speak, while a poor little Tagal—"one of the niggers"—all unconsciously played. "Surely," they thought, "his ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... achieved. Corruption is never so rife as in communities where the demagog and the agitator bear full sway, because in such communities all moral bands become loosened, and hysteria and sensationalism replace the spirit of sound judgment and fair dealing as between man and man. In sheer revolt against the squalid anarchy thus produced men are sure in the end to turn toward any leader who can restore order, and then their relief at being free from the intolerable burdens of class ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... they would figure him as a presiding Mercury, the god of traffic and fiction, with a hammer in his hand instead of a caduceus.—But pray, Mr. Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way? Puff. Egad, sir, sheer necessity!—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention. You must know, Mr. Sneer, that from the first time I tried my hand at an advertisement, my success was such, that for some time after I led a most extraordinary life indeed! Sneer. How, pray? ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... wrote pantoums (pantuns) after the Malay fashion. He published in 1872 a Petit traite de versification francaise in exposition of his metrical methods. He was a master of delicate satire, and used with much effect the difficult humour of sheer bathos, happily adapted by him from some of the early folk-songs. He has somewhat rashly been compared to Heine, whom he profoundly admired; but if he lacked the supreme touch of genius, he remains a delightful writer, who exercised ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... chickens sputter in the oven below, and the water boils off the potatoes, and the pudding is manufactured, and the cloud deepens and glooms, he does not recover his free-and-easy air and manner. He ceases his walk after a little, from sheer weariness, but he thrusts out his arm and seizes a chair with the air of one who has not time to be leisurely, and flings himself into it, and clasps his arms on the table, and bends his head on his hands and ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface. It was named the "Telegraphic Plateau," with a view to its future use. At either edge of this plateau huge mountains, from four to seven thousand feet high, rise out of the depths. There are precipices of sheer descent down which the cable now hangs. The Azores and Bermudas are peaks of ocean mountains. The warm river known as the Gulf Stream, coming northward meets the ice-bergs and melts them, and deposits the shells, rocks and sand they carry on this plain. When it was discovered the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... bank of the sluggish stream with its flood-worn channel and its treacherous patches of quicksand, the wagon thus halted by the sheer nerve and quick-thinking of mother became a very small island in a troubled sea of weltering backs and tossing horns and staring eyeballs. Riders shouted and lashed unavailingly with their quirts, trying to hold back the full bulk of the herd until the foremost had slaked their thirst and gone ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... or yielding. The ice broke on the instant; and so rapidly was he moving that a hole twelve or fifteen feet long was torn by the sheer force with which he went against it. As he fell through, he went under once, but luckily came up in the hole he had made, and got his hands and arms on the edges of the ice, which, however, kept bending down and breaking off. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... by Duhm and Cornill, along with XI. 22b, 23, XII. 3b, XVII. 18 for no textual or metrical reasons, but only because these scholars shrink from attributing to Jeremiah such outbursts of passion: just as we have seen them for similarly sheer reasons of sentiment refuse to consider as his the advice to desert to the enemy.(724) Yet they admit inconsistently the genuineness of VI. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and freedom, or Red Gulch and—she is moving. (To JOVITA.) I am harsh, little one, and cold. Perhaps I have had much to make me so. But when (with feeling) I first met you; when, lifting my eyes to the church-porch, I saw your beautiful face; when, in sheer recklessness and bravado, I raised my hat to you; when you—you, Jovita—lifted your brave eyes to mine, and there, there in the sanctuary, returned my salute,—the salutation of the gambler, the outcast, the reprobate,—then, then I swore that you should be mine, if I tore you ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer joy of discord. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... vicious Pernambucan; hence one could scarcely blame him for drawing a pistol and shooting the launchman—fatally, according to Mr. Schultz. Of course, after that, to have lingered longer inside the three-mile limit would have been sheer insanity, so Mr. Schultz, taking matters into his own hands, had uphooked and skipped with doused lights from the jurisdiction ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of the cavaliers could scarce carry them, and that the end was approaching, redoubled their shouts; and pressed more heartily and eagerly than ever upon the Spaniards, driving the cavalry back, by sheer weight, into the ranks of ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... They come to look, and they prefer to stare. Reel off a host of threads before their faces, So that they gape in stupid wonder: then By sheer diffuseness you have won their graces, And are, at once, most popular of men. Only by mass you touch the mass; for any Will finally, himself, his bit select: Who offers much, brings something unto many, And each goes home content with the effect, If ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh, my dear,' he half turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together. And later—we must have advice—medical advice; ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,—the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational worship. And while they are dropping away from the old Church in all directions, they simultaneously, from sheer habit, create new-fangled creeds very much more absurd than anything the Church ever taught, and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... no one who has seen a wild elephant can doubt for a moment that the title belongs to him in his own right. Lord of all created animals in might and sagacity, the elephant roams through his native forests. He browses upon the lofty branches, upturns young trees from sheer malice, and from plain to forest he stalks majestically at break of day 'monarch of ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... you really think the Lord does not know what is good for us? That is sheer unbelief. Take what He gives, and be thankful. Barker, why do you suppose the angels came to the sepulchre so, as they did ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... so fully under the influence of anodynes as not to be cognizant of what was taking place, and Bodine, soldier-like, was not long in reaching his decision. Rising, he went aside with Dr. Devoe, and said, "Miss Wallingford is keeping up from the sheer force of will. Nothing but your command can induce her to yield and take such rest as can be obtained here. I do not think you can interpose too soon. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... gazed at the moon awhile a thrill of sheer madness set him to tumbling, head over heels, upon the fresh hay. Life was full of gladness for him, and his throat cramped with a delicious longing for he knew not what. He wondered vaguely if it were not something new and unimaginably good to eat. It was the nearest ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... he put off to the latest moment any decision as to the course which he should take with respect to the Bill when it came up to him for his sanction. As regards a dissolution, indeed, he felt from the beginning that it would be sheer folly, attended by no small risk. Was he to have recourse to this ultima ratio, merely because a parliament elected a year before, under the auspices of the party now in opposition, had passed, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... street, she started away at a quick walk; but her strength soon failed her. She heard the sound of the snow crunching under a heavy step, and knew that the pitiless spy was on her track. She was obliged to stop. He stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or lack of intelligence, she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She went slowly on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that he could still keep her in sight. He might ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... exclusive attention to the dictates of conscience and by sheer force of will the Wang school of philosophers succeeded in reaching a standard of attainment that served to make them models for posterity. The integrity of heart preached by his followers in Japan has become a national heritage of which all Japanese are proud. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— 'Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... pass which only Grassette knew, the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... By sheer force of will he put aside the insistent weakness, which he knew would get the better of him were he to resign himself to it. By the same force of will he injected into his being a degree of physical energy. But he was a white man, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... "What sheer nonsense! I've half a mind to scold you. Of course, Father is willing to put himself out for you. Only this morning he said he would do all in his power to get a ship ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... works, or stood here and there in groups, doing as they chose. The foremen did not dare to speak to them; if they made a friendly remark they were met with insults. The workers were taking advantage of the fact that they were indispensable; their behavior was sheer tyranny, and they were continually harping on the fact that they would just as soon go as stay. These words made them the masters of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up and at it, again," he exclaimed, common-placely enough, his voice a bit uncertain. Stern had walked narrow girders six hundred feet sheer up; he had worked in caissons under tide-water, with the air-pumps driving full tilt ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... they were among the mountains, till they reached a narrow ledge or shelf scarcely wider than the stage. On one side there was a sheer descent of hundreds of feet, ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... Tornado was running of falling on board the vessel was very great, and Jack was about reluctantly to give the order to sheer off from her, when he saw the remainder of those on deck prepare to make the desperate leap which would either terminate in their destruction or place them in comparative safety. Just at that moment, as his eye was fixed on the naval ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and stay what they are; you've got to be democratic, to some extent, to understand the idea. What keeps us obeying laws we ourselves make? What keeps us obeying laws that make things inconvenient for us? Sheer self-interest, of course—but try to ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... room said to have been occupied by Isabella with the old brewhouse, now a tavern, by means of which Mortimer was wont to communicate with his mistress. The castle stands upon a mount of 280 feet, sheer rock, and the brewhouse is at its base. A peculiarity of the tube, bored through the live rock, is an elbow-joint, which is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fifty and sixty, a sheer wreck, I had noticed earlier in the night standing in Piccadilly, not far from Leicester Square. She seemed to have neither the sense nor the strength to get out of the rain or keep walking, but stood stupidly, whenever she got the chance, meditating on past days, I imagine, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... willing to endure the sentence passed upon them, and they were not misled by Boer promises in which they had never had any faith at all. There are good reasons to be assigned for the willingness of many of the men to make appeals to the Government: sheer hard necessity and the sufferings of those dependent upon them were among these reasons; and it is unfair to consider these appeals to have been due ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... front of the tomb, the procession of mourners ranged themselves about it in a semi-circle. They stood with their backs to the edge of a cliff that rose sheer for sixty feet or more from the plain beneath, across which, but at a little distance from the foot of the precipice ran the road followed by the caravans of merchants in their journeys to and from the coast. Then, a hymn having been sung invoking the blessing of the gods on the dead priestess, Elissa, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... awe, when we first climbed a winding, white trail to the summit of the mountain and gazed into the abysmal depths. My eye followed an eagle which floated across the chasm to its perch on a projecting crag; thence, down the sheer face of the cliff a thousand feet to the stream which has carved this colossal canyon from the living rock. Like a shining silver tracing it twisted and turned, foaming over rocks and running in smooth, green sheets between vertical walls of granite. To the north ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... half-eagles, which fell about me in a golden shower, and made me cry out with amazement; but this was not all! The tears sprang to my eyes as I opened the morocco box and took out the chrysoprase necklace: tears partly of gratitude and pleasure, partly of sheer kindness and love and sorrow for the sweet, stately lady who had thought of me in her closing days, and had found (they told me afterward) one of her last pleasures in planning this ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven away, followed by a parting "Oh, la la!" from the chasseur, uttered in a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement. ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... amazing; but he dismissed it with a passionate energy. "The dull figuriste!" he exclaimed. "Daguerre. Once I could have done that, yes, and been entertained by its adroitness and insolence—before you made me. Do you suppose I was able then to understand the sheer tragic fortitude to live of a scrubwoman! The head you thought unpleasant—haven't you seen her going home in the March slush of a city? Did you notice the gaps in her shoes, the ragged shawl about a body twisted with forty, fifty, sixty years of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sorcerers, stoop in the final rites of fire and burial. Some days ago I taxed the band-master, Bond, with the possibility of playing in the dark; for a moment his face was as long as Taylor's bassoon, but since then by means of surreptitious practice and, I fancy, the sheer confiscation of his bandsmen's folios, the impossible has been achieved. Every band is the best in France, but only ours can play in darkness. Thus, as the column swings past the pond and waiting cookers, the Band strikes up one of ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... already decided on a man for the job of foreman, and I, for one, am glad we picked the man we did, but I want you boys to approve of our appointment. What you say goes. Stand up!" commanded Tom Gray sternly, fixing his gaze on the red-headed jack, who, from sheer force of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... laymen; it was the minister only who was required to take the oath. Later, the laws enacted by the General Assembly required every clergyman coming into the colony to subscribe to the Articles of the Christian Faith according to the Church of England and to be of Anglican ordination. By reason of sheer inability at times to provide sufficient Anglican clergymen for the parishes, clergymen of Presbyterian ordination were permitted to serve in Virginia parishes; and that was true throughout the whole seventeenth century. The last Presbyterian clergyman ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... too much. Good-for-working boy. Me and heem make 'em three-four beg oyster every day. He bin say: 'You carn be mate for me!' He go along two Mulai boy. Dorphy [Adolphus] carn mek too much now—one sheer belonga him, Mulai boy two sheers. Carn beat me—one sheer one man." Hamed has clean-cut notions on the disadvantages ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was dashing against the kitchen door. Underneath, the little cellar, dug in the dry sand weeks before, and used as a storing place for tents, chairs, vegetables and coal sacks, was filled with water which now came within a foot of the floors. From sheer force of habit, Mary began building a fire in the range, and I to pack the spoons, knives and forks in a basket for removal. Ricka thought this a wise thing to do, but ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... absurdity of their conversation; of which, although they had spoken in earnest, they were both somewhat conscious. "But I say, old fellow, without any more humbug about love and such like bosh, just look at the dear old craft! how beautifully she sits on the water— what a graceful sheer she has—and how well her sixteen guns look run out, like dogs from their kennels, all ready to bite. You should see her under weigh though, and how beautiful she looks with her canvas spread! You'd ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... susceptibilities of its political and commercial rivals. The idea that the sentiment either of the world at large or of the over-sea British would be favourably impressed by the three months of futile negotiations was a sheer delusion. It was the people of England who had to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... redoubtable of sentinels. Either the figures below were hidden from him or instinct warned him that they were friends. He hopped from bough to bough of the great windrow, and nearly always he sang. Now his song was clear and happy, saying that no enemy came in the forest. He sang from sheer delight, from the glory of the sunshine, and the splendor of the great green forest, drying in the golden glow. Now and then the gray squirrel came down from a tree and ran over the windrow. There was no method in ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain, is an Alpine gasthaus—a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, is ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... ordinary occasions, Mrs. Gallilee was up in time to receive the letters arriving by the first delivery; the correspondence of the other members of the household being sorted by her own hands, before it was distributed by the servant. On this particular morning (after sleeping a little through sheer exhaustion), she entered the empty breakfast-room two hours later than usual. The letters waiting for her were addressed only to herself. She rang ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... special clause from Potsdam, the German troops); even fish caught by the fishermen of Lebanon have to be handed over to the military authorities, and the shortage of supplies in Smyrna, for instance, is such that at the end of 1916 there were two hundred deaths daily from sheer starvation, while Germany was importing from Turkey hundreds of tons of corn and of meat. Thus this was no natural shortage, for though supplies were low all over the Turkish Empire, there was not dearth of that kind. It was an artificial shortage made ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... seats were taken, someone gave a signal and off went the little trains down such a steep grade that their rush carried them far up another incline. This was repeated over and over until they had reached a great height. Here there was a sheer drop as straight as it could be made without taking the cars off the rails, and down they went, turning and twisting. All at once they were plunged ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... her? Now her wrath turned upon Bennett. What audacity had been his to believe that she would so forget herself? She set her teeth in her impotent anger, rising to her feet, her hands clenching, tears of sheer passion starting ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... powers of industry for the satisfaction of his prodigal instincts; it was the drawing-room of a woman whose placidity no danger could disturb, and who cared for nothing if only her husband was amused. Spend and gain! And, for a change, gain and spend! That was the method. Work till sheer exhaustion beat you. Plan, scheme, devise! Satisfy your curiosity and your other instincts! Experiment! Accept risks! Buy first, order first, pledge yourself first; and then split your head in order to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... these exhibitions of his strength. He had grown to understand that he could always affect her when he pretended to dominate her by sheer brute force. She had explained it to him ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... knew, was to big Wilbur what Dick himself was to the great mass of law-abiding men. Accident had cut Wilbur adrift, but it was more than accident which started Pierre on the road to outlawry; it was the sheer love of dangerous chance, the glory in fighting ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Alps composed of solid coherent limestone (such as that familiar to the English traveller in the cliffs of Matlock and Bristol), 3000 or 4000 feet thick, and broken short off throughout a great part of this thickness, forming nearly[50] sheer precipices not less than 1500 or 2000 feet in height, after all deduction has been made for slopes of debris at the bottom, and for rounded ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... reputation of having once been the rendezvous of a gang of pirates, as a house, that has stood untenanted for any length of time, is sure to be peopled with ghosts. People seem to think it a pity that a tenement should remain unoccupied, so, out of sheer compassion for the proprietor, they stock it with unearthly tenants from roof to cellar, or like—for, now I am in the humor for comparisons, I might as well go on—it was like a man who keeps his business ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... had to pass in September or be forever labeled a dunce by his fond family. Now you see why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic equations into his stupid head, and he offered me his hand by the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... of amazement, fright and pain, which struck on the ear like the shriek of a terrified woman, the nimble creature spun lithely 'round, and, like the bull, reckless of all save the unseen foe behind him, made a blind leap sheer over the brink of the precipice, and in a ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... them. And now this possibility of fruitful co-operation is, for the time being, and it may be for many years, suspended. I say nothing of the loss of markets in the older countries which will be occasioned by sheer loss of population and the lower standard of living. That is one of the more obvious but not perhaps the most important of the ways in which the war affects ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pilot-house, now partly open, caused Worden, blind as he was, to believe that the pilot-house was seriously injured if not destroyed; he, therefore, gave orders to put the helm to starboard, and 'sheer off.' Thus the 'Monitor' retired temporarily from the action, in order to ascertain the extent of the injuries she had received. At the same time Worden sent for me, and I went forward at once, and found him standing at the foot of the ladder ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... miles an hour. There, before us, is Cumbrae: over Bute and over Cumbrae look the majestic mountains of Arran; that great granite peak is Goat-fell. And on a clear day, far out, guarding the entrance to the Frith, rising sheer up from the deep sea, at ten miles' distance from the nearest land, looms Ailsa, white with sea-birds, towering to the height of twelve or thirteen hundred feet. It is a rocky islet of about a mile in circumference, and must have been thrown up by volcanic agency; for the water around it is hundreds ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... grow discouraged now, were we to weaken and slack off, the whole structure we have built, these past eight years, would come apart and fall away. Never then, no matter by what stringent means, could our free world regain the ground, the time, the sheer momentum, lost by such a move. There can and should be changes and improvements in our programs, to meet new situations, serve new needs. But to desert the spirit of our basic policies, to step back from them now, would surely start the free world's slide toward the darkness that the communists ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... classical author, to study the topography of Epipolae. But his talent is his own, and very agreeable, though he once so forgot himself as to jest on the Deceased Wife's Sister. When we think of those writers to whom we all owe so much, it would be sheer ingratitude to omit the name of the master of them all, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Here is a wit who is a scholar, and almost a poet, and whose humour is none the less precious for being accompanied by good humour, learning, a wide experience of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... scored his first great popular success. 'The Sorcerer' had appealed to the few; 'Pinafore' carried the masses by storm. In humour and in musicianship alike it is less subtle than its predecessor, but it triumphed by sheer dash and high spirits. There is a smack of the sea in music and libretto alike. 'Pinafore' was irresistible, and Sullivan became the most popular composer of the day. 'The Pirates of Penzance' (1880) followed the lines of 'Pinafore,' with humour perhaps less abundant but with an added ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... reply. "His Eastern servant 'phoned for me one night last week; and I found Ferrara lying unconscious in a room like a pasha's harem. He looked simply ghastly, but the man would give me no account of what had caused the attack. It looked to me like sheer nervous exhaustion. He gave me quite an anxious five minutes. Incidentally, the room was blazing hot, with a fire roaring right up the chimney, and it ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... willingness of readers from around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... could make up their minds whether to resent or applaud the trick that King had played on them with Yasmini's obvious collaboration, King was well under way with a speech that held them spellbound. It would have held any audience spellbound by its sheer, stark manliness. It was straighter from the shoulder than Yasmini's eloquence, and left absolutely nothing to imagination. Blunt, honest downrightness, that was the key of it, and it took away the breath of all ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... somewhere. I'm afraid you will think me a bore for sticking to the point like this, but the fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It's a hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can't place it, I worry myself into insomnia. It's partly sheer vanity, and partly because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It has helped me ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... as a matter of course; they fulfilled them, and went beyond. They were not a melancholy company; they had something of the lightness of the element in which they moved. Indeed, it would be difficult to find, in the world's history, any body of fighters who, for sheer gaiety and zest, could hold a candle to them. They have opened up a new vista for their country and for mankind. Their story, if it could ever be fully and truly written, is ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... their wont is in the pressure of debate, endeavored to deny, to insinuate in their vile Newspapers, That Jenkins lost his Ear nearer home and not for nothing; as one still reads in the History Books. [Tindal (xx. 372). Coxe, &c.] Sheer calumnies, we now find. Jenkins's account was doubtless abundantly emphatic; but there is no ground to question the substantial truth of him and it. And so, after seven years of unnoticeable burning upon the thick skin of the English Public, the case of Jenkins accidentally burns through, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... to her house so much, unless she meant to inveigle Elnathan; but, for her part, she would rather see him dead than live to bring reproach upon his family and the Church by following after the blasphemers. I ventured to tell her that I did look upon it as sheer kindness and love on the young woman's part; at which Elnathan seemed pleased, and said he could not doubt it, and that he did believe Peggy Brewster to be a good Christian, although sadly led astray by the Quakers. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... was growing eery, now, and precipitous. To their right rose a sheer cliff. To their left, the path fell off abruptly to a gigantic caldron where red flames ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Tammaritu was "a devil" incarnate, whose whole thoughts were of murder and rapine; at least, this was the idea formed of him by his Assyrian contemporaries, who declared that he desired to put to death the sons of his two predecessors out of sheer cruelty. But we do not need a very vivid imagination to believe that these princes were anxious to dethrone him, and that in endeavouring to rid himself of them he was merely forestalling their secret plots. They escaped his murderous designs, however, and fled to Assyria,—Khumban-igash, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... surprise had he learnt the real reason of his Matilda's change of plan. That angel had, in short, so wildly spent Bob's and her own money in the adornment of her person before setting out, that she found herself without a sufficient margin for her fare by coach, and had scrimped from sheer necessity. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... stairway, from gallery to gallery, hard pressed by her furious mistress. Soon she heard them rise into the belvedere and the next instant they darted out upon the roof. Down into its valleys and up over its ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled. She reached the sheer edge, the lady at the window hid her face in her hands, there came a dull, jarring thud in the paved court beneath, and the lady, looking down, saw the child lifted from the ground and borne out of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... convinced Madeleine that M. de Bois would not have made this inquiry out of sheer, causeless curiosity; and she made known to him the count's request concerning the votes which she was to exert herself to obtain. Gaston caught eagerly at ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... is of an oblong form flanked by stupendous mountains; the enormous barrier of the Dundun Shikkun almost precludes the possibility of bringing cannon from the south, although one gun is known to have been dragged over by sheer manual labour; it was brought by Dost Mahommed from Cabul to quell some refractory chiefs, the carriage being taken to pieces, and the gun fastened by ropes in the hollowed trunk of ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... exposure—I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come—a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won't think any more of it—now—at least. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... The extraordinary devotion to a volume of natural history, which after generations of use has become more like a mop-head than a book, may be seen in the reproduction of a "monkey-book" here illustrated; this curious result being caused by sheer affectionate thumbing of its leaves, until the dog-ears and rumpled pages turned the cube to a globular mass, since flattened by being packed away. So children love picture-books, not as bibliophiles would consider ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... an interesting spectacle to see this woman, moved by sheer pride and obstinacy, conjoined with ignorance of the actual situation, seeking to set her single will against that of a city in revolt, and endangering the very existence of the monarchy by her sheer lack of reason. Her ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... possible to have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of the soul, to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped down from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power and virtue and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper, who would refuse such help? But I do not find such a being in Christ. I do not find, I cannot imagine, such a being. I wish I could. To me the Christian Christ seems not so much a humanized God as an incomprehensibly ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... struggled up through the lightning's glare, I have walked where the cliffs fell sheer To a gorge below, but I breathed a prayer, And my soul ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... Morvyth on terms of distant iciness, Valentine and Katherine constantly sparring over trifles, Fauvette preserving an attitude of martyred dignity, and Aveline, out of sheer perversity, striking up a friendship with Maudie Heywood, matters were not very ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... correct idea of the great central table-land of Fezzan. It is an elevation, not quite clearly marked to the eye on some of its northern approaches, but dropping sheer to the plain at other parts. Mourzuk is situated in a sandy depression on its surface, which would probably be turned into a salt lake if there were sufficient rain. The limits of the hollow, as of that of many others—Wady Atbah for example—are ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... till he had got nearly across the bridge that Captain Devereux, as it were, waked up. It was no good waking. He broke forth into sheer fury. It is not my business to note down the horrors of this impious frenzy. It was near five o'clock when he came back to his lodgings; and then, not to rest. To sit down, to rise again, to walk round the room and round, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pick up a living in the village, one can hardly tell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the light-footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs to extort, by sheer beggary, a scanty morsel from some pair of "drowthy cronies," or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure contempt by some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... the morning session at quarter to twelve, so that those who lived near enough could go home for a change of dress. Emma Jane and Rebecca ran nearly every step of the way, from sheer excitement, only stopping to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... like that, Geert. What do you mean by 'justifying it before my own heart?' By saying that you force me, half tyrannically, to assume a role of affection, and I am compelled to say from sheer coquetry: 'Ah, Geert, then I shall never go.' Or ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... hoped to obtain through the Princess some opening for their foreign trade, which would better enable them to dispose of their wines and help them to live. Mazarin kept down the local Parliament, and carried everything through sheer terror. Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, the Princess's advisers, recommended that a royal envoy should be cut to pieces. Lenet dreaded lest such an act, somewhat over-energetic, might render his mistress ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... book of directions, has also been published by the same lady, and is perhaps a still greater boon to every nursery; for this is the age when many a child's temper is ruined, and the inclination of the twig wrongly bent, through sheer want of resource and idea, on the part of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... of character or sheer doggedness one Native has tried to break through the South African shackles of colour prejudice, the Colour Bar, inserted in the South African Constitution in 1909, instantly hurled him back to the lowest wrung of the ladder and held him ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the tree he girdled; Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward; Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... country for fowls, but when we went to look at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens, almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... rock-rooted conviction in the heart of the nation, we shall tend to lukewarmness—to an awful indifference as to how this contest shall end; and begin to seek for present peace at any price. We say present peace, for a permanent peace, short of a thorough crushing of the rebellion, is simply a sheer impossibility—a wild hallucination. Nor is it a less mad fantasy to suppose that the rebellion can be effectually crushed without annihilating slavery, the sole and supreme cause of the rebellion. Such lukewarmness and untimely peace sentiments, widely diffused through the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... past year many tribes have shown, in a degree greater than ever before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe, is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... some manuscript of that period preserved in the British Museum. She, who had explored the ruins dozens of times, knew well that at the point where she was standing there could be no place of concealment. Beyond that wall, the hill, covered with bushes and brushwood, descended sheer for three hundred feet or so to the bottom of the glen. Had the voices sounded from one or other of the half-choked chambers which remained more or less intact she would not have been so puzzled; but, as it was, the weird whisperings seemed to come forth from space. Sometimes they ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... northern division of the continent. This arises from the peculiar geological structure of these mountains. Vast clefts traverse them, yawning far into the earth. In South America these are called quebradas. You may stand on the edge of one of them and look sheer down a precipice two thousand feet! You may fancy a whole mountain scooped out and carried away, and yet you may have to reach the bottom of this yawning gulf by a road which seems cut out of the face of the cliff, or rather has been formed by a freak of Nature—for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... desired to live quietly without opening the front door again; but his good master begged him to marry to please him, assuring him that he need not trouble about his wife. So the good steward wandered out of sheer good nature into this marriage. The day of the wedding, bereft of all her reasons, and not able to find objections to her pursuer, she made him give her a fat settlement and dowry as the price of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... noble captain," answered the officer; "but, prithee, reserve thy oaths for the court of justice; it is but sheer waste to throw them away, as you do in your ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the same tactics over and over, learns no more than a machine would. But, of course, the bird does not think; hence the folly of her behavior to a being that does. The wisdom of nature, which is so unerring under certain conditions, becomes to us sheer ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... thought I felt him nibble at my shirt tails, and his eyes grew in my imagination as large as wagon wheels and Mr. Fox, himself, seemed to grow as big as an elephant. When at last I dropped from sheer exhaustion and could summon courage to look behind me, I could see nothing. It was then I realized I was not so game as I thought I was and the knowledge was not pleasant by any means. Not far from our house there was a horse ranch, owned by a Mr. Williams. He had two sons about my own age ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... which proceeds thus: "Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of the person to be baptized, &c." The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of the requisite material ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Smith snatched her hand suddenly from mine and moved toward the edge of the cliff, crying out that we must continue our search. I climbed the orchard wall and looked along the shore. Here the cliff dropped away almost sheer, and the narrow strip of shingle at its base was lost in the surf. Farther to the north it widened a little with the curve of the shore, and through a swaying curtain of rain I could follow it to a point we called ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Belshazzar's nails on the floor of the bathing pool. Then his heart and breath stopped an instant. Beside the dog walked the Girl, one hand on his head the other holding the flowing white robe around her and grasping one of the Harvester's lilies. His first thought was sheer amazement that she was not afraid, for it was evident now that the backlog had awakened her, and she had taken the dog and gone to her mother. Then she had followed the path leading down the hill, around the cabin, and into the sheet of moonlight gilding the shore. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... pretended stupidity, and inquired, "what pantry?" and "what bread?" but Jane soon discovered that I knew very well; and while she looked at me so searchingly I could not possibly frame a plausible story—so, from sheer necessity, I told the whole truth, "and nothing but the truth." My curious attempt at getting thin excited great amusement; but Mammy told me that she knew of a better way than that, which was to run up and down stairs as much as possible. ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... civilization, and that by the Caucasus the path of barbarism; this is why the Turks who took the former course could found an empire, and those who took the latter have remained Tartars or Turcomans, as they were originally; because the way of the Caucasus was a sheer descent from Turkistan into the country which they occupy, but the way of the Aral was a circuitous course, leading them through many countries—through Sogdiana, Khorasan, Zabulistan, and Persia,—with many fortunes, under many masters, for many hundred ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... sight of a huge cactus, trailing its heavy knotted length upon the face of a rock; and at times we brushed beneath overhanging branches of some tree that could not be distinguished. All the way up we seemed to skirt a sheer precipice, which at moments was alarming in its gloomy depth. Deeper and deeper below shone the lights of the railway station and of the few houses about it; it seemed as though a false step would drop us down into ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... answered Outzen calmly. "But to disturb the peace of the grave from sheer daring, with the fumes of the punch still in your head,—that is a different matter,—that will ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Soames. The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't the fellow take better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Scarecrow; who crawled to the edge of the nest and looked over. Below them was a sheer precipice several hundred feet in depth. Above them was a smooth cliff unbroken save by the point of rock where the wrecked body of the Gump still hung suspended from the end of one of the sofas. There really seemed to be no means ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tongue, with inconceivable rapidity, passed from subject to subject, but with an incoherence that was to me, at least, marvellous. For two hours he poured forth a verbal torrent, which was only suspended by sheer physical exhaustion. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Adventures of Peter Wilkins, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle, 1736, has had its day. It was a blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to Stothard, Vol. IV. The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy I have not seen. Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... were to the waiter, and referred to successive tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation as I cannot trust myself to set down in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... distinct Provinces of the Dominion stand as land marks of portentous meaning in the History of Canada. The settlement and development of these immense fertile prairies of the West were bound to react on the economic powers and political outlook of our Country. By the sheer weight of their economic value these new Provinces have leaped into prominence and forced themselves upon the attention of the Country at large. The Western issues are now so weighty that only the greatest prudence and wisest statesmanship will maintain the equilibrium ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... make himself withal a body? What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... opening scenes of the New World drama. Skies of profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... we kept up the pursuit of the flying Moors, and only rested from sheer weariness. The next morning Meer Jaffier rode into our camp at Daudpore, ill at ease. But Colonel Clive received him with friendship, and caused him to be saluted as the Nabob of Bengal. From him we learned the particulars of what had taken ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... "God-forsaken," so often applied to regions like this, would, however, be inappropriate here, for in God's name the locality is famous. On a promontory whose sides fall down in sheer precipices all about, except where a narrow neck of rock connects it with the net-work of cliffs, is a vast monastery, the Mother Abbey of the Olivetani. In 1313 a noble of Siena, Bernardo Tolomei, in the midst of a life of literary distinctions and pleasures, received, it is said, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the Irish had borne down the defence amidships, where the run of the gunwales was lowest. The sheer weight of them as they clambered, one over the other, on board, listed the ship over, and made the boarding easier for those who followed. The wild Danish war shout rose once or twice, and then it was drowned by the Irish yell. After that there was ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... will grow her governance; never out of her dominance.—Those who think this sheer nonsense, are welcome to think so. But it is worth ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... books again that for a month I gave no thought to the future. I did nothing but read and study ... except at those times when I was talking to people prodigiously of my trip and what I had seen and been through. And naturally and deftly I wove huge strips of imagination and sheer invention into the woof ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... daughter. "It is a monumental thing at this crisis of affairs—a huge, unpopular claim on a resenting government carried through by persons impelled solely by the most purely primitive and disinterested of motives. An ingenuous county politician, fresh from his native wilds, works for it through sheer prehistoric affection and neighbourliness; an old black man—out of a story-book—forges a powerful link of evidence for mere faithful love's sake; a man who is a minister of the gospel, a gentleman and above reproach, gives to its service all his interest, solely because he cherishes an affectionate ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in this upper stillness sweet sounds of church bells reach us from hamlets close underneath the convent. Nothing can be more solid, fresher, or more brilliant than the rich beech- and pine-woods running sheer from our airy eminence to the level world below, nothing more visionary, slumberous, or dimmer than that wide expanse teeming, as we know, with busy human life, yet flat ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... nine hundred beds, which were always so full that the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself with extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer necessity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its position in London, and the fact that its school was only just emerging from primeval chaos, it ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Germans in daylight, with a like result. The ground was piled high in places with bodies. Then, when night had fallen, yet another attack was made. One mighty mass of Germans came charging over the narrow space. By sheer weight of numbers they overwhelmed the French and took the trench for which they had paid such a ghastly price. They held it only for a few hours. By converging on it from three points at once the French retook it soon ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Debby's pins were making, and could Aunt Judith not read in a lower tone? Nellie was surprised at Miss Latimer's good-humoured patience, and thoroughly enjoyed Miss Deborah's occasional tart remarks, thrown out in sheer desperation. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in English literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but pyramidally extant'—'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful voices'—'predicament of chimaeras'—'the irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'—are examples of this ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... mind," he coaxed, "you were really not responsible. It was fatigue, destiny, the spite of fortune,—whatever you like. In the case of the others, whom you despise so justly, I dare say it is sheer, disgraceful affection. But see that ravishing placard, swinging from the roof: 'This train stops twenty minutes for dinner at Utica.' In a few minutes more we shall be at Utica. If they have anything edible there, it shall never contract my powers. I could dine at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... would take him longer than that to get to a safe range, get into position, and fire. He'd be dead anyway, as the ship plunged into the atmosphere and burned up. And to pull out without firing would be saving his own life at the cost of the lives he was under oath to defend. That would be sheer cowardice. ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... this was played with great spirit, the two most distinguished being Nancy and Dan Dennison, though Miss Fortune played admirably well. Ellen had seen Nancy play before; but she forgot her own part of the game in sheer amazement at the way Mr. Dennison managed his long body, which seemed to go where there was no room for it, and vanish into air just when the grasp of some grasping "blind man" was ready to fasten upon him. And when he was blinded, he seemed ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... divisible. Has any man ever looked upon a line and perceived directly that it has an infinite number of parts? Did any one ever succeed in dividing a space up infinitely? When we try to make clear to ourselves how a point moves along an infinitely divisible line, do we not seem to land in sheer absurdities? On what sort of evidence does a man base his statements regarding space? They are certainly very ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the sky was dust-dimmed, the south wind feverish and strength-sapping. At dawn we had sighted a peak against the western horizon. We were approaching it now—a single low butte, its front a sheer stone bluff facing southward toward the river, it lifted its head high above the silent plains; and to the north it stretched in a long gentle slope back to a lateral rim along the landscape. The trail crept close about its base, as ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... want of food, Sir," continued Thompson, by sheer duress preventing my father from following his guests and attempting to pacify them, "I have taken to spirits. I do not like the taste of spirits and they go at once to my head. They depress me further, Sir, but they intoxicate me. Yes, I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... determine to reject it. But it may have been, and if it was, then the selection of "A" only, carried with it the rejection of "B." A father sees his two children perishing in the waters. He jumps into a boat, and reaches the scene of disaster. The children are sinking from sheer exhaustion. He takes one into the boat, and returns to shore. He could easily have saved the other, but did not, and he tells the people this on landing, and that he must be simply judged by his act of saving the rescued child, ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... and tried, but presently I saw mother looking queer, and she said I was tired, and had gone on enough. I made her read it to me afterwards, and I had gone off into a muddle, and said something that would have been sheer murder. So I had better leave it alone. Old Vanbro mistrusts every word I say because of the Hermann connection, and indeed I may not always have talked sense to him. Those things work out in God's own time, and the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... That's no joke! The dragon—though a dragon of dragon race—let the bags fall in his fright. But, from sheer terror, he picked them up again. Yet his fear did not gain the mastery till they entered the court-yard. When the hungry children saw their father coming with the loaded dragon, they rushed toward him, each one with ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... of what he had made of himself through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it—remembering what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily, undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... glairy creatures pick up this science? We are told that the Mollusc derives from the Worm. One day, the Worm, rendered frisky by the sun, emancipated itself, brandished its tail and twisted it into a corkscrew for sheer glee. There and then the plan of the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... breathe for wonderment; and numb With truth that fell too suddenly, sat dumb With sheer amaze, and stared at Roy with eyes That looked no feeling but complete surprise. He swayed so near his breath was on my cheek. "Maurine, Maurine," he ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... nature in many phases—of breeze and sunshine, of the glory of the land, and the sheer ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Well, isn't that just what the big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger playthings, for pounds, where before we fought for pence—for gold where before we fought for coppers—for command of a country instead of a schoolyard; for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer deviltry and the love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight about, just the same ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... fought and won in the eleventh century any national prejudices that belong wholly to the modern world are quite as much out of place with regard to it as they are with regard to Caesar or St Augustine. And if we must be indignant and remember old injuries that as often as not were sheer blessings, scarcely in disguise, let us reserve our hatred, scorn and contempt for those damned pagan and pirate hordes that first from Schleswig-Holstein and later from Denmark descended upon our Christian country, and for ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... as if he had fainted from sheer starvation," returned Clemantiny brusquely as she picked him up in her lean, muscular arms. "Why, he's skin and bone. He ain't hardly heavier than a baby. Well, this is a mysterious piece of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... evolution at the mercy of His caprice; did not Brahma, by means of meditation, which, as the Oriental scriptures tell us, preceded creation, practise the gentlest, the most rapid, and the easiest method of guiding beings to the Goal? Is it not sheer blasphemy to attribute such folly to the Soul of the world? Does not the study of Nature, at each step, belie this insensate waste, of which no human being would be guilty? Everywhere with the minimum of force, Nature produces the maximum of effect; everywhere ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... his interview with the captain, thought that he had never seen a family more radiantly happy than this company of boys and girls who were skipping and prancing up and down the long room, bumping against each other in sheer gleefulness ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... him on board by the horns he showed no fear as he rode in the air. And, once on his feet again, and loose on deck, he showed us hell's own fight—out of sheer indignation—back there in Brisbane. He flashed after us, with the rapid motions of a bullfight in the movies. Most of us climbed every available thing to get out of his reach. He smashed here and there through wooden supports as if they were ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,—I had spent out of sheer copiousness of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... day was still, the sun's bright glare Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall Withered by tropic heat, the air Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall. Behold a group, young men and gray, And women, kneeling; silence holds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... its pallor; beauty remained only because she had a figure which not even emaciation could have deprived of lines of alluring grace. But she was no longer quite so straight, and her hair, which it was a sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality. She was still pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the class in which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... This is sheer nonsense. Joy smiles in good earnest, and many an aching heart knows too well the deep ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... generation the respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... through the gloomy woods; but there was no hesitation on the part of Nellie, who, but for the sturdy teaching of her parents, would have crouched down beside the log and sobbed in terror until she sank into slumber through sheer exhaustion. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... I had bade Davis do, and to think what might happen because of it. I, Roscoe Paine, no longer even a country banker, was at the helm of "Big Jim" Colton's bark in the maelstrom of the stock market. It would have been funny if it had not been so desperate. And desperate it was, sheer reckless desperation and nothing else. I must have been crazier than ever, more wildly insane than I had been for the past month, to even think of such a thing. It was not too late yet, I ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,—tip the scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare. She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was in him, an' see him, an' go him better if it was possible. Nothing over the earth, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... essential thing. What I had to do was to demolish at one blow a truth which had been twenty-seven years in existence and which was all the more firmly established because it was founded on actual facts. That was why I went for it with all my might and attacked it by sheer force of eloquence. Impossible to identify the children? I deny it. Inevitable confusion? It's not true. 'You're all three,' I say, 'the victims of something which I don't know but which it is your duty to clear up!' 'That's easily ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... which this rock, as well as that of Elmiseram and others lying in sight, rose sheer up from the plain, filled them with surprise; for, although these natural rock fortresses are common enough in India, they are almost without an example in Europe. After visiting the fort they rambled through the town, and were amused at the scene of bustle in its ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... one bright afternoon we glided through a narrow entrance into its superb harbour. We appeared to be sailing up a large lake, extending as far inland as the eye could reach, and surrounded with lofty mountains of many different and picturesque shapes. On either side were walls of granite, rising sheer out of the water to a height of nearly 2000 feet, while behind them rose the vast Sugar-loaf Mountain, and a number of other lofty and barren peaks towering up clear and defined against the blue sky. Like mighty giants they surround the harbour, the ground at their bases sloping ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to a great extent, protected it upon three sides. The fourth, that opposite to them, except at one place where a kind of natural causeway led into the town, was also defended by Nature, since here for more than fifty feet in height the granite rock of the base of the hill rose sheer and unclimbable. On the mount itself, that in all may have covered eight or ten acres of ground, and surrounded by a deep donga or ditch, were three rings of fortifications, set one above the other, mighty walls which, it ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation. A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and, slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... away? Art thou a god, that thou, indeed, by favouring whom thou wilt And slighting others, canst at once bring back to life and slay? GCod moulded beauty from thy form and eke perfumed the breeze With the sheer sweetness of the scent that cleaves to thee alway. None of the people of this world, an angel sure thou art, Whom thy Creator hath sent ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying Ransome in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy's face. It was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile. The blood in me ran cold, and I drew in my breath as ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... initiatory process was not very painful, he concluded "to go it, provided they'd promise to run him for constable. Office is the hull any of the scallywags jine 'em for, and I may as well go in for a sheer," said he, thinking if he could not have the privilege of selling liquor, he would at least secure the right of arresting ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... fever which supervened. Apart from the lack of food, a great cause of mortality lay in the change of diet. Potatoes form a bulky article of food, and stirabout, unless very carefully made, used to swell after it was consumed. Many, too, ate raw turnips from sheer destitution, and these also caused swelling of the stomach as well as a dysentery almost always fatal in ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... spoke at once. "It's almost too good to be true," was Jack's quick exclamation. "What do you suppose the surprise will be?" Norman's eager question. While Mary, clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just love to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you swoop down ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... off after his rice-birds, while Uncle Remus leaned up against the wall and laughed until he was in imminent danger of falling down from sheer exhaustion. ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... unfolding in due order under the hand of the poet, from the largest to the least. Now the reader should be informed that every one of these unities has been violently attacked and proclaimed to be a sheer phantasm. Chiefly in Germany has the assault taken place. What we have above considered as the joints in the organism of the poem, have been cut into, pried apart, and declared to make so many separate poems or passages, which different authors have written. Thus the one great ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... as soon as they were gone, 'I think it right to tell you, that we were obliged, out of sheer charity, to take that poor Irish girl into the house. It was impossible to move her without risk ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... result from volcanic activity associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poor soul was inefficient, and he knew it: beneath all her flow of speech ran an undercurrent of wrath against the new learning and all its works. Poverty—sheer terror of a dwindling cupboard and the workhouse to follow—drove her to plead with that which she hated worse than the plague. He heard, and all the while his mind was miles away from her petition; for some chance word or words let fall by her had seemed for an instant ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... being, the young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism. Epicurism which, in my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, precisely because it looks at first sight most like an angel of light. The mass, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... perfection the industrial-financial-democratic scheme of life should have developed an apologetic therefor, and imposed it, with all its materialism, its narrowness, its pragmatism, its, at times, grossness and cynicism, on the mind of a society where increasingly their own followers were, by sheer energy and efficiency, acquiring ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... undoubtedly require modification. Under his reign, English thought was constantly busied with false issues, simply from ignorance of the most effective criticism. It is needless to point out how much time is wasted in the defence of positions that have long been turned by the enemy from sheer want of acquaintance with the relevant evidence, or with the logic that has been revealed by the slow thrashing out of thorough controversy. It would be invidious perhaps to insist too much upon another obvious result: the ease with which a man endowed ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... guns. Ten thousand of these men were hurled against the English centre and right by Danneberg. The carnage was frightful. Between the hostile lines rose a rampart of fallen men. The Russians would probably have swept away the British by the sheer force of greater numbers, had they not been taken in the flank and repulsed by a French regiment which arrived just in time to save their ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure religiosity. The prolongation of life gives place to sheer self-sacrifice as the fundamental "remedy." And indeed what other remedy has ever been conceived for the general ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... left the ridge and headed away from the river, which flowed round a wide curve, and toward dawn they were brought up by a ravine. The roar of water rose hoarsely from its depths. The moon was getting low and the silvery light did not reach far down the opposite side, but they could see a sheer, smooth wall of rock, and the width of the chasm rendered any attempt to jump ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded door, and green ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of this plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to the hills,—a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The ancient boundary of the city proper was the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the man, Mr. Jones," she said sweetly. "It was a sheer accident. He was taken by surprise. In his place I would have emptied the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... verses on Miss Isabella M'Leod of Raza, alluding to her feelings on the death of her sister, and the still more melancholy death of her sister's husband, the late Earl of Loudoun, who shot himself out of sheer heart-break at some mortifications he suffered, owing to the deranged state of his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... right man at last. A day will come soon when I shall take Chum from his present home to his new one. That will be a great day for him. I can see him in the train, wiping his boots effusively on every new passenger, wriggling under the seat and out again from sheer joy of life; I can see him in the taxi, taking his one brief impression of a world that means nothing to him; I can see him in another train, joyous, eager, putting his paws on my collar from time to time and saying excitedly, "What a day this is!" And if he survives the journey; if I can keep ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... figure continued its onward career; and Freeman once more levelled his weapon,—when a voice, which gave him such a start of surprise as well-nigh caused him to pull the trigger for sheer lack of self-command, called out, "Why, you abominable young villain! What the mischief do you mean? Do you ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... make any distinction between the sheep and the goats? But while Mr. Adams, unmoved by argument, anger, or entreaty, thus alienated many and discouraged all, every one was made acquainted with the antipodal principles of his rival. The consequence was inevitable; many abandoned Adams from sheer irritation; multitudes became cool and indifferent concerning him; the great number of those whose political faith was so weak as to be at the ready command of their own interests, or the interests of a friend or relative, yielded to a pressure against which no counteracting force was employed. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... of this character. Some, not inherently vicious nor absolutely depraved, had adopted this lawless calling by reason of some stigma which deprived them of their social position; others, by reason of their indolence; and others from sheer necessity, who found in their dire distress the justification ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... wave were steadily sweeping the vessel onward towards this haven of refuge, and there was nothing to do but to watch the sharpening outlines, and to see, as fog and mist cleared before the sun, the sheer dark rocks and deep valleys of their ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Olga resembled him. She had the same quick, pale eyes, with the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... one of the best counterfeits of genius that has been seen for many a day; so good, indeed, that most men are taken by it for the first quarter of an hour at the least. But for real unmistakable genius,—for that glorious fulness of power which knocks a man down at a blow for sheer admiration, and then makes him rush into the arms of the knocker-down, and swear eternal friendship with him for sheer delight; the "Biglow ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... with the utmost care, so that they might close in upon and reach us simultaneously, as they were now doing. As the brilliant light of the port-fire blazed forth, a shout of astonishment, not very far removed from dismay, burst from the occupants of the canoes, and a momentary tendency to sheer off precipitately became apparent; but this was instantly checked by a loud and authoritative call from the largest canoe—the voice sounding very much like that of Matadi himself—and with an answering yell the savages at once turned the bows of their canoes toward the schooner and began to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down to the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to Miss Adrian's ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... stratagem is mentioned as a very notable artifice. What follows? Why, that the slave was doubly tempted: 1st, by the luxury he witnessed; 2ndly, by the impunity on which he might calculate. Often he escaped by sheer weight of metal in lying. Like Chaucer's miller, he swore, when charged with stealing flour, that it was not so. But this very prospect and likelihood of escape was often the very snare for tempting to excesses too flagrant or where secret marks had been fixed. Besides, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... realization of what it would mean if Numa should suddenly enter the tunnel in front of him; but Numa did not appear and the ape-man emerged at length into the open and stood erect, finding himself in a rocky cleft whose precipitous walls rose almost sheer on every hand, the tunnel from the gorge passing through the cliff and forming a passageway from the outer world into a large pocket or gulch entirely enclosed by steep walls of rock. Except for the small passageway from the gorge, there was no other entrance to the gulch which was some hundred ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In sheer wickedness there seems little enough to choose between Eyraud and Bompard. But, in asking a verdict without extenuating circumstances against the woman, the Procureur-General was by no means insistent. He could not, he said, ask for less, his duty would ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Springhaven had learned, by lore of generations, to build a boat with an especial sheer forward, beam far back, and deep run of stern, so that she was lively in the heaviest of weather, and strong enough to take a good thump smiling, when unable to dance over it. Yet as a little thing often makes all ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... religious persecutions had begun, in the slaying of the Manichean heretics at Orleans. The seasons in their courses seemed to fight against humanity, for famine and pestilence, storm and tempest swept down upon the land and the people died in thousands of sheer starvation. The Roman Empire had crumbled in the dust; after it fell that of Charlemagne into the abyss. The chronicles of Raoul Glaber are full of the most gruesome details of cannibalism, of diabolical appearances, of tortures that cannot be named. The only refuge seemed to be within the walls ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... be said to have depended almost for their very existence upon the horse; and in old pictures the Tartar is often seen lying curled up asleep with his horse, illustrating the mutual affection and dependence between master and beast. Out of sheer gratitude and respect for his noble ally, the man took upon himself the form of the animal, growing a queue in imitation of the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... at once upon a splendid piece of mountain scenery, and soon left behind us the vivid green of the upper valley. To our left a sheer crag rose from the valley in one unbroken slope, and in front the mountains seemed to close and bar all progress. We had five thousand feet to climb from the frontier stone, and I anticipated having to accomplish the larger part of it alone. They ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... waves below. "You are so brave a man that I could not reconcile my conscience to leaving you without a ship. Come, I'll give you, in exchange for the Onslow, my own vessel, the Commodore here. I can vouch for its being a good sailer and valuable, though I got it very cheap. But from sheer philanthropy, I can't give up your crew, you would decimate it; the soldiers, however, you shall have, I don't care what becomes of the ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... carried away by an impulse to rush hunting through Paris, to attach myself to some handsome woman I might meet, to follow her to her door, watch her, write to her, throw myself on her mercy, and conquer her by sheer force of passion. My poor uncle, a heart consumed by charity, a child of seventy years, as clear-sighted as God, as guileless as a man of genius, no doubt read the tumult of my soul; for when he felt the tether ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... communion service bearing his own wine and bread, and in the solitude of his own pew communed with God, if not with his fellow-men. For nearly twenty years did this austere man rigidly go through this lonely and sad ceremonial, until he conquered by sheer obstinacy and determination, and was again admitted ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's wedding, not knowing the lateness of the hour; for her brother Richard had played a trick upon ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wondered. At first, he had thought it indicated the presence of warriors, but Indians did not cut down trees and doubtless it was due to some other cause, perhaps an old, decayed trunk that had been weighted down by snow, falling through sheer weariness. In any event he was going to see, and, emerging from his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... And in a little while they were come out of the thick woods and were in a country of steep little valleys, grassy, besprinkled with trees and bushes, with hills of sandstone going up from them, which were often broken into cliffs rising sheer from the tree-beset bottoms: and they saw plenteous deer both great and small, and the wild things seemed to fear them but little. To Ralph it seemed an exceeding fair land, and he was as joyous as it was fair; but the Lady was pensive, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... sculptor, fresh from the Paris schools and Salon triumphs. He had long parted company with Jews and Judaism, and to his ardent irreverence even the Christian glories of Middleton seemed unspeakably parochial. In Paris he had danced at night on the Boule Miche out of sheer joy of life, and joined in choruses over midnight bocks; and London itself now seemed drab and joyless, though many a gay circle welcomed the wit and high spirits and even the physical graces of this fortunate young man who seemed to shed a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... would have laid hands on him, then he laughed from sheer helplessness. "Oh, go on, go on; let's see, there's Clemence and Marie Tellec and Cosette and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... station over-right The balcony, to which he clambered, shows. Ariodantes weened, this while, the knight Would him to seek that hidden place dispose, As one well suited to his fell despite, And, bent to take his life, this ambush chose, Under the false pretence to make him see What seemed a sheer impossibility. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... an incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by dividing their forces against the united strength ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster—it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... no intention of freezing people, but they are hideously ill at ease with me, and say all kinds of foolishnesses from sheer nervousness. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Newman's Life. He said that when he himself was in bad odour for his early Civil List speeches, so that he had been exposed to serious disturbances, and a break-up of his intended meeting at Bristol was threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean dignity, looking curiously out of place, but ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that which seasoned the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency rouses ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... illustrations, for as nonsense these are as admirable as the text. But the greater part of Mr. Herford's work belongs to the realm of pure fancy, and though of a whimsical delicacy often equal to Lewis Carroll's, it is rarely sheer nonsense. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... have hitherto considered, relating to the supernatural lapse of time in fairyland, have attributed the mortal's detention there to various motives. Compulsion on the part of the superhuman powers, and pleasure, curiosity, greed, sheer folly, as also the performance of just and willing service on the part of the mortal, have been among the causes of his entrance thither and his sojourn amid its enchantments. Human nature could hardly have been what it is if the supreme passion of love had been absent from the list. Nor ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... fight those fellows if they attempt to board us, won't you?' he said, going up to the skipper. 'If you will run all the guns over to starboard we can give them a broadside which ten to one will make them sheer off rather than get a ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... fruiterers seemed not to be succeeding in their rivalry with each other and with the Chinese hawkers. The Chinese shops were dotted everywhere, dingier than any other, surviving and succeeding, evidently, by sheer force of cheapness. The roadways everywhere were hard and bare, reflecting the rays of the ascending sun until the streets seemed to be Turkish baths, conducted on a new and gigantic method. There was no green anywhere, only unlovely rows of houses, now gasping with ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting 'for the King;' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,—the infernal element in man called forth, to try it by that! Do that therefore; since that is the thing to be done.—The successes of Cromwell ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of her stout resistance, and before John could climb aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm. Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the icy water, for there were many pieces of ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... grief and faith have put into the word: his mother "was not." It was incredible! He gasped as he stood at the window, looking out over the blossoming lilacs at the Works, black against a fading saffron sky. Ten minutes ago his mother was in the other room, owning those Works; now—? The sheer impossibility of imagining the cessation of such a personality filled him with an extraordinary dismay. He was conscious of a bewildered inability to believe what had been said ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... knows perfectly well that I can go on the stage the day I am twenty-one, yet through sheer obstinacy she refuses to advance me a penny to do as I like with before the 20th ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... help looking like a girl of seventeen," sighed Mrs. Curtis. "If that colonel were but married, or the other young man! I'm sure she will fall into some scrape; she does not know how, out of sheer innocence." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his office rent, his licenses, and other expenses paid, but he shook his fist at the city, in sheer good nature and confidence in his strength, despite the fact he had waited a week for expected employment, and nothing at present loomed ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... have thought that this middle-aged gentleman was taking advantage of an opportunity to bask in the smile of a pretty girl for the sheer pleasure of her company. He was purposely detaining her, but whether from a wish to amuse himself or to mark his indifference to what went on around him she did not fathom. The fact was that Sylvia had wondered herself a good deal about that interview in Mrs. Owen's house, and she was not quite ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Lawrence—flows. But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... if you don't want to be pounded you'd better keep out of the way," answered Dan, with a warning look in his black eyes that made Jack sheer off in haste. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... it up. They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter, until at length, feverish, bitten, bleeding, and hungry, I sought refuge beneath the gauze curtains in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... at the window, looking down into that old-world garden, he was "sensing" the atmosphere keenly, seeking for the note of danger. It was sheer intuition, perhaps, but whilst he could never rely upon its answering his summons, once ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... himself because he was too open and unreserved to disguise his feelings, and because he really considered the praise lavished on Beattie extravagant, as in fact it was. It was all, of course, set down to sheer envy and uncharitableness. To add to his annoyance, he found his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, joining in the universal adulation. He had painted a full-length portrait of Beattie decked in the doctor's robes in which he had figured at Oxford, with the Essay ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain destroyed by larceny? You resisted the power of 150 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every principle of morals from the dread of fifteen hulks, while the expedition itself cost you three times more than the value of the larcenous matter brought away. The French trample on the laws of God and man, not for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always take ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... contrived within them, near their outer edges, that might fairly be compared to caves hollowed in the face of a cliff. The weight upon the lower stories and the substructure was therefore enormous, even to the point of threatening destruction by sheer pulverisation. The whole interior was composed of crude brick, and if, as is generally supposed, those bricks were put in place before the process of desiccation was complete, the shrinkage resulting from its continuance must have had a bad effect upon ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... of blood, for the jugular vein had been cut open as though it had been done with a knife. So much for the head stroke, which is, I may say, exceptional. As a general rule I think the tiger bears down his victim by sheer weight, and then, by some means which I should hesitate to define, although I have seen it, the head is wrenched back, so as to dislocate the vertebrae. One evening two cows were killed before me. I was going to say the tiger sprang ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... corner. But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the Castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should command ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glory eternal. Every man of them who fell had first killed his foeman—some half a score—while of those who survived there was not one so craven as to cry "Quarter!" The white flag went not up till they were overwhelmed and overpowered by sheer ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... sweat stood out on Bentley's bronzed forehead as he renewed his efforts; the stout hickory sapling bent and crackled beneath the pressure of the two men, but held on, and the boat slowly but steadily began to swing clear of the ice. These two Homeric men held it off by sheer strength, until the boat was in freewater, and the men, who had sat like statues in their places, could once more use their oars. The general stepped back into his place, cool and calm as usual, and entirely unruffled by his great exertions. Bentley wiped the sweat from his face, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Bumppo, cried Benjamin, your top-light frightens the fish, who see the net and sheer off soundings. A fish knows as much as a horse, or, for that matter, more, seeing that its brought up on the water. Haul oil, Master Bumppo, haul off, I say, and give a wide ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet room as if wrung from the twitching lips by sheer torture. It went out in silence—a dreadful, lasting silence in which the souls of men, stripped naked of human convention, stood confronting the first primaeval ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Congress", by jovial old "Anacreon Moore", have we beheld such an invasion of prize-fight philosophy and race-track rhetoric. We learn with interest that a former United member named "Handsome Harry" has now graduated from literature to left field, and has, through sheer genius, risen from the lowly level of the ambitious author, to the exalted eminence of the classy slugger. Too proud to push the pen, he now swats the pill. Of such doth the dizzy quality of sempiternal Fame consist! Speaking ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself together. These nervous women have often an unexpected fund ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... still not possible, total defensive strength must include civil defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind of protection becomes sheer necessity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... swinging the whip over Bengal's nose, the cruel lash cutting the tender snout with every blow. But he was not doing it from sheer cruelty, as many of the spectators who raised their voices in ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... this prison, whose splendor and luxury seemed like sheer mockery, away from this house teeming with bitter memories of past grandeur ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... haste Whopper had been reloading his rifle. Now he swung the weapon to his shoulder. He was greatly agitated but by sheer force of will power calmed himself sufficiently to take aim. Then the rifle cracked out and the bullet hit the bear full in the chest. It made bruin stagger, and he fell back on his side, kicking up a shower of snow ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... same period the development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. Covington would not have ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the Americans care much more about it than the rest of us. Then there are different notions about this question of saving time, different notions of what wastes time and what does not, and much which the old world regards as politeness and good manners Americans consider as sheer waste of time. Time is, they think, far too precious to be occupied with ceremonies which appear empty and meaningless. It can, they say, be much more profitably filled with other and more useful occupations. In any discussion of American manners it would be unfair to leave out ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that was his laugh, and 'Baudelaire,' he said, 'was a bourgeois malgre lui.' France had had only one poet: Villon; 'and two-thirds of Villon were sheer journalism.' Verlaine was 'an epicier malgre lui.' Altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lower than English. There were 'passages' in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. But 'I,' he summed up, 'owe nothing to France.' He nodded at ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing the coins, one by one, 'as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;' here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this particular portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour and virtuous industry; 'and I won't stand in your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... like his eme was half my lover, half my tyrant. Of all which I will tell thee hereafter, and what wise I must needs steer betwixt stripes and kisses these last days. But now let us arm and to horse. Yet first lo you, here are some tools that in thine hands shall keep us from sheer famine: as for me I am no archer; and forsooth no man-at-arms save ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... argument, to the effect that this moment of panic revealed the truth of their theory of government; that the custodians of law and order have become the government itself quite as the armed men hired by the medieval guilds to protect them in the peaceful pursuit of their avocations, through sheer possession of arms finally made themselves rulers of the city. At that moment I was firmly convinced that the public could only be convicted of the blindness of its course, when a body of people with a hundred-fold of the moral energy possessed by a Settlement group, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded himself that he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the circumstances brought back the trying Death Valley struggles, when this woman and her companions, and the poor children, so nearly starved they could not stand alone, were only prevented from sitting down to die in sheer despair by the encouraging words of Rogers and myself who had passed over the road, and used every ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... found out that she had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister and had wanted to go home and cry in peace, as an English girl should. She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the Spectator will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims. Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... even a lost soul may admire the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and man, stood ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... you as beyond question. What am I saying? The flower of the scientific talent of the time? No; that would not answer. The scientific genius of all subsequent time would have to be included; for how often does history show us the pioneers of science in sheer contradiction with the accepted body of scientific knowledge of their own time! It may take fifty, and it may often take a hundred years of discussion in scientific matters to settle the question as to what is true and legitimate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Venice, more idle than elsewhere, and even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to strangers, to amuse and gain a few pence. We pass over any details of the persecution inflicted on him by English tourists, who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of sheer curiosity and eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales in circulation, were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of course, displeased him, and accordingly in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Peter the Great is notable for the removal of serious checks upon the power of the tsar and the definitive establishment of that form of absolutism which in Russia is called "autocracy." By sheer ability and will-power, the tsar was qualified to play the role of divine-right monarch, and his observation of the centralized government of Louis XIV, as well as the appreciation of his country's needs, convinced him that that kind of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... if possible, stand and watch the Master Workman doing the work that is to make this region our source of present day joy. We will make the ascent and stand on the summit of Pyramid Peak. This is now 10,020 feet above sea level, rising almost sheer above Desolation Valley ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... and a heavy cornice at the top, and immense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals by small windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extreme steepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its large moat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. To this tall fortress the good Rene retired in the middle of the fifteenth century, finding it apparently the most substantial thing left him in a dominion which had included ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fact, music had ousted literature: "the libraries were closed like sepulchres." But fashionable people were interested in an hydraulic organ, and they ordered from the lute-makers "lyres the size of chariots." Of course, this musical craze was sheer affectation. Actually, they were only interested in sports: to race, to arrange races, to breed horses, to train athletes and gladiators. As a pastime, they collected Oriental stuffs. Silk was then fashionable, and so were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech; for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words. The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy the man of moral energy all compact, whose mere presence, like that of Samuel, the seer, restrains others, softens and transforms them. This is a thing to be written on a man's tomb: "His ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Brought not from this same block divine Inheritance, or hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. "How's this? Have I devoutly treated," Says he, "your godship, to be cheated? Now leave my house, and go your way, And search ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... desperately than against their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt. The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less difficult encounters, he left mourning and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... then of sheer exuberance and with a strong embrace, pressed his head hard against her breast. He yielded passively, made no response of his own beyond a deep-drawn breath or two. A moment later when she had released him and risen to her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was busily engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task,—as good as any boy could have whistled,—and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, all alone ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Fitful snorings and groans and incoherent mutterings broke the stillness. At intervals a man near the door would jump to his feet, proclaiming the end of the world. Sometimes his paroxysm was brief, but again he would keep up his leaping and solemn chanting until he fell to the floor in sheer exhaustion... Gradually even he became quiet, and nothing was audible except heavy breathing and the sound of the watchman in the corridor as he passed by regularly, flashing his light into the room through the slits ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... It is the duty of every faithful subject to serve his prince at the expense of his life; but in the straits to which you are reduced, your strength exhausted, deprived of succor, and without hope of receiving any, would it be reasonable to sacrifice the lives of so many brave men out of sheer obstinacy? Submit in good faith, and no harm shall come to you. We promise you still more, and that is to provide all of you with honorable employment. You shall have no grounds for discontent: for that we pledge you ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... this revelation of the heart of a strong man made tender as a woman's by a power centering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experience of the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is the varioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathy that she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve to his plea that she promise to marry him when he should return and provide a home for her. Her more cautious mother secured a modification of this pledge ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... is chiefly due to Captain Jinks, or, I should say, Major Jinks. They were about to kill us when, by the sheer force of his glance and his powers of speech, he actually cowed them, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... When the Temple came into view, rising majestically in the distance, they shouted to each other, "The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!" out of sheer joy in beholding the sacred structure that ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... stones and sticks. They were treasures to him and he was as important about them as a miser about his shekels. Again and again he counted them, taking a pleasure in their arithmetic. Already he was advanced in mathematics beyond the others and he loved to arrange his wealth for the sheer delight of arrangement; orderliness was an instinct ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... considerably, and in its deep and silent flow winds for many miles between high hills which closely confine it, and in one place rise in a perpendicular cliff 800 feet sheer ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... out of their way all whom they meet; whole troops of dogs come forth from the cemeteries to fight over the offal of the piazzas. Every true believer endeavours as soon as possible to get well behind bolts and bars, and would regard it as a sheer tempting of Providence to quit his threshold under any pretext whatsoever before the morning invocation of the muezzin. He especially who at such a time should venture to cross the piazza of the Etmeidan would have been judged very temerarious or very ill-informed, ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... this work, and have just been looking over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But really such things ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... wide tore free, binding and all, from the edge nearest the centre pole. It split six feet sheer. Andy's feet went over his head, but he kept a tight grip on ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... no answer. But my blood jumped in me with sheer fury, for answer or no answer, I knew who the man beside her was. Close by me I heard Dunn's unmistakable chuckle: and where Dunn was Collins was too. I behaved like a fool. I should have bounced through the bush and grabbed Dunn at least, which ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... brief study of the Incas and Chibchas concludes the civilized elements of the Aboriginal South American. To the east of the Andes were a number of tribes, all of which were, to a greater or lesser degree, still in a state of sheer savagery. Near the eastern frontier of the Inca Empire resided such peoples as the Chiriguanos, Chunchos, Abipones, Chiquitos, Mojos, Guarayos, Tacanas; while to the north were similar tribes, such as the Ipurines, Jamamaries, Huitotos, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought that Keith was a little mad. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing from sheer astonishment. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and maintain that all that is sheer nonsense!" exclaimed the Collector with emphasis. "I have examined the old toasting-iron no less than a hundred times, and it isn't five hundred years old! It comes down perhaps from the time of the feud of Soest, when very likely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... around the world to share their observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage, towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the islands of this group result from volcanic activity associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a lot of biscuits for fourpence," said Priscilla, "if you go in for plain arrowroot. Of course they're rather dull, but then you get very few of the better sorts. Take macaroons, for instance. They're nearly a halfpenny each in Brannigan's. Sheer ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... their friends and relatives, they live, depending on each other, like tall trees growing in the same forest. We, however, have been forced in exile by the wicked Dhritarashtra and his sons having escaped with difficulty, from sheer good fortune, a fiery death. Having escaped from that fire, we are now resting in the shade of this tree. Having already suffered so much, where now are we to go? Ye sons of Dhritarashtra of little foresight, ye wicked fellows, enjoy your temporary success. The gods are certainly auspicious to you. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... to win at any cost, by fair means or foul. His rushes, which had slackened, grew more violent. He came at Percy head down; he tried to crowd him into a corner, to throw his arms around him, to overpower him by sheer, ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... distance, but he saw far beyond it the black shadow of forest, in the interminable depths of which he might easily lose himself if the pursuit continued. Whether it continued or not was a matter of sheer indifference to him. He had drawn them far enough, but if they wished to go farther he would be the hunted again, although it might be dangerous ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reasserted herself, this artificial nausea wore away. I took a drive to Millard's Canon, and was surprised at finding a charming wooded road winding up through the canon along a mountain stream. From the end of the carriage-road we walked half a mile to a picturesque waterfall having a sheer descent ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... and "minding" with a corner of her eye the possessor of the same, the tiny Freddy, an imp of mischief uncontrollable by other hand or look than hers. A little lower down, poking into the invisible brook through the paling, was the eldest boy, silent from sheer delight in the unexpected pleasure of coating himself with mud without remark from Nettie. This unprecedented escape arose from the fact that Nettie had a visitor, a lady who had bent down beside her in a half-kneeling attitude, and was contemplating her with a ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... infinite variety, as also of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a mair curiouser ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... even of a Spinola, were not capable of a prolonged effort; there was no money in the State treasury; and the soldiery, as soon as their pay was in arrears, began once more to be mutinous. The bolt had been shot without effect, and the year 1607 found both sides, through sheer lack of funds, unable to enter upon a fresh campaign on land with any hope of definite success. But though the military campaigns had been so inconclusive, it had been far different with the fortunes of maritime warfare in these ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and busy; a life of gasoline and hammers and straining attempts to get balance exactly right; a happy life of good fellows and the achievements of machinery and preparation for daring the upper air; a life of very ordinary mechanics and of sheer romance! ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... jerked open Betsy's adjustment-cover and fairly yelped his dismay. He reached in and swiftly completed corrective changes of amplification and scanning voltages. He balanced a capacity bridge. He soothed a saw-tooth resonator. He seemed to know by sheer intuition what was ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... rest the place was laid out upon a slope, and at its head, immediately beneath the sheer steps of the mountain side stood two edifices very much larger in size than any of those below. One of these resembled the other houses in construction, and was surrounded by a separate enclosure; but the second, which was placed on higher ground, so far as they could judge at that ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... opportunity as you're offerin'!" Mr. Cavendish's voice and manner had become entirely confidential and sympathetic, and though fear of their mother could not be said to bulk high on their horizon, yet the small Cavendishes were persuaded by sheer force of his logic to withdraw and dress. Their ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... At dinner, Amaryllis, in sheer kindness of heart, shone with good humour, readiness of reply and flow of conversation. Randal, while he felt that she now and then forced the note, caught her motive, and responding, smoothed her way. But Dick, having from childhood ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... her most painfully had she known of it. The mind turns aside from the contemplation of the effect that a story or two of Kipling's would have produced upon her could she have grasped their vocabulary; she would probably have taken to her bed in sheer fright, as she did in a thunderstorm. Poetry of the heart and emotions, which never verged, even most distantly, upon what her traditions and her susceptibilities told her was the indecorous, satisfied her highest demands, and the less said about nature, ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... helpless craft and got as near to her as possible; but as she lowered her lifeboat, she saw the yacht stagger, stop, and then founder. The tops of her masts seemed to meet, she had broken her back, and the seas flew sheer over her. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... flung open, and a girl ran out. Her hair was disordered, her face pale, and her eyes full of alarm. There she stood on the doorstep, facing the crowd, which in an instant grew as if by magic to three times its former size, and, little knowing what she did, she cried in the eager accents of sheer terror: ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... she was attacked by two American outlaws, while riding on the river bank. One of them seized the bridle of the horse, and the other attempted to drag her from the saddle. Turning upon the latter, she shot him dead, and the other, from sheer amazement at her daring, lost his self-possession and begged for mercy. After compelling him to give up his arms, she allowed him to depart unmolested, as there was no tribunal of justice near by ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... existence of such a being as God—fate had taken pity upon him and, through no act of his own, he was going to be relieved of his intolerable burden. For he knew that, with that fighting mob of raging maniacs struggling madly round the boats, escape was a sheer impossibility, and that in a few minutes—or hours, at the outside—for he was a strong swimmer—he would go down inanimate into the dark depths, and his load of disgrace and humiliation would ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the former British Premier, is one of the gallant men attached to the Hood battalion. He has been through the thick of many fights, and has been wounded more than once, escaping death through sheer good fortune. ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... of the biggest-hearted men who ever left the shores of Great Britain and Australasia, and that the stupendous difficulties confronting them may be properly appreciated. It is no tale of glamour and romance; it is a tale of sheer, hard graft, generally under ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... too much | Vi metas tro da bluo | vee meh-tahss tro dah blue in my linen | en mian tolajxon | bloo-oh ehn mee-ahn | | tohlah'zhohn This is not my | Tio cxi ne estas mia | tee-oh chee neh handkerchief | naztuko | eh'stahss mee-ah | | nahz-too'ko You have torn the | Vi sxiris la punton | vee sheer-eess la lace | | poon-tohn When can I have | Kiam mi povos havi | kee-ahm mee po-vohss it? | gxin? | hah-vee jeen? Return this linen | Resendi tiun cxi | rehsehn'dee tee-oon on... | tolajxon la... | chee tohlah'zhohn | | la... You must bring | Estas necese, ke vi ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... dense and still, where the wind was hoarse, and startled squirrels flew over the fallen trunks and boughs of ruined trees. They rode close to the edge of sheer precipices four hundred feet down, with trout-brooks, like silver threads, winding through the gorges. Great walls of rock rose above and around them, and seemed to shut them in with a frown. Sharp turns in the road brought them ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... those fellows if they attempt to board us, won't you?' he said, going up to the skipper. 'If you will run all the guns over to starboard we can give them a broadside which ten to one will make them sheer off rather than get a further ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... lighter pleasures that she was never allowed to gratify. I think she secretly longed for the freedom that had been hers under the broader roof of her father's stately mansion on High Street. But she had, I suspect, neither the courage nor the force of mind to raise an issue, and from sheer inertia remained faithful to the life that she ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... bridge as he heard the click of Belshazzar's nails on the floor of the bathing pool. Then his heart and breath stopped an instant. Beside the dog walked the Girl, one hand on his head the other holding the flowing white robe around her and grasping one of the Harvester's lilies. His first thought was sheer amazement that she was not afraid, for it was evident now that the backlog had awakened her, and she had taken the dog and gone to her mother. Then she had followed the path leading down the hill, around the cabin, and into the sheet of moonlight gilding the shore. She stood there gazing ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... belonged to a boy of twelve, though he looked older—a street urchin—dirty, ragged, with a pinched face and a starved, ill-clad form. A look of sheer desperation came into these eyes when their owner saw the money, and he trembled with excitement as a certain bold and wicked thought came into his mind—a thought born, not of a bad heart, ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... was dying, and fearing that he might be obliged to pay the funeral expenses he stuttered to the bystanders, with passionate gestures, that an hour ago he had discharged the cripple whom he had dragged about with him, out of sheer sympathy, long enough. She was nothing more to him now than the cock in the courtyard, which was crowing to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... combat. He passed into the inner room, and returned in a moment with the girl's bundle. And with his return one glance showed him how nearly his plans were upset. Jessie was clasping Jamie in her arms, kissing him hungrily, tears streaming down her cheeks, while, out of sheer sympathy, little Vada was clinging to her mother's skirts, her small face buried in amongst them, sobbing as though her heart ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... made a circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness. That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me until ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... those who paint in music; but though Handel wrote more great choruses, his debt to Purcell is enormous. His way of hurling great masses of choral tone at his hearers is derived from Purcell; and so is the rhetorical plan of many of his choruses. But in Purcell, despite his sheer strength, we never fail to get the characteristic Purcellian touch, the little unexpected inflexion, or bit of coloured harmony that reminds that this is the music of the open air, not of the study, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... square-sail,—canvass so low that it might easily be confounded with the foam of the sea, at a little distance. She rounded the head-land, and was edging away from the coast, apparently for sea-room, when she took a sudden sheer in our direction. As if curious to ascertain what could have taken so large a square-rigged vessel as the Dawn, into her present berth, this cutter actually ran athwart our hawse, passing inside of us, at a distance ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... What she felt was not so much horror at thought of the deliberate unkindness, as sheer bewilderment at the discovery that a human being existed who cherished a positive dislike to her irresistible self. She had disliked Norah—that had seemed natural enough—but that Norah should return that dislike ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... right. I beg your pardon. [He points to HELENA] Look at her. Wandering up and down from sheer idleness. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... history. "For a hundred years," says Johnston, "slaves in Barbados were mutilated, tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve to death, burnt alive, flung into coppers of boiling sugar, whipped to death, overworked, underfed, obliged from sheer lack of any clothing to expose their nudity to the jeers of the 'poor' whites."[133] And yet the owners of these slaves were English, of the same stock under which developed the mild patriarchal type of slavery of Virginia. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... continuous thread from the remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third was the long-meditated Body of Divinity, or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hackwork hung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for such labours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking for pedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were they so regarded by Milton. To ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... writing. Walking was a pleasure. I could preach or lecture without effort. Words, thoughts, and feelings were all at hand to do my bidding. What I had charged on myself as idleness, was strengthlessness, the result of sheer exhaustion. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to understand, in the least, what was passing over the girl before him, he weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible conclusion as Jude ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... miracle of truth; I have seen the expression more than once; doctors see it often, in the sudden revulsion from terror and agony to certainty and peace; I only marvel where he ever met it: but the general effect is unpleasing, marred by patches of sheer ugliness, like that child's foot. There is the same mistake in all his pictures. Whatever they are, they are not beautiful; and no magnificence of surface-colouring will make up, in my eyes, for wilful ugliness of form. I say that nature is beautiful; and therefore nature cannot ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are papers on Burke, on Dr. Johnson, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as great. One group deals with Scottish History and one with the service of the state. The last is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... their yoke, and are restive under it; their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property; their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy, exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot—that form of love, strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Patty was snugly in bed, cuddled beneath the comforting down coverlet, she let herself go, and cried to her heart's content; great, soul-satisfying sobs that quieted her throbbing pulses and exhausted her strained nerves, until she fell asleep from sheer weariness. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... a small and exquisite woman with music in her heart and in the tips of her fingers; his memory of her was dim, but he knew that she had been the maddest and the merriest of all possible mothers—a creature of joy and sunshine and the sheer happiness of existence. And then her sister Mirabelle, who found life such a serious condition to be in, and loved nothing about it, save the task of reforming it for other people whether the other people liked it or not. And finally, her brother John, bald, fat, and good-natured; ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... was not so much his strength, which was remarkable, that enabled him to keep his hold upon this depending dead weight, as it was sheer desperation. It seemed to be pulling his arms out of their sockets, and his shoulders ached incessantly. At the risk of losing his balance altogether he sought relief by the continual shifting of his position but he knew that the strain was too great for him and that he must ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he felt a little contempt for the part he was playing and a sovereign scorn for his own imbecility, he even anticipated the Marchesa's languid but cutting comments on his failure. One second more, and all was lost—but not a word would come. Then, in sheer despair and with a violence that betrayed it, he seized one of Beatrice's hands in both of his and kissed it madly a score of times. As she interpreted the action, no eloquence of words could have told her more of what she wished to hear. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... I don't understand it. I don't indeed. It is sheer nonsense, and you must get over it. I shouldn't be doing my duty if I didn't tell you that you must get over it. He will be here again in another ten days, and you must have thought better of it by that time. You ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him, at the sky ominously clouded, at the valley below, already deepening into shadow; and, doing so, suddenly he heard his own ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... imagery—hypnotised by symbols and analogies which the necessary development of organised society has rendered obsolete—the ideals even of democracies are still often pure abstractions, divorced from any aim calculated to advance the moral or material betterment of mankind. The craze for sheer size of territory, simple extent of administrative area, is still deemed a ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... The poor soul was inefficient, and he knew it: beneath all her flow of speech ran an undercurrent of wrath against the new learning and all its works. Poverty—sheer terror of a dwindling cupboard and the workhouse to follow—drove her to plead with that which she hated worse than the plague. He heard, and all the while his mind was miles away from her petition; for some chance word ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man's soul alive. Repentance will save any and every soul alive, then and there: but remorse will not. Remorse may only kill him. Kill his body, by making him, as many a poor creature has done, put an end to himself in sheer despair: and kill his soul at least, by making him say in his heart, 'Well, if bad I am, bad I must be. I hate myself, and God hates me also. All I can do is, to forget my unhappiness if I can, in business, in pleasure, in drink, and drive remorse out of my head;' and often a man succeeds ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... we had provided ourselves with eighteen months' provisions, in pork and flour, calculating that by the time this quantity was consumed, we should have raised enough to support our establishment out of the soil by the sweat of our brows. And thus from sheer ignorance of colonial life, we had laid out a considerable portion of our capital in the purchase of useless articles, and of things which might have been procured more cheaply in the colony itself. Nor were we the only green-horns that have gone out as ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... night, and was quite surprised to find that the Doctor regarded it favorably. All that night she lay awake from sheer joy: at last she was going to be of service—she was going to do something. She tried to tell herself of the hardships of the life, but nothing could dim her enthusiasm. "I hope it will be hard," she cried happily. "I want it hard ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... not!" I protested. "She is not guilty, but this terrible dread and anxiety is, I know, gradually unbalancing her brain. She is a girl of calm determination, and if she believed that you suspected her she would be driven by sheer terror ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... said King Philip. "Do you suppose that any rambling Don is going to take up my time when by a sheer accident his verbosity has started me on a true scent? Out, Aristotle, out! Or, stay, take this note with you to the Captain of the Guard"—and King Philip hastily scribbled upon a parchment an order ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... with sheer eulogy. Eulogy is nice, but one does not learn anything from it. Had dear Charles Reade stopped after writing "womanly grace, subtlety, delicacy, the variety yet invariable truthfulness of the facial expression, compared with which the faces beside yours are wooden, uniform ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple orchards—some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb health—some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular neighbours. But not ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... sleep. The draught acted soon, as Miss Carew learnt by listening at the door and hearing the deep, regular breathing. But the effects passed off, and Molly sat up absolutely awake at one o'clock in the morning. She lay down again and tried to force herself to sleep by sheer will power, but she soon realised the awful impotence ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent peril. Thus he too "kicked against the pricks," hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the more careless about trying to make the best of herself. If nobody cared about her, what did it matter whether she was a dunce or not? So she said boldly that she had been learning nothing; and then the two Enderby girls lifted up their heads and stared at her in sheer amazement. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... struck him was a deep well-hole, and I was perched upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch. What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... a terrified voice. Then out of sheer fright she made an enormous effort over herself, and laughed aloud. Under the influence of that mortal dread, in the supreme exertion she made to destroy the effect of the monosyllable that had escaped her lips, the laugh ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... understood as well as she did the ins and outs of parliamentary law; how to appoint committees and chairmen and count yeas and nays; in other words, how to swing the class along in proper form. They knew all this, but hitherto it had been necessary to call it to their minds each year, when by the sheer force of oratory, ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... calling Mr. Frampton, was going to make a speech. The cry was immediately taken up by the others, who for some moments defeated their own purpose by calling vociferously for "silence for the governor's speech!" Having at length, from sheer want of breath, obtained the required boon, Mr. Frampton, waving his hand with a dignified gesture, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... into the gray they sheer away, On the awful polar tide; And the sailors know they have seen the wraith Of ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... the crew had been excited by the approaching strangers, which were rapidly drawing nearer. They ceased their arguments and strife, therefore, and crowded forward, looking alternately from the foreign ships to their own leader, lightly poised on the sheer-poles scanning the enemy. There were plenty of men of sufficient experience among them to pronounce them Spanish ships immediately, and they therefore anticipated that work lay before them that morning. Presently Morgan sprang down upon the forecastle ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he sat was a good instance of his taste. The silver-plate on it was really remarkable. There was a delightful Caroline tankard in the middle, placed there for the sheer pleasure of looking at it; there was a large silver cow with a lid in its back; there were four rat-tail spoons; the china was an extremely cheap Venetian crockery of brilliant designs and thick make. The coffee-pot and milk-pot were early Georgian, with very peculiar marks; but these vessels ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... that ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,—tip the scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare. She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was in ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... day. "If only I could have you for my own, what a delight it would be! My whole theory of training is so different,—you should never waste your energies in house-work, my darling, (Johnnie had been dusting the parlor); it is sheer waste, with an intelligence like yours lying fallow and only waiting for the master's hand. Would you come, Johnnie, if Papa consented? Inches Mills is a quiet place, but lovely. There are a few bright minds in the neighborhood; ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he addressed ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Pawle. "Sheer tempting of Providence! I'm amazed! But—how did you get to know Mr. Ashton and to hear of this diamond? ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... has the usual circular towers at the corners and a heavy cornice at the top, and immense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals by small windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extreme steepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its large moat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. To this tall fortress the good Rene retired in the middle of the fifteenth century, finding it apparently the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... angry, but bored, by this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer, narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to convince herself to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... pages in a body; and, finally, the imperial horse-guard (/Hatschiergarde/) itself, in black velvet frocks (/Fluegelroeck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. One scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... two sheer dynamic principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... service kept me in continuous joy, as waters invest a fish. I woke from a high dream. . . . And then, but for the fear of seeming cowardly, I would have extinguished my life as men blow out a candle. Vanity preserved me, sheer vanity!" He shrugged, spreading his hard lean hands. "Belhs Cavaliers, I grudged my enemies the pleasure of seeing me forgetful of valor and noble enterprises. And so, since then, I have served ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the first stress of war, were wrenched and shaken with veritable hysteria. At St. Ludwig and Constance those husky soldiers in ironmongery, with shaved heads and beards and outstanding ears, fell into sheer savagery, not because they were bad and savage men, but simply because they were hysterical. The fact ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... is the bank which falls Sheer downward from the second circle there; But on this, side and that the high ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... at the British under command of Sir John French. There followed a retreat that for sheer heroism and dogged determination has become one of the great battles of all time. The British, outflanked and outnumbered three to one, fought and marched without cessation for six days and nights. Time after time envelopment and disaster threatened them, but with a determination that ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... to be used, or any other service in which the bride and bridegroom kneel, cushions for their use should be provided. These are usually covered in white satin, with outer covers of very sheer lawn upon which the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... of Goerlitz, hounded on by their Minister, sentenced Behmen to be banished, and interdicted him from ever writing any more. But in sheer shame at what they had done they immediately recalled Behmen from banishment; only, they insisted that he should confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing of books alone. Behmen had no ambition to write any more, and, as a matter of fact, he kept silence ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... up here seem to think I know mighty little. It's very humiliating! But since they discovered that I am neither "'ristocratic" nor "pious," they seem to be friendly enough. I often find myself wondering if much of the work in the seminary wasn't a sheer waste of time, when I am brought up against the practical, commonplace, everyday life of these people. My friend Mrs. Burke has a fund of common sense and worldly wisdom which is worth more than any Ph.D. or S.T.D. represents, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... and stands up in a long-flapped waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new, picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old man's guard by sheer strength. But it won't do; he catches every blow close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns, after a minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old gamester. Joe now ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... From sheer fatigue these birds often seek a temporary resting place on passing ships. A solitary owl, after a long journey, settled on the rigging of a ship one night. A sailor who was ordered aloft, terrified by the two glowing eyes that suddenly opened upon his own, descended ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer abstraction. There is no such concrete personality or individuality within ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... understood, and tried to raise himself, nearly reaching to a sitting position, but falling back from sheer weakness, and gazing shrinkingly at us as if expecting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Buller tramping heavily at her side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show with the satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallid Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominate this fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into the supper-room, the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... unconscious or openly exercised by speech, is given us in the matter of sleep. Among adults the act of going to bed serves as a powerful suggestion to induce sleep. Seldom do we seek rest so tired physically that we drop off to sleep from the irresistible force of sheer exhaustion. Yet as soon as the healthy man whose mind is at peace, whose nerves are not on edge, finds himself in bed, his eyes close almost with the force of a hypnotic suggestion, and he drops off to sleep. With some of us the suggestion is only powerful in our own bed, that ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... was generally reproaching her partner. Eve was always her partner; and to-night she devoutly hoped that her employer would elect to rest. She always played badly with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, through sheer nervousness. Once she had revoked, and there had been a terrible ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... remember episodes of an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them together, and connecting together all those little matters which had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concentrated will power in bringing back to mind almost completely her two first years at Peuples. Distant memories of her life came back to her with a singular facility, bringing a kind of relief; but the later years seemed to lose themselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... officers." Apparently the common people were moved: they might have yielded, if their superiors had allowed them. But nothing could move those hard hearts; indeed, the sight of blood only inflamed them the more; and they felt certain that by sheer persistence they could break down ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... romantic answer. Royal Thatcher was naturally modest and self-depreciating in his relations to the other sex, as indeed most men who are apt to be successful with women generally are, despite a vast degree of superannuated bosh to the contrary. To the half dozen women who are startled by sheer audacity into submission there are scores who are piqued by a self-respectful patience; and where a women has to do half the wooing, she generally makes a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... fellow. But he's got a wife; and I told him, as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura. I reckon he thought better ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless—as his uncle had proved—for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right! He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage—there was no luck in it—he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... why had Lynda—? And with this thought such a wave of emotion swept over Truedale that he feared, strong as he was, that he was going to lose consciousness. For a moment he struggled with sheer physical sensation, but he kept his eyes upon the small, dark face turned trustingly to his. Then he realized that people were moving about; the body of the house was nearly empty; McPherson, while helping Betty on with her cloak, was commenting ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... divine Inheritance, or hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. "How's this? Have I devoutly treated," Says he, "your godship, to be cheated? Now leave my house, and go your way, And search ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... be, if we are to have any history at all, a struggle, a wrestling, a contest, bloody, unceasing, uncertain in its issue from the first hour until the last. This is no mere warning spoken from the lips only by one who, from sheer weekly necessity, may seem to you formal and official; it is as urgent, as deeply from the heart as though it were a summons from a messenger who has come to you directly from his Master. I beg of you to consider your ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... into it the whole weight of his personality. He grappled like a giant with the rooted obstacles that strewed his path, flinging them hither and thither by sheer force of will. His scorching eloquence blasted every opposing power, consumed every tangle of adverse evidence. It was as if he fought a pitched battle for himself alone. He wrestled for the mastery ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... what they were there for. Here, so far as he had learned, was the only place in London where a starving creature could get work, without a character or qualification of any kind. Hither came those who, through drink, or idleness, or sheer misfortune, had got right down to the foot of the social ladder; waiting patiently in the dim hope that some extra pressure of work inside would occur to give them an hour or two's employment. Well, he did not hesitate long. He seized a moment when ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... worse days' sport than I saw once when we were out after rattlesnakes and nothing else. There was a cave, sir, down under a mountain a few miles to the south of this, right at the foot of a bluff some four or five hundred feet sheer down,—it was known to be a resort of those creatures; and a party of us went out,—it's many years ago now,—to see if we couldn't destroy the nest—exterminate the whole horde. We had one dog with us,—a little dog, a kind of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... morning, General French started. Immediately I received orders from General Cronje to proceed with three hundred and fifty men to check the advancing troops. As I stood on the ridges of Magersfontein, I was able to look down upon the English camps, and I saw that it would be sheer madness to pit three hundred and fifty men against General French's large force. Accordingly I asked that one hundred and fifty more burghers and two guns might be placed at my disposal. This request, however, was refused, and so I ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... rock that, high and sheer, Rose from the mountain's breast, A weary hunter of the deer Had sat him down to rest, And bared to the soft summer air His hot red brow ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... and often "drew the long bow" with daring hand. He loved to astonish people with extraordinary tales, which were sheer inventions, but which no one could disprove. He pretended, too, to have been everywhere and to have seen everything. This weakness made him good game for Barnum, who determined to expose his foibles to ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "Non omnia possumus omnes," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it—to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... pace nor his stride, and before the Eldest Statesman, much hampered by his prisoner and the bucket, could put up any sort of defence, the unknown rescuer had sprung across the stepping-stones, and, catching him by the shoulders, had, by sheer force of speed and surprise, hurled him ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... men in the corner stared at her in sheer amazement, and then both burst into a great roar of laughter, which brought the whole office force to their feet. "Say, Swift, come meet this young mortgage raiser," called the nervous partner. "If you ever get conceited, just ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... culture—in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... older than I be, and I suppose you will think all this sort of thing is clear sheer nonsense, but depend upon it a kiss is a great mystery. There is many a thing we know that we can't explain, still we are sure it is a fact for all that. Why should there be a sort of magic in shaking hands, which seems only a mere form, and sometimes ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... man was quivering with passion. A terrible loathing for himself, for his crime which had been the precursor of this terrible situation, filled his soul to the verge of sheer physical nausea. A red film gathered before his eyes, and through it he saw the grinning face of the inhuman monster who had planned this hideous, abominable thing. It seemed to him as if in the silence and the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sky. Before them the plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, with an indescribable bold look of great altitude; but close to them at one side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock and beyond this a sheer descent. The eye leaped down abrupt slopes of forest to the valley they had left, now a thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic blues and greens, tremulous with heat. On the noble height where they stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... if the prognostications of to-day's schemes may also fail, and countries which they have doomed to progress still remain as is Guayra, their towns deserted, with but the broken spire of some old church emerging from the verdure of the tropics, as the St. Paul's Rocks rise sheer out of the sea. If there is charm in the unknown, there is at least as great a charm in the forgotten, and the Salto de Guayra is one of the most forgotten corners of the earth. To this wild place ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... aligned in a triangular formation about Mallard and his sponsors and, with Captain Bull Hargis of the Traffic Squad as its massive apex, this human ploughshare literally slugged a path through the mob to the side entrance of the hall. By sheer force the living wedge made a furrow in the multitude—a furrow that instantly closed in behind it as it pressed forward. Undoubtedly the policemen saved Congressman Mallard from being crushed and buffeted down under the caressing hands of those who strove with his bodyguard ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood. Industry, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of 11,500 feet, and from ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... replied the doctor. 'One of the frightened servants chose to take it into his head, that he had something to do with this attempt to break into the house; but it's nonsense: sheer absurdity.' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Colbert did even more notable work. The Italian Republics had made their noble code of commercial rules and maxims. The Dutch had given to the world one of the most wonderful examples of what man may accomplish by sheer pluck and persistent hard work, and commercial institutions founded on a principle of liberty; and neither the terror of the Spanish rule nor the jealousy of England had destroyed her power. Credit, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... fast becoming a public nuisance, she naturally turned to Jefferson for assistance. She wanted to write a book that would be talked about, and which at the same time would open the eyes of the public to this growing peril in their midst—this monster of insensate and unscrupulous greed who, by sheer weight of his ill-gotten gold, was corrupting legislators and judges and trying to enslave the nation. The book, she argued, would perform a public service in awakening all to the common danger. Jefferson fully entered into ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... in an instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle. At eight o'clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the foresail. At eleven o'clock I was no farther along. Blood dripped from every finger-end, while the nails were broken to the quick. From pain and sheer exhaustion I wept in the darkness, secretly, so ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... holdest the sheer steep of Leucas, far seen of mariners and washed by the Ionian sea, receive of sailors this mess of hand- kneaded barley bread and a libation mingled in a little cup, and the gleam of a brief-shining lamp that drinks with half-saturate mouth from ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
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— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The path had widened somewhat, and the dreadful sense of sheer depth below her was less insistent. Nevertheless, the way was far from easy, the steps being little more than deep notches in the cliff. It slanted inwards here however, and she set herself to achieve the ascent with ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... it better," said Mr. Simlins with a sly cast of his eye;—"you can set her to be your 'vice' when you want one. I was comin' up from the river, you see, and came up behind 'em, and I couldn't hear what they said; but when she let him go, I see her give a kind o' sheer look round this way, and then she put up her hand to her cheek and cleared for home like—a gazetteer!"—said Mr. Simlins, who had given this information in an undertone. "Made straight tracks for the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... at least. This danger Sandy perceives, but he dare not check his leaders. Suddenly, within a few yards of the bridge, Baptiste throws himself upon the lines, wrenches them out of Sandy's hands, and, with a quick swing, forces the pintos down the steep side of the ravine, which is almost sheer ice with a thin coat of snow. It is a daring course to take, for the ravine, though not deep, is full of undergrowth, and is partially closed up by a brush heap at the further end. But with a yell, Baptiste hurls his four horses down the slope, and into the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and his guards went down from the town to where the faggot burned, near the road upon a rock was a chantry, it stood at a cliff's edge steep and sheer, and it turned to the sea-breeze; in the apse of it were windows glazed. Then Tristan said to those ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... democracy of the world. Maryland was a picturesque principality under the rule of a dissolute young prince, who enjoyed a great private revenue from his possessions, and yet interfered but little with the individual freedom of his subjects. Pennsylvania was administering itself on a basis of sheer civic equality, and was absorbing from Franklin the principles of liberal thought and education. New York was so largely tinged with Dutchmanship that it resented more than the others the authority of alien England, and fought its ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the way through the somewhat thinly scattered underwood as he replied, "You see, Mister Harry, the place where he's gone to sun hisself is just at the foot o' a sheer precipice, which runs round ahead of him and juts out into the water, so that he's got three ways to choose between. He must clamber up the precipice, which will take him some time, I guess, if he can do it at all; or he must take to the water, which he don't like, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Andreas Sunesen with his priests mounted the hill to lay the sword of prayer in the scales of battle; the Danes rallied, and their swords were not blunt when they turned upon their enemies. Whilst the Archbishop and others prayed, the Danes were triumphant; but when his arms fell to his side through sheer weariness, the heathens prevailed. Then the priests supported the aged man's arms, who, like Moses of old, supplicated for his people with extended hands. The battle was still raging, and the banner of the Danes had ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... night before, looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so sudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and in sheer desperation began to talk. "That's a good enough argument to change any one's mind," she said. "Isn't it queer how many different views of a subject ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... both are dead. Thus it happens that here I am,—alone at the age of seventy, without any soul to care for me, or any creature to whom I can trust my business, or leave my fortune. It is not my fault that it is so; it is sheer destiny. How, I ask you, can I make any 'Last Will and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was to warn the people. To that end I was on my way to the Despatch office when sheer chance switched me into the City Hall tragedy. I possessed myself ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... submitted to the embrace, but her soul had recoiled from it; she had actually fainted under the shock: and ever since, she had declared to her brother, with a pertinacity which he had been unable to understand— which, indeed, had looked like sheer audacity, that he would never marry Margaret Ibbotson. Philip was now convinced that he had done his sister much wrong. Her temper and conduct were in some instances indefensible; but since he had learned all this, and become aware how much of what he had censured had been said and done out ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... tangled locks of glossy black. His face was long, narrow, hook-nosed and sinister; his eyes, as I have described them, a steady and beady black. I could at first glance ascribe great activity, but only moderate strength to his slender, wiry figure. In this I was mistaken. His sheer physical power was second only to that of Captain Selover. One of his forearms ended in a steel hook. At the moment I could not understand this; could not see how a man so maimed could be useful aboard a ship. Later I wished we had more as handy. He ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... one of the doomed wretches as upon the other; and the strange phantasmagoric haze which is thrown around the ship and the lonely voyager leaves their outlines as clear as if we saw them through the sunshine of the streets of Paris. Coleridge triumphs over his difficulties by sheer vividness of imagery and terse vigour of descriptive phrase—two qualities for which his previous poems did not prove him to possess by any means so complete a mastery. For among all the beauties of his earlier landscapes we can hardly reckon that of intense and convincing truth. ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... looked hard down the slope. It must have been a puzzling circumstance for Tull. Venters laughed grimly at the thought of what Tull's rage would be when he finally discovered the trick. Venters meant to sheer out into the sage before Tull could possibly be sure who ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... that. But she goes on, says she, 'Your teeth's fine an' long an' white, maybe you've cleaned 'em some.' Then says the wolf, 'That's so I ken eat folks like you right up.' With that he springs out of the blankets an' pounces sheer on that poor little squaw and swallows her up at one gulp, same as you ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... our obstinacy strikes out against God. We know as well as we know anything, that in doing this and in not doing that we are going every day right in the teeth both of God's law and God's grace; and yet in the sheer obstinacy and perversity of our heart we still go on in what we know quite well to be the suicide of our souls. We are told by our minister to do this and not to do that; to begin to do this at this new year and to break off from doing that; but, partly through ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... far distant, the dredging nets were coarse and weighty, and the capstan of the clumsiest and most primitive description, so that the coral-seeking serfs under contract were worked like bullocks until they were often wont to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion as they hauled away mechanically. We can imagine then with what raptures of joy these ill-treated mortals must have hailed the advent of October, the month that terminated their long spell of suffering and semi-starvation, and with what eagerness they must have returned homewards, the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... says, there is no salvation for him who curses the Holy Ghost, he would, in the frenzy of his despair, swear at that mysterious portion of the Trinity by the hour, and then employ the next in beating his breast in the agony of repentance. Many may think all this sheer madness; but he was not more mad than most of the hot-headed methodists, whose preachers, at that time, held uncontrolled sway over the great mass of people that toiled in the humbler walks of life. Two nights ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... them; yet, as she rose and fell with the 'scend of the sea, shapeless snow- white blotches appeared and vanished again beneath them occasionally. She was coming along very fast, however; and presently, when she took a rather broad sheer, I caught a momentary glimpse of two royals and just the head of a third—the mizzen—proving conclusively that she was full-rigged—as was the Virginia. But, as the skipper had surmised, she was still much too far off ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... vast accumulation of basaltic lava-flows, piled layer upon layer, with intervening beds of bole and tuff, up to a thickness, according to Geikie, of about 3,500 feet. At the grand headland of Gribon, on the west coast, the basaltic sheets are seen to rise in one sheer sweep to a height of 1,600 feet, and then to stretch away with a slight easterly dip under Ben More at a distance of some eight miles. This mountain, the upper part of which is formed of beds of ashes, reaches ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... when on a sudden the trail emerged from the forest, to creep along the face of another precipice. The path was only a ledge jutting out not more than three feet from the solid wall hung with vines; at the edge was a sheer drop of thousands of feet—or maybe not more than 2000, but to Charley, whose left foot hung over the drop, it looked ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... is true of the subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor; and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Duerer, often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Kent's anchor not holding fast, and her driving down into the Salisbury's station, threw this last ship out of action, to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew, for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was now and then, when she could sheer on the tide. The French, during the whole time of the Kent and Tyger's approach towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them, without any resistance on their part; but as soon as the ships came properly to an anchor they returned it with such fury as astonished ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... cold comfort, but he had not expected more, and he strolled away in sheer vacuity of heart and thought to the principal theatre of the city, where just then a bright comic opera was running. The lights, the gay music, the brilliantly-dressed crowd upon the stage, made no impression on his mind, and his saturnine and gloomy face was in such ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands—by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them—should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... others. The punishment fits the crime perfectly and being self-inflicted there is no injustice. It is true that many men possessed of great brain power play "second fiddle" to shallow-minded men of inferior wisdom from sheer lack of forcefulness on their own part. They lack the full quality of leadership while possessing all save one essential—courage. Fear abides in their hearts and spreads itself as a mantle of gloom over their ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... shaded; what a noise Aunt Debby's pins were making, and could Aunt Judith not read in a lower tone? Nellie was surprised at Miss Latimer's good-humoured patience, and thoroughly enjoyed Miss Deborah's occasional tart remarks, thrown out in sheer desperation. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... death, all along of your cursed rump. Alas! how frightened I am! oh! I have no heart for jests. Ah! machinist, take great care of me. There is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, I shall form food for my beetle.... But I think I am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of Zeus, I perceive. Hullo! Hi! where is the doorkeeper? Will ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
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