"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... experienced all the pangs of a ceaseless, impetuous, and impotent longing. He remembered the feeling which had come over him the day after his first arrival. He remembered the resolution he had formed then, and he felt angrily indignant with himself. What was it that had been able to wrest him aside from that which he had acknowledged as his duty, the single problem of his future life? The thirst after happiness—the old thirst after happiness. "It seems that Mikhalevich was right after all," he thought. "You wanted to find happiness in life ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... moment. I struck out with my clenched fists, throwing all the power I possessed into my blows, and fortunately for me—a mere boy in the grasp of a heavily-built man—he was comparatively, powerless from loss of blood consequent upon his wounds, so that I was able to wrest myself ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... subjects; how faithfully I have narrated their wrongs and advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen, and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of England, and provide places of honour and emolument for the scions ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... each armed with the rifle and musket peculiar to their service. By a sudden effort, he seized the rifle of one and the musket of the other, and turned their muzzles from him; and so firm was his grasp, that, although unable to wrest the weapon from either of them, they ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... O thou life of life, How worldlings, that profane thee rife, Can wrest thee to their appetites! How princes, who thy power deny, Pretend thee for their tyranny, And people for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... assumption was that the young lady would, on hearing my representations, exert herself to heal the breach between Captain Beauchamp and his family. You stand in the way. You treat me as you treated the lady who came here formerly to wrest your dupe from your clutches. If I mistake not, she saw the young lady you acknowledge ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths. Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their roots deep down in the hearts of ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... brilliancy of the eye which the bonnet shaded. It was the only striking feature in his countenance; but when once noticed, it ever made a strong impression on the spectator. About his neck there hung in a scarf of sky-blue silk a WREST as it was called—that is, the key with which a harp is tuned, and which ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street. The guard very properly refused to let him pass. In his drunken fury he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which, being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley, and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Senor Pizarro, a man of high birth and breeding, a porteno ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... August a fresh attempt was made to wrest the supposed secret from the Shah, who once more denied all knowledge of it, employing the strongest figure of denial. "If," said the helpless old man, "you think I have any concealed treasures, they must be within me. Rip open my bowels, and satisfy ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... this stage, to say that it was at first of wood, and became, by degrees, of wood and iron; in the present day the iron very much preponderating. It will be at once evident that the object of the framing is to keep the ends of the strings apart. The near ends are wound round the wrest-pins, which are inserted in the wooden bed, called the wrest-plank, the strength and efficiency of which are most important for the tone and durability of the instrument. It is composed of layers of wainscot oak and beech, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... better her eventful and mysterious life, to be a friend to her; and nobly did he keep his promise. On the following day he took measures for her rescue, and though several attempts were made to wrest her from him, and the mendacity of slave-dealers summoned to effect it, he had the satisfaction of seeing her restored to her native village,—to freedom, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... seasoned troops for operations in South Italy. The hardihood of Pitt in sending forth this expedition has often provoked criticism. But it was worth while to run serious risks to save Sicily from the grip of Napoleon, and to wrest from him the initiative which he had hitherto enjoyed unchallenged. Besides, the Czar insisted on that effort, and made it almost a sine qua non of his alliance. In a military sense the results were contemptible; in the diplomatic sphere they ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... giving pain to my father, and for my wearied and excited state of mind; and strangely enough—to show how differently, according to the difference of the organs, the same object may appear to two people—he quoted in my favour that very verse which you wrest against me. He wished me to show my father that I had only changed my heaven, and not my character, by becoming an Ultramontane- Catholic . . . that, as far as his esteem and affection were founded on anything in me, the ground of it did not vanish with my conversion. If I had told him ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... always sure he stood before his country, and, in a sort, a parent of it. The prisoner knew, that though his spirit was broken with guilt, and incapable of language to defend itself, all would be gathered from him which could conduce to his safety; and that his judge would wrest no law to destroy him, nor conceal any that could save him. In his time, there were a nest of pretenders to justice, who happened to be employed to put things in a method for being examined before him at his usual sessions: these animals were to Verus, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... powerful of Spain's rivals waged many a long war with one another to decide which should grasp the sceptre that had slipped from Spanish hands. The fleets of Holland fought with stubborn obstinacy to wrest from England her naval supremacy; but they failed, and in the end the greater portion of the Dutch domains fell to their foes. The French likewise began a course of conquest and colonization at the same time the English did, and after a couple ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... tribe as Runi, who would recognize me as the white man who was once his guest and afterwards his implacable enemy. I must wait, and in spite of a weakened body and a mind diseased, struggle still to wrest a ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the knees of the gods it surely lies, what man is to be king over the Achaeans in seagirt Ithaca. But mayest thou keep thine own possessions and be lord in thine own house! Never may that man come, who shall wrest from thee thy substance violently in thine own despite while Ithaca yet stands. But I would ask thee, friend, concerning the stranger—whence he is, and of what land he avows him to be? Where are his kin and his native fields? Doth he bear some tidings of thy father ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... remarkable in it; but Utica at once revived the scenes at school long past and half-forgotten, and carried me with full speed back again to Italy, and from thence to Africa. I crossed the Rubicon with Caesar; fought at Pharsalia; saw poor Pompey into Larissa, and tried to wrest the fatal sword from Cato's hand in Utica. When I perceived he was no more, I mourned over the noble-minded man who took that part which he thought would most benefit his country. There is something magnificent in the idea of a man taking by choice the conquered side. The ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... is typical of what went on at the Hudson's Bay forts for ten years. Each year, when the English ships came out to Nelson on the west coast, armed bands were sent south to wrest the forts on James Bay from the French; and each spring, when Iberville's bushrovers came gliding down the rivers in their canoes from Canada, there was a fight to drive out the English. Then the Indians would scatter to their hunting grounds. No more loot of furs for a year! The English would ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... strictly on the defensive, may fight ever so bravely, but he must give way when properly attacked. It is not so, however, with a general who indeed waits to receive his enemy, but with the determination to fall upon him offensively at the proper moment, to wrest from him and transfer to his own troops the moral effect always produced by an onward movement when coupled with the certainty of throwing the main strength into the action at the most important point,—a thing altogether impossible when keeping ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... was directed, about noon, upon the suburb of Czyste. This was defended by forty guns, which made havoc in the Russian ranks, while two battalions of the 4th regiment, rushing upon them in their disorder, strove to drive them back and wrest Wola from their hands. The effort was fruitless, strong reinforcements coming to the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... see that good lives never can secure Men from bad livers. Worst men will have best 40 As ill as they, or heaven to hell they'll wrest. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Union had met no violent resistance either from insurgents or from the States. In the Virginia convention of 1788 Patrick Henry had said: "I never will give up that darling word 'requisitions;' my country may give it up, the majority may wrest it from me, but I never will give it up till my grave." Nevertheless, when the requisitions on the States were given up, the chief cause of dispute in the Union was removed. Up to this time the only distinctly sectional legislation ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... needn't tell you, will not go to war to wrest your children from the royal family, but will afford you personally every ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... the wrists. "Don't madden me! You're not really on the Halls? You are living here as governess. It is some prank, some masquerade! Say it is!" He shook her. She tried to wrest her hands away. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... as ever against that even stream of low confidential talk. But I would not give up. Fate and the fog had brought me here, the one solitary soul perhaps who by the chain of circumstances had both the will and the opportunity to wrest their secret from these ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... not come. An hour they waited, and a hour after that. Still no crowd of burly men came surging toward them from the Blackburn camp, still no attempt was made to wrest from their possession the waterway which they had taken ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... squadron appeared before the fort at New York, which surrendered without firing a shot. The example was followed by the city and country; and, in a few days, the submission of New Netherlands was complete. After this acquisition the old claim to Long Island was renewed, and some attempts were made to wrest it from Connecticut. That province however, after consulting its confederates, and finding that offensive operations would be agreeable to the union, declared war against the Dutch; and not content with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... made for a parley, when some of the men from each side approached the line of demarcation. Joe McKay was the interpreter, and while he was speaking, an Indian, named Little Chief, grabbed at his revolver and tried to wrest it from him. A struggle ensued in which the Indian was worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ringing through the hollow and over ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... for he has only one gardener, whom he lends to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the bells for mass, which he said, half an hour later, especially ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... with swords drawn, wrest his glass out of his hand, and break it against the ground: his rout make sign of resistance, but are all driven in. The ATTENDANT ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... pleasing Mr. Getz, was only an added offense to both him and Absalom. They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz writhed in their ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... inter-relation between spirit and matter, between soul and soul? To me it seems hopelessly inscrutable, and all effort to elucidate it, like the language of the Son of Maia, 'by night bringeth darkness before the eyes, and in the daytime nought clearer.' I shall as soon expect to wrest her buried secrets from the Sphinx, or to revive the lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Dhritarashtra shall certainly perish. If they act otherwise instead of fighting, then they may live; but in the event of a battle ensuing, none of them will be left alive. Slaying all the sons of Dhritarashtra along with Karna, I shall surely wrest the hole of their kingdom. Do ye, meanwhile, whatever ye think best, and enjoy also your wives and other sweet things of life. There are, with us, many aged Brahmanas, versed in various sciences, of amiable behaviour, well-born, acquainted with the cycle of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fervently to heaven to divert them," said the pious Princess. "Thou knowest it has been the occupation of my life to wrest a blessing for my Lord and my harmless children.—One alas! is taken from me! would heaven but hear me for my poor Matilda! Father! ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... pet project—all those who occupied them were not thankful. Some also stole their neighbors' chickens, and the said neighbors abused us. Others seemed more inclined to live on one another than to wrest a living from the soil, while once Macdonald of the Northwest Police lodged a solemn protest, "We'll hold ye baith responsible for the depredations o' the wastrels who're disturbing the harmony ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... mighty coat to a tobacco-stopper chipped out of a morsel of deal, were piled together, pell-mell, or hung against the whitewashed walls, or suspended by cords from bed to bed. Everything that ingenuity and hardihood, prompted by the sharp spur of hunger, could wrest from the foe, from the country, from earth or water, from wild beasts or rock, were here in the midst of the soldiers' regimental pallets and regimental arms, making the barracks at once atelier, storehouse, workshop, and bazaar; while the men, cross-legged on their little hard couches, worked away ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... almost started from their sockets. His voice was lost within the vizor, and his friend affected not to understand his meaning when he made signs with his gauntlets, and endeavoured to close with him, that he might wrest the cudgel from his hand. At length he desisted, saying, "I'll warrant the helmet sound by its ringing"; and taking it off, found the squire in a cold sweat. He would have achieved his first exploit on the spot, had his strength permitted ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... camp. Meanwhile Clive sent Eyre Coote forward with a small detachment to keep the enemy on the run. Among those who accompanied him was Desmond, with Bulger and Mr. Toley. Desmond hoped that he might overtake and capture Monsieur Sinfray, from whom he thought it likely he might wrest information about Mrs. Merriman and her daughter. Diggle had made use of Sinfray's house; it was not improbable that the Frenchmen knew something about the ladies. As for the seamen, they were so much disgusted at the tameness of the enemy's resistance that they were eager for anything ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... that even I have power to grant thy suit. I have saved, with some hazard, the life of the Queen and her daughter; in doing it I promised to the soldiers, in their place, the best blood of Palmyra, and theirs it is by right. It will not be easy to wrest Gracchus from their hands. It will bring danger to myself, to the Queen, and to the empire. It may breed a fatal revolt. But, Piso, for the noble Portia's sake, the living representative of Cneius Piso my early friend, for thine, and chiefly for the reason that thou art affianced to the warlike ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... one of them, "my gods, my Sun-god, thus says Nin, thy handmaid, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, seven times seven I prostrate myself. Let the king my lord wrest his country from the hand of the Bedwin, in order that they may not rob it. The city of Zaphon has been captured. This is for the information of the king ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... interest in slavery, public opinion was divided, and it was uncertain to which side it would incline. The Confederates understood the value of the prize, and they had taken measures, which promised to be successful, to wrest it from the Union. The task had been committed to Gen. Humphrey Marshall, who had invaded Eastern Kentucky from the Virginia border, and had already advanced as ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... thick fog fell low upon the ground. The night was drawing on dark and dreary, and everything seemed full of gloom. Chester walked on; he took no heed of the way, but turned corner after corner with reckless haste, one hand working in his bosom as if he could thus wrest away the pain that seemed strangling him, and the other grasping his walking-stick upon which he paused and leaned heavily ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... instrument, with a view to its protection against all assailants; but one day an equally powerful fellow, a St. Helen's collier, cock of the walk in his neighbourhood, made up to the theodolite bearer to wrest it from him by sheer force. A battle took place, the collier was soundly pummelled, but the natives poured in volleys of stones upon the surveyors and their instruments, and the theodolite was smashed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... these reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... place, I readily admit; but the hardship consists in this—that they are driven from particular positions to which their early associations lend a preference. What was it that stirred into a flame, the fierce hostility of Tecumseh but the determination evinced by your Government to wrest, from the hands of his tribe, their last remaining ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Again the ball was passed to Rollins, and, standing on the twenty-five yards and well to the left of the nearer post, he dropped it over for as pretty a field-goal as had ever been seen by the spectators. In such manner did Brimfield wrest victory from defeat, and the maroon-and-grey banners waved exultantly. But the victory had cost dearly, as was discovered when the casualties were counted. Saunders was badly hurt, so badly that he was definitely out of the game for a fortnight at ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... constituted the Executive Committee were not those who would lightly do this. He could quite understand their resentment of both his attitude and his words at the last meeting—he had expected them to make an effort to wrest from him, but in such a way as not to jeopardize their own interests, the supreme authority which he had forced from them; yet they all knew him too well even to suggest any transaction on his part so at variance with the standards ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... him good-natured and rather simple, yet with a fund of homely wit and philosophy that stood him in good stead. He described Beatonville to them, and the farm where he and his aged parents tried to wrest a living from nature—that ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... trifle cynical, and a trifle sleepy he looks. He also looks, for a man who has just been indulging in a fit of severe self-depreciation, exceedingly confident and full of faith in himself. And why not? Let that man despair who has lost confidence in his own ability to wrest favors from the fingers of Fate or Fortune. Despair is ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the gallant seaman Think that in the days to be, England's hand should proudly wrest it ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... take oath that they shall cause their gift to prove its value! It shall be meat and drink to me, and honor and life itself. Many happenings shall spring from this gift, for I will put my whole strength into the holding of it; Odin himself shall not wrest it from me! I will be such a king that there will not be many to equal me; such a king that they will wish they had given me happiness and left me ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom that has been given unto him has written, as he also in all his letters speaks thereof, in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they also do other Scriptures, to their own destruction. There St. Peter bears testimony for the Apostle Paul in respect to his doctrine, which shows plainly enough that this Epistle was written long after St. Paul's Epistles. And ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... with him? But small and secondary streams beside the mighty Rhine. There are certain rivers which represent nations, and ideas, and periods of history—the Scamander for instance, bringing to our thoughts the days of Grecian heroism; when men fought with gods, and in so doing seemed to wrest from them a portion of their supernatural strength and beauty—the Nile, the priestly Nile, mysterious as a dogma, but rich in blessings as the agency of a divine spirit; concealed in its source, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... of an element, especially nitrogen, is hardly less injurious and will actually lessen the yield of fruit though it may increase the size of the vine. Not only must the food be in right proportions but in such condition as to be readily available. Tomato roots have little power to wrest plant food from the soil. The use of coarse, unfermented manure is even more unsatisfactory with this than with other crops. The enormous yields sometimes obtained by English gardeners from plants grown under ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... Metellus Pius, a man of repute and a good soldier, though perhaps he might now seem too slow, by reason of his age, to second and improve the happier moments of war, and might be sometimes wanting to those advantages which Sertorius by his quickness and dexterity would wrest out of his hands. For Sertorius was always hovering about, and coming upon him unawares, like a captain of thieves rather than soldiers, disturbing him perpetually with ambuscades and light skirmishes; whereas Metellus was accustomed to regular conduct, and fighting in battle array with full-armed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... victory which, in their perfection, belong only to the state of the blessed in Heaven. They feel that all things are possible to them through Him that strengtheneth them,(69) and that no temporal affliction, no power of man or any creature shall wrest from them the feast which they enjoy. And hence they are able to ask, in the confident words of the Apostle, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness; or danger, or persecution, or the sword ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... the best thing about Maiden Newton. The village had seen, prior to the late war, a good deal of rebuilding; relative unattractiveness is the consequence. This seems to be the almost inevitable result of the establishment of a railway junction. The church stands on the site of a Wrest Saxon building, and is partly Norman with much Perpendicular work. Cattistock, a long mile north, is unspoilt and pretty both in itself and its situation. It has a fine church, much rebuilt and gaudily decorated, with a tower containing ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... difficult matter for Monte to wrest the revolver from Hamilton's weak fingers, even with one arm hanging limp; but it was quite a different proposition to quiet Madame Courcy and Marie, who were screaming hysterically in the hall. Marjory, to be sure, was splendid; but even she could do little ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... lest the attempts to settle these disputed claims should weary, antagonize, or anger the King.[88] Many of the old charges were renewed, and Connecticut was no longer regarded as a "dutiful" colony, but rather as one altogether too independent, from whom it might be wise to wrest her charter, subjecting her to a royal governor. As early as 1715, her colonial agent had been advised to procure a peaceable surrender of the charter. To this proposal, Governor Saltonstall had returned a courteous and dignified refusal. But the danger was ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... been the means of the damnation of millions of souls? Not because it is in itself a bad book, but because it is a theological work, prepared only for the priests and ministers of our holy religion. Therefore, it is always a very dangerous book in the hands of women or laymen, who wrest the Scriptures to ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... each other in increased wonderment. What manner of chap was this same Obed, to be able to wrest a living from a bounteous Nature in the clever way he did? Steve in particular was loud in ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... ruin to ruin, as far as the new town, and the combat seemed likely to be continued from street to street, and to become sanguinary, when a Turkish captain served as a mediator for negotiating an arrangement. Bonaparte declared that he had not come to ravage the country, or to wrest it from its ruler, but merely to deliver it from the domination of the Mamluks, and to revenge the outrages which they had committed against France. He promised that the authorities of the country should be upheld; that the ceremonies of religion should continue to be performed as ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... inability to persuade his widowed mother to resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhansi, before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy more freely the society of her ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... learned lord, we pray you to proceed, And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall drop ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... chronicle every heedless word—to draw dark deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend—to lie in wait—to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of familiar intercourse—to extort anger from gentleness itself, that you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given his noble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... around him and some ahead of him, with drivers just as keen and eager to win as he, and every one of them accustomed to dog-driving for years. Victors are some of them in previous contests, and not one of them is disposed to see a white lad from across the sea come and wrest their honour from them. Whips are flying now in earnest, and the dogs of other trains are waking up to realise that there is fire in their masters' eyes and strength in their arms and a burning sting at the end of the heavy lash. With terrific rushes they ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels of ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... in Bedfordshire, where Dorothy met her importunate lover, was the seat of Anthony Grey, Earl of Kent. There is said to be a picture there of Sir William Temple,—a copy of Lely's picture. Wrest Park is only ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... how sweet the eye's wild gaze divine Sweet to quaff the incense at that shrine! Prouder, bolder, swells the breast. That which once set every sense on fire, That which once could every nerve inspire, Scarce a half-smile now hath power to wrest! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... curiosity and raise the most lively conjectures, which might, in time, reach Wenceslas. On the other hand, if success attended his efforts, it was more than probable that Cartagena would remain quiet, as long as her itching palm was brightened with the yellow metal which he hoped to wrest from the sands of Guamoco. "It is only a chance, Padre," Rosendo said dubiously. "In the days of the Spaniards the river sands of Guamoco produced from two to ten reales a day to each slave. But the rivers have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... project of Union was 'mainly set on foot by his Majestie and so much coveted after by him that he may rid himselfe of the House of Commons, who have been very heavy on his loines, and the loins of his predecessors.... I confesse the king has reason to wrest this excessive power out of the Commons their hand, it being an unspeakable impairment of the soveraintie, but I fear ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... scrupulous hands; the wealth of Milan and Naples was squandered on them in retaining-fees and salaries for active service. There was always the further possibility of placing a coronet upon their brows before they died, if haply they should wrest a town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a province from a needy Pope. The neighbours of the Montefeltri in Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of them Condottieri. Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... on the old carriage," cried Charlie, nerved by despair; "I won't stay here nohow. I'm going home to my mother;" and as he spoke he endeavoured to wrest himself from Robberts' grasp. "Put him in here," said Mrs. Thomas; "it would never do to let him go, for he will run home with some distressing tale of ill-treatment; no, we must keep him until I can send for his mother—put him ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... have brought worse tempers than hers into subjection; still I never dreamed the little minx would dare openly defy me in that manner. I shall keep her in the belfry-room, under lock and key, until she asks my pardon on her bended knees; and what is more, I shall wrest the secret from her—the secret she has defied me ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... Whoever eats the bread that another has reaped and kneaded, is under an obligation to his brother, and cannot say he owes him nothing in return. The poorest of us has received from society much more than his own single strength would have permitted him to wrest from nature. ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... with a light heart. The fact of escaping from the debasing drudgery of "Dawes'," of being the possessor of a cheque for L2. 12S., the prospect of securing work, if only of a temporary nature, made her forget her loneliness and her previous struggles to wrest a pittance from a world indifferent to her needs. After all, there was One who cared: the contents of the two letters which she had just received proved that; the cheque and promise of employment were in the nature of compensation for the hurt to her pride which she had suffered yesterday at Orgles's ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... than casting me into shame and torment and death. And I deem thou canst not do it. Nay, she said, staying the words that were coming from his mouth, I wot that thou canst do it if thine heart can suffer it; for thou art stronger than I, and thou mayst break my bow, and wrest this knife out of mine hand; and thou canst bind me and make me fast to the saddle, and so lead my helpless body into thraldom and death. But thou hast said that thou lovest me, and I believe thee herein. Therefore I know that thou canst not ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... of a war which it knew to be crushing and merciless, a war which each of those who called for it knew to be a war which he himself must wage, with his own hands, with his own body, a war which would wrest him from the pleasant ways of peace, from his labours and his comforts, which would weigh terribly upon all those whom he loved, which would expose him for weeks, perhaps for months, to incredible sufferings and which meant almost certain death to a third or ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... our conversation, loveliest of women. Things spoken in jest often come true in the end." She looked up and smiled as if enchanted at the idea. Then she rose, and when he grasped one of her hands she made no effort to wrest it away. He imprinted a long-drawn kiss on it. She shivered and then rapidly glided into the adjoining room, where the jumble of sounds produced by tuning a variety of musical instruments was now heard. The strident notes of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... of the line with which he had sailed from Toulon in 1778, resolved to go first upon the American coast, off South Carolina or Georgia. Arriving with his whole fleet at the mouth of the Savannah, August 31st, he decided to attempt to wrest the city of Savannah from the British. This would have been of real service to the latter, had it nipped in the bud their ex-centric undertaking; but, after three weeks of opening trenches, an assault upon the place failed. D'Estaing then sailed for Europe with the ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... my brother by surmise; I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, Incapable of base compliances, No prodigal in his nature, but affecting This shew of bravery for ambitious ends. He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, And drink may one day wrest the secret from him, And pluck you from your hiding place in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... advanced upon me. I had just light to see the thrust and parry it. Another second, and we had closed in the midst of that strange atmosphere, striking and sneezing at each other across the pike shaft, as we each strove to wrest it to himself. My antagonist was a lusty fellow, and tugged me stoutly, while I kept him between me and the main fight, now raging through the water and the fire: this I could just distinguish among the vapour and smoke, dashed about in red showers of embers, as each new tramp and ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... tractableness of the fleet Horse; and Man should still have had the ingenuity that is peculiarly his own. Jupiter in heaven laughs to himself, no doubt, he who, in his mighty plan, denied these {qualities} to men, lest our audacity should wrest {from him} the sceptre of the world. Contented, therefore, with the gifts of unconquered Jove, let us pass the years of our time allotted by fate, nor attempt ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... the case stands thus, the whole proceeding May easily be ended with a laugh; All turns upon a single paragraph, Which bids the wife attend the spouse. No pleading Can wrest an ordinance so ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... land. When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... prolonged absence, you step up in the morning to the bulwarks of the vessel and see on the distant horizon the lofty blue mountains of your country; you will feel it then in the impetuous flood of tenderness which will fill your eyes with tears and will wrest a cry from your heart. You will feel it in some great and distant city, in that impulse of the soul which will impel you from the strange throng towards a workingman from whom you have heard in passing a word in your ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... who dashed into the water grandly to fetch the stick thrown in by his master. The other was a bulldog, who went in about a yard or so at the same time, and then as the swimmer brought the stick to shore the intruder fastened on it, and always managed somehow to wrest the prize from the real winner, and then carried it to his master with the cool impudence which may be seen not seldom when the honour and reward gained by one person are claimed and even secured by ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... tell, with much shuddering, how a Jesuit priest had been mixed up with this wretched business, and there had been a scheme at once religious and political to wrest the estate and the lovely lady from the fortunate heir; and how this grim Italian priest had instigated them to use a certain kind of torture with the poor heir, and how he had suffered from this; but one night, when ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... desires their concurrence, are couched in such extremely courteous terms, that sometimes civility almost borders on servility. Notwithstanding this, however, it is quite plain that it was always thoroughly understood who was master in Italy, and that any attempt on the part of the Senate to wrest any portion of real power from Theodoric would have been instantly and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you—as also in all his epistles—speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto own destruction."[213] For the texts that tell of the identity of the Christ with His brother-men have been wrested into a legal substitution of Himself for them, and have thus been used as an escape from the results of sin, instead ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... entrust them with the transport of a ton of treasure from the sea of Biscay to Madrid, knowing well that it would not be their fault were it not delivered safe and undiminished even of a grain, and that bold must be the thieves who would seek to wrest it from the far-feared Maragatos, who would cling to it whilst they could stand, and would cover it with their bodies when they fell in the act of loading or discharging their ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... of this confidence between us," I said, "whether it ends happily or sorrowfully for ME, Laura's interests will still be the interests of my life. When we leave this place, on whatever terms we leave it, my determination to wrest from Count Fosco the confession which I failed to obtain from his accomplice, goes back with me to London, as certainly as I go back myself. Neither you nor I can tell how that man may turn on me, if I bring him to bay; we only know, by his own words and actions, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... death painfully and vividly, painted truthfully the mad terror that had seized upon her and struck her down at that frightful time, raised her hands to her brow with the gesture of despair, as though she would wrest the madness from her brain—and a shudder of pity and awe passed through the assembled crowd. It is a fact that at this moment, if her words were false, her anguish was both sincere and terrible. An angel soiled ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not by the Portuguese, but by the Spaniards themselves, and not by camp-followers but by his chief men, that his grace is not here through necessity, but with a very definite aim, awaiting more men and a fleet, in order forcibly to wrest Maluco, China, and Japan, from the king our sovereign. This is clearly shown by the words of the foremost men of his company, and by the many questions they put to us concerning our knowledge of these regions; as well as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... peace thou seemest now, Yielding thy ridges to the rustic plough, With corn-fields at thy feet, and many a grove Whose songs are but of love; But different was the aspect of that hour, Which brought, of eld, the Norsemen o'er the deep, To wrest yon castle's walls from Scotland's power, And leave her brave to bleed, her fair to weep; When Husbac fierce, and Olave, Mona's king,[5] Confederate chiefs, with shout and triumphing, Bade o'er its towers the Scaldic raven fly, And mock each storm-tost sea-king toiling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... violent man, succeeded in compelling his brother to give him a share of the government, and in the midst of incessant quarrels, which often led to bloody conflicts, each of the two brothers strove to wrest as much as possible from Austria before young Albert should be of age. The nobles availed themselves of this anarchy to renew their expeditions of plunder. Unhappy Austria for several years was a scene of devastation and misery. In the year ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... "theft," of "robbing," and of "manstealing," we could have borne with him well; and, as we have hitherto done, continued to pass by his labors with silent contempt. But we have deemed it important to show in what manner, and to what extent, the spirit of abolitionism can wrest the pure word of God to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... not attempt either to punish the kidnapers or wrest the slaves from the hands of their present owners. Our plan will be simply this: Take the consul with us to identify us, go to these owners, explain the facts, and offer to repurchase the negroes at once. They will, no doubt, gladly ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... destruction had been hit upon, which had so well succeeded, now stood over the body of the Georgian, with uplifted hand, about to complete the deed already begun. There was not a moment for delay, and the youth sprung forward in time to seize and wrest the weapon from his grasp. With a feeling of undisguised indignation, he exclaimed, as the outlaw ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... You were magnificent. You were my knight of the windmills, tilting against all power and privilege, striving to wrest the future from the future and realize it here in the present, now. I was sure you would be destroyed. Yet you are still here and fighting valiantly. And that ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... from the spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose, there is a fascination about the book which ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... most part he was successful; but at last he received so numbing a blow across the arm that he quivered with pain and anger as he sprang forward, and, in place of retreating, seized the stick, and tried to wrest it away. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... and suffering require it. What would we not do to pull a neighbor out of the water, or out of the fire, or to deliver him from Algerine captivity, or wrest him from the hand of a pirate or midnight assassin? But what captivity, what pirate, what murderer so ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... of rice were more powerful than those of cotton, though cotton was king. The rich lands here produced as high as fifty-five bushels of rice to the acre, under forced slave labor; now the free blacks cannot wrest from nature more than twenty-five or ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... saintes lore,* *doctrine, teaching He got him of the tormentores* leave, *torturers And led them to his house withoute more; And with their preaching, ere that it were eve, They gonnen* from the tormentors to reave,** *began **wrest, root out And from Maxim', and from his folk each one, The false faith, to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... reproved for the tone of her plays, which was much inferior to that of her novels: "I make challenge to any person of common sense and reason, that is not wilfully bent on ill nature, and will, in spite of sense, wrest a double entendre from everything * * * but any unprejudiced person that knows not the author—to read one of my comedies and compare it with others of this age, and if they can find one word which can offend the chastest ear, I ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... with one of his "silencer" twists of the neck cords, the Jap sprang up. A demoniac anger twisted that usually smiling countenance, and it took all of Shirley's strength, to wrest away the automatic revolver from the maddened valet, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... remembered, at sight of it, that on the night when the iceberg was overturned and the Halbrane was carried away, I had dreamed of a fabulous animal of this kind, seated at the pole of the world, and from whom Edgar Poe could only wrest its secrets. ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... so long passive, that I doubt if it has the power to disperse them. Indeed, to obtain their political support, they have received so many advantages, and, I may say, such assistance, that they are now so strong, that any attempt to wrest from them the privileges which have been conceded would be the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... footing; but meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years' time he had tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him. The unfortunate Robert came to him at Northampton, almost alone, forced himself into his presence, and told him he would submit everything to him, if he would only leave him the state and honor due to his birth. Henry turned his back on him, muttering ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... masquerader unduly excited by liquor: there was not a word or motion from the lighter sex that could have been construed into an impropriety. There was something almost pathetic to me in this attempt to wrest gayety and excitement out of these dull materials; to fight against the blackness of that wintry sky, and the stubborn hardness of the frozen soil, with these painted sticks of wood; to mock the dreariness of their poverty with these flaunting raiments. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... are you doing to my sister?" he cried, at the same time trying to wrest the stick from the ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... Tarzan's questions, managed to wrest his attention long enough from the diversion of flea hunting to advance the theory that the power which made the lightning and the rain and the thunder came from Goro, the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dum always was danced in the light of Goro. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... proceeded. "Thou hast slain thine enemy—it was a cruel deed: thou hast cut him off perchance in his sins—it is a fearful aggravation. Do yet by my counsel, and in lieu of him whom thou hast perchance consigned to the kingdom of Satan, let thine efforts wrest another subject from the reign of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... face was horrible in its savagery. He opened his mouth, still keeping his grasp on the knife, which she tried to wrest from him. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his hatchet head jerked till he got the bit straight between his teeth; then, gripping it as a fretful dog clamps the bone which his master pretends to wrest from him, he leaned down to his work, and the mud, the new-fallen snow and the slush flew like dirty sparks, and covered man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us any dispensation to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... they agreed to try their powers upon a traveller, to see which could soonest strip him of his cloak. The North Wind had the first try; and, gathering up all his force for the attack, he came whirling furiously down upon the man, and caught up his cloak as though he would wrest it from him by one single effort: but the harder he blew, the more closely the man wrapped it round himself. Then came the turn of the Sun. At first he beamed gently upon the traveller, who soon unclasped his cloak ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... letters with the signet of your office as patriarch of Jerusalem. As a penance for my sins, I will travel over Europe, I will describe everywhere the desolate condition of the Holy City, and exhort princes and people to wrest it from the profane ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... in the Holy Land, had lost their power; but a new family of the Turkish race, the one that dwells in Europe to-day, the Osmanlis, had built up an empire by conquest over their fellows, and had begun to wrest province after province from the feeble Empire of the East. In 1354 their advance brought them across the Bosporus and they seized their first European territory.[23] Soon they had spread over most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... look over an evening paper. As he was reading, an affray arose between two gentlemen in the room, who were both partially intoxicated. St. Clare and one or two others made an effort to separate them, and St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side with a bowie-knife, which he was attempting to wrest from ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thee the Latin!" exclaimed he. "I forbid thee to read or learn the same, for I well know thou wouldst wrest ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... his fellowman hath fed, Then 'spite the law forbidding interest, He thinketh naught but cursed gain to wrest. Who taketh usury methinks hath said: 'O Lord, in beauty has Thy earth been wrought! But why should men for naught enjoy its plains? Ask usance, since 'tis Thou that sendest rains. Have they the trees, their fruits, and ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of mankind obey Their honour'd parent, all pretences lay 20 Down at your royal feet, compose their jars, And on the growing Turk discharge these wars; The Christian knights that sacred tomb should wrest From Pagan hands, and triumph o'er the East; Our England's Prince, and Gallia's Dolphin, might Like young Rinaldo and Tancredi fight; In single combat by their swords again The proud Argantes and fierce Soldan slain; Again might we their valiant ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... will, And then you sware you well know how, Though now you swerve, I know how ill. But thus this world his course doth pass, The priest forgets a clerk he was, And you that have cried justice still, And now have justice at your will, Wrest justice wrong against ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... hindered?" / outspake Siegfried then; "Whate'er in friendly fashion / I cannot obtain I'll yet in other manner / take that, with sword in hand. I trow from them I'll further / wrest both ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... probable reasons." Buchanan may have thought that nine years of his stern rule had eradicated some of James's ill conditions; the petulance which made him kill the Master of Mar's sparrow, in trying to wrest it out of his hand; the carelessness with which—if the story told by Chytraeus, on the authority of Buchanan's nephew, be true—James signed away his crown to Buchanan for fifteen days, and only discovered his mistake by seeing Bachanan act ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their system was worthless and throw it away. They would be content with whatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... of the history of that giant, except that he carried off the wife of another giant who lived on the Great Island opposite, and held her here in his fastness amid the pine trees against all efforts to wrest her from him. A huge rock that he hurled back in one of these fights is still to be seen on the ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... But whatever might have been the hour of his departure, it was certain that from half past ten A. M. until nine P. M., when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles Summerton was missing. Being naturally of a reticent disposition, he has since resisted, with but one exception, any attempt to wrest from him a statement of his whereabouts during that period. That exception has been myself. He has related to me the following in the ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... in sharp fulgurations; the farm (cleared of debt through Bassett's generosity, to be sure!) where his father and brothers struggled to wrest a livelihood from reluctant soil, and their pride and hope in him; he saw his teachers at college, men who had pointed the way to useful and honorable lives; and more than all, Sumner rose before him—Sumner who ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... once been planted on the Nile. Excitement ran high. The French people had no love for England, and they encouraged Marchand to remain where he was. The English newspapers demanded that he be withdrawn. Germany, which had already begun its campaign to wrest from England the leading place on the ocean, was delighted at the prospect of a war between France and the British. The German diplomats patted France on the back, and practically assured her of German help in case it came to a ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... awakening. Away from the delirium of the camp, in contact with cold reality, he began to learn something of the serious, practical business of gold-mining. Before he had been long on the creeks he found that it was no child's play to wrest treasure from the frozen bosom of a hostile wilderness, and that, no matter how rich or how plentiful the treasure, Mother Earth guarded her secrets jealously. He began to realize that the obstacles he had so blithely overcome in getting to the Klondike ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er, On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart: If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you Wrest once the law to your authority: To do a great right, do a little wrong; And curb this cruel ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... boast our proof that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, God our aid! A trophy to bear, as we march, Thy band, South, East, and on to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... preliminary and inferior enquiries it is less necessary that the mind should be perpetually awake and on the alert, than in the direct office of composition. The situation is considerably similar of the experimental philosopher, the man who by obstinate and unconquerable application resolves to wrest from nature her secrets, and apply them to the improvement of social life, or to the giving to the human mind a wider range or a more elevated sphere. A great portion of this employment consists more in the motion of the hands and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... an instrument in the hands of God to carry out His will? He never ceased to marvel at the amazing fact that he, poor, scoffed at or pitied, surrounded by difficulties of every sort, should have been chosen to wrest the palm from the hands of trained scientists of two continents. To us the wonder is not so great, for we, if we have read his character aright as revealed by his correspondence, can see that in him, more than ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... myself to repeat Tertullian's famous "Credo quia impossible," till, from a wooden recital, it became a triumphant affirmation. I reminded myself that St. Peter had said of the Pauline Epistles that in them were "some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest ... unto their own destruction." I shudderingly recognised that I must be very unlearned and unstable to find discord among the Holy Evangelists, and imposed on myself an extra fast as penance for my ignorance and lack of firmness in the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the effects have been directly opposite to what short-sighted mortals had anticipated. It was in 1756, scarcely forty years ago, that the French, being in possession of the provinces, attempted to wrest from us those portions of America which we occupied. What was the result? After a war which, for cruelty and atrocity, is perhaps unequaled in history, both parties employing savages, by whom the French and English were alternately tortured and burned to death, France, in ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... civilization, which resembles the time of the Roman emperors? These tones utter anew a world-saving prophesy, and shall we not then appropriate them fully and forever? The "thought of Baireuth" now obtained more definite form. A number of friends of the cause were to make it real and wrest German art from the Venusberg of ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl |
