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Possess   /pəzˈɛs/   Listen
Possess

verb
(past & past part. possessed; pres. part. possessing)
1.
Have as an attribute, knowledge, or skill.
2.
Have ownership or possession of.  Synonyms: have, own.  "How many cars does she have?"
3.
Enter into and control, as of emotions or ideas.  "A terrible rage possessed her"



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"Possess" Quotes from Famous Books



... past ten by the Dutch clock in the kitchen, and rushed into Miss Squeers's bedroom with the gratifying intelligence. Now, Miss Squeers being five years older, and out of her teens (which is also a great matter), had, since, been more than commonly anxious to return the compliment, and possess her friend with a similar secret; but, either in consequence of finding it hard to please herself, or harder still to please anybody else, had never had an opportunity so to do, inasmuch as she had no such secret to disclose. The little interview with Nicholas had no sooner passed, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... me a remark often cited as made to Sir Theodore Martin by General Grant during the ex-President's visit to England, to the effect that Englishmen 'live under institutions which Americans would give their ears to possess.' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... then, to escape from one of your greatest possible duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have the remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have in addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary baptism; and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole renegade from the vow which you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... great nobles; while a promise was moreover made, and ratified, that he should have immediate information of every attempt to injure him in the estimation of the King; and, finally, he was offered a bodyguard, over which he was to possess ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Scotland, was used with barbarism unprecedented there after each plot or rising, to extract secrets which, save in one or two cases like that of Carstares, the victims did not possess. They were peasants, preachers, and a few country gentlemen: the nobles had no inclination to suffer for the cause of the Covenants. The Covenants continued to be the idols of the societies of Cameronians, and of many ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... as though some one else had hatched up the circumstances so that they would seem bound to smite you. Of course, to everyone but yourself, there is a possibility that you may be guilty. It may please you, however, to know, Corporal, that you still possess the confidence of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... part of the Report immediately connected with the art of restoring damaged or decayed paintings. This labour, and the success by which it was attended, are really a memorial of what the genius and industry of the French can achieve. To all those who, like you, possess valuable collections, such information cannot but ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... the man who can assign promptly everything which is not in harmony with himself to a devil, and so get rid of it. The pitiful case is that of the distracted mortal who knows not what is the degree of authority which his thoughts and impulses possess; who is constantly bewildered by contrary messages, and has no evidence as to their authenticity. Zachariah had his rule still; the suggestion in the street was tried by it; found to be false; was labelled accordingly, and he ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... hussies; but he did a great deal more than talk. He supplied from himself that deficiency of inventive power and enterprise which is woman's weak point; and he tilled those wide powers of masterly execution which they possess unknown to grandpapa Cant and grandmamma Precedent. As this clear head had foreseen, his women came out artisans. The eye that could thread a needle proved accurate enough for anything. Their supple, taper fingers soon learned to pick up type and place it quite as quick as even ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... merry will we be at the festal board!" The wind and sea continued propitious. Not a cloud dimmed the firmament. He had not trusted too much to the ocean, but he had to man. He overheard the seamen exchanging hints with one another, and found they were plotting to possess themselves of his treasure. Presently they surrounded him loud and mutinous, and said, "Arion, you must die! If you would have a grave on shore, yield yourself to die on this spot; but if otherwise, cast yourself into the sea." "Will nothing satisfy you but my life?" said he. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... keep this resolution or not, matters little now; we shall, at any rate, have no temptation in the future to break it, for I shall be in my grave before your receive this letter. I am dying, a fact which may possess some faint interest for you even now—or may not—that is not to the purpose either. It is not of myself that I would speak, but of my child. I am sending her to you, Therese, as to the only relative she has in the world; look on her, if ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... the generations that succeed us. All nations have, to a greater or less degree, been faithful to their trust in using the gift to fulfil the design of the Giver. It is impossible to name a people who do not possess cherished traditions that have descended ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... was old, there were many places of historic interest, and, although Kirk cared little for such things, he found it easy to assume the virtue he did not possess. Moreover, there was something contagious in his companion's enthusiasm. Almost against his will he felt his appreciation growing, as he listened to her casual comments on the scenes they visited. Her husband, who seemed busily ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... are a few religious volumes which deal with the primary and principal rites of the life common to all. We possess several parts of the words of Buddha consecrated to the Great and Indivisible Divine Being, and to all ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... you of the great tasks and duties of peace which challenge our best powers and invite us to build what will last, the tasks to which we can address ourselves now and at all times with free-hearted zest and with all the finest gifts of constructive wisdom we possess. To develop our life and our resources; to supply our own people, and the people of the world as their need arises, from the abundant plenty of our fields and our marts of trade to enrich the commerce of our own States ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... not his fault. It is he who has been right, and we who have been wrong. No man should spend money he does not possess. Debts that a man can never pay are robberies. I have condoned, I am worse than she—worse than all of you—I, the clergyman, who have been given the care of souls. Dick, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... These are red corpuscles of the size of the usual non-nucleated disc, whose protoplasm as a rule shews a pure haemoglobin colour, and which possess a nucleus. Occasionally there may be 2-4 nuclei. The sharply defined nucleus lies generally in the centre, comprises the greater part of the cell, and is above all distinguished by its intense colour with ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... F. Tracy became Secretary of the Navy, in 1889 he called attention to the fact that, while the United States had secured a number of excellent vessels of the cruiser type, it did not as yet possess an efficient navy. He pointed out that the country had two widely separated ocean frontiers to protect, and that there was only one way to protect them, namely, by two separate fleets of armored battle-ships. He said further that in addition to the battle-ships, the condition ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... at first received the white strangers with kindness and hospitality. There were exceptions even to this rule, but it was the exception. The white man's property soon excited the cupidity of the Indian, and knowing no law but the law of might, he sought to possess himself of the same. And right here I want to say, that from an experience covering more than half a century, the only thing an Indian respects on earth, is Power. Courage he respects for the simple ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... advisers, he revokes it or modifies it. But in what concerns the great affairs of state, peace or war, his Majesty, docile as he is in everything else, will have the rest obedient to his wishes. In that case there is nobody at court, whatever authority he may possess, who dare gainsay his Majesty. This prince has a very sound judgment and a great deal of information; there is no sort of thing, or study or art, about which he cannot converse very much to the point. It is true that, when people see how, in spite ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... after his own fashion, in his paltry, low-aimed existence! How could a God pour out his being to uphold the merest waste of his creatures? No world could ever be built or sustained on such an idea. It is the children who shall inherit the earth; such as will not be children, cannot possess. The hour is coming when all that art, all that science, all that nature, all that animal nature, in ennobling subjugation to the higher even as man is subject to the Father, can afford, shall be the possession, to the endless delight, of the sons and daughters ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... incurious villages. Near the dying of the day There will be a cudgel-play, Where a coxcomb will be broke, Ere a good word can be spoke: But the anger ends all here, Drench'd in ale, or drown'd in beer. —Happy rusticks! best content With the cheapest merriment; And possess no other fear, Than to ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... reprinted from the original London editions, and are now the only edition published in this country. No library, either public or private, can be complete without having in it a complete sett of the works of this, the greatest of all living authors. Every family should possess a sett of one of the editions. The cheap edition is complete in Twelve Volumes, paper cover; either or all of which can be had separately. Price Fifty cents each. The following are ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... of Fairfax's Godfrey of Bulloigne, ed. 1600 (the first), which I possess, there occurs a very curious variorum reading of the first stanza of the first book. The stanza, as it is given by Mr. Knight in his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... these two words. Character means one's moral condition. Reputation means the morality that others believe one to possess. ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... desire of agents and their deputies to capture and possess beautiful girls, it is very important to any Indian agent that each victim, even though he be half or three-quarters, or even entirely, white, be kept on the Reservation; for every captive is so much money ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... well as a National Vain-Glory; and tho' we boast our selves to excel all the World in things wherein we are out-done abroad, in other things we attribute to others a Superiority which we our selves possess. This is what is done, particularly, in the Art of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Striving to possess their souls in patience they waited while the sun climbed higher into the heavens and still its light did not betray any signs of the coming of their missing friends. By turning and leaning a few feet ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay

... needful regulations, includes the power to determine what regulations are needful; and if a regulation prohibiting slavery within any territory of the United States be, as it has been, deemed needful, Congress possess the power to make the same, and, moreover, to pass all laws necessary to carry this ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... years I went at it head down, and this brings me up to four years ago, when I was a grown man, the owner of a house, two luggers, and as good a diving plant as any man could wish to possess. What was more, just before this I had put some money into a mining concern on the mainland, which had, contrary to most ventures of the sort, turned up trumps, giving me as my share the nice round sum of L5,000. ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... would be shot. Vincent had so often been in the battlefield, so often under a fire from which it seemed that no one could come alive, that the thought that death was at hand had not for him the terrors that possess those differently circumstanced. He was going to die for the Confederacy as tens of thousands of brave men had died before, and he rejoiced over the precaution he had taken as to the transmission of his discoveries on the previous day, and felt sure that ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... most sacred spot is the Shamanic stone at the mouth of the river Angar. Some thousands of them around Lake Baikal are Christians. A knowledge of reading and writing is common, especially among the Trans-Baikal Buriats, who possess books of their own, chiefly translated from the Tibetan. Their own language is Mongolian, and of three distinct dialects. It was in the 16th century that the Russians first came in touch with the Buriats, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... whom he is a great favorite. No sooner had the genteel waiter announced the readiness of the festive board, than each gallant sought him a fair partner, and filed off in procession, those not fortunate enough to possess such an accompaniment being compelled to bear up with one of their own harder sex. Smooth was among the most fortunate, having succeeded in fettering himself to a Kentucky belle. Down a long, circular stairway, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... as I will presently remind you, we possess a great many specimens,)—proves to be very extraordinary. It altogether establishes the fact that the Bible is not to be interpreted "like any other book." That it could not be so interpreted, might have been confidently ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... had recently taken under his paternal care. She was assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sort of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if he would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... beautiful hair was gone. She stood before him, shamed and sorrowful, and he grew into a mighty rage. "Who was it did this to you, Sif?" he said. "I am Thor, the strongest of all the Dwellers in Asgard, and I shall see to it that all the powers the Gods possess will be used to get your fairness back. Come with me, Sif." And taking his wife's hand in his, Thor went off to the Council House where the Gods and the ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... application of these theories, the student of Greek religion must never forget that, after all, it is with poetry, not with systematic theological belief or dogma, that he has to do. As regards this story of Demeter and Persephone, what we actually possess is some actual fragments of poetry, some actual fragments of sculpture; and with a curiosity, justified by the direct aesthetic beauty of these fragments, we feel our way backwards to that engaging picture of the poet-people, with which the ingenuity of modern ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... very small number who possess all the different elements of a consummate pianist—all the faculties which surround him with an irresistible prestige and give him a sovereign power. He is an accomplished musician—he knows just how far fancy may be indulged in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... possess such formidable means of action, yet in spite of the permanent guillotine, despite the delegates sent with the guillotine into the provinces, despite its Draconian laws, the Convention had to struggle ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... persuaded into anything, or he would try to discover some rich woman, with a plain face, who would be flattered by the attentions of the agreeable Mr. Stryker. While he was making these reflections he was introduced to Elinor, and we are sorry to say it, she appeared to him to possess the desirable qualifications. She was certainly very plain; and he found that there was no mistake in the report of her having received two important legacies quite lately. Miss Elinor Wyllys, thanks to these bequests, to her expectations from her grandfather and Miss Agnes, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... morbid and devastating rapidity, a whole scheme, by which the woman before her might possess herself of John, unfolded itself in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... said Dick, just as if I were grown up, you know. "Won't you sit down? Try that green velvet chair. I am sure it was created for a pink dress and unfortunately neither Mrs. Dodge nor I possess one. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the light of my own experience that we shall find some specialization among the lower animals with respect to preference for right and left hand or arm. I should not be at all surprised to discover that it is the rule for animals to possess or to develop readily definite preference for one hand in connection with a given act of skill and to have quite as definite a preference for the other hand in connection with a radically different kind ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... faculty within us capable of bearing witness to the divine origin of our souls, it is the power our minds possess of embracing, in the fraction of a second, great spaces of time and series of events. In the short interval between the bending of the whip above her and its descent upon the horses' backs, she had not only made her great discovery, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... trembling, hoping, fearing; but presently he looked up with a cold "Why do you stand there? I gave you permission to go; go at once." And with a sinking heart she turned away and sought the solitude of her own room, there to weep, and mourn, and pray that she might one day possess the love she so pined for, and bitterly to reproach herself for having by the failures of the past month ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... possess the secret but themselves, the Fair Strangers set the Gilla Dacker to watch the fruit (putting him first under gesa to eat none of the berries himself, since he was already too cheerful and too young to be of much service); ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Henry IV, gives a detailed copy of this speech, which however can possess no more claim to authenticity than the words that Shakespeare ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... extensions of meaning the word has come to be used almost as a synonym of regularity of variation. Whatever changes or alternates according to a recognizable system is said to be rhythmic, to possess rhythm. In this sense, rhythm is one of the universal principles of nature. We find it in the stripes of the zebra, the indentation of leaves, the series of teeth or of crystals, the curves of the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... procure pasture, as they subsist only on the produce of their flocks and herds. In their country there are excellent horses, called Turkish horses, and their mules are in great estimation. The Greeks and Armenians possess the cities and towns, and employ themselves in manufactures and merchandize, making, especially, the best carpets in the world. Their chief cities are Cogno or Iconium, Caesarea, and Sebaste, where St Basil suffered martyrdom. This country is under subjection ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... in the Pit at best was a precarious affair, as the three Hill-dwellers were quickly to learn. Before Joe could even possess himself of his kites, his astonished eyes were greeted with the spectacle of all his enemies, the fireman included, taking to their heels in wild flight. As the little girls and urchins had melted away before the Simpson gang, so ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... ministrations of prophets, apostles, high priests, seventies, elders, bishops, priests, teachers and deacons, now as anciently—not men selected by men without authority, clothed by human ceremonial alone, nor men with the empty names of office, but men who bear the title because they possess the authority, having ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... endeared itself to our imaginations, our minds, or our hearts, has here its home. The books that have most instructed or amused; the statuary that most raises and delights us; the pictures on which we most love to dwell; the antiquities that possess most curiosity or value, are here arranged, and in an order that would satisfy, I ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... be a matter of serious consideration to women to employ the influence which they possess, as the gift of nature, to wise, holy, and useful purposes. Let the young female especially see to it, that her attractions are not dedicated to the service of sin, but to that of virtue and of Christ. Let her neither be tempted, nor ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... seems to influence literary as well as scientific men throughout Europe, renders its accomplishment by the combined exertions of the scholars of different countries by no meals impracticable. It would be exceedingly convenient to possess an alphabetical list of all the extant Greek and Latin writers, with a catalogue raisonnee of the MSS. of each; and if such a work were attempted, there is little doubt, I imagine, that in point of number a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... black renown, Possess'd her very early for his own: An ugly, surly, sullen, selfish spirit, Who Satan's worst perfections does inherit; Second to him in malice and in force, All devil without, and all within ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... tedious convalescence. Miss Martin sent back one of Henry James's novels, and was surprised that Mrs. Bradlaugh made no second attempt to use the library. When the little girls in school asked for the Elsie books, she answered with a glow of pride that the library did not possess one of those silly stories, and offered as substitute, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... scourge that will strike our descendants once the seas are depopulated of whales and seals. By then, crowded with jellyfish, squid, and other devilfish, the oceans will have become huge centers of infection, because their waves will no longer possess "these huge stomachs that God has entrusted with scouring the surface of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... from being connected in some way or other with each of the great families of the town, and having money enough not to be dependent on any of them, was what is called a privileged character—a class of individuals hard to be endured, unless they possess the specific virtue of good-nature, to which Miss Debby had no claim. She talked without ceasing, and her motto was to speak "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." She was of a thin figure, always dressed in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... pointed out that modern Infantry, when mobilized, cannot be considered like the Cavalry as a standing force—that is to say, that the latter possess much greater ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... by all who have heard the most striking Scotch preachers, as to the proportion which their manner bears in the effect produced. Lockhart, late of The Quarterly, says of Chalmers, 'Never did the world possess any orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says; whose delivery, in other words, is the first, and the second, and the third excellence in his oratory, more truly than is that of Dr. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... spoken of the Christian calendar," remarked Ernest. "There have been several other systems in use. Those curious people that call themselves the children of the sun and moon, possess a mode of reckoning that carries them back to a period anterior to the creation of the world. Then, the Greeks computed by Olympiads, or periods of four years. The Romans reckoned by lustri of five years, the first of which corresponds ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... think that there are some old Japanese songs containing something similar. All that the statement really means is that the voice, the look, the touch, even the footstep of the woman beloved have come to possess for the lover a significance as great as life and death. For the moment he knows no other divinity; she is his god, in the sense that her power over him has become infinite ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for instance, to divine and determine what sort of history the problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... my chambers. As the shops had charms for Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for anybody else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at the windows, and waiting for her as often as she chose. We were thus a good while ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the various crises of her history. Thrift, industry, obedience to law, and intellectual cultivation are essential qualities in the makeup of any successful people; but no people can be really great unless they possess also the heroic virtues which are as needful in time of peace as in time of war, and as important in civil as in military life. As a civilized people we desire peace, but the only peace worth having is obtained by instant readiness to fight when wronged—not by unwillingness or inability ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... loneliness in the States. He had proved with his own eyes that the day was near when Alaska would come into her own. Gold! He laughed. Gold had its lure, its romance, its thrill, but what was all the gold the mountains might possess compared with this greater thing he was helping to build! It seemed to him the people he had met in the south had thought only of gold when they learned he was from Alaska. Always gold—that first, and then ice, snow, endless nights, desolate barrens, and craggy mountains frowning everlastingly upon ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... stranger, I will inform you. This sight which you see is just your present case. You have nothing to resolve with yourself but whether you will prepare by swimming across this river immediately, forever to possess that beautiful country that lies before you; or by attempting the passage over the narrow board which crosses the first arm of the river and leads into the island, where you will be again amidst briars and thorns, and must at last pass that deep water, before you can enter ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... "Equal rights with the other (Russian) subjects or with the Karaite Jews [1] to the educated and well-deserving Jews who possess the title of Honorary Citizens, to the merchants affiliated for a number of years with the first or second guild and distinguished by their business integrity, to the soldiers who have ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... is of the same hopeless order, and has the same injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to his female companion with an air of constitutional humility and propitiation—to ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... will cease. Is there any ground in speculation? The assertion goes that imagination will be shrivelled by the chill of scientific practicality, that minds trained and informed by physical and mental science will possess too overpowering a sense of logic, too habitual a consciousness of the matter-of-fact, to indulge in the visions and imaginings which are supposed to be the life of poetry. It is urged that, when every inch of the world has rendered its hard statistics to the blue-books, and when the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... habitual way of estimating his own achievements is strikingly illustrated by his mode of thinking and speaking of certain defects in the equipment with which nature had supplied him for the career on which he was embarked. Gifted as he was, even he did not possess all gifts. He lacked one or two of those which might have been thought most ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... Mr. Wadsworth began his hunting by picking up some of the various trencher-fed hounds of the neighborhood, the hunting of that period being managed on the principle of each farmer bringing to the meet the hound or hounds he happened to possess, and appearing on foot or horseback as his fancy dictated. Having gotten together some of these native hounds and started fox-hunting in localities where the ground was so open as to necessitate following the chase on horseback, Mr. Wadsworth imported ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... made the tour through which he carries his young hero, and who, from long experience, knows how to please and instruct his young readers, these volumes possess just the qualities to attract those for whom they ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott

... essentially private to himself. "It is so, Mr. Gray, that in this case it cannot be avoided. I wish you to understand, that all pecuniary arrangements are to be made for Mrs. Western which she herself may desire. Were she to ask for everything I possess she must have it,—down to the barest pittance." But at this moment he had not received his ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... between England and Scotland in no better state than he found them. His aggressive imperialism paid little heed to the susceptibilities of a stubborn, if weaker, foe; and he did not, like Cromwell, possess the military force to crush out resistance. He would not conciliate ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... familiar, and in their ephemerides their places are shown with as much accurateness as those of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacks; the parallax of the fixed stars nearest them is as well understood as that of their own sun, and they possess a magnificent history of the changes taking place in the heavens and which are governed by laws that it would be vain for me to attempt to give you an idea of. They are acquainted with the revolutions and uses of comets; they understand the system of those meteoric formations of stones ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... ready to enter the world, or as we say, when it has become mature. But how does the fetus assert its maturity? There is the kernel of the matter; that is the real problem, a problem for the solution of which, happily, we possess better facilities than have heretofore existed. One solution that has been suggested assumes that the fetus loses ultimately its power to assimilate the nourishment provided through the mother's blood. In consequence, it is argued, the material which previously ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... before God and Jesus Christ our Lord, that he be constant in preaching the Word, whether in or out of season, reproving, rebuking, and exhorting with all long-suffering and doctrine; and that because of that ungodly spirit that would possess professors after he was dead; for the time will come, saith he, that they will not endure sound doctrine, neither sound reproof, nor sound trial of their state and condition by the Word, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears,—the plague ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... who so arrange the electoral districts of a State, that in an election one party may obtain an advantage over its opponent, even though the latter may possess a majority of the votes in the State; the truth is, it would be a long story to go through, but we are corrupted by our liberals with our own money, that's a fact. Would you believe it now, that so long ago as six years, and that is a great while in our history seein' we are growing at such a rate, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... an empty threat. Mr Pinsent, though nothing of a sportsman, did indeed possess a gun, deposited with him years ago as security against a small loan. But it hung over the office chimney-piece downstairs, and he could not have loaded it, even if given the necessary powder and shot. Possibly the boys ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... telescope—so far as the expression has any definite meaning—is to be measured by the diameter of its object-glass. There has, indeed, been some honourable rivalry between the various civilised nations as to which should possess the greatest refracting telescope. Among the notable instruments that have been successfully completed is that erected in 1881 by Sir Howard Grubb, of Dublin, at the splendid observatory at Vienna. Its dimensions may be estimated from ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... unfortunately no special cure known for yellow fever such as we possess in malaria. The patient should be well covered and surrounded with hot-water bags during chill. It is advisable to give a couple of compound cathartic pills or a tablespoonful of castor oil at the start. Two, or at most three, ten-grain doses of phenacetin at three ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... impulse is then a morbid and debased impulse; in the child it is natural and, within limits, praiseworthy. A girl of this sort, who feels that she is not likely to attract attention because of any special gifts of beauty or intellect which she may possess, becomes conscious that she can always arouse interest by the severity of her bodily sufferings. The suggestion acts upon her unstable mind, and forthwith she becomes paralysed, or a cripple, or dumb, presenting a mimicry or travesty ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... in Lower Canada rendered it necessary for the British government to appoint a species of dictatorial governor, one who should possess the power of making temporary provision for the government of Canada. It has been already seen that Lord Durham was selected for this important mission, and that he had arrived in the province. Before, however, relating the particulars of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... fear, a clumsy botcher in applying the lessons that Browning was able to teach, but the dramatic monologues of which this volume is largely composed owe whatever art they may possess to his example. My dramatic studies are drawn from life. For example, the local preacher who expresses his views on the rival merits of Church and Chapel is a Wharfedale acquaintance, and the farmer in 'Cambodunum' who declares that "eddication's nowt but ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... overwhelming weight, by having at last got an order for something, the waiter imperceptibly melted away. Waiters never walk or run. They have a peculiar and mysterious power of skimming out of rooms, which other mortals possess not. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against the Crown. Besides, the Pope was more unpopular than the King, and had been so for a much longer time; the nobility, which, since the reign of St. Louis, had coalesced to resist clerical jurisdiction, had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... individual variations. The smaller the race the less the number of variations possible, including those on the side of what we call genius. Again fortunate variations depend not so much on the general average intellectual capacities of the race as on its variability. So one race may possess a relative superiority of achievement because of its high variability, just as, as we have already pointed out, the greater preeminence of the male sex with regard to intellectual accomplishment is due to the greater number ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... false promises of the insidious intriguer Madame de la Motte-Valois, who, in the queen's name, asked from him a loan of a million for the purchase of a jewelled ornament which highly pleased the queen, and which she, notwithstanding her exhausted coffers, was resolved to possess. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... are like children. And that sense is in the very best sense of childhood. It is something which the modern world does not understand. It is something that modern Americans do not understand, even when they possess it; but I ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... prosperity of the nation is due. The custom of family prayers should be revived along with many other good New England customs which some modern radicals may ridicule, but to which they owe all that they possess. ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson

... the Mohahve Indians mentioned by our recent guide; and from one of them, who spoke Spanish fluently, I obtained some interesting information, which I would be glad to introduce here. An account of the people inhabiting this region would undoubtedly possess interest for the civilized world. Our journey homewards was fruitful in incident; and the country through which we traveled, although a desert, afforded much to excite the curiosity of the botanist; but limited ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... it met you undiminished in volume, unabated in turbulency. Long before this I had begun to look at the river in the light of a personal enemy. I think that Xerxes, in the matter of the Hellespont, did wisely and well. Did I possess his resources of men and money, I would fain do so and more likewise to that same Potomac, subdividing its waters till the pet spaniel of "my Mary Jane" should ford them without wetting the silky fringes of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... had here the making of a good story, and I vaguely outlined it for a certain editor. In my synopsis I suggested that it was a woman who proposed to pretend to die thus so as to lull the suspicions of a villain to sleep, and thus possess herself of certain vital documents. My synopsis falls into certain hands. The owner of those hands asks me how the thing was done. I tell her. In other words, the so-called murder that you imagined you had discovered to-night was the result of design. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... open before our eyes, with fine prospects for patronage and the gift of many offices. It is at least equal in dignity and grandeur to the city government, and nothing prevents its becoming a vast scheme of corruption, except that it never can, by any possibility, possess a penny of revenue. Of course there should be a committee of repairs and supplies, and one of immigration, the latter to provide for the naturalization of foreign words and their proper treatment before they could take ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... vital agencies necessary to render labor productive. A knowledge of the conditions of mechanics, of chemistry, of electricity, and of vital phenomena should be imparted by the teacher; and to impart this knowledge, he must first possess it. ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... in the course of the morning; the coach was heavily loaded, nine passengers within, and three without, besides the driver; the day was hot, and the horses dragged us slowly through the black mud, which seemed to possess the consistency and tenacity of sticking-plaster. We had a dinner of grouse, which here in certain seasons, are sold for three cents apiece, at a little tavern on the road; we had passed the long green mound which bears the name of Mount Joliet, and now, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... enough in this position; it will burn you out twenty years before your time. And it will be the end of what peace and happiness a born fighter could ever hope to possess; for you will raise up enemies and critics on every side, you will be hounded, you will be the victim of cabals, your ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... anxious to show him kindness. He asked him if he would not prefer to cleanse himself before examination. The young German drew himself up and replied: "Look at me, General. I am covered from head to foot with mud, and that mud is the soil of France—you will never possess as much soil in Germany." The General turned to him with that gentle courtesy which marks the higher commands in France and answered: "Monsieur, we may never possess as much soil in Germany, but there is something that you will never possess, and, until you conquer it, you cannot vanquish France, ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke

... said, addressing the stone, "the concerns of past days recorded on you possess, according to your own account, a considerable amount of interest, and have been for this reason inscribed, with the intent of soliciting generations to hand them down as remarkable occurrences. But in my own opinion, they lack, in the first place, any data by means of which to establish the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... hereafter. We are separated but for an hour. Do not weep, my sweet one, but listen to me. It was my duty to reward you, Margaret, for all that you have done for the infirm old man. I have performed this duty. Every thing that I possess is yours! My will is with my private papers in the desk. It will do you justice. Could I have given you the wealth of India, you would have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... The wild-horse in his prime is rarely the object of their attack; though the old and infirm—the gravid mare, and the feeble colt—often fall before these hungry hunters of the plains. Both common wolf and coyote possess all the astuteness of the fox, and know, as if by instinct, the animal that is wounded to death. They will follow the stricken deer that has escaped from the hunter; but if it prove to be but slightly harmed, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... mince-pies. Besides being sold in great quantities by town confectioners, nougat is made in most country homes. Even the dwellers on the poor up-land farms—which, being above the reach of irrigation, yield uncertain harvests—have their own almond-trees and their own bees to make them honey, and so possess the raw materials of this necessary luxury. As for the other sweets, they may be anything that fancy and skill together can achieve; and it is in this ornate department of the Great Supper that genius has its ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... his own observations in his note-book without too frequent interruption. His manner was polished in the extreme, and so frank withal that he seemed to me like a man of glass through whom every thought shone unhindered. I wondered how one who seemed powerless to conceal his own emotions should possess a detective's ability to thread his way through the dark and hidden duplicity of crime. When he spoke it was in a low, velvety, and soothing voice, that fell upon the ear with an irresistible charm. When Osborne ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... elephants are born with light-coloured or clouded hides. Such creatures are bought at fabulous prices by the Malay and Siamese princes, to whom a white elephant is the greatest treasure that a king can possess. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... felt. A sharp disappointment will suddenly drive us to God. The mariner of life sails, unthinking, over its prosperous seas, but a flaw of storm will bring him to his prayers. And religion, reason as we will, is peculiarly associated with affliction. And does not sorrow possess this supernatural air, not merely because it interrupts the usual order of things, but because, more than joy, it has a weaning and spiritual tendency,—is sent, as it were, more directly from God for this specific purpose? At least, after the sanctifying experience ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of existence saw nothing else than art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough, quite different passions usually possess ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... Portugal the excellencies and beauties of Italy to please the King and the Infantas and the most serene Infante D. Luiz. I used to say to myself: What fortresses or foreign cities have I not yet in my book? What immortal buildings and what noble statues does this city still possess which I have not already stolen from it and carried away without carts or ships on thin paper? What painting, stucco, or grotesque has been discovered amongst these grottoes and antiquities of Rome, Puzol, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... think me cruel—a despot who delights in the death of his enemies. Yet it is not so, for I desire peace and to save life, not to destroy it. It is you Christians who for hard upon a hundred years have drenched these sands with blood, because you say that you wish to possess the land where your prophet lived and died more than eleven centuries ago. How many Saracens have you slain? Hundreds of thousands of them. Moreover, with you peace is no peace. Those Orders that I destroyed tonight have broken it a score ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... wandering shepherd star Is not more distant, gazing from afar On the unreapd pastures of the sea, Than I am from the world, the world from me. At night the stars on milky way that shine Seem things one might possess, but this round green Is for the cows that rest, these and the sheep: To them the slopes and pastures offer sleep; My sleep I draw from the far fields of blue, Whence cold winds come and go among the few Bright stars we see ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... surprise and vexation, that, though the dauphiness exhibited singular readiness and acuteness in comprehending political questions, she was very unwilling, and, as it seemed to him, afraid of dealing with them, and that she shrunk from the thought that the day would come when she must possess power and authority. And the continuance of this feeling is visible in her first letter to her mother, some passages of which show a sobriety of mind under such a change of circumstances, which, almost as much as the benevolence which the letter also displays, augured well for the happiness of the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... energy and political dignity that mark its population in our day, we shall hail the realized fact with infinite delight. We will rejoice, not only because the emancipated negro may thenceforth possess a realm wherein his rights shall be sacred, but because the civilization with which the colonies must border the African continent, will, year by year, sink deeper and deeper into the heart of the interior, till barbarism and ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... Ecco, siete Inglese! Lat us spika Ingelis, I onnerstan' 'im to ze bottom-side. (Laboriously, to CULCHARD, who tries to conceal his chagrin.) 'Ow menni time you employ to go since Coire at here? (C. nods with vague encouragement.) Vich manners of vezzer you vere possess troo your travels—mosh ommerella? (C.'s eyes grow vacant.) Ha, I tink it vood! Zis day ze vicket root sall 'ave plenti 'orse to pull, &c., &c. (Here PODBURY comes up, and puts some rugs the coupe of the diligence.) You sit at ze beginning-end, hey? better, you tink, zan ze mizzle? ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various

... with my companion who was busily engaged in sketching. The ruins of the ancient Oratory, viewed amid the pastoral repose of all things around them, began imperceptibly to exert over me that mysterious power of mingling the impressions of the present with the memories of the past, which all ruins possess. While I sat looking idly into the water of the well, and thinking of the groups that had gathered round it in years long gone by, recollections began to rise vividly on my mind of other ruins that I had seen in other countries, with friends, some scattered, some ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... not possess this consciousness of guilt so much as it holds possession of him. It pursues the fugitive from justice, and it lays hold on the man who has resisted or escaped the hand of the executioner. The sense of guilt is a power over and above man; a power so wonderful that it often compels the most ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... play into each other's hands. Knighton opposes every kind of expense, except that which is lavished on her. The wealth she has accumulated by savings and presents must be enormous. The King continues to heap all kinds of presents upon her, and she lives at his expense; they do not possess a servant; even Lord Conyngham's valet de chambre is not properly their servant. They all have situations in the King's household, from which they receive their pay, while they continue in the service of the Conynghams. They dine every day while in London at St. James's, and when they give a dinner ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... father appointed him an experienced governor and able preceptors. These persons, distinguished by their capacity, found in him a ready wit capable of receiving all the instructions that were proper to be given him, as well in relation to morals as other knowledge which a prince ought to possess. As he grew up, he learned all his exercises, and acquitted himself with such grace and wonderful address, as to charm all that saw him, and particularly the sultan ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... 14 October.—To-day I took a car into Dunkirk and bought some things, as I have lost nearly all I possess at Antwerp. In the afternoon I went to the dock to get some letters posted, and tramped about there for a long time. War is such a disorganizer. Nothing starts. No one is able to move because of wounded arms and legs; it seems to ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan



Words linked to "Possess" :   exhibit, feature, dominate



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