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Shake off   /ʃeɪk ɔf/   Listen
Shake off

verb
1.
Get rid of.  Synonyms: escape from, shake, throw off.
2.
Get rid of.  Synonyms: cast, cast off, drop, shed, throw, throw away, throw off.  "Shed your clothes"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shake off" Quotes from Famous Books



... health. I was well; at least I had been so, I felt fully assured, up to that moment. Now a feeling of chilliness and numbness and faintness had crept over me, a cold sweat was on my forehead. I tried to shake off this feeling by bringing back my thoughts to some other subject. But, involuntarily as it were, I again uttered the words, "Poor Julia!" aloud. At the same time a deep and heavy sigh, almost a groan, was distinctly audible close by me. I sprang up; I was alone—quite alone. It ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Mr Osbourne says, 'he came downstairs, rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a lecturing tour in America he was eager to make, "as he was so well," and played a game of cards with her ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... for over an hour, wondering what would be the next development in this mysterious affair. She could not shake off the idea that she would soon see Richard, in spite of the fact that she had no definite reasons upon which to base her hopes. One thing, however, seemed certain. If the man with the stolen snuff box had arrived in Brussels, it ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... of the next day they struck the San Felipe trail a few miles from Rubio City. Perhaps it was the sight of that old road, with its memories for the Seer and his companion, that led the engineer to say: "It's curious, Abe, but I can't shake off the odd feeling that Barbara's life is somehow wrapped up in that country out there." As he spoke he turned in his saddle to look back toward the Basin. "She seems to belong to it somehow as, in a way, it belongs to her. There is a look in her eyes sometimes that makes me think of the desert ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark

... squire; "I cannot tell what ails me, but there is an impression on my mind which I cannot shake off." ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... the seat, he was reminded of the night when he had taken this train with the girl who had come to occupy a great part of his thoughts in these days. He had begun to feel that if he could ever hope to shake off his anxiety and get back to his normal state of mind, he must find her and unravel the mystery about her. If she were safe and had friends, so that he was not needed, perhaps he would be able to put her out of his thoughts, but if she were not safe——He ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill

... thought. The Greco-Roman mental formulas, which our education has made as it were second nature, are nowise suited for application to modern problems. Those into whose minds such formulas have been instilled in childhood have acquired overwhelming prejudices which they are rarely, if ever, able to shake off, prejudices which weigh heavily upon contemporary society. I am inclined to believe that one of the moral errors from which Europe is chiefly suffering to-day, the Europe whose members are tearing one another ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... There is within my mind a void Whose vacant weight is harder to be borne Than the keen stingings of more active pangs; When it has traced the mystic chain of being To its last link, it may perchance shake off The misery of restless discontent,— Its fulness then may sink it ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... at Tom, and the young cadet began to shudder violently. His teeth chattered and he found it difficult to focus his eyes as his nervous system tried to shake off the effects of the ray. He crumpled to a heap on the balcony floor and ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... his brain was simply chasing itself in circles. Stopping short, he shook himself much like a dog on issuing from the water. His will was to shake off the horrors of the past night and his dread of the future. Better sense told him that only weakness lay in dwelling on these things. Let things fall as they would, he would meet them like a man, he hoped, and no more could be asked of him. In the meantime he would ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... accorded them that faint gleam of intelligence which the tribulations of a distressful stomach ought, one would think, to have aroused. I visit them at dawn. They are lined up as on the day before, but motionless. When the air grows a little warmer, they shake off their torpor, revive and start walking again. The circular procession begins anew, like that which I have already seen. There is nothing more and nothing less to be noted ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... operator was already claiming the wire, writing "deth," "deth," "deth," as rapidly as his fingers could shake off ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... the great revelation of the change that had taken place, and in spite of the fact that his instrument is prose, the lyric quality of many a passage of Rene was as unmistakable as it was new. But the lyric impulse could not at once shake off literary tradition. It needed to learn a new language, one more direct and personal, one less stiff with the starch of propriety and elegance. The more spontaneous and genuine it became, the closer it approached this language. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... ride I was having! How wretched I felt! Yet I was too bashful to shake off the shawl and stand up ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... dwell Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed. Methinks I hear a voice come up the river From those far bayous, where the alligators Mount guard around the camping filibusters "Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba— (That golden orange just about to fall, O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;) Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say, Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow The message of our gospel, thither borne Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... No, no. Rashe, and I started off at six o'clock this morning, to shake off the remains of the ball, rode down to Brompton, and did our work. No, it was not like the macaw business, I declare. The old gentleman held the bird for us himself, and I promised ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hair disheveled in the wind, the stripes of your clothes strongly suggestive of Sing Sing, your appearance a caricature of humankind, you wander up and down the beach a creature that the land is evidently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling to take. But you are consoled by the fact that all the rest are as mean and forlorn-looking as yourself; and so you wade in, over foot-top, unto the knee, and waist deep. The water is icy-cold, so that your teeth chatter and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was justified in deceiving his half-crazy brother. Still he was ill at ease. He had no faith in Arthur's presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell of horror, and ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... by his visitor's cool insolence that Poynter was at the foot of the staircase before he thought to follow; and then, feeling that this man had a hold upon him that he dared not shake off, he followed him up-stairs, and into the sparely-furnished front drawing-room in which the doctor had been lying ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... with a sort of fever, induced by a toil under which his strength was beginning to give way, opened the casement of his garret to breathe the morning air, and shake off, for a moment, the burden of his care. Happening to glance downward, he saw the reflection of Ginevra's lamp on the opposite wall, and the poor fellow guessed the truth. He went down, stepping softly, and surprised his wife ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... sister Tabby, you are no stranger to her qualifications — I vow to God, she is sometimes so intolerable, that I almost think she's the devil incarnate come to torment me for my sins; and yet I am conscious of no sins that ought to entail such family-plagues upon me — why the devil should not I shake off these torments at once? I an't married to Tabby, thank Heaven! nor did I beget the other two: let them choose another guardian: for my part I an't in a condition to take care of myself; much less to superintend ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... death. So nervous was Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird's Island to be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been unable to shake off ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that." He shook his head as if to shake off a vexing thought. "I—it makes me feel like a brute to think I've been knocking out a half-starved man and throwing him into that water because he crawled under an old blanket in my boat for shelter. Why didn't I ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... was swerving and dipping like a helpless wild duck seeking to shake off the three hawks that were ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs

... Darrow to places where the girl had been with him. She tried to reason away this scruple, she even reminded herself with a bitter irony that whenever she was in Darrow's arms she was where the girl had been before her—but she could not shake off her superstitious dread of being with him in any of the scenes of the Parisian episode. She replied that she was too tired for the play, and they drove back to her apartment. At the foot of the stairs she half-turned to wish him ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... part of the principles of the French Revolution. They stood now for individual liberty, laying especial stress on freedom of trade, freedom of contract, and freedom of competition. They had set themselves to break down the rule of the landowner and the Church, to shake off the fetters of Protection, and to establish equality before the law. Their acceptance of egalitarian principles led them to adopt democratic ideals, to advocate extension of the suffrage, and the emancipation of the working classes. Such principles, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... us do as she likes, shoving and pulling us along her ways, however rough, all but killing us at times in getting her lessons driven hard home. After I had stopped again and again, shouting good warning advice, I saw that he was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn of his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, "Where ...
— Stickeen • John Muir

... certainly and frequently searched and known, if there be anything wanting or amiss in their doctrine, discipline or manners, or anything worthy of punishment, the slothful labourers in the vineyard of the Lord may be made to shake off the spirit of slumber and slothfulness, and be stirred up to the attending and fulfilling more diligently their calling, and not suffered any longer to sleep and snore in their office; the stragglers and wanderers may be reduced to the way; the untoward ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... there was neither continent nor island; the world was one fluid sphere, uniform, monotonous, as in the most primitive period of its formation. Nevertheless it must be owned that it was with a certain amount of im- patience that I awaited the rising of the mist, for I was anxious to shake off the phantom fallacies that Curtis's words ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... speedily, whoso showeth himself by service or avoweth himself in mere loyalty, a friend of the king! Let the princes shake off slumber, let shameless lethargy begone; let their spirits awake and warm to the work; each man's own right hand shall either give him to glory, or steep him in sluggard shame; and this night shall be either end or vengeance of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... every one of us that has a man's appendages to boast of. Come, off with our tunics, for a man must savour of manhood; come, my friends, let us strip naked from head to foot. Courage, I say, we who in our day garrisoned Lipsydrion;[439] let us be young again, and shake off eld. If we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! We shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights, like Artemisia;[440] nay, if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier the knights, for indeed women excel in riding, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... to the woods, but immediately came back, for she knew not what to do there. A lethargy seemed to take hold of her and benumb her with an ever greater fear. Try as she would, Janina could not shake off this ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... honours, Swell not thy soul, beyond advice or friendship, Nor yet inspire the follies of a queen, Or tune thine ear to soothing adulation, Suspend awhile the privilege of pow'r, To hear the voice of truth; dismiss thy train, Shake off th' incumbrances of state, a moment, And lay the tow'ring ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... high time to shake off the illusion that there is any moral law, or any historical consideration, that imposes upon us any sort of restraint with regard to England. Only absolute ruthlessness makes any impression on the Englishman; anything else he regards as weakness.... A corsaire, corsaire ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... rose as if to shake off a physical bandage. For the first time in his life he felt conscious of a rebellion with the elemental conditions ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... whole, it will be best, perhaps, if I abstain from forming a decisive opinion of his manners, language, and conduct in his own house, until time has enabled him to shake off the anxieties, whatever they may be, which now evidently troubled his mind in secret. I will turn over to a new page, and my pen shall let Laura's husband alone ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... found Tertius gassing about as a D.A.Q.M.G., which, God knows, he isn't cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Coll. at base-camp (we're always in force for a frontier row), but I'd heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help me. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went—forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties. Macnamara's—'member old Mac, the Sapper, who ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... necessary to you than food and drink. I shall relate to you what happened to me when I was about your age. When I entered the cloister, it happened that at first I always walked about sad and melancholy, and could not shake off my sadness. Accordingly, I sought counsel and confessed to Dr. Staupitz, —I am glad to mention this man's name. I opened my heart to him, telling him with what horrid and terrible thoughts I was being visited. He ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... touched but lightly by the bow. Sir S. transferred his attention from the wall to me as he sang this sad old ballad, and I could not look away, because there was the same compelling power in his eyes as in his voice. No doubt it was only of the song he thought, not of me at all, really; yet I could not shake off the haunting impression of the look, and it made me dream of him all night. I saw him standing beside me in the strange, pale twilight of Sweetheart Abbey. And in his hand was a box of ebony, inlaid with silver, which he held out. But when I took the box it was locked, and he had ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... sister is here, if you please. I won't detain her long," said Mary, trying hard to shake off the tremor which always came upon her, when she found herself in Mrs. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... to shake off Ursula de Vesc and the Franciscan, he was mistaken. Thanks to the good offices of Cartier, the innkeeper, they had changed horses at Chateau-Renaud, and now their freshness more than balanced any lesser skill ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... spring are jolly; Maidens, be gay! Shake off dull melancholy, Ye lads, to-day! Oh! all abloom am I! It is a maiden love that makes me sigh, A new, new love it is ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to Moore: 'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public imagination, more particularly since my moral ——- clove down my fame.' Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never hear anything of Ada, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... really weary, at least the spirit uplifted him, though he knew that he must not overtask the body. His enthusiasm, based upon such a sanguine temperament, continued to rise. Again he foresaw glittering success. They would shake off all their foes, reach the fort in time, and lead the garrison and the people who had found refuge there ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Me killee white boy," cried Ah King, impatiently trying to shake off Luke's grasp. "He ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... expanded to horrible size, growing mountainous; it turned into a volcano in the tropics, and yet it stared at him, indubitably an Eye implacably hostile to all rights of privacy forever. Penrod blinked and clinched his eyelids to be rid of this dual image, and he managed to shake off the volcano. Then, lowering the angle of his glance, he saw something most ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... all the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had done to her in these four weeks and ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... sure to pick up, and exaggerate on his own account. At that time Bezzuoli and Servolini were the great lights and directors of the Academy of the Fine Arts, and they delighted, naturally, in so able and so apt a pupil; that he found it hard to shake off their teaching becomes ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... she heard singing in the sunshine as she went through the green fields. Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men among the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire for her death: being used to say that it was of little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at length, released; and Hatfield House ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... suffered to perform the dances, and where the parts of the women are perform'd by men in the dresses of women, it appears plainly, how much the execution suffers by this expedient. However well they may be disguised, there is an inherent clumsiness in them, which it is impossible for them to shake off, so as to represent with justness the sprightly graces and delicacy of the female sex. The very idea of seeing men effeminated by such a dress, invincibly disgusts. An effeminate man appears even worse ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... friend," I said, "and insult him in your father's house by turning the key on him. You endeavor to throw suspicion on a man who never injured you in the slightest degree. You insult me in insulting my friend, sir. Suspicion is not always such an easy thing to shake off as it has been in this instance. I, on my side, might ask what you were doing walking about the passages in your socks at four o'clock this morning? In your socks, sir, still in your ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... while preparing to shake off gloomy thoughts by a visit to a friend, some one knocked at my door, and left a ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... pass uneventfully over us as we linger under the trees at Luchon, and then we shake off the spell, to look for its mountain neighbors. One of the peaks from which the panorama of the Maladetta chain can be best seen is the Pic d'Entecade, a noted point for an object-lesson of the mountains' relief. Some of us accordingly resolve ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... became silent. As he surmounted each hill top Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky for weather signs. In spite of himself there crept over him a sense of foreboding, which he impatiently tried to shake off. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... led him to make this choice. "Thus, acting under the reasons aforesaid (the family associations), I resolved to go to Gallarate, in order that I might have the enjoyment of four separate advantages which it offered. Firstly, that in the most healthy air of the place I might shake off entirely the distemper which I had contracted in Milan. Secondly, that I might earn something by my profession, seeing that then I should be free to practise. Thirdly, that there would be no need for me to pine away while ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... near, looking like so many mutes stationed to show respect to the departed; but their intentions were of a different character, as they were waiting, I imagine, for some friendly gust of wind to shake off the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... they close above us, and you are mine for ever and ever and only,—sealed mine beneath all this crystal sphere of the waters! We hear the gentle lapping of the ripples on the shore, we hear the tones of evening-bells swim out and melt above us, we hear the oar shake off its shower of tinkling drops,—up the jewel-strewn deeps of heaven the planets hang out their golden lamps to light our slumbers! Heart to heart and lip to lip, we are at rest, we are at peace, nothing comes between us, our souls have the eternities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... rowing like a Cossack, brawling with foreign adventurers, and fighting with his grooms in mimic battles. But to the one her emancipation was only a means of obtaining power; to the other the emancipation of Russia, like the emancipation of himself, was the end. He wished the nation to shake off the old trammels from which he had freed himself. Sophia remained a Byzantine, Peter aspired to be a European. In the conflict between the Czarevna and the Czar, progress was not on the side of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... shake off its contamination. Could he escape from the odium of his more immediate personal delinquencies; his fawning sycophancy of Nicholas Biddle; his dirty work in behalf of that man for money, not for love; could he deluge with Lethean ocean the public memory, his malpractices as attorney-general; his ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... yell, and the lad leaped several feet from the ground, dancing about like a rejoicing warrior and flinging his hand as if he were trying to shake off some ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... is nothing so hard for a human mind to grasp as the impossibility of grasping the meaning of infinity. It can't shake off its own limitations. But all the same, if I was to tell anyone except you, dearest, that I had seen and held a conversation with the spirit of a Pharaoh who lived before Moses, what would they think? ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... Julie is always about such things—what delicious notes she writes, how she hates to put anybody out or disappoint them! And now, not a word of excuse to anybody. And she looks so ill—so white, so fixed—like a person in a dream which she can't shake off. I'm just miserable about her. And I hate, hate that man—engaged to her own cousin all the time!" cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... enacted in regard to existing incumbents. As regarded the future regulation of the church revenues, government felt that they could not abandon those declarations and principles with which they entered upon office; that they could not shake off the engagement under which they conceived themselves to stand, of doing justice to the Irish nation; and the terms of that virtual and most honourable compact they conceived to be that if, in the future disposition of the revenues of the Irish church, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... not always successful. My mind wanders, in spite of me, from my own concerns and from thine, to the sick-bed of my friend. A reverie, painful and confused, invades me now and then; my pen stops, and I am obliged to exert myself anew to shake off the spell. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... Tournon, with his coat collar turned up, while dancing before his sleepy eyes are the elegant shadows of a fashionable evening party mingling with the famished specters of the market-place. He stands knocking his boots against the curbstone of the Hotel du Senat, to shake off the snow, while opposite the bright lamps of a brougham light up the front of an old mansion, and Doctor Ricord's coachman cries out: "Gate, if you please." Life in Paris is made ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... expeditions. This same house Cornelia bought for seventy-five thousand drachmas, and not long after Lucius Lucullus, for two million five hundred thousand; so rapid and so great was the growth of Roman sumptuosity. Yet, in spite of all this, out of a mere boyish passion for distinction, affecting to shake off his age and weakness, he went down daily to the Campus Martius, and exercising himself with the youth, showed himself still nimble in his armor, and expert in riding; though he was undoubtedly grown bulky in his old age, and inclining ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... not foolish? was it not wrong? Yet, if I found such deep delight in thinking of him, and if I kept those thoughts to myself, and troubled no one else with them, where was the harm of it? I would ask myself. And such reasoning prevented me from making any sufficient effort to shake off ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... over, and tried to discover some means of avoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment of living in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time. How could they shake off these intolerable fetters? ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... fools will go on as they have ever done; but to the wise few, to whom I address myself, I would say, Shake off at once and forever the fancies and feelings, the creeds and customs that shackle you, and be true. We have come to a time when wise men will not be led blindfold in the footsteps of their predecessors, but will tear ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... Vaura, ma chere, is a weight of care to me, that I try in vain to shake off;" and something very like a tear glistened ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... all, she said: "Much as I love you, darling, I am ready to part with you for good: there is a cure for all your griefs; there is a better woman in this house than ever Grace Carden was or will be. Be a man; shake off these miserable trammels; leave that vacillating girl to nurse her villain, and marry the one ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... startle at these estimates! It is proper that many of you should. You have misspent time enough. Awake your 'drowsy souls,' and shake off your stupid habits. Think of Napoleon breaking up the boundaries of kingdoms, and dethroning kings, and to accomplish these results, going through with an amount of mental and bodily labor that few constitutions would be equal to, with only ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... ended by remarking generally that the genius of the present age is wasted by that indifference which with a few exceptions runs through the whole of life. If we ever shake off our apathy[7] and apply ourselves to work, it is always with a view to pleasure or applause, not for that solid advantage which is worthy to be striven for ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... forerunner of an approaching burst of flames—as in truth it was—than the return of day: however, the fire fell at a distance from us: then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... spot, or high altar, in this northern temple of the winds—and watch the trains smoking out from under them and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy the passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have heard for the last time the cry of the east wind among her chimney-tops! And yet the place establishes an interest in people's hearts; go where they will, they find no city of the same distinction; go where ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... virtue can itself advaunce To what the favourite fools of chaunce By fortune seem'd design'd; Virtue can gain the odds of Fate, And from itself shake off the weight ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... influences were antagonistic. They could not continue together. He stood between virtue and vice, and he must choose. Vice was very attractive too, very comely, very witty, and holding him by that chain of custom which is so hard to shake off. There were hours when his nature swayed strongly over to that side, and when he was tempted to fall back into his old life. But Bossuet and Pere la Chaise were ever at his elbows to whisper encouragement, and, above all, there ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... getting a new suit he has more trouble than a fine lady, for he has to shake off the old garments, while getting the new, bit by bit, here a feather and there a feather, today a new wing-quill; tomorrow a new ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... by settlements in other countries, may, perhaps, be so many reasons to take greater pains to qualify themselves for this employment, and may make them succeed better in it; especially when they have been able to shake off the fetters which are rivetted upon them under the narrow influence of a too tyrannical kirk discipline, which you, Sir George, have just now so ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... measures. The promises made to the Spanish people were ample; but he spoke to men who had no ears for his offers, On every hand the population flew to arms, and all vowed to drive him from their land. Even conflicting parties agreed to shake off their natural enmity to each other, in order to effect this triumph. A guerilla warfare was now pursued: agile bands of men appeared, and having cut off some of their enemies, retired with equal rapidity. In the meantime a British army, under General Moore, was marching to their aid from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... like all the rest of his family; when they had become accustomed to a thing they suffered it to go its own way. It was for this reason he could not persuade himself to shake off the Abbe Dubois, although he knew him to be a rascal. This Abbe had the impudence to try to persuade even me that the marriage he had brought about was ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... to shake off a prolonged bronchial attack; a young Guardsman, a friend of mine, though my junior by many years, was convalescent after an illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, so we travelled together. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... them. Once or twice in the long two, nearly three months that I had given myself to get ready to marry Nickols, I paused and found myself thinking of the weighty things of life, but I soon was able to shake off the thought of the future. The time I felt it press most heavily was one morning that Jessie Litton and I sat quietly sewing on some sort of fluff she and Harriet had planned for my adornment, and very suddenly Jessie laid down her ruffle and looked ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... great discontent of the heirs. Henrietta's income had expanded from four thousand a year to twenty; and she spent her days in thinking of and talking of the careers to which she could help her husband if he would only shake off the lethargy which seized him the year after his marriage to a Fuller heiress. But Hastings would not; he was happy in his books and in his local repute for knowing everything there was to be known. Month by month ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... seemed like a turning-point with the May family, rousing and giving them revived hopes. Norman began to shake off his extreme languor and depression, the doctor was relieved from much of the wearing suffering from his hurt, and his despondency as to Margaret's ultimate recovery had been driven away. The experiment of taking her up succeeded so well, that on ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... in her eyes. Mine, I knew, were speaking beyond the will of my speech. I leaned toward her. Without volition I leaned toward her, as a tree is swayed by the wind. Ah, we were very close together in that moment. But she shook her head, as one might shake off ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... 1720, was passed an Act with a pompous and even portentous title: it was called "An Act for the better securing the Dependency of the Kingdom of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain." The preamble recited that "attempts have been lately made to shake off the subjection of Ireland unto and dependence upon the Imperial Crown of this realm, which will be of dangerous consequence to Great Britain and Ireland." The reader would naturally assume that some fresh designs of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... brat as I would an adder," said Denot, attempting to shake off the sergeant's hand. "There, take the dagger," and he dropped it on the ground, and rushing at the boy, got inside the swing of his stick, and made a grasp at his throat. Arthur, however, was too quick for him, and pushing away his hand, fastened his own arms round his adversary. They were now ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... from us, trying in vain to make merry, it withheld its deceitful inspiration. For the exceeding weight of sorrow that presently settled down upon us it had no balm. When you are on a pleasure trip it is unpleasant to be miserable; so I tried hard to shake off the mild melancholy that began to steal over me. I said to myself, I will not affront the great deep with my personal woes. I am but a woman, yet perhaps on this so great occasion magnanimity of soul will be possible even to me. I will consider ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... again penetrated the mountain recesses and fell upon the valley, Saint-Prosper arose to shake off a troubled slumber. An unhealthy mist hung over the earth, like a miasma, and the officer shivered as he walked in that depressing and noxious atmosphere. It lay like a deleterious veil before the glades where myrtles ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... fancy I have contracted a new acquaintance, whom it will be no easy matter to shake off. My little beau yesterday overtook me again in one of the public walks, and slapping me on the shoulder, saluted me with an air of the most perfect familiarity. His dress was the same as usual, except that he had more powder in his hair, wore a dirtier shirt, ...
— English Satires • Various

... two hostile camps, the citizens took the side of one or other of the aspirants, and civil war raged for several years till some decisive action brought it to a close. Meantime tributary vassals took advantage of the consequent disorder to shake off the yoke, the Blamites and various neighbouring cities joined in the dispute and ranged themselves on the side of the party from which there was most to be gained: the victorious faction always had to pay dearly for this somewhat ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... imperiously demand recreation as nourishment. Especially is this the case with persons given to sedentary pursuits, confined during the week to shops, factories and stores, and whose only opportunity this is to shake off the dull monotony of work and to give the bodies and minds necessary relaxation and distraction. It is not physical rest that such people require so much as healthy movement of a pleasing kind, and ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... the Englishman used him as a prop on one side and the managing wife nearly overwhelmed him on the other; he slept fitfully, and always with the air of a martyr, waking up every few minutes and vainly trying to shake off his burdens, who invariably made stifled exclamations and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... to get across the much-vexed boundary-line, and enter Unyoro, guided by Kamrasi's deputation of officers, and so shake off the apprehensions which had teased us for so many days. This first march was a picture of all the country to its capital: an interminable forest of small trees, bush, and tall grass, with scanty villages, low huts, and dirty-looking people ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... sir; too pure for Comyn's base alloy. Know, then, the Bruce's hand is red with the traitor's blood, and yet, fearless and firm in the holy justice of his cause, he calls on his nobles and their vassals for their homage and their aid—he calls on them to awake from their long sleep, and shake off the iron yoke from their necks; to prove that Scotland—the free, the dauntless, the unconquered soil, which once spurned the Roman power, to which all other kingdoms bowed—is free, undaunted, and unconquered still. He calls aloud, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... host's gaiety, Arthur Lovell was ill at ease. Do what he would, he could not shake off the memory of the meeting between the father and daughter. Henry Dunbar's deadly pallor—that wild, scared look in his eyes, as they slowly reopened and glared upon Laura's anxious face—were ever present to the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the main a thing of sunshine and laughter. But now great slabs of gloom began to work themselves into the scheme of it. A magnificent despondency became its keynote. It would not do. I felt that I must make a resolute effort to shake off my depression. More than ever the need of conciliating the professor was borne in upon me. Day and night I spurred my brain to think of some suitable means ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... to examine minutely all systems of mythological interpretation. Every key has been tried in this difficult lock; every cause of confusion has been taken up and tested, deemed adequate, and finally rejected or assigned a subordinate place. Probably the first attempts to shake off the burden of religious horror at mythical impiety were made by way of silent omission. Thus most of the foulest myths of early India are absent, and presumably were left out, in the Rig-Veda. "The religious sentiment of the hymns, already so elevated, has discarded most of the tales which offended ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... real sources of bluntness in the feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of the flower, are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness of compassion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye at intervals of rest too selfishly within; the want of power to shake off the anxieties of actual and near interest, and to leave results in God's hands; the scorn of all that does not seem immediately apt for our purposes, or open to our understanding, and perhaps something of pride, which desires rather to investigate ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... out boxes and boxes and boxes, all alike. I saw, heard, and felt almost nothing. My hands moved unconsciously and instinctively. At this time, I think, the first feeling of profound ennui came to me, that feeling which to shake off I would at a later time do anything, anything, no matter how violent and extreme it was. Only at noon time when the whistle shrieked did I seem alive, and then ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... forces working underground in the West Indies. One is the Spanish and negro combination, which desires to shake off all the British, French and Dutch possessions, and to create a Creole Empire of the Islands. The other is an English plan, to weld all the British islands in the West Indies into a single Confederation and to buy as many of the smaller isles from France and Holland as may seem possible. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... was dense and high. The Rainhams had been delayed in taking possession of Creek Cottage; a severe cold had smitten Tommy just at the end of her labours in the hospital, and, being thoroughly tired out, it had been some time before she could shake off its effects. Mr. Linton and Norah had put down their feet with joint firmness, declaring that in no circumstances should she begin housekeeping until she was thoroughly fit; so the Rainhams had remained at Billabong. Tommy was petted and nursed in a way she had ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... unable to articulate, Mr. Sponge applied his hand to the ivory bell-knob and sounded an imposing peal. Mr. Jogglebury sat wondering what was going to happen, and thinking what a wigging he would get from Mrs. J. if he didn't manage to shake off his friend. Above all, he recollected that they had nothing but haddocks and hashed mutton ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... and kept hitting him without taking breath or knowing where his blows fell. Blood flowed down the face of the German, who, choking and with a rattling in his throat, spat forth his broken teeth, and vainly strove to shake off this infuriated man who was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... the Duc de Guise, enjoining him to profit without delay by so admirable an opportunity of regaining his forfeited favour. But whatever were the haste with which all endeavoured to reach the Court, it still required time for them to do so;[44] and meanwhile the other great nobles were anxious to shake off the control to which they had been subjected during the previous reign. Individual hatred came to the assistance of personal ambition, and those whose talent enabled them to acquire influence at Court began to exercise it no less zealously in the ruin of others ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... We have proof. Often at zero hour we have seen whole populations of cities go over the top and vanish, leaving behind them their bloody rags. We should go mad if we did not believe in immortality. We know that the physical is not the essential part. How better can a man shake off his flesh than at the hour when his spirit is most shining? The exact day when he dies does not matter—to-morrow or fifty years hence. The vital concern is not when, but how. The civilian philosopher considers ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... and open defiance of conventionality there is something that compels respect even in the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life in secret, and clandestinely to shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel. There are assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the night. He who goes his way without concealment says: "Every one does it and conceals ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... known as "staring coat." Besides these, the horse's skin is furnished with an expansion of red, voluntary muscle, firmly attached to the fibrous bundles, and by which the animal can not only dislodge insects and other irritants, but even shake off the harness. This fleshy envelope covers the sides of the trunk and the lower portions of the neck and head, the parts unprotected by the mane and tail, and serves to throw the skin of these parts into puckers, or ridges, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... be in want of a husband. The heir of the Hamiltons was of her own age, and in years past had been thought of for her by her father. What could be more fit than to make a match between those two? Send a Scot south to be King of England, find or make some pretext to shake off Mary Stuart, who had forsaken her native country, and so join the crowns, the 'lass' and the 'lad' being now in the right relative position. Scotland would thus annex her old oppressor, and give her ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... for my salary is small, my hair is turning grey, and I do not dance. But I was not entirely discouraged. I resolved to give Yonkers a fair trial, and a true verdict to render according to the evidence. So I frequented the tea-parties and sociables so common in that wretched town, and strove to shake off the melancholy that clung to me like the Old Man of the Sea. To my horror, the Funny Fellow became multiplied like the reflections in a shivered mirror. Men and women, and even young innocent children, became Funny, and danced about me ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... Revenge they were in no mood to avoid him, despite the odds. After an hour of sailing in a strong breeze, it was seen that this other vessel was a small merchantman which shifted her course as though to shake off pursuit. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... will find it difficult to make partisans among us French, whatever may be our indolent indifference in other respects in this matter, an indifference so great that at the present time the American question does not exist to the most of us. Moreover, we shall shake off this inertia; and, as to the English, they will not suffer their brightest title to glory in modern times to be tarnished by any latent complicity with the Gulf States. The brutal doctrines of interest, so often professed publicly in Parliament by Mr. Bright, may indeed find organs; ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... one side was the tyrant Napoleon, on the other Fr: Wilhelm, her kingly husband, without an idea outside of cathedral architecture and bishoprics in Jerusalem; yet Louise willed that Prussia should seize the reins of power, shake off the French yoke, and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... not a conundrum? If he interests you at a distance (and I take for granted that what you say in your letters is not merely conventional compliment) you can think how piquant he is in actual life. I must confess, however, that I can never shake off the feeling that I am living with some capricious creature who frequently growls and may possibly bite. Well, it won't be very long before I write again, and by that time I shall probably know whether I am likely to find any permanent billet ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... earth from the pot by passing a knife around the skies. Turn the plant upside down, and remove the pot. Then remove all the matted fibres at the bottom, and all the earth, except that which adheres to the roots. From woody plants, like roses, shake off all the earth. Take the new pot, and put a piece of broken earthen-ware over the hole at the bottom, and then, holding the plant in the proper position, shake in the earth around it. Then pour ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... with pale complexion, set off by dark, penetrative eyes; a shapely head covered with long, heavy masses of straight dark hair. The impression his appearance conveyed to me was that of a person benevolent but apathetic; unhappy without the will or power to shake off his burden. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... his sisters, but the vicar remained neutral. He saw that though at times Herbert was a little impatient at the domination of his sisters, and a chance word showed that he nourished a feeling of resentment toward them, he was actually incapable of nerving himself to the necessary effort required to shake off their influence altogether, and to request them to leave ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... in the mournful eyes, as if his soul had been starving for kindness and sympathy. Sometimes he would forget his situation, and speak hopefully of the future, but still there was a weariness that he could not shake off, a languor that seemed to ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... dwelling shall be of the riches of the earth and of the dew of heaven. You shall live by your sword and your descendants shall serve his descendants. But in time to come they shall break loose and shall shake off the yoke of your brother's ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall

... perverted instincts that made her possible. They made the very thought of immorality a grisly joke. And yet their nearness, the touch of their ill-grown, ill-cared-for, or grossly over-nurtured bodies against his, the sound of their nasal strident voices brought him relief. He could not shake off their fascination for him. He was like a man hanging round the scene of some ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... betrayed by the words, 'If Thou art the Son of God,' and the answer of our Lord, which begins emphatically with 'man,' puts us on the right track to understand why He repelled the insidious proposal even while He was faint with hunger. To yield to it would have been to shake off for His own sake the human conditions which He had taken for our sakes, and to seek to cease to be Son of man in acting as Son of God. He takes no notice of the title given by Satan, but falls back on His brotherhood ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... systems, as exhibited by their official expounders, whom the accredited functionaries of similar systems, do not scruple, in the face of day, to brand as impostors, should induce rational beings to drive them entirely from their hearts; to shake off such an intolerable burden of misery; to even deny the existence of such appalling doctrines, of such petrifying systems, which the superstitious themselves, whilst paying them their homage, frequently curse from the very ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... exclusion of every other feeling. I have not a thought or a care but for the fate that too certainly awaits those who are most dear to me; and if this be a weakness, it is one I shall never have the power to shake off. In a word, Blessington, I ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... of himself," thought Sam, and returned to his bankbook, striving in the contemplation of the totals at the foot of the pages to shake off the dull anger that had begun to burn in his brain. Glancing up again, he saw that Joe Wildman, son of the grocer and a boy of his own age, had joined the group of men laughing and jeering at Windy. The shadow on Sam's ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... instead, my dear child," he said, with his grand air. "Josiah, you must begin to go out a little and shake off ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... of sight. The more, however, that he held his thoughts shut up in his own mind, the more active and troublesome they became, and an idea took possession of him, which he made very few efforts to shake off, though he could not at first see clearly how to carry it ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... certified monument erected for the express purpose of commemorating the invented incident. There is then no tradition in any one of the stages through which the episode has passed. It is all history and false history. Historians cannot shake off their responsibilities by looking upon the local antiquary as the responsible author of tradition. They cannot but admit that the local antiquary belongs to the historical school, even though he is not a fully equipped member of his craft, and because he blunders they must not class him as ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... had filled his mind with arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind, yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry enough soon as ye ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... and the overwhelming influence of Christianity upon the whole world, delayed this movement, so that it did not again become prominent until the sixteenth century. About this time, when therapeutics as a science began to shake off the shackles of religion and superstition, another startling innovation was noticeable, viz., the division of mental healing into religious and non-religious healing. This change came gradually, and as is usual in all reform, certain prophets saw and proclaimed the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... the most noticeable. Jealous of the lofty manner in which it lifts its head above the surrounding fields and walls of the city, the church has seen fit to crown its head with a cross, which it seems inclined to shake off. This small mountain of a monument is conical in shape, and is composed entirely of broken crockery; hence its name, Testaccio. In its crockery sides, they have found a certain coolness and evenness of temperature ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... lives and whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority set over you will, in all administrations for your good, be quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a disposition to shake off the yoke and lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the honor and ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... at length, partially awakened by a loud noise. At first her sleepy senses paid little attention and she dozed on. But again she was roused. A noise which grew louder and louder at last compelled her to shake off sleep, and starting up, she opened the door and looked into the passage. A few streaks of moonlight, streaming through an iron grating high up in the wall, enabled her to see a tall figure stealing softly along the corridor, with its ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... be got from Pennie. He must shake off the thought of his tiresome secret and enjoy himself as much as he could to-day. Afterwards there would be time to trouble about it. And now they were getting quite near to the tents and flags and gaily-painted caravans and confused ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... possibly be on its way to him at that moment. The image of Forrester as he lay on the football field haunted him constantly, and he would have given all the world even then to know that he was alive. Hope, however, came to his rescue, and helped him for a time to shake off the weight of his heart, and address himself boldly to the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... 92. They sooner now the stars may count Than lose these dismal bands; Or see to what the motes[14] among Or number up the sands. 93. Then see an end of this their woe, Which now for sin they have; O wantons, take heed what you do, Sin will you never save. 94. They sooner may drink up the sea, Than shake off these their fears; Or make another in one day As big with brinish tears; 95. Than put an end to misery, In which they now do roar, Or help themselves; no, they must cry, Alas, for evermore. 96. When years by thousands on a heap Are passed o'er their head; Yet ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of the corral gate of the Hippodrome with his last week's salary in his pocket and an imprecation on his lips. He had shaken the sawdust of the sham arena from his high, tight-fitting boots; he would shake off the white dust of France, and the effeminate soil of all Europe also, and embark at once for his own country and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... "I am not afraid of evil tongues. There's a way of silencing them. But there's my peace of mind, too. I wouldn't be able to shake off the notion that I've ruined a brother officer. Whatever action you take, it is bound to go farther. The inquiry has been dropped—let it rest now. It would have been absolutely ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... whole of its foreign commodities via the two Hanse towns—Hamburg and Bremen; and has exported its cattle and transmitted its mails by the same routes. The Schleswig-Holstein war has strengthened a wish long felt in Denmark to shake off this dependence; but good railways and good steam-ship ports will be necessary for this purpose. When, in April 1851, a steamer crossed rapidly from Lowestoft to Hjerting, and brought back a cargo of cattle, the Danes felt suddenly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... a while, trying to think. The parson was like an incubus upon him, which he was totally unable to shake off. He knew neither how to resist nor how to give way. Misty ideas got into his head of escaping to his bed-room and blowing his own brains out. Different schemes of retaliation and revenge flitted before him, but he could ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... third department the student takes an advanced position, and is expected, during the two or three months he will remain in this department, to perfect himself in the more subtle questions involved in accounts, as well as to shake off the crude belongings of schoolboy work. He will be required to use his mind in everything he does—to depend as much as possible upon himself. The work which he presents for approval here must have the characteristics of business. His letters, statements, and papers of all ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... remorse she had felt when Lena was severely burned and lay for days hovering between life and death. But she could not shut her eyes or blind her conscience to the fact that she had been guilty in intention, if not in actual deed, and she could not shake off the haunting sense of shame or the feeling that others must know of the contemptible action of which she had ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... Notwithstanding his many successes, and his evident desire to stand well with his Chinese subjects, it was already clear that they bore their new leader little love. Several of the principal provinces were in a state of veiled rebellion, showing that the first opportunity would be taken to shake off the Mongol yoke, and that Kublai's authority really rested on a quicksand. The predictions of a fanatic were sufficient to shake the emperor on his throne, and such was Kublai's apprehension that ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... levy—300,000 armed men under the leadership of Galba the king of the Suessiones—to their southern frontier to receive Caesar there. A single canton alone, that of the powerful Remi (about Rheims) discerned in this invasion of the foreigners an opportunity to shake off the rule which their neighbours the Suessiones exercised over them, and prepared to take up in the north the part which the Haedui had played in central Gaul. The Roman and the Belgic armies arrived in their territory almost ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and the fields all about, with the keen, practised eye of a man of his lawless profession. All was still. No sound or movement any where, save among the crows. In spite of his iron will and constitution he began to feel an insidious drowsiness creeping over him, which he did not find it easy to shake off; several times his eyelids closed, and he lifted them resolutely, only to have them fall again in another instant. In fact he was just dropping into a doze, when he felt, as in a dream, a hot breath on his face, and suddenly waked to see ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... "Ye ascetics, shake off all inaction. Let your hearts be fixed on virtue, for virtue is the one only friend of him that has gone to the other world. Even the most intelligent by cherishing wealth and wives can never make these their own, nor are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... thence in ordinary repute not so bad, yet in just estimation may be judged, even worse than the former; as doing to our neighbour more heavy and more irreparable wrong. For it imposeth on him really more blame, and that such which he can hardly shake off: because the charge signifieth habit of evil, and includeth many acts; then, being general and indefinite, can scarce be disproved. He, for instance, that calleth a sober man drunkard, doth impute to him many acts of such intemperance (some really past, others probably future), ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... But having done so he could not shake off the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put it from ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... Trowbridge writes from Detroit: "The period intervening since your last visit to this place has been an eventful one to the nation. South Carolina, driven on by a few infatuated men, has made a bold effort to shake off the bonds of Union and Federal Law, and, to the minds of some in whom you and I repose the utmost confidence, a happy government seems to totter on the brink of dissolution. It is a long story, and the papers will ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... From Heaven distilled a clemency; There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; Some could, some could not, shake off misery: The Sinister Spirit sneered: "It had to be!" And again the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... would awake, who yet overcome with a heavy drowsiness, are again drenched therein. And as no one would sleep for ever, and in all men's sober judgment waking is better, yet a man for the most part, feeling a heavy lethargy in all his limbs, defers to shake off sleep, and though half displeased, yet, even after it is time to rise, with pleasure yields to it, so was I assured that much better were it for me to give myself up to Thy charity, than to give myself over to mine own cupidity; ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... from the quail, the woodcock, the swallow, and a thousand others, that are apparently more generous than the poor ant, to which AEsop has given a reputation for avarice that it will have some trouble to shake off. The birds swallow the seeds, many of which are covered with a hard, horny skin, that often resists digestion; these are carried by the inhabitants of the air across rivers, seas, and lakes, and are deposited by them in the neighborhood of their nests—it may be on the top of a mountain, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... bladder and smallgut, We're come scraping and singing to rouse ye; Rise, shake off your straw, And prepare you each maw [3] To kiss, eat, and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... him. The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest impression upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever, and ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... album in her hand, the calm of death is upon her. She has lived prepared for this emergency, provided also with the means of escaping from it. But she will not die without entreating her young admirer to shake off, before it is too late, the evil influence to which both, though in different ways, have succumbed; and her dignity, her kindness, the instinctive reverence, and now chivalrous pity, with which she has inspired him ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... against the tigers and wild boars of the jungle. One day I was thus engaged, when the elephant I was on, being some way from the rest, a tiger flew out and fastened on his trunk. In vain the mighty beast tried to shake off his savage assailant. He then endeavoured to kneel upon him and so to crush him; and I fully expected to be thrown over his head. My gun was, however, ready. I caught a sight of the tiger's eye; and, firing, sent a ball directly into it. ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... she was in his arms, his face was against hers, and hot tears not her own were on her cheek. Then he was shaking his head as if to shake off ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... oppression to last forever? We, the women of the democracy of Sheffield, answer, No! We put forth this earnest appeal to our sisters of England to join hand and heart with us in this noble and just cause, to the exposing and eradicating of such a state of things. Let us shake off our apathy and raise our voices for right and liberty, till justice in all its fulness is conceded to us. This we say to all who are contending for liberty, for what is liberty if the claims of women be disregarded? Our special object will be the entire political enfranchisement of our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... are also desirous of placing about this epoch the first counts of Hainault, and even of Holland. But though it may be true that the chief families of each canton sought then, as at all times, to shake off the yoke, the epoch of their independence can only be fixed at the later period at which they obtained or enforced the privilege of not being deprived of their titles and their feudal estates. The counts of the high grounds, and those of Friesland, enjoyed at the utmost but a fortuitous privilege ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan



Words linked to "Shake off" :   take, escape from, remove, exuviate, exfoliate, autotomise, molt, autotomize, cast off, get away, take away, withdraw, drop, slough, moult, throw, break loose, abscise, escape



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