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Delve   Listen
noun
Delve  n.  A place dug; a pit; a ditch; a den; a cave. "Which to that shady delve him brought at last." "The very tigers from their delves Look out."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books



... this branche, Which proud Envie hath mad to springe, Of Scisme, causeth forto bringe This newe Secte of Lollardie, And also many an heresie 350 Among the clerkes in hemselve. It were betre dike and delve And stonde upon the ryhte feith, Than knowe al that the bible seith And erre as somme clerkes do. Upon the hond to were a Schoo And sette upon the fot a Glove Acordeth noght to the behove Of resonable mannes ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... earlier recipe book the Waybroad is prescribed for twenty-two diseases, one after another; and in another of the same date we are taught how to apply it: "If a man ache in half his head . . . delve up Waybroad without iron ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head with Crosswort by a red fillet, soon he will be well." But the Plantain did not long sustain its high reputation, which even in Shakespeare's time had become ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... those among the few claiming to have any insight into the real Hawk Carse who declared that a month went out of his life for every minute he spent in the cell then. The story, of course, came trickling out through various unreliable sources; we who delve in the lore of the great adventurer have to thank for our authorities Sewell, the great historian of that generation—who personally traveled several million miles to get what meager facts the Hawk would divulge ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... hour! My fondest hopes would not decay; I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away! The garden, where I used to delve Short-frock'd, still yields me pinks in plenty; The pear-tree that I climbed at twelve I see ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... around, In part still shrouded by the soil, A stony chaos strews the ground, Where patient students delve and toil To bring to light Time's buried spoil, And History's ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... this contact of living nations and sleeping hordes a thrill of new life in the world, crying, If the contact of Life and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life. To be sure, behind this thought lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,—the making of brown men to delve when the temptation of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... time in beginning his operations. As he had said, the chief need was a fire extinguishing chemical solution or powder. Tom resolved to try the solution first, as it was easier to make. With this end in view he proceeded to delve into old and new chemistry books. He also sought the advice ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... and at least four different public schools without knowing anything about "sex hygiene." That married women had babies and that somehow these were due to the presence of men in the household was the limit of her sex knowledge. Beyond that it was not "nice" for a girl to delve, and Milly was very scrupulous about being "nice." Nice girls did not discuss such things. Once when she was fifteen a woman she knew had "gone to the bad" and Milly had been very curious about it, as she was later about the existence of bad women generally. This state of virginal ignorance ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... Inshallah—God willing—return to me rejoicing; yet sore I fear lest thou come back to me and say, 'Sooth thou hast spoken in thy speech, O my mother!" However Zayn al-Asnam took up a pickaxe and, descending to that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... for and those attained, the effect is good. The newspapers publish at length the recommendations of the Executives, and also the results obtained, and keep up public interest in all important matters. "Free to delve in the allurement and fascination of science, emancipated man goes on subduing Nature, as his Maker said he should, and turning her giant forces to his service in his constant struggle to rise and become more ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... is lifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one; for a communion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart. The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, though independent of language, gives to it life and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... tradition overthrown, And dawning promise once more dead In the pernicious lowlihead Of not aspiring to be fair. And what am I, that I should dare Dispute with God, who moulds one clay To honour and shame, and wills to pay With equal wages them that delve About His vines one hour ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... wreath! My forehead wears A hundred leaves—a hundred years I never knew the words: "You must!" And shall my wreath return to dust? Freemen! The door is yet ajar; From northern star to southern star, O ye who count and ye who delve, Come in—before my ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... strength and with steadfast heart, 830 He began to delve for the glorious tree Under its covering of turf, till at twenty feet Below the surface concealed he found Shut out from sight, under the shelving cliff, In the chasm of darkness —three crosses he found, In their gloomy grave together he found them,— 835 ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... twenty-five years. And then—in what state of repair I know not—it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six-sevenths of one per cent, on the purchase price of the gaping ruin sold in 1837. There is a certain poetry in notarial records. But we will not delve for it now. Idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty-five years, or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities the gloomy pile, even when restored and renovated, stood ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest proclamation; ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses, winch ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot be like you. Marjorie and Morris ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... blandishments, threats, force, or appeal to their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that lay ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... bounty's riches, and fair hidden pride; For where the golden ore doth buried lie, The ground, undecked with nature's tapestry, Seems barren, sere, unfertile, fruitless, dry; And where the upper turf of earth doth boast His pride, perfumes, {239} and particoloured cost, Delve there, and find this issue and their pride To spring from ordure and corruption's side. But, to make up my all too long compare, These ragged walls no testimony are What is within; but, like a cloak, doth hide From weather's waste the under garnished pride. More gracious than my terms can let ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... said he to the spade; and so the spade began to dig and delve till the earth and rock flew out in splinters, and so he had the well soon dug out, you ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... delve the darksome dell Where never pierc'd a ray, There to the wailing night-bird tell, 'How love was ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities— To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... by its money price, its private utility. The spirit which gives freely, because it knows that it has received freely; which communicates knowledge without hope of reward, without jealousy and rivalry, to fellow- students and to the world; which is content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by the practical use of some stray talisman which the poor student ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... cavity, excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... manly brood Was trained to delve the Sabine sod, And at an austere mother's nod To hew and fetch ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... valise (or the manuscript) in a seat and go into another car, when you come back the goods may be there and they may not. That is the only way to keep money—fasten your eye right on it. If you leave it in the hands of others, and go away to delve in books, the probabilities are that, when you get back, certain obese attorneys have divided your substance ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... they could do all that a maiden might and more—delve could they no less than spin, hunt no less than weave, brew pottage and helm ships, wake the harp and tell the stars, face all danger ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... to delve at whiles for easel-lumber, Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city, Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas, Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure, Yet under all concealing ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... mantle of the sky No cheering moonbeams delve, And the far village clock hath told The midnight hour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... Without physician, gold, or sorcery: Away forthwith, and to the fields repair; Begin to delve, to cultivate the ground; Thy senses and thyself confine Within the very narrowest round; Support thyself upon the simplest fare; Live like a very brute the brutes among; Neither esteem it robbery The acre thou dost reap, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... considered his whole class as fair game for literary pilfering. That women had been taxed to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet, for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman he is; susceptible of taking in a new idea. He ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... the man who had dropped into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... infinite approbation of the audience." The snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve into ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delve'd gold, the wailers heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God strikes a silence through you all, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... Patty's quick perceptions had caught the flaw in Kenneth's argument. "It isn't that. It's because you're so absorbed in your work that you'd RATHER dig and delve in it, than to go to parties. That's all right, of course, and much to your credit. But you can't blame me for liking a man who is willing to throw over ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... could I now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, That ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... her and said with grave intensity, "How, dear, are the great truths of science to be ascertained unless men—men and their wives—are willing to delve lovingly, to sacrifice comforts, and even endure hardships ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... the period under discussion. Yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by black soldiers because of racial separation. Rarely did the Army staff bother to delve into these matters in the years before Korea, (p. 232) although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions were collected by the War Department itself. This indifference is the more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the War Department Policies ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... Forrest laws, or other custome, the head Gaviler of the Forrest, or others deputed by him, provided they were born in the Hundred of St. Briavel's, may go into any man's grounds whatsoever, within the limitation of the Forrest, and dig or delve for ore and cinders without any molestation. There are two sorts of ore: the best ore is your brush ore, of a blewish colour, very ponderous and full of shining specks like grains of silver; this affordeth the greatest quantity of iron, but being melted alone produceth a mettal ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... know I don't want to delve into a lot of past history at this time, but I've got to talk ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... and then a day. I was what is called a 'bound girl.' I didn't have nice, easy times, like you little ones. You have no idea of my hardships. It was delve and dig from ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May

... house "it snowed of meat and drink"; the sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of its development in which ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... Pericles at Athens, storm the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... for the purpose of fixing the point to a festering sore and which, if removed, would permanently eliminate the liability of such seizures. The patient and her husband were informed that the physician intended to delve to the bottom of this trouble and, by deferring investigation as to its exact nature until the symptoms had practically disappeared, a way was cleared to obtain their complete confidence, and at the same time to overcome any unwillingness to accept a psychical explanation for ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... soon then as the modern politico-social reality is itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... buckle my shoe; Three, four, shut the door; Five, six, pick up sticks; Seven, eight, lay them straight; Nine, ten, a good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, maids a courting; Fifteen, sixteen, maids in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, maids a waiting; Nineteen, twenty, I'm very empty; Please, Mamma, ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... along the Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... Empire: in fact, it would be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ai!" in ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... threshe, and therto dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... the fusing fireballs scorch the sky, Their mining arts the staunch besiegers ply, Delve from the bank of York, and gallery far, Deep subterranean, to the mount of war; Beneath the ditch, thro rocks and fens they go, Scoop the dark chamber plumb beneath the foe; There lodge their tons of powder and retire, Mure the dread passage, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... "Ten o'clock" is that art is not a social activity. "Listen," he cries, "there never was an artistic period. There never was an art-loving nation. In the beginning man went forth each day—some to battle, some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... peasant of his day marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they live on black ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... rough coat would become sleek after a month's good feeding, his legs could be clipped below the knees. Oh! he is full of capabilities. See! he is now acting Sphinx, and looking up at us, as if he could delve into what is passing in our minds, and would turn these vague suggestions to account." Suddenly he sprang to his feet, barked, and seemed much agitated; in a minute we, too, hear the sound of wheels, which his more acute ear had already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... we wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... Sturdy and strong! Summer and autumn time Hasten along; Harvest the sunbeams, then, Bind them in sheaves, Range them, and change them To tufts of green leaves. Delve in the mellow mold, Far, far below, And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow, grow! Grow, little ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein

... despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were no necessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were no decree of God, no real requirement ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... Much of what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter was responsible for the usually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... insects, particularly the larger beetles, have the habit of passing their larval state in the under earth. Here they generally excavate burrows, and thus in a way delve the soil. As many of them die before reaching maturity, their store of organic matter is contributed to the mass, and serves to nourish the plants. If the student will carefully examine a section of the earth either in its natural or in its tilled state, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... World.—But how different is the picture of primitive man suddenly brought face to face with an unknown world. With no knowledge of nature or art, with no theory or practice of social order, he began to dig and to delve for the preservation of life. Suffering the pangs of hunger, he obtained food; naked, he clothed himself; {8} buffeted by storm and wind and scorched by the penetrating rays of the sun, he built himself a shelter. As he gradually became skilled in the industrial ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... understanding of how they came to have the problem that they have. I have yet to encounter the person who protests he has no idea why he doesn't function as he would like to in a certain area. From a practical standpoint, not many have the time nor money required to delve into the unconscious background of the problem. The high cost of treatment is a very real objection and cannot be discounted lightly. People suffering from emotional problems usually suffer financial reverses as well. Who is to help ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless riches just beneath their feet. And rubies and diamonds strew the bottom ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... night to Meryl she could not refrain, from just one little delve into the perplexing situation. "If you and Major Carew met at six o'clock and did not get back until seven, you must have had quite a long chat together. Such a new thing for him! I don't think even I, his trusted friend, can boast of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... my purpose to attempt a detailed history of the Rogue River war as that task were better left to the historian with leisure to delve into the musty records of the past, but I sincerely hope that when the true story of that bloody time is written the kernel of truth will be sifted from the mass of chaff by which it has thus far been obscured. My purpose is merely to give the facts in a general way as I received them, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... crossed his brain, the wish that this case might seem as simple to him as it apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... and it may well be that Albert would be like to gain rank and honour more quickly in this way than by doughty deeds in the field. It is good that each man should stick to his last. As for me, I would rather delve as a peasant than mix in the intrigues of a Court. But there must be courtiers as well as fighters, and I say not aught ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next turn ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... other contact with the earth is like ploughing. You may play upon it, travel over it, delve into it, build your house down on it; but when you strike into the bosom of the fields with your ploughshare, wounding and healing as your feet follow deep in the long fresh cut, you feel the throbbing of the heart ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... feede on carefulnesse, To ditche, to delve, and labour for my bread, Nay rather choose to begge from doore to doore, Then condiscend to offer violence To young Pertillo in his innocence. I know you speake, to sound what mightie share Pertillo hath ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... a hope beyond! What is to be done about it? Suppose the wealth of the universe were divided per capita, how long would it remain out of the clutches of the Napoleons of finance, only a percentage of whom find ultimately their Waterloo, little to the profit of the poor who spin and delve, who fight and die, in the Grand Army ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... John Mason and Captain John Underhill over the Pequots on the hills of Mystic, in 1637, in its results was far greater than that of Wellington on the field of Waterloo. This fact will impress itself in indelible characters on the minds of those who delve into the historical truths connected with the genesis of our settlements, so wide spreading were the fruits of this victory. As the native inhabitants of the eastern part of Long Island and the adjacent islands were subjects of, and under tribute to, these dreaded Pequots,[1] they ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker

... Marco, nothing save the tourists and the contents of the bewildering shops; all else remains the same, a little more tarnished by the sea-winds and the march of the decades, perhaps, but still the same. Read your poets and study your romances, but delve into no disillusioning guide-books. Let us put our faith in the gondolier; for his lies are far more picturesque than a world ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... to delve through the piles of shattered, reduced rock. The foreman held the lantern close, that the young engineer might have all the light he wanted, and called to miners to ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... technique is frowned upon. Or one may consult textbooks and published papers. (This, by the way, is known as library research, and is generally conceded to be indicative of the superior student, especially if he points out the fact that he is so interested that he just had to delve into the literature.) By any technique, the expected results are always obtained. Always. And by everyone. The initial confusions—that some honest students perpetuate—are easily brushed aside as errors due to inexperience, sloppiness, lack of initiative, stupidity ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield

... contest, you will have to delve the ground, it may chance dislocate an arm, sprain an ankle, gulp down abundance of yellow sand, be scourge with the whip—and with all this sometimes lose the victory. Count the cost—and then, if your desire still holds, try the wrestler's life. ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... evidence of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings, I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they surrounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering exclamations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Considering that they dig, delve, carry burthens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome exercise which astounded them, accustomed ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... critic starts out in life with a sort of Procrustean ideal of measurement, to which everything has to be cut down. He is blissfully sure of his standards, and does not need to bother his mind over any possibilities in the way of new artistic developments. Only after he begins to delve into the history of criticism upon his own account does he wake up to the fact that 'the genius is the thing,' and that the slings and arrows of outrageous critics have been ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... Alfred had no idea of who Claudius was, or how long ago he lived. However, when he located him four hundred years back, the old professor said "Huh, four hundred years ago? H-ll! Four thousand years." Alfred did not delve into the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... Mammon in a delve{1} Sunning his threasure hore{2}; Is by him tempted, and led downe ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... of golden thought still scattered through the plays of Shakspere that no author or actor has ever discovered, and although they have read and repeated his lines, for more than three hundred years, there has been no brain able and brilliant enough to delve into or explain the secret caves of Shaksperian wit. Human sparrows cannot know the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... fallen into the river and was so held under by logs that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save without warning, strangely leading us ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... methods of study and management of life problems as well as of specific brain diseases, infections, and gastrointestinal and endocrine conditions, become more and more helpful, even a necessity, in the wards and dispensary of the General Hospital on 16th Street. The layman cannot, perhaps, delve profitably into the details of such a highly and broadly specialized type of work. But he can readily take a share in the best appreciation of the general philosophy ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... DIGGE AND DELVE having had the honour to be commanded to make the necessary arrangements for the obsequies of the late Mr. PITT WELLINGTON, beg to say (on this memorandum) that they have not been fortunate enough to carry out the transaction ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... mere intrenchment for five-and-twenty miles. With bogs, with thickets full of Croats; and such an amount of artillery,—I believe they have in battery no fewer than 1,500 cannon. A position very considerable indeed:—must have taken time to deliberate, delve and invest; but it is done. Near fifty miles of it: here, clear to your glass, has the head of Lacy visibly emerged on us, as if for survey of phenomena:—head of Lacy sure enough (body of him lying invisible ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... happened as the law of triumphs enjoins, about which Dio Cocceianus writes. And if it seems to you an irksome thing to delve into books of ancient writers, at all events I will explain cursorily, as best I may, the entertainments pertaining to the triumph. They cause the celebrator of the triumph to ascend a car, smear his face with ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... the suspicion had come to him that he had accidentally stumbled upon a more complicated plot than mere blackmail. Mrs. Dupont's intimacy with Molly, and the use she was making of her distant relationship with the Major to further her ends, made him eager to delve deeper into her real purpose. At least these two, apparently ignorant of their guest's true character, should be warned, or, if that was impossible, protected from imposture. Their open friendliness and social endorsement ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... about the building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in their quest. No, there is no lightness, even in their happiest moments. To be light, an intelligent swiftness of brain is needed. And these derelicts have little of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... What time the ruddy sun Smiles on the pleasant corn Thy singing is begun, Heartfelt and cheering over labourers' toil, Who chop in coppice wild and delve the russet soil. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... of all time, Great deeds extolled in prose and rhyme, Delve deep in Clio's treasured store, Exhaust encyclopedic lore— You will not find in one edition A hint ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... for you alone that I have lived in this wilderness all these years, thereby saving it from destruction, and warding off the conspiracy that would reduce you to beggary. For your sake only have I so guarded the secret of its wealth that no living soul suspects it. Even the men who delve in its depths know not the value of the material in which they toil, for I have not told them. Nor have I allowed an assay to be made of its smallest fragment; but I know its worth, its fabulous value, that will make the owner of the Copper Princess one of the ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... herself, with a bitter little shrug as she made the request, "A woman who hesitates is lost"), as she lay awake pondering the whole matter, she thought: "It can't be worse than it is, and it won't be very long either way, I think. I can be faithful to him, make and mend, dig and delve, if needs be, for his benefit, in return for the honor he does me in giving me his name and protection. I shall expect nothing, literally nothing, from him that wives usually demand. I, who have borne for years with the caprice of school-girls, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... foreordained to be his wife was not more unbelievable than the consciousness that he, her undeclared lover, her predestined mate and protector, was listlessly permitting her to delve further into the black heart of a land out of which he had promised to convey her with all possible speed, for the salvation of her body and soul.... Yet what could he do, save be passive for the time, and wait upon the turn of events? He could not, dared ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... the city moans with a human cry, And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die; But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay, For God still keeps one playground where He ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the most interesting ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Dixon and Thomas Hoare Made us that bell which wee ring before, Which men for that good deede praie we they maie thrive, For we having but four bells, they made them five; And out of the grownde this bell they did delve The 24th of Julie, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... belief are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no miracle has ever been performed in the world's history that was not ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... prune away only the superfluous; we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its manners and customs. Such is a brief summary ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... them with offences, then executioners carry them into effect. The farmer hath already sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it; sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all this truly ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... clearly what thousands feel without the moral courage to utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... also a mystery, and this fact possibly rendered him all the more interesting to one whose business it had always been to solve mysteries. I do not mean by that that I had ever made any effort to delve into the secrets of Saberevski's past, or to read without his knowledge and consent, any portion of that history which he kept so carefully veiled; but the mere fact that an air of mystery did pervade his presence, imparted to him ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... spin, we delve the mine, Sustaining each his neighbor; And who can hold a right divine To rob us of our labor? We rush to battle—bear our lot In every ill and danger— And who shall make the peaceful cot ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between Dryden and Settle, Dennis and Addison, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... There was no time to delve into Mr. Crymble's motives just then. There was just time to act. The blank wall of the ell shut off Mrs. Crymble's view of the scene. Constable Nute was still well down the road. There was only the basilisk Mr. Reeves on the woodpile. Cap'n Sproul grabbed up a quilt spread to air ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. When Ponce's order to distribute them ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... where and how to hit the ball. If it is lying fairly well, it is only necessary to skim the top of the turf and take it cleanly. There is no necessity in such a case, as is too often imagined by inexperienced players, to delve down into the turf so that the ball may be lifted up. If the stroke is played naturally, in the way I have indicated, the loft on the face of the brassy is quite sufficient to give the necessary amount ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I turn away from that base cave, the mind. Yet ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... Deserting the bar to delve into this mystery, they found the outlaw's pony stretched out beside the hitching-rack near the rear of the building. The owner cast one glance at the dead animal; then his eyes went ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... all such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby? - 'Tis all to taverns ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... man,—not a writer, for in a writer there are many men,—an author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know everything though he does not tell it, never be ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... to trace it back and found that it began in the door of a pioneer log cabin; and oh, what do you think, Claribel, the two ancestors we are proudest of, the ones we all quote the oftenest, and plume ourselves the most on being their descendants, had to dig and delve for everything they got. Old Mrs. Carter told me so this morning." She pointed to the two portraits that headed the long line. "Now if sister makes any objections to our plans, I'll just refer her to the first of the grandmammas who made our hospitality ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston

... in this matter for awhile as though I had not a single doubt as to the authenticity of the old man's tale. I have a theory, and if I am correct I believe I will be able to delve until I strike a clue, and if I do and prove the story correct and solve the mystery, we shall have performed one of the most ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... considering some aspects of the social condition of ancient Greece. The lessons to be learned from that wonderful country are not yet exhausted Each time that we return to that richest of historic mines, and delve faithfully and carefully, we shall be sure to dig up ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... her mountains and streams, and her precious metals. They tell you that she is filled with the basis of all material prosperity, with gold, silver, lead and iron: but greatness can not come from material resources alone—it must come from the people who till and delve. Utah is great because her people are great. When she has centuries behind her she will make a splendid showing because she has started right. She has given to that part of the people who instinctively know what is right, the power to influence the body politic.... This movement is destined ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... They delve in mines, and risk accident, disease and death, or suffer an abjectly lingering life of impoverishment. Thousands of coal miners are killed every year, and many thousands more are injured, in order that two boys and others of their class may draw huge profits.[188] More than 10,000 persons are ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Emile Michel, Member of the Institute of France—that mine of learning about Rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt, decrit et commente, par M. Charles Blanc, de l'Academie Francaise. This sumptuous folio he picked ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes

... concrete Fact he stumbles against. A true method of culture makes drudgery beautiful by presenting a vision of the object to which it leads;—beware of the conceit that dispenses with it! How much better it is to delve for a little solid knowledge, and be sure of that, than to be a proper target for such a sarcasm as a great statesman once shot at a glib advocate, who was saying nothing with great fluency and at great length! "Who," he asked, "is this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... frequent marvellous anticipations of what we think most modern, affect to despise him. His works have never been translated into any modern language except piecemeal, there is no complete translation, and one must be ready to delve into some large Latin, if not Greek, volumes to know what a marvel of medical knowledge he was, and how wise were the men who followed him closely, though, being human, there are times when ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... an old truth—that the boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... and from his notes, there have been gleaned a number of interesting items relative to the language and customs of the inhabitants of Pal-ul-don that are not brought out in the story. For the benefit of those who may care to delve into the derivation of the proper names used in the text, and thus obtain some slight insight into the language of the race, there is appended an incomplete glossary taken from some of Lord ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... a little peasant—she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,—but that night she was as happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver buckles, because she was half a woman; happy in the ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... where it be practicable, should have a small plot of ground to cultivate, that he may dig and delve in, and make dirt-pies if he choose. Children now-a-days, unfortunately, are not allowed to soil their hands and their fine clothes. For my own part, I dislike such model children; let a child be natural—let him, as far as is possible, choose his own sports. Do not be always interfering ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse



Words linked to "Delve" :   trowel, withdraw, rut, dig, rootle, cut into, rout, groove, shovel, root, furrow, turn over, remove, tunnel, take away, take, burrow



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