"Grasping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinking how little those lovely creatures knew of tragedy and sorrow. Theirs was a world secure in beauty, unmarred by the things which man brings upon himself, and this was true because they knew nothing of avarice or grasping greed. Could it be that man, in all his pride, was one of the least ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... were silenced, not satisfied. He looked up moodily at the moon now alone in the sky, for only a vanishing segment of the great vermilion sphere of the sun was visible above the western mountains, when suddenly he felt one of those long grasping claws on his arm. "Now, Rufe, bubby," a most insinuating tone, Crann had summoned, "all them fool fellers air diggin' up the face of the yearth, wharever they kin find a Chilhowee lily—like sarchin' fur a needle in a haystack. ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... grasping the sound arm of his orderly, "I confide her for one hour. Remember that you must die sooner than let any one ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... struggle, I shook myself free with such force that he staggered back, while I bounded forward and snatched the book from the priest's hand, throwing it on the floor, and then, regaining once more the statue of St. Margaret, I stood grasping her with one arm with desperate energy, while I cried: 'A moi, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chair. Robespierre mounted the tribune and tried to speak. It was not without reason that Therezia afterwards said, "This little hand had somewhat to do with overthrowing the guillotine," for Tallien sprang on him, dagger in hand, and, grasping him by the throat, cast him from the tribune, exclaiming, "I have armed myself with a dagger to pierce his heart if the Convention dare not order his accusation." Then rose a great shout from the Centre, "Down with the tyrant, arrest him, accuse him!" From the Centre, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... a hurry! Good golly, folks seem to think talking is all there is to do in this world! Come on, Bland." He hurried on, his mind absorbed in grasping the full significance of Bedelia's excited report of events at the Rolling R and this curious crowd that gaped at him. The thought of Mary V lying unconscious, stricken by the sound of his voice over the telephone, nagged at him persistently and unpleasantly. He ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... in hand, before we take up a new one, what do you think of this by way of illustration?" Ruth asked, as she threw down on the table a daintily written epistle. There was an eager grasping after it by this merry trio, and Eurie securing it, read aloud. It was an invitation for the next evening to a select gathering of choice spirits for the purpose of enjoying a social evening ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... steamer, just as Frank had said; why, he could even distinguish Todd Pemberton up in the pilothouse, grasping his wheel and guiding his charge among the shoals that were charted in the northern end of the lake as dangerous, that is, for green hands at the tiller or wheel of a boat propelled ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... at the front-room window, a hand grasping each side of her waist, her look vaguely directed upon the limetree opposite and the house which it in part concealed. She was a well-grown girl of three and twenty, with the complexion and the mould of form which indicate, whatever else, habitual nourishment ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... to speak, but he gesticulated violently before grasping Pen's shoulder with one hand and waving the other round as if to drive back those who held the ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... so, but rather by reason of his avarice and grasping disposition; for, indeed, he was ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... utter, schooled to universal distrust, stern to his followers and pitiless to himself, bearing the brunt of every hardship and every danger, demanding of others an equal constancy joined to an implicit deference, heeding no counsel but his own, attempting the impossible and grasping at what was too vast to hold—he contained in his own complex and painful nature the chief springs of his triumphs, his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Adrien in a tense whisper, and grasping her arm almost savagely. "Keep your mask on, and come with me. If you are discovered, I will not ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... good!" she replied, leaning her head upon his shoulder, and grasping one of his hands tightly in both of hers. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... capital from every alleged and real form of a grasping, destructive, and disloyal selfishness, which may turn even the present midday of national prosperity and contentment into the threatening deepening gloom of an advancing cyclone ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... last two centuries had sometimes seen their temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny of the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt by their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the quiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... America in State affairs which they constantly make, the greatest difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Grasping the situation, the youth showed himself at the window, where the Sioux were sure to see him, and ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... began to mount still higher. She crawled along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... from thy shrine, O holy Freedom! hath to me A potent power, a voice and sign To testify of thee; And, grasping it, methinks I feel A ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... me in silence. He saw my agitation, and realized something of what I felt, for putting out his hand and grasping mine he said, kindly: "It must be a blow . . . friends all dead, eh? Well, I'm your friend, anyhow . . . and you'll remember later. Why, man, you must get that forty years out of your mind you are surely younger than myself, and will be as strong as a bull in a week or two. Try and ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... think of no other way but by feeling for them with my hands, and boldly grasping them, one at a time, and so squeezing the life out of them. I had already given my attention to trapping them, without success. I had, as you know, killed one, by the only ingenuity I could think of, and likely enough I might get one or two more ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... members of Congress wished to avoid the degrading necessity of showing the nation the prurient administrative sores. Advised, directed, tutored and pushed by Seward, Blair and Chase, Mr. Lincoln is—innocently—as grasping for power, as are any of those despots not ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... often is in Scripture, as a general expression for the whole inward life, and all that the Apostle means is that, by the gift of the Divine Spirit of wisdom, a man's inner nature may be so touched as to be capable of perceiving and grasping ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... tyrants, make the relation between them and us an evil thing. The world was a blessed place to Jesus, because everything in it was his father's. What pain must it not have been to him, to see his brothers so vilely misuse the Father's house by grasping, each for himself, at the family things! If the knowledge that a spot in the landscape retains in it some pollution, suffices to disturb our pleasure in the whole, how must it not have been with him, how must it not be with him ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... [After further successful fighting,] "in the ninth year [506 B.C.], King Ho Lu addressed Wu Tzu-hsu and Sun Wu, saying: "Formerly, you declared that it was not yet possible for us to enter Ying. Is the time ripe now?" The two men replied: "Ch'u's general Tzu-ch'ang, [4] is grasping and covetous, and the princes of T'ang and Ts'ai both have a grudge against him. If Your Majesty has resolved to make a grand attack, you must win over T'ang and Ts'ai, and then you may succeed." Ho Lu followed this ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... By offering to the nation a hope, at which many of their best men seem eagerly grasping, of getting rid of the colored people abroad—they conduce more and more, as this hope prevails, to keep out of mind the superior, unalterable, and immediate duty of righting them ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... unto the coming of our Lord' and finds it in his heart to pray thus because 'Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it' (1 Thess. v. 24). Sometimes it is presented as the steadfast stay grasping which faith can expect apparent impossibilities, as when Sara 'judged Him faithful who had promised' (Heb. xi. 11). Sometimes it is adduced as bringing strong consolation to souls conscious of their own feeble and fluctuating faith, as when Paul tells Timothy that 'If ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the two adventurers. The Count was to keep by the Baron's side, and, thus supported, negotiations were to be delicately opened. Accordingly, when the party rose, the Count whispered a word in Mr. Maddison's ear. The millionaire answered with a grave, shrewd look, and his daughter, as if perfectly grasping the situation, led the Galloshes out to inspect the new fir forest. And then the two noblemen and the two Dariuses faced one another over ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... place in the Garden was a short lobster 'longside of it. Then, he said, he was took down with an incurable disease. He tried and tried to get along, but 'twas no go. He mortgaged the shanty to a grasping money lender—meanin' Poundberry—and that money was spent. Then his sister passed away and his heart broke; so they took him to ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the naturalist grasping both his young friends' hands, — "when did you come? and how is all wiz you? I hope you are ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... like the Lebanon Amirs of old, this khawaja—tells me many edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean. For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great khawaja, when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his paunch and double ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... said Drew never knew, for just then there came a heavy step and the sound of a jovial voice behind him, and Captain Hamilton's hand was grasping his. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... flew wildly about the room. Order was with difficulty restored, the mischievous party summarily chastised and commanded to hold his tongue, under penalty of ejectment from the room if he spoke again. Firmly grasping that red and unruly member, Grif composed himself to listen, with his nose in the air and his ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... the sailor who, while drifting through a tempestuous ocean, clings for safety to a single plank, his powers of grasping it becoming every moment more feeble, and the deep darkness of the night only checkered by the flashes of lightning, hissing as they show the white tops of the billows, in which he is ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... hill several blocks distant, carefully guiding his horse through the debris, was a man in a wagon or buggy. Like a drowning person grasping at a straw, I frantically called and waved my hands. It took me some time to attract attention, but finally he turned in my direction. Hallelujah! As he neared me, I noticed the words, "Spring Valley Water Works," on the sideboard of his wagon. "Madam, can I assist you?" he inquired. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... Gonatopus is furnished with a very remarkable modification of the claws of the front tarsi, which are very strongly developed, and differ somewhat in shape in the different species. It has usually been supposed that these claws were for the purpose of grasping prey, but Professor Mik offers the more satisfactory explanation that they are for the purpose of grasping the Cicadellids, and holding them during ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... that the lineaments of man's ancient ancestor might have been discerned. One can imagine what must have been the pressure from the carnivora that forced a selective transformation of the feet of the progenitor of the anthropoids into grasping hands. Coincidentally with the tree life, man's special line of adaptation—versatility—was undoubtedly rapidly evolved. Increased versatility and the evolution of hands enabled man to come down from the trees millions of years thereafter, to conquer the world ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... destroying those monsters, who during so many ages, have devoured the unhappy victims, which the tyranny of the ministers of Moloch have exacted as a cruel tribute from affrighted mortals. By steadily grasping this inestimable clew, rendered still more precious by the beauty of the donor, man can never be led astray—will never ramble out of his course; but if, careless of its invaluable properties, for a single instant he suffers it to drop from his hand; if, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... happened. That slender and effeminate Petronius seized the hand of the youthful athlete, which was grasping his shoulder, then seized the other, and, holding them both in his one hand with the grip of an iron vice, he said,—"I am incapable only in the morning; in the evening I regain my former strength. Try to escape. A weaver must have taught thee gymnastics, and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... discussed in clubs, accepted and overthrown with equal demonstrations of popular zeal, and which, expressing in their terrible energy the universal dissatisfaction with past and present, the universal grasping at a brighter future, have met and answered so many grave questions,—questions neither propounded nor solved in any of the two hundred constitutions which Aristotle studied in order to prepare himself for the composition of his "Politics." The world had not yet seen a powerful nation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... on a scale inadequate indeed but expressive of a generous intention. The United States retained the great Northwest and the Mississippi became the western frontier, with destiny already whispering that weak and grasping Spain must soon let go of the farther West stretching to the Pacific Ocean. When Great Britain signed peace with France and Spain in January, 1783, Gibraltar was not returned; Spain had to be content with the return of Minorca, and Florida which she had ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... you," said Mr. Cameron. "If you have any further difficulty with this grasping capitalist, come to me and I will give you the best advice ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... enough money to pay the legacies of Csar by sales of property, and by loans, in spite of the fact that Antony refused to give up any that he had taken. He artfully won the soldiers and the people by his liberality (that could not fail to be contrasted with the grasping action of Antony), and by the shows with which he amused them. Thus with it all he managed to make the world believe that he was not laying plans of ambition, but simply wished to protect the state from the selfish designs of his rival. In this effort ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... hurled it at him with a loud roar. Karna, however, with a number of arrows resembling snakes of virulent poison, cut off into many fragments that spiked mace as it coursed towards him with the tremendous peal of thunder. Then Bhima, that grinder of hostile troops, grasping his bow with greater strength, covered Karna with keen shafts. The battle that took place between Karna and the son of Pandu in that meeting became awful for a moment, like that of a couple of huge ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... years, for youth is ever blind, and the young are ever selfish, giving never a thought to the years they must spend, when, grey-haired and wise, they will try to repair with their shaking old hands, the tatters and rents they had made in their thoughtless, grasping youth. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... circumstances—unnecessary. As the canoe dropped slowly down the river, it became obvious that this monkey had a baby, for a very small and delicate creature was seen clinging round the big one's waist with its little hands grasping tightly the long hair on the mother's sides, its arms being much too short to encircle her body. Ailie's heart leapt with an emotion of tender delight as she observed that the baby monkey's face was white and sweet-looking; yes, we ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... house Dorothy stopped short as she caught the sound of voices in the library. She listened intently a second, then she frowned, put her finger on her lips, and grasping Ruth by the hand led her softly across the hall and up-stairs. Not until they had reached the large room in the third story and had closed the door did she break the ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... freedom to love a ruler; but he, for his part, had not sought the office which was thrust upon him by the will of others. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopularity upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Florentines, who noticed every detail, thought her grasping: and though he wanted to restrain her, he found himself unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... he cried, grasping my hand heartily, "how glad I am to see you. Come along in and let mother give you some tea. Nonsense!" he waved away my protest. "Marigold, stop that engine and bring in the Major. I've got lots of things to tell ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... old Spanish grandee. Now they found a sacramental vessel which had been destined as a gift to some Catholic church. Now they drew up a golden cup fit for the King of Spain to drink his wine out of. Perhaps the bony hand of its former owner had been grasping the precious cup and was drawn up along with it. Now their rakes or fishing lines were loaded with masses of silver bullion. There were also precious stones among the treasure, glittering and sparkling so that it is a wonder how their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... seldom regulated by the beneficial discipline of education, and early collision with their equals." It must be yet more "galling" for Queens, because they always have been more flattered, and are imaginative enough to fancy that in grasping the symbols they hold ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... he, nervously grasping his reins, and becoming very pale. "I have no news, and yet, if she were dead, my heart would tell me so; I believe, then, that she is alive, and, should I fall to-day, there hangs a medal lion around my neck (her dear portrait), which must be sent ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... loves to swim, climb trees, and hunt like a savage all at the same period, and, what is more, some of these same tendencies characterize the college man. The late maturing of the sex instinct, so old and strong in the race, and the early appearing of the tendencies towards vocalization and grasping, both of late date in the race, are facts that are hard to explain on the basis of the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Volumes of light rolled upon his eyes and head, and he found himself transported to a beach of the sea under a strong sun, with a great surf roaring: he and the warlock standing there on the same mat, speechless, gasping and grasping at one another, and passing ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grasping his hand effusively, as she took her first step toward Clytie. "Now, you will come ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... assassinated the youthful Alexander, and proclaimed himself king of Macedonia. He had before this been on bad terms with Pyrrhus, who had made incursions into Thessaly, and the usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbours, especially since the death of Deidameia. Now, however, as they both claimed Macedonia, they were brought into direct collision, and Demetrius, after mating a campaign in AEtolia and leaving Pantauchus with a large force to guard ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... piquant couplet, the listeners testified their approbation by a hum of mirthful applause. Before the song was over, Luis had sought and found a means of observing what was passing within doors. Grasping the lower branch of a tree which grew within a few feet of the corner of the house, he swung himself up amongst the foliage. A large bough extended horizontally below the open window, and by climbing along this, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... man stared in astonishment. "It seems like a face I ought to know," he said, "but I can't place thee." They withdrew to the shade of one of the poplars. Friend Carter turned again, much moved, and, grasping the old man's hands in ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... rather more eagerness over his acceptance than May considered necessary. Indeed, she remarked so much to her husband whilst she was taking off her hat; then a sudden thought struck her, and she paused, with her fingers still grasping ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the organic hosts were in the prehuman stage the maintenance of the accord was easily and naturally attained. Species arose and perished, each in turn effecting a simple reconciliation with the others, grasping only so much room and food as was necessary for its proper support. But with the coming of man, the species which by its swiftly progressive desires has become a host in itself, a disturbing element was introduced into the old ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... lamentably, and sink into corruption and anarchy and tyranny, simply because the people for whom the constitution was made did not develop the qualities which alone would enable them to take advantage of it. With any people the essential quality to show is, not haste in grasping after a power which it is only too easy to misuse, but a slow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities, such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit of self-reliance, of moderation, which alone enable a people to govern ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... a bargain!" said Reas, eagerly grasping the ring that Sigurd took from his belt pouch; "and you may take the ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... of dread he half raised himself, grasping the sofa with his knotted hands. He slid down, half crawling and half falling, into the corner, where he crouched, breathless and shuddering; so he was when Helen came ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... press being very active, there is every reason to believe, in view of the wide field of German and foreign journalism over which the influences of the chancellor extended at the time, that he had a finger, not alone in the denunciation on the one hand of Empress Frederick as grasping, mercenary, and too much of an Englishwoman to be a patriotic German, but likewise in the abuse of Emperor William for unfilial conduct. Every act of his that could possibly be construed as such, was painted in the blackest of colors, especially ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... many heroisms and so many crimes, from Eve and Helen to Manon Lescaut, had grasped him with his wizard power. Poor Germain, thitherto so worthy and so well-intentioned, rose in the morning an adventurer—an adventurer, it is true, driven by desperation and anguish into his dangerous part, and grasping the hope of nevertheless yet winning by some forlorn good deed the forgiveness of her who was ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... and pity of it. We retraced our steps, but now following the edge of that precipice out of which we had emerged. I had peremptorily insisted on carrying her. She put her arms round my neck and, to my uplifted heart, she weighed no heavier than a feather. Castro, grasping my arm, guided my steps and gave me support ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... "Liar!" shouted Cesarini, grasping Vargrave's arm with the strength of growing madness, while his burning eyes were fixed upon his tempter's changing countenance. "You, too, loved Florence; you, too, sought her hand; you ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and Father Balbi followed me. Soradaci who had come as far as the opening, had orders to put the plate of lead back in its place, and then to go and pray to St. Francis for us. Keeping on my hands and knees, and grasping my pike firmly I pushed it obliquely between the joining of the plates of lead, and then holding the side of the plate which I had lifted I succeeded in drawing myself up to the summit of the roof. The monk had taken hold of my waistband to follow ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an indifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious Society. Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous concerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we may let go of old things too precious to be lost. Hence I have been pleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting articles upon a Hired Ministry and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... just the thing for the vast majority of the people; the fight comes with a handful of greedy fellows so stingy and grasping that neither law nor cobbler can take their measure. And now supposing some one should ask: "Who are the rich girls with dowries going to marry, if you make this rule ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... already done so, were hurriedly closing their stores. The cars were blocked, and foot travellers fleeing in all directions. From the thickest of the crowd, a mighty creature of bone and muscle, a giant in height and breadth, grasping an iron support twisted from a bench, had forced his way out to the street, and now was using it to pry up the bricks from the sidewalk, which in turn were seized ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... somehow," said Rudolf. "Anyway, I sha'n't bother any more looking for him." Still grasping his sword, he climbed back into the big bed between his brother and sister. Peter was still cross and grumbly. He kept insisting that Mittens might have disappeared inside the bed—which was a piece of nonsense neither of the ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... a wooden armchair before a table covered with books and papers, yet with that apparently haughty attitude towards it affected by gentlemen of abdominal fullness, Colonel Starbottle supported himself with one hand grasping the arm of his chair and the other vigorously plying a huge palm-leaf fan. He was perspiring freely. He had taken off his characteristic blue frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, and collar, and, stripped only to his ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is hung with portraits of many Cecils, by Lely, Vandyck, Kneller, Reynolds and other masters. Note the huge dimensions of the carved balustrade; the strange rustic figures portrayed thereon; and the lions grasping shields bearing heraldic devices. ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... to this Didu, and represented it with a somewhat grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds, and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. This, perhaps, was the most ancient form of Osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rode, bending all his energies to overtake the animal. The wagon was swaying from side to side, and more than once the woman just saved herself from being thrown out by grasping the edge of the seat. She found that her standing position was a dangerous one and crouched on the ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... movement—changed, indeed, but perfectly to be recognised by him, her father. And by the cruel, the monstrous accidents of the meeting, she had been swept away from him again into this whirlpool of London, before he had had the smallest chance of grasping at the little form as it floated past him on this aimless stream of things. His whole nature was in surging revolt against life—against men's senseless theories of God and Providence. If it should prove that he had lost ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... price, and shut up the works. Prices of linseed oil have been raised somewhat, we confess; but we claim that they had been forced down much too low, by the excessive competition which has prevailed for a few years past. Of course some of the most hot-headed and grasping among us, were anxious to force prices away up, when they once realized that we had an absolute monopoly of the linseed oil trade of the country; but the great majority were practically unanimous in a demand for just prices only, and ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... interested, "what land whale of these plains blows sand up in that fashion?" Then I saw several heads turned in that direction, and heard some one say something about a shell, and finally I succeeded in grasping, not without a thrill, the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... one, so that we may see how piggy is finally disposed of. The cart ascends the hill till it comes to a line of buildings with the canal running at the back thereof; a huge and solid block lies ready for the corpse, and at each side appear a pair of brawny arms grasping a long cleaver made scimitar-shape; smaller tables are around, and artists with sharp knives attend thereat. Piggy is brought in from the cart, and laid on the solid block; one blow of the scimitar-shaped cleaver severs ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Headstrong; and when he made a sudden halt, planted himself firmly on his solid supporter, with his wooden leg inlaid with silver a little in advance, in order to strengthen his position, his right hand grasping a gold-headed cane, his left resting upon the pummel of his sword, his head dressing spiritedly to the right, with a most appalling and hard-favored frown upon his brow, he presented altogether ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of our arrival spread abroad, a great number of Acadian exiles flocked to our camp to greet and welcome us. Ah! petiots, how can I describe our joy and rapture, when we recognized countenances familiar to us. Grasping their hands, with hearts too full for utterance, we wept like children. Many a sorrowing heart revived to love and happiness on that day. Many a wife pressed to her bosom a long lost husband. Many a fond parent clasped ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... it's nothing. Did I say he? I was faint with the heat. Don't mention it. Don't you speak of it," she added earnestly, grasping his arm. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... in dressing-gown and slippers, was sitting there in the damp without a hat on. With one hand he was tightly grasping his forehead, the other hung over his knee. The attitude bespoke with sufficient clearness a mental condition of anguish. He was quite a different being from any of the men to whom her eyes were accustomed. She had never seen ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... perceived the insult conveyed in the reply, grasping the neck of his long robe; but Biberli felt that he had seized only the hood, swiftly unclasped it, and as he hurried to a side door, through which loud voices echoed, Siebenburg heard the low cry of a woman. It came from behind a curtain spread over some clothes that hung on the wall, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ever such courage! Looking back into her eyes I saw a light that by its own vital force was self-translated, requiring no words, nor the sight of her fingers grasping the handle of that small revolver at her waist, to tell of her determination. In spite of myself I shuddered; yet she was so calm, so wonderful in her abiding faith of catching up with me on that Long Trail that knows no turning back, that ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... robot arms grasping him firmly. He struggled to break loose, and saw Steve trying to say something, only no words were coming. Steve ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... this kind. Mrs. Davilow ventured a hesitating opinion that perhaps it would be safer to say nothing—Gwendolen was so sensitive (she did not like to say willful). But the rector's was a firm mind, grasping its first judgments tenaciously and acting on them promptly, whence counter-judgments were no more for him than shadows fleeting across the solid ground to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Grasping in his hands {804} A goblet wreath'd with ivy, fill'd it high With the grape's purple juice, and quaff'd it off Untemper'd, till the glowing wine inflamed him; Then binding round his head a myrtle wreath, Howls ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... rivaled Humboldt and been in his prime at eighty. His brain was the brain of Ricardo; but instead of sticking to his boos, he got caught in the swirl of politics, and was matched up with the cheap, the selfish, the grasping. The people who snatched Henry George out of his proper sphere as a thinker, writer and lecturer, and flung him into the turmoil of practical politics, were of exactly the class who would, if they could, have a little later ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Cesareo. "But I will have vengeance on my rival;" and he left the garden, muttering curses, and grasping the cross ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... them. I am not prepared to accept this conclusion. I have been a good deal in America, and I know that our practical cousins there do not refuse to avail themselves of advantages within their reach, by grasping at those which are beyond it. In 1854, I travelled by railway from New York to Washington. We had several ferries to cross on the way, but we found that the railway with the ferries was much better than no Railway at all. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... uncle and his men will fight; we'll all fight," Elise retorted, her hands grasping the arms of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 90 will aid the boy in grasping the situation. A is the airship; B the path of its flight; a the course of the bomb after it leaves the airship; and D the earth. The question is how to determine the proper movement ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... is a providential arrangement—I mean this youthful incapacity of grasping the consolations brought by Time. For, after all, life, being there, has to be lived; and maybe life would be lived in a half-hearted fashion did we suspect its many compensations, including what may, methinks, be the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... day actually made the landlady of the Hotel de Perou, though she was a hard, grasping woman of Auvergne, gave a thought to the condition of her lodgers, and one quite different from her usual idea of obtaining the maximum of rent for the ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... entered the house, appeared at the aperture. His finger was on his lips, and his small grey eyes gleamed with an unusual expression of decision and vigilance. One lynx-like glance he cast into the apartment, and then grasping the arm of Baltasar, he drew, almost dragged him through the opening. The pannel closed with as little ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... but wander on the shore night-stilled, Drinking its darkness till my soul is filled; The breathing of the salt sea on my hair, My outstretched hands but grasping ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... but interesting in the usual bearing of Prussian officers. In our own Revolutionary war, generals developed pride and avarice and jealousy. War turned Tilly into a fiend. How cold and sullen and selfish it made Napoleon! How grasping and greedy it made Marlborough! How unscrupulous it made Clive and Hastings! How stubborn and proud it made Wellington! How vain and pompous it made Scott! How overbearing it made Belle-Isle and Villars! How reckless and hard it made Ney and Murat! The dangers and miseries of war develop sternness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... congratulate you. (Grasping his hand.) What a noble, splendid, inspired address you gave us! ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... these fellows getting ready to fire. John, take care!" and Aunt Gwen, in her eager desire to warn the doctor, waves her hands in the air, one of them grasping a fluttering white kerchief. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... of both good and ill, but as torture they are the merest mockery when compared with the fruitless chase to which poor Death has been condemned for ever and ever. Does it not seem as though he too must have committed some crime for which his sentence is to be for ever grasping after that which becomes non-existent the moment he grasps it? But then I suppose it would be with him as with the rest of the tortured, he must either die himself, which he has not done, or become used to it and enjoy the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... doctor, able to return with her former fervour to her prayers. She prayed till seven o'clock. As the clock struck, the executioner without a word came and stood before her; she saw that her moment had come, and said to the doctor, grasping his arm, "A little longer; just a few ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... have taken with him on his flight securities to the amount of L1,200,000. Even so it is typical of the grasping nature of the man that he complained of having to leave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... lady's lips There speak her grievous woe, Though in her chamber in the night Her frequent tears would flow. She dreamt of wrong where love was sought, Of crafty cruel eyes, Of one steep stair, of grasping hands That stifled ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... could converse more at our ease. There I recounted to him the ungenerous usage I had met with from Potion; at which relation he started up, stalked across the room three or four times in a great hurry, and, grasping his cudgel, cried, "I would I were alongside of him—that's all—I would I were alongside of him!" I then gave him a detail of my adventures and sufferings, which affected him more than I could have imagined; and concluded with telling him that Captain Oakun was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... us, now sweeping around the point like a wild bird, amid a smother of spray, appeared the advance canoe. As it disappeared I could distinguish De Artigny at the stern, his coat off, his hands grasping a paddle. Above the point once more and in smoother water, I was aware that he turned and looked back, shading his eyes from the sun. I could not but wonder what he thought, what possible suspicion had come to him, regarding my presence ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Fillmore Flagg at the close of his oration. George Gerrish arose and paid a glowing tribute to the wisdom and eloquence of the orator; after which, grasping him by both hands, he said, "Fillmore, I am proud of you! Solaris is more than proud of the masterful way in which you have treated the entire subject! Your presentation of the theme, seemed to me to be so perfect, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... you've won her for a wife, And ante-nuptial glamour dies, What food for matrimonial strife Her crass inconsequent replies. How terrible to find her dense, And never grasping what you mean; You'll think one gleam of common sense Worth more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various |
