"Strained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his Wazir and those present in the assembly heard the Prince's words they said to his father, "O our lord the King, in very sooth thy son is the most accomplished man of his time;" and they called down blessings upon the King and the Prince. Then the King strained his son to his bosom and kissed him between the eyes and questioned him of what had passed between the favourite and himself; and the Prince sware to him, by Almighty Allah and by His Holy Prophet that it was she who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... "I'm quite of Miss Rose's way of thinking—straining at gnats is very ill-manners, especially at table. I once knew a man who strained in this way, until I thought he would have choked, though it was with a fly to be sure; but gnats are nothing but small flies, you know, Miss Rose. Yes, I'm quite of your way of thinking, Miss Rose; it is very vulgar ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... strained "Good-night, sir," to the evangelist and a courteous bow to Mrs. Gwynne, the Rector followed the people, leaving the evangelist and his wife behind packing up their hymn books and organ, their faces only too clearly showing ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... And the halves hover hawklike to pounce on the ball, And the runners poise ready, while the mass of hot men Heaves and slips, like rough bullocks making play in a pen, And the crowd sees the heaving, and is still, till it break, So the riders endeavoured as they strained for ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... which is the real physical basis of all matter, we find indissolubly associated with each and all of the varied forms and modifications certain motions which are analogous to each other. In the aetherial atom itself, so infinitesimal in its proportions that even our imagination is almost strained in our attempt to conceive it, yet even here we have rotation and translation in an orbit, such rotation and translation being due to the motions of the electro-magnetic Aether. Then in the gaseous forms of matter into which these atoms may be condensed, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... sunrise they were abreast of the Curzolares, a cluster of huge rocks, or rocky islets, which, on the north, defends the entrance of the Gulf of Lepanto. The fleet moved laboriously along, while every eye was strained to catch the first glimpse of the hostile navy. At length the watch from the foretop of the Real called out, "A sail!" and soon after announced that the whole Ottoman fleet was in sight. Several others, climbing up the rigging, confirmed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the moment, so increasing the blackness of impending horror; then, under the influence of this last applied stimulus, his sight grew preternaturally keen. He discerned one moving form—two—three; to his over-strained nerves there seemed a whole posse behind them. Oh, the Eyes, the Eyes that were so constantly on him! Could he never rid himself of them! He bent his head to the sleeting blast and darted down the middle of the street to ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... a laugh put back her fair hair. Her face was very pale—a greyish pallor—and her wonderful eyes stared from it in an odd, strained way. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... savagely. It wrote: "When Mr. Butler's 'Life and Habit' came before us, we doubted whether his ambiguously expressed speculations belonged to the regions of playful but possibly scientific imagination, or of unscientific fancies; and we gave him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, we strained a point or two to find a reasonable meaning for him. He has now settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... intelligence, but fraternal sentiment as well, are those of a social character. The aggregation that we call society is bound together by ties of sympathy, strengthened it may be by culture, but often strained by selfishness and pride. The relation of man to nature and her physical forces commands the highest functions of the mind, but the relation of man to his fellows not only enlists the highest intellectual ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... and they strolled to and through the Main and into the alcove. James and Lola, the latter looking terribly strained and worn, had already eaten, but joined them in ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Strained by conflicting emotions, I fidgeted awkwardly about Cousin Frank's chair, pinching the hem of my apron into folds, and shifting from one ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... sofa, and rushing to the door, threw it open. The next apartment was the dining-room, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp. There she saw Camors, crouched upon the floor, sobbing furiously and beating his forehead against a chair which he strained in a convulsive embrace. Her tongue refused its office; she could find no word, but seating herself near him, gave way to her emotion, and wept silently. He dragged himself nearer, seized the hem of her dress and covered it with kisses; his breast heaved tumultuously, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... wherefore persecut'st thou me?" He heard and saw, and sought to free His strained eye from the sight: But Heaven's high magic bound it there, Still gazing, though untaught to bear ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... circumstance," says Mr. Nichols, "pointed out to me by Dr. Johnson himself."' Lit. Anec. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... set in a smooth green carpet, threw out tiny, polished, early May leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted the long park. Beyond them the broad blue river twinkled in the sun, the tugs and barges glided down, the yachts strained their white sails against the purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the long, unbroken rows of brick and stone; story on story of shining windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of clean granite steps, polite, impersonal, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... he trotted off to where Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus were tied to the wheels of the waggon, put his nose to each, and barked; and in the place of a patient attack upon tormenting flies and fleas, the dogs leaped up, strained at their thongs, and barked ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... strangers, in Newport they are enemies; in both places the quality of friendship is strained. The two problems of existence are, Whom shall I recognize? and, Who will recognize me? A man's standing depends upon the women he knows; a woman's upon the women she cuts. At a summer resort recognition is a fine art which is ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... dear fellow, the present situation between my wife and myself is very much strained, and I never care to find myself alone with her altogether, because my position is ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. It almost seemed to him as though he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... out tomorrow, if we camp within five miles—just to get everything in running order and remember if we've forgotten anything.' The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and the dogs strained low in the harnesses in which they were born ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... every prospect that the matter would be officially investigated just as soon as the department commander could turn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still at large. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, Captain Devers, strained relations existed,—the former holding to the theory that the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no one else, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against the imputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and moving heaven and earth ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... upon it, and tried to hurl it from its seat. In this I failed at first, for I found it firmly fixed. But in dread lest, the first shock of amazement passing away, the guards would rush upon me before I had effected my purpose, I strained with all my might; and, with a noise as of the cracking, and breaking, and tearing of rotten wood, something gave way, and I hurled the image down the steps. Its displacement revealed a great hole in the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Finn then ordered one of the negroes to bring a couple of powerful oxen, yoked to a gill, employed to drag out the stumps of old trees. For many minutes the oxen were lashed and goaded in vain; every yarn of the hawser was strained to the utmost, till, at last, the two brutes, uniting all their strength in one vigorous and final pull, it was dragged from the water, but the monster had escaped. The hook had straightened, and to its barb were attached pieces of thick bones and cartilages, which must have belonged ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Mike," she said in a low, and, as I thought, rather strained voice. "Is anything ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued, in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor troubles, Abbot Gerard in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected on the way to the meadow: the scholars met in force and demolished them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called his vassals ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and Sawkins—although the ladder was as yet only a little more than half the way up—noticed, as they hauled and strained on the rope, that it had worn a groove for itself in the corner of the brickwork at the side of the window; and every now and then, although they pulled with all their strength, they were not able to draw in any part of the rope at all; and it seemed to them as if those others ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Although Ralph strained his eyes in the direction in which the captain had been looking, he could see nothing; but he had no doubt a sail had been seen coming up astern, and that the object of the change of course was to let her pass them without their being seen. He rather wondered ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... "She strained herself just before I got to Mr. Chamberlain's. I was passing a young man by the name of Hunter and she fell flat. Say, do you know anything about ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... all her help they made a slow pace. The forest grew more and more dense; there seemed no opening, no prospect of an opening. She knew what must be in store for them if the Abbot had uncoupled his bloodhounds, so she strained every nerve in her young body, listened to every murmur or swish of the trees, every one of the innumerable, inexplicable noises a great wood gives forth. She suffered, indeed, intensely; yet Prosper never knew it. He played upon her, quite unconsciously, by wondering over the difficulties of the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... or any root of the smallest shrub. More than one pole cracked: more than one fastening gave way, when he had barely time to shift his weight upon a better support. He heard his grandfather's voice calling, and he could not answer. It disturbed him, now that his joints were strained, his limbs trembling, and his mouth parched so that his breath rattled ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... Ellen strained her eyes, but could make out nothing, not even a glimpse of white. She sat back in her chair, her heart beating violently. Presently Mr. Van Brunt jumped down and opened a gate at the side of the road; and with a great deal of "gee"-ing, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and the order was given, 'Square mainyards!' Someone wailed a hauling cry and the great yards swung round, tops'l lifting to the quartering wind. As the wind drew aft she gathered weight and scudded before the gale. Seas raced up and crashed their bulk at us when, at the word, we strained together to drag the foreyards from the backstays. Now she rolled the rails under—green, solid seas to each staggering lift. At times it seemed as if we were all swept overboard there was no hold to the feet! We stamped and floundered ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... bound to the household by an hundred ties of sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and in America, where there is rarely even a common language or nationality to form a bond, and where households are broken up with such facility, the relation between master and servant is often so strained and so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what foreigners reproach us with being), a nation of hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class- feeling greatly to be wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing. From the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as "help," to the "great" establishment ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... below, which meant that we were aground and wanted assistance, to let the men on watch at the Hurst Castle signal- station know what was up with us; and, in addition, our smart commanding officer put on a party of boys at the pumps, to see whether the brig might not have strained her timbers and sprung a leak, through working about on the nasty ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... descriptive of the scenes which our traveller has visited. We shall extract some of these adaptations of the ancient picture to the modern scene, marking the points of resemblance which appear to be strained and forced, as well as those which are more easy and natural: but we must first insert some preliminary matter from the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the oxen strained, the lumbering waggons groaned as they moved away, and while the Scotch band passed over the Zuurbergen range and headed in the direction of the Winterberg mountains, their English friends spread themselves over the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sands of life, Where thought hath swept her purifying wave, Bearing the treasures of the unsearched deep To swell the riches of humanity. That is a happiness apart from man To aid, to sympathise with, or destroy; In its calm solitude alike secure From the broad adulation of the weak, And the strained condescension of the great, Both insults to the mighty soul within, That is not prized but for its golden shrine. Here there is that which makes the spirit free And noble in the measure of its strength, Untrammelled by conventionalities That make the very light of heaven take worth ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... muscle in his broad back and arms was strained to the uttermost; so also were the muscles of his companions, and the canoe seemed to advance by a series of rapid leaps and bounds. Yet the sound of the pursuers' oars seemed to increase, and soon the proverb "it is the pace that kills" ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the evening train just coming up to the depot platform. That diamond flashed like the Gould's Bluffs light. The sight of it would have made Zach Bloomer feel at home. And when I found out what it cost! My soul and body! Well, I used all the brains I had and strained them a little, I'm afraid, but at last I made him understand that perhaps something a tiny bit smaller would look, when I wore it in the front of my dress, a little less like a bonfire on a hill and we went back to the jewelry store together. The upshot of it was that I have a brooch—lots ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... approaching train must be dreading her arrival. And when at last the train rolled in, and he spied her shapely little head in the on-coming throng of travellers, Roger saw by her set steady smile and the strained expression on her face that he had guessed right. With a quick surge of compassion he pressed forward, kissed her awkwardly, squeezed her arm, then hastily greeted the children and hurried away to see to the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... hearts of these two visitants,—visitants not from Heaven, but from Paradise,—were fastened with a keen interest and strained attention upon the unfolding of that wondrous Life of Christ. His works and words were the theme of their adoring contemplation. May we not learn then, that what these two great Saints could do was, therefore, at least a possible thing ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... home he had ever travelled in that direction. He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London. The Strand had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street, but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample and beautiful grounds stretching to the river—grounds that are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they don't know an iota of what they are doing. But what I am sure of, and many other men also, is that there is no order, that here there is not a single person in authority whom to obey. This superfluity of rulers will finally lead to strained relations between them and the towns of this province will end ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of music he was holding, and ran to fetch a chair for her. He no longer looked at Ellen, for Frances's pallor and the strained look in her eyes filled him ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... these preliminary necessities. Our problems of conduct lie in the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be. First then a man must get a living, a fair civilized living for himself. It is a fundamental duty. It must be a fair living, not pinched nor mean nor strained. A man can do nothing higher, he can be no service to any cause, until he himself is fed and clothed and equipped and free. He must earn this living or equip himself to earn it in some way not socially disadvantageous, he must contrive as far as ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... observed in the gallery of the statues of the kings, carved directly above the arches of the portal, a strange spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with such impassiveness, with a neck so strained, a visage so hideous that, in his motley accoutrement of red and violet, he might have been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters for six hundred years. This spectator ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... round about; over, and enclosing us, like Aphrodite's arms; as if the dome of the sky were a bell-flower drooping down over us, and the magical essence of it filling all the room of the earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air. Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained upwards on the bank, striving to keep above the rude grasses that push by them; genius has ever had such a struggle. The plain road was made beautiful by the many thoughts it gave. I came every morning to ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... squally. The foot of the top-gallant-mast was working between the cross and trussel trees, and the royal-mast lay over at a fearful angle with the mast below, while everything was working, and cracking, strained to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the contents of their plates, followed this explosion. Miss Vernon demurely smiled to herself, and finally kicked Hugh's foot. He laughed aloud suddenly and insanely and then choked. Veath grew very red in the face, perhaps through restraint. The conversation from that moment was strained until the close of the meal, and they did not ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the secretary came in again with great excitement, begging that she would not see the visitors, as one of the men from downstairs had 'phoned up to her that he did not like the appearance of the strangers; they seemed to be trying to talk in high strained voices, and they had very large feet. Maybe they were ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... who had worked briskly in the morning, are beginning to loiter. Out of the washing-tins hands come up red and swollen, only to be plunged again into hot dirty water. Would the whistle never blow? Once I pause an instant, my head dazed and weary, my ears strained to bursting with the deafening noise. Quickly a voice whispers in my ear: "You'd better not stand there doin' nothin'. If she catches you she'll give it ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... fibre of the molten frame, When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts Its heyday verve and little hints enflame, Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts Welled the soft word, and many a tender name Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained And the deep joy they ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... most of the very rich women of fashion who have come to Paris of late years, and he has become so prosperous, has such a polite celebrity, and his opinions upon art are so conclusively quoted, that the friendship of some of us who started with him has been dangerously strained. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Zingall to the schooner. The crew noticed that he came aboard quite like any other man, descending the ladder with even more care than usual. He was a small man, of much dignity, with light grey eyes which had been so strained by the exercise of his favourite hobby that they appeared to be starting from his head. He chatted agreeably about freights for some time, and then, at his brother skipper's urgent entreaty, consented to go below and give them a ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... on the other. As through a fog he saw the Mexican dance back to his corner to be received joyously by his seconds. He saw Jack Dempsey looking up at him, nodding his head and smiling. He saw a terribly anxious look on a pale, strained face he slowly recognized as that of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... received reinforcements in the form of renewed orders from his principals. Many of the faces that fringed the inner circle of that crowd were frightful to look upon, some white as though just lifted from hospital pillows, others red to the verge of apoplexy—all strained as though awaiting the coming of the jury with a life or death verdict. They all knew that Bob had sold more than a hundred thousand shares of Sugar upon which the profits must be more than four million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short stock, which must ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands—now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp, blue bundle much ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... eunuchs, 'Go to the Commander of the Faithful and tell him that I await him after a little space, that I may make ready for him a place with carpets and so forth.' So they returned in haste to the Khalif, whilst Shemsennehar, doffing her (outer) clothing, repaired to her beloved Ali ben Bekkar and strained him to her bosom and bade him farewell, whereat he wept sore and said, 'O my lady, this leave-taking will lead to the ruin of my soul and the loss of my life; but I pray God to grant me patience to bear this my love, wherewith He hath smitten me!' 'By Allah, answered she, 'none will suffer ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... The fleeter game of all kinds now shot past us like arrows; deer were bounding over the ground, in company with wolves and panthers; droves of elks and antelopes passed swifter than a dream; then a solitary horse or a huge buffalo-bull. From our intense anxiety, although our horses strained every nerve, we almost appeared to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Smoker to remain, then set off. He had to make a circuit of three miles to get to the spot where the thorns extended from the forest, and Edward saw no more of him, although he strained his eyes, until the stag sprung out, and the gun was discharged. Edward perceived that the stag was not killed, but severely wounded, running towards the covert near which he was hid. "Down, Smoker," said he, as he cocked his gun. The stag came within shot, and was coming nearer ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... in vain that Stephen strained his ears, the voices that had not been drowned in the noise of footsteps had been growing fainter with distance, and now ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 750,000 during the period 1989-97, bringing the population of Israel from the former Soviet Union to one million, or one-sixth of the total population. Initially this great influx increased unemployment, intensified housing problems, and strained the government budget. At the same time, the immigrants bring to the economy scientific and professional expertise of substantial ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... brood with keenest subtlety, Sending our reason forth, like Noah's dove, To know why we are here to die, hate, love, With Hope to lead and help our eyes to see Through labour daily in dim mystery, Like those who in dense theatre and hall, When fire breaks out or weight-strained rafters fall, Towards some egress struggle doubtfully; Though we through silent midnight may address The mind to many a speculative page, Yearning to solve our wrongs and wretchedness, Yet duty and wise passiveness ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Gravener—I thought her silence the only good taste and her gaiety perhaps a part of the very anxiety of that discretion, the effect of a determination that people shouldn't know from herself that her relations with the man she was to marry were strained. All the weight, however, that she left me to throw was a sufficient implication of the weight HE had thrown in vain. Oh she knew the question of character was immense, and that one couldn't entertain any plan for making merit ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... With strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the steps of their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him open the outer door. There were a few words as of greeting. Then they were aware of a strange step inside and of an unfamiliar voice. An instant later ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... currency of bank notes on a capital to be created to some extent out of Government stocks. Although this proposition was refused by a direct vote of the Convention, the object was afterwards in effect obtained by its ingenious advocates through a strained construction of the Constitution. The debts of the Revolution were funded at prices which formed no equivalent compared with the nominal amount of the stock, and under circumstances which exposed the motives of some of those who participated in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... very silence being punished with the penalties of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror. Though Wolsey had strained the law to the utmost, he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice. If he shrank from assembling parliaments, it was from his sense that they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... "As-cen-s-e-u-r!" in a singing roar, into which he threw his whole soul, as a young tiger does. As the train passed the boy, Mary, gazing out of the corridor window, looked straight down the deep round tunnel that was his open mouth, and caught his strained eye. He suddenly looked self-conscious, and broke into a foolish yet pleasant smile. Mary smiled too, like a child, showing her dimples. Then she knew that she would get out at Monte ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... head toward the dark martello tower, for a woman's arms were now clasped around her, and loving lips pressed her own. "Free at last, my own darling! Free!" cried Alixe Delavigne, as she strained her gentle captive to her bosom. "My own poor darling! Now, we shall never be parted! My darling! ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... bring them about—would leave us with a sort of clarified Problem of the Unemployed on our hands. Our Minimum Wage would have strained these people out, and, provided there existed what is already growing up, an intelligent system of employment bureaus, we should have much more reason to conclude than we have at present, that they were mainly unemployed because of a real incapacity ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of those very large canoes called lanchas by the Spaniards. A pilot and four Indians were sufficient to manage it. They constructed, near the stern, in the space of a few hours, a cabin covered with palm-leaves, sufficiently spacious to contain a table and benches. These were made of ox-hides, strained tight, and nailed to frames of brazil-wood. I mention these minute circumstances, to prove that our accommodations on the Rio Apure were far different from those to which we were afterwards reduced in the narrow boats of the Orinoco. We loaded the canoe ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... overthrown and the shah was forced into exile. Conservative clerical forces established a theocratic system of government with ultimate political authority nominally vested in a learned religious scholar. Iranian-US relations have been strained since a group of Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 and held it until 20 January 1981. During 1980-88, Iran fought a bloody, indecisive war with Iraq that eventually expanded into the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... was a good horseman and he had the animals well in hand. The boy, however, was so anxious to see what went on below, that he strained forward too far. With a scream, and the snap of broken boughs, he plunged forward, shot through the leafy-canopy, and landed with a sickening thud upon ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... Achaians. But even so they could not put the Argives to rout, but they held their ground, as an honest woman that laboureth with her hands holds the balance, and raises the weight and the wool together, balancing them, that she may win scant wages for her children; so evenly was strained their war and battle, till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... recoil of the surf from the reef that is hawsing her bows up into the wind, sir," explained the master, as he strained at the wheel, with the sweat trickling down from underneath the rim of his hat. "There—now she falls off again—steady as ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... a crisis of feeling had come; she was not her old self, nor I to her what I had been. There was a strained, almost frightened look in her eyes; a low-voiced "Augustin" replacing her bantering "Caesar." Save for my name she did not speak as I led her to a couch and sat down by her side. She looked slight, girlish, and pathetic in a simple gown of ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... your hopes of Heaven, I implore you—give me my boy again! il mio dilettissimo figlio! See, I sign the parchment!" and with feverish strokes she wrote her name; then with hands strained ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... comes about, with the most successful of hardy mixed borders, that, at the end of the third season, things will become a little confused and the relations between certain border-brothers slightly strained; the central flowers of the clumps of phloxes, etc., grow small, because the newer growth of the outside ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager, parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have been a magnificent woman when she was young,—not unlike, I have heard it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... he stumbled into the garden, where a mass of plunging horses tugged and strained at their harnessed guns and caissons. Muddy soldiers put their ragged shoulders to the gun-wheels and pushed; teamsters cursed and lashed their horses; officers rode through the throng, shouting. A squad of infantry ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... what was wanting. Out of five Bushels of Malt, I generally make a Hogshead of Ale with the two first Coppers of wort, and a Hogshead of small Beer with the other two, but this more or less according to please me, always taking Care to let each Copper of wort be strained off thro' a Sieve, and cool in four or five Tubs to prevent its foxing. Thus I have brewed many Hogsheads of midling Ale that when the Malt is good, has proved strong enough for myself and satisfactory to my friends: But for strong keeping Beer, the first Copper of wort may be wholly put ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... ground, but so he might not be thrown. Now they stood almost still, while men shouted madly, for no such wrestling had been known in the southlands. Grimly they hugged and strove: forsooth it was a mighty sight to see. Grimly they hugged, and their muscles strained and cracked, but they could stir ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... he cried, at last; and running up, we all four strained away in concert. The tough obstacle convulsed the surface with throes and ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... although he strained his eyes to the utmost he could not see a single thing surrounding him. To all appearances he was ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... now, and though she did not speak, she looked at him with strained attention, hanging on ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... stir along the table; a sighing breath. Then some one laughed, and Banks piped his strained note. "And," he said after a moment, "of course you kept on to that missionary camp and waited for the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... which water could not extinguish. We felt sure, therefore, that as long as that light continued burning we should be seen by those on board. Our great dread was that the light would go out before the ship could get back to us. We strained our eyes in the direction of the ship. The thickening gloom and mist were rapidly encircling her, and shrouding her from ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... he turned quickly and put his hand to his ear in a listening attitude. At first the boys could not distinguish the sound that his quick ear had caught, and then indistinctly a faint, hollow clatter came over the plain from behind them. They strained their eyes but could see nothing ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... showed him that the peculiar waving motion was made by human agency, and he strained his eyes in the hope of detecting the cause of the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... of a foreigner's probable views on this national delicacy: "a slimy pool with a rock in the middle, and creatures floating round about." The rock is a lump of ice (botvinya being a cold soup) in the tureen of strained kvas or sour cabbage. Kvas is the sour, fermented liquor made from black bread. In this liquid portion of the soup, which is colored with strained spinach, floated small cubes of fresh cucumber and bits of the green tops from ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... really took Andrey Antonovitch's last hysterical outbreak as a direct permission to act as he was asking, or whether he strained a point in this case for the direct advantage of his benefactor, because he was too confident that success would crown his efforts; anyway, as we shall see later on, this conversation of the governor with his subordinate led to a very surprising event which amused many people, became public property, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... head but he would not listen to it. He strained his ears for the opening of the Malletts' door, and just as the sound of the clock striking two steady notes for half-past five was fading, as though it were being carried on the light wings of the wind over the big trees, over the green, across the gorge, across the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... discordant; The crowded thoroughfare doth fret me And make lonely. Darkling I muse and yearn For those glad days of yore, When my part chorded too, And I, a merry, trustful boy, Found consonance in every friend without annoy. Since then, how changed! Strained are the strings of friendship; fled the joys; Seeming the show. An alien I, unlike, alone! And yet my mother! The welcome word o'erflows the eye, And makes the very memory weep. No, love is not extinct—that sweetest name— The covering ashes ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... rising. What had come to her with this thing Janet had told her? Why had she this strange fullness in the beating of her heart, this sense, part of shame, part of fright, part of happiness, that had taken possession of her? What had become of her strained feeling about Janet? For it had gone, gone utterly, and with it all her pride, all her self-control. She was conscious only of a great need of somebody's strength, of somebody's thought and interest —of Janet's. Yet how could she unsay anything? ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "God is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though he were her brother, looking affectionately into his face, and laughing with his laughter—and she rarely thought of him. In Lutchkov there was something enigmatic for the young girl; she felt that his soul was 'dark as a forest,' and strained every effort to penetrate into that mysterious gloom.... So children stare a long while into a deep well, till at last they make out at the very ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... it is stifling," said Monpavon, crimson, fearing for his paint, and the lowered windows exposed to the populace these high functionaries mopping their august faces, strained, agonized, by the same expression of waiting—waiting for the Bey, for the storm, waiting ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... showing signs of a rare interest in his companion's conversation. His eyes were bright, his usually impassive features seemed to have become more mobile and strained. He laid his hand ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 29,000 enlisted men, and involved the accumulation of a vast fleet, the acquisition of docks, lighters, tugs, and coaling equipment, as well as the establishment of an administrative organization, at the precise time when the shipping facilities of the world were being strained to ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... slowly ahead and passed the Teutonic at a creeping pace, but notwithstanding this, the latter strained at her ropes so much that she heeled over several degrees in her efforts to follow the Titanic: the crowd were shouted back, a group of gold-braided officials, probably the harbour-master and his staff, standing on the sea side of the moored ropes, jumped back over them as they drew up taut ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... spirit with which class and teacher enter upon the recitation. If the spirit of cooperation is lacking; if the relations between teacher and pupils are strained or not cordial; if the class look upon the recitation as a kind of game in which the teacher tries to corner and catch the class, and the class try to avoid being cornered and caught, then the recitation is ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... the question represented a real matter of debate in her mind), "I want your opinion; will you give it me? Apropos of slang, why does it sit well on some people? It certainly does not vulgarize them. After all, in many cases, it is what they call 'racy idiom.' Perhaps our delicacy is strained?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out, pale, her large eyes strained as though seeking to read something which eluded her in the clouds or the shadows which hung over the city. She had rather the air of a frightened but eager child. She rested her fingers upon his arm, not exactly affectionately, ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... generosity of the East India directors was not strained in Lamb's case. It should be recorded as an agreeable commercial phenomenon that these officials, men of business acting in "a business matter,"—words too often held to exclude all such Quixotic matters as sentiment, gratitude, and ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... I strained her fragile form to my breast. I kissed her pale cheeks—her brow—her lips. She moved not. I found she had fainted. I thought she was dead, and my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... ready to back the President, war was inevitable; none the less so because Mr. Lincoln closed with patriotic and generous words: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... to undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together to receive him. From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the room his cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained beyond their exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover, welcomed him kindly. He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely silly. They sat down, and tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little master of his tongue as he was of his eyes. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compliments to the American legal profession, speaking particularly of Judge Story. The compliment gave me great pleasure, because it seemed a just and noble-minded appreciation, and not a mere civil fiction. We are always better pleased with appreciation than flattery, though perhaps he strained a point when he said, "Our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic, with whom we are now exchanging legal authorities, I fear largely surpass us in the production of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... one on board hurt, plenty to eat and drink, and presents for all ranks and ratings—very much to the amazement of the Spaniards. "Only a day ahead," was the news the last prize gave him. But they were nearing Panama; so Drake strained every nerve anew, promising a chain of solid gold to the first look-out who saw the chase. Next midday his cousin, young Jack Drake, yelled out "Sail-ho!" and climbed down on deck to get the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... for all. As the Scriptures enjoin us, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, to do all to the glory of God, so Utilitarianism exhorts us to do all for the welfare of mankind. Now, far be it from me to caricature this soul-inspiring rule by forcing it, under a strained construction, to an unnatural extreme. Fairly examined, it will be seen to make no extravagant demands on our self-denial. As Christianity, even while bidding us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... neither the perseverance nor the health to study successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose her vocation from the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... within me; miserable longings strained its chords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless! How vast and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsaken garden—grey now with the dust of a town summer departed. Looking forward at the commencement of those ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Wilbur strained his eyes to see, but the unfamiliar growth of cacti, sage-brush, palo verde, and the dusty-miller plants made quick vision difficult. In a moment, however, he caught sight of the little reddish-gray animal running swiftly and almost indistinguishable ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... They strained their eyes for a glimpse of their mother, but there was no movement to be seen anywhere about the place. Even the breeze had died down, so there was not so much as a flutter among the trees as they drew nearer and nearer. At last, unable to hold themselves back longer, they broke into a run and ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... had even found some one to talk to in the recreation room when I sneaked up at three o'clock. There came a time when Schmitz's patience was strained over my regular disappearance from about 3 to 3.30. There was absolutely nothing for me to do just then in my own line, so I embraced that opportunity daily to take my way to the recreation room and see what ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... which I see allowed in average school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. But even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the small of the back: or the spine will be strained ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... inevitable tragedy, the idea of which I shrank from afterward more than at the time. We each threw a lasso over the neck of the doomed wolf, and strained our horses in opposite directions until the blood burst from her mouth, her eyes glazed, her limbs stiffened and then fell limp. Homeward then we rode, carrying the dead wolf, and exulting over this, ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... hand a message to the sergeant in command of the squad. Leaving the counter, Tom walked quickly to a newsstand near the gate, where he could stand close to the Marines. The sergeant read the message quickly and turned to his squad. Tom strained ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... with me," said the Wind To the ship within the dock "Or dost thou fear the shock Of the ocean-hidden rock, When tempests strike thee full and leave thee blind; And low the inky clouds, Blackly tangle in thy shrouds; And ev'ry strained cord Finds a voice and shrills a word, That word of doom so thunderously upflung From the tongue Of every forked wave, Lamenting o'er a grave Deep hidden at its base, Where the dead whom it has slain Lie in the strict embrace Of secret weird tendrils; but the pain Of the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... Holland. Thousands of Belgian refugees wandered as far north as The Hague, where various Dutch relief committees and the American Legation at The Hague did their best to house the homeless and relieve the suffering. Dr. van Dyke rolled up his sleeves still farther and strained to solve the problem of the unemployed, sometimes, when a case interested him, turning his own ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... of that big rifle ready to cough sixteen chunks of lead in half as many seconds, any one of them hitting hard enough to drill through them, man by man, down to the last head in the line. So their arms went up and strained high above their heads, as if eager to show their desire to comply without reservation to the unspoken command. Morgan had not said ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden |
