"Wrestle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a donkey, put his tongue out, spat in her face, and imitated the dog's bark. "Bow-wow! You would like to eat me, wouldn't you? Bow-wow! There's my nose; bite it off if you can. You're a lovely dog—you horrid beast! Bow-wow! Break your chain and come wrestle with me; snap at my finger, there it is before your nose; only don't you wish you ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Book in which the Pictures tell the Story. After you have seen the Pictures there is no need to wrestle ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... to such a Master! So you will be experiencing[12] (echontes) the same conflict in kind (oion) (as you wrestle side by side for your Lord against evil) as that which you saw in me, in my case, when I was with you in those first days (Acts xvi.), and which you now hear of in me, as I meet it in my prison ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... his father, sir. I endeavor to instill him with some few notions of respect, but the town spoils him. Indulges him completely, I may say. And when Sharon's sympathies are stirred sir, it will espouse a cause very warmly—Give me that!" broke off the schoolmaster, and there followed a brief wrestle. "Chewing again to-day, sir," he ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... mine. Can you hear a robber's footstep when he's kneeling before murder? or can you listen to the snow falling on Midsummer's day? If so, your ears are finer than mine. Can you run with a chamois? can you wrestle with a bear? can you swim with an otter? If so, I'm your match. How many cities have you seen? how many knaves have you gulled? Which is dearest, bread or justice? Why do men pay more for the protection ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... I may not wrestle with you," said the Clerk, "for you are a gentleman and I am nobody. You are the son of a lord and I am the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;—over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,-after ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... no man here who would not think it absurd to wrestle with you, but let some one call here the old woman, my nurse, Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her, if he will. She has cast to the ground many a man who seemed to me to be ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... spiritual authority. The rigid tenets of Father Wynn's faith were lost in the supposed catholicity of his humanity. "A preacher that can jine a man when he's histin' liquor into him, without jawin' about it, ought to be allowed to wrestle with sinners and splash about in as much cold water as he likes," was the criticism of one of his converts. Nevertheless, it was true that Father Wynn was somewhat loud and intolerant in his tolerance. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... then the brothers began to wrestle; and from wrestling half playfully, they went on to wrestle in earnest. One gave the other a chance blow, and the other returned an intended one, and then they fought in good earnest, and did not stop till William had got a bloody nose; ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... let you go. I will plead and wrestle with you as in the old fable my namesake of my own race wrestled with the angel, until at length you bless me. You despise me because I am a Jew, because I have had many adventures and not succeeded; because ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Still to preserve that infant purity Which the voice teaches in our inmost heart, Still in alarm, forever on the watch Against the wiles of wicked men: e'en virtue Will sometimes bear away her outward robes Soiled in the wrestle with iniquity. This is the curse of every evil deed That, propagating still, it brings forth evil. I do not cheat my better soul with sophisms; I but perform my orders; the emperor Prescribes my conduct to me. Dearest boy, Far ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was to be put on against the wiles of the devil. 'Ye wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the darkness of this world; against ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... acquisition of instruction in all departments of military science; so that many a soldier was there fitted for the position he afterwards acquired, of officer, colonel, or general. To fence with the mounted bayonet, to wrestle, to leap, to climb, to run for miles, to swim, to make and to destroy temporary bridges, to throw up earth-walls, to carry great weights, to do, in short, what Indians learn to do, and much that they do not learn,—these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... country whose inhabitants were daily increasing and whose lands were practically limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom of the woods and hills, had developed a frame originally powerful into that of a tall and hardened athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap, ride, as well as to use the musket and the sword. His intellect was not brilliant, but it was clear, and his habit of thought methodical; he was of great modesty, yet one of those who rise to the emergency, and are kindled into greater and greater power ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... appeared, among them the thirty-six world-rulers of the darkness, whom Solomon commanded to fetch water to the Temple. Some of these demons he condemned to do the heavy work on the construction of the Temple, others he shut up in prison, and others, again, he ordered to wrestle with fire in the making of gold and silver, sitting down by lead and spoon, and to make ready places for the other demons, in which they should ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... think that courage is the same as wisdom. But in this way of arguing you might come to imagine that strength is wisdom. You might begin by asking whether the strong are able, and I should say 'Yes'; and then whether those who know how to wrestle are not more able to wrestle than those who do not know how to wrestle, and more able after than before they had learned, and I should assent. And when I had admitted this, you might use my admissions in such a way as to prove that upon my view wisdom is strength; whereas in that case I should ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... struggling 'gainst an unrelenting fate. What will be the end, I know not! what will be the doom of Camus? Shall I die disowned, dishonoured? Shall I live, and yet be famous? Backs as strong as oxen have we, legs Herculean and bare, Legs that in the ring with Titan wrestler might to wrestle dare. Arms we have long, straight, and sinewy, Shoulders broad, necks thick and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' stagnant water, Every day, I blush to own it, Cambridge strokes are rowing shorter. ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... the whole of this tall and huge body issued from the aperture. Judging by his bull-neck, the astonishing breadth of his chest and shoulders, and the vast bulk of his arms and legs, this giant need not have feared to wrestle single-handed with a bear. He wore an old pair of blue trousers with red stripes, faced with tanned sheep's-skin, and a vest, or rather cuirass, of thick leather, which was here and there slashed by the sharp ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of polar bears. The young cubs wrestle and tumble, as playfully as two puppies. This play has much to do with their physical and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... country. As soon as he perceived that he had attracted the emperor's notice, he instantly ran up to his horse, and followed him on foot, without the least appearance of fatigue, in a long and rapid career. "Thracian," said Severus with astonishment, "art thou disposed to wrestle after thy race?" "Most willingly, sir," replied the unwearied youth; and, almost in a breath, overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers in the army. A gold collar was the prize of his matchless vigor and activity, and he was immediately appointed to serve in the horseguards who always attended ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... chap that has found out he can't wrestle as well as he thought he could, he will hardly be able to keep his hands off me. Maybe he would find he had made another mistake, and maybe it would be I who was off my reckoning. However, I've my knife with me, and I will ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in our lot, we must continually face some other person, eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power of character or intellect; that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... protest. They had not known quite what to do, but Perrot had offered to fight the champion, and they, supposing it was to be a fight with weapons, had hastily agreed. It was clear, however, that it was to be a wrestle to the death. Iberville quelled all protests, and they stepped back. There was a final call from the champion, and then he became silent. From the Indians rose one long cry of satisfaction, and then they too stilled, the chief ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... last of his family. When he was very young the conviction came to him that his duty was never to marry, so our race might cease to exist. He lived here and preached against evil. He studied the ancient learning that he might be fitted to wrestle with sin. But in the end horror of what was here gained upon him so that he closed the house and went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a girl; the daughter of the clergyman who was leaving the mission. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... night and out the other side, and we liked our Otto more than ever. We had plenty in common, the same loneliness, fevers, climate, and niggers to wrestle with; moreover he had been in England, and liked it; he smoked a pipe; he washed. Also, as he privily confided to us in the young hours of one morning, he had his doubts as to the divinity of the KAISER, and was not quite convinced that RICHARD ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... credit of the family; and of the family, she took leave to remind me, I was (I think she said, by God's will) the head. I could not resist remarking how times had changed; less than a year ago she had sent William Adolphus, sober, staid, panoplied in the armour of contented marriage, to wrestle with my errant desires. Victoria flushed and became just a little ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... understand this present paper, in its two sections of The Vision, &c., and The Dream-Fugue, as connected with a previous paper on The English Mail-Coach. The ultimate object was the Dream-Fugue, as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with a colossal form of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains the mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as other variations not ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in regard to woman's liberty of choice or power to aid sexual selection, may be inferred from the statement by the same "excellent observer" of Indian traits (as Darwin himself calls him) that "it has ever been the custom among these people to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always carries off the prize"—an assertion borne out by Richardson (II., 24) and others. But if the strongest man "always ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... appearance and in voice. Paaker went up to him, and abused him violently, and threatened him with his fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw him yesterday at the festival—but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker, and wrestle with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed to shrink up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet—not my son, but a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sculptor, he said to him, "I wonder not that you make so great a difference between the statue of a man who is running a race and that of one who stands his ground to wait for his antagonist with whom he is to wrestle, or to box, or to play a prize at all sorts of defence; but what ravishes the beholders is, that your statues seem to be alive. I would fain know by what art you imprint upon them this wonderful vivacity?" Clito, surprised at this question, stood considering what ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... field for sport. Let us have some of the old games that we used to play at home. Who will wrestle with me?" ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... on each other and began to wrestle. And in their bout of wrestling they made holes in the ground and they made hillocks on the ground, and when the day was about to close Mell overthrew the Red Champion. He left him stark on the ground. Then he took the cord he had round his waist ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... those great thews and sinews in heavy grips—when the mighty hands of the other had held him, the huge limbs embraced him; and his eyes would grow full of the passion of fight and the desire of battle. None other would satisfy him to wrestle with but his dead rival, and indeed he in common with the country people thought that no other might be found fit ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... strength of body, mind and soul, I flung into it; I but forth my strength; I wrestled and laboured, and toiled in might of prayer. The prayer, this soul-emotion was in itself-not for an object-it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass, I was wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... after all, been settled, if only by what the Tories were pleased to call the coup d'etat of the Royal Warrant, and no longer excited the passions of a few years back. What he had really drawn upon himself was a hand-to-hand wrestle with a man who had no sooner provoked contradiction than he resented it with all his force, and with a determination to ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mine, because of Dora's not being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand, retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a mental wrestle with himself. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... paradise: Each brawler be enthroned in calm among the Children of the Wise. Yet in the council with the gods no one will falter to pursue His lofty purpose, but come forth the cyclic labours to renew; And take the burden of the world and dim his beauty in a shroud, And wrestle with the chaos till the anarch to the light be bowed. We cannot for forgetfulness forego the reverence due to them Who wear at times they do not guess the sceptre and the diadem. As bright a crown as this was theirs when first they from ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... weather-gage, the thunder of the sudden broadside, the hurtle and crash of the shot, the stern, quick word of command as the clumsy guns are run in to be reloaded and fired again and again with furious haste. The ships drift into closer wrestle. Masts and yards come tumbling on to the blood-splashed decks. There is the grinding shock of the great wooden hulls as they meet, the wild leap of the boarders, the clash of cutlass on cutlass, the shout of victory, the sight of the fluttering flag as it sinks reluctantly from the mizzen ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... boys younger than I have gone out to wrestle with the world for a livelihood, and I reckon I ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... a base hireling," said the caller, blandly. "And as for the capable young woman: do I or do I not recollect a dark night on the German frontier when she was glad enough to call on a sleepy fellow pilgrim to help her wrestle with a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... himself on his front feet and lifted his head high, higher, until his nose pointed skyward and his antlers lay back upon his shoulders. Then a strong convulsion shook him. I heard the shuddering wrestle of his whole body. I heard the gurgle and flow of blood. Saw the smoke of fresh blood and smelled it! I saw a small red spot in his gray breast where my bullet had struck. I saw a great bloody gaping hole on his rump where the.30 Gov't expanding bullet ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... whole party adjourned to the terrace for coffee, and as soon as she decently could after the performance of this sacred rite, Nan escaped into the rose-garden by herself, there to wrestle with the thoughts to which Ralph's carelessly ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... beheld in the warm season, when bending over the river to lave her bosom with the cooling fluid. It was taller than herself, and there was something on its brow which proclaimed it to be fiercer and bolder, formed to wrestle with rough winds, and to laugh at the coming tempests. For the first time since she was, she turned away to tremble, her soul filled with a new and undefinable feeling, for which she could not account. After shading her eyes a moment ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... going through all this, after my wrestle with this formidable disease and my triumph over so elusive an ailment, is it still your intention to support him in disinheriting me? Shall he interpret the laws as he will against his benefactor? Will you look on while he makes war upon nature? I obey nature, gentlemen of the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... of bankers and big business men have got together to wrestle with the financial problem. The Burgomaster has his people at work, trying to get their hands on ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... of the lady missionaries is already living among them in her little log house. Shall I speak of the needs of our school boys and girls? You patient mothers know so well what are the needs of forty-two play-loving active children, who wrestle, play football, tag, jump rope and barbed wire fences; and the needs of Indian boys and girls are nearly identical with those of the same number of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... among which is the gift of walking about on their hind legs in a singularly human fashion. Those in the London Zoological Gardens invariably attract a crowd. They struggle together in a playful way, standing on their hind legs to wrestle. They fall and roll, and bite and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... till the law and curse for thy sin be satisfied for; and then, but not till then, thou shalt have life by the law. Tell me, now, you that desire to be under the law, can you fulfil all the commands of the law, and after answer all its demands? Can you grapple with the judgment of God? Can you wrestle with the Almighty? Are you stronger than he that made the heavens, and that holdeth angels in everlasting chains? 'Can thine heart endure, or can thy hands be strong in the day that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it' (Eze 22:14). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... afterward that I spoke those words. They exercised a little restraint, perhaps, on Leroy when the day of his terrible trial came. They made him wrestle with the demon of suspicion that strove to possess him. I was sitting in my office, lagging dispiritedly over my work one day, when the door burst open and Brainard stood beside me. Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known,—not a hint in this pale creature, whose ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... young, she used with tender hand The foaming steed with froary bit to steer, To tilt and tourney, wrestle in the sand, To leave with speed Atlanta swift arear, Through forests wild, and unfrequented land To chase the lion, boar, or rugged bear, The satyrs rough, the fauns and fairies wild, She chased oft, oft took, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and my comrades were setting of a snare, 'Twas then we seed the gamekeeper—for him we did not care, For we can wrestle and fight, my boys, and jump o'er everywhere:- Oh! 'tis my delight of a shiny night, in the season ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... must get him to tell you about a wrestle he had with a lion once. Extraordinary story! (Looking at his watch suddenly.) Jove! I must be off. See you again, Baxter. Good-bye, Robinson. No, don't shake hands. I'm in a hurry. [He looks at his watch again and goes out hurriedly by the door ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... wrestle with doubt, or to follow its leadings. Out of every sincere soul-struggle, your faith shall come forth stronger and calmer. And do not hesitate to proclaim your new convictions when they have become convictions. Such is the encouragement and sympathy ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... of the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in human nature—wrapt up in an immense great-coat, and urging on two starved ponies, with dreadful imprecations and uplifted ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... begun to work upon this, he threw away his burden and went towards it and began to wrestle with it. And it was not a long time before he began to tear its covering in pieces; the flesh on it was not bigger than a thumb. Then he went away from it, and took up his burden again on his head, and went wandering on. When he ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... its rush of purpose, it seems to mirror the action of mighty spirit. When a great wind comes roaring over the eastern flats towards the North Sea, driving over the Fens and the Wringland, it is like something of this island that must go out and wrestle with the water, or play with it in a game or a battle; and when, upon the western shores, the clouds come bowling up from the horizon, messengers, outriders, or comrades of a gale, it is something of the sea determined to possess the land. The rising and falling of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... would not wish a head to follow me and leap up on the table and wrestle me, or to drink against me with ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... criticism to say that Christians must not revile when they are reviled. Those who think that Luther did not know this rule of the Christian religion, or did not apply it to himself, do not know the full story of his life. He certainly did wrestle with the flesh and blood in himself. He sighed for peace, but the moment he seemed to become conciliatory and pacific, his enemies set up a shout that he was vanquished. It seemed that they could not be made to comprehend the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... years, pursuing this marvellous and more than human life, dwelling with him as with a father and tutor, in all obedience and lowliness, exercising himself in every kind of virtue, and learning well from practice how to wrestle with the invisible spirits of evil. From that time forward he mortified all his sinful passions, and made the will of the flesh as subject to the spirit as slave is to his master. He was altogether forgetful of comforts or repose, and tyrannized over sleep as over a wicked servant. And, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... it, being such a stocky fellow. And the hard life I had lived since being swept out to sea in my Wavecrest had agreed with me. My muscles were like wire cables, I was burned as black as a negro, and there was scarcely a man aboard the bark whom I could not have flung in a fair wrestle. ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... the grass. Brynhilda, the valkyrie, swore that no one should ever marry her who could not fling her down. Perhaps you have done the same. The man who eventually married her, got a friend of his, who was called Sygurd, the serpent-killer, to wrestle with her, disguising him in his own armour. Sygurd flung her down, and won her for his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle, and I will do my best ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... he were worthy of good at their hands, if he, an unknown man, gave sport to the people. Then he asked what they would of him; so they prayed him to wrestle ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... rushed headlong through the door-way, Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts, Stamped upon the lakes and rivers, Made the snow upon them harder, Made the ice upon them thicker, Challenged Shingebis, the diver, To come forth and wrestle with him, To come forth and wrestle naked On the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... few other groups of people dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat is content to let me ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... its restless development of political experiment, the subdivisions of party there, the dominance of faction, as we see it, steadily increasing, breeding on itself, in the pages of Thucydides, justify Plato's long-drawn paradox that it is easier to wrestle against many than against one. The soul, [25] moreover, the inward polity of the individual, was the theatre of a similar dissolution; and truly stability of character had never been a prominent feature in Greek life. Think of ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... Margarita's mind. She seated herself on the bench outside the kitchen door, to wrestle with it. What if it were not to a convent at all, but to Alessandro, that the Senorita meant to go! No; that was preposterous. If it had been that, she would have gone with him in the outset. Nobody who was plotting to run away with a lover ever wore such a look ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... full health. My eyes are perfect, my hearing but little impaired, chiefly to whispers, for which I certainly have little occasion: my spirits never fail; and though my hands and feet are crippled, I can use both, and do not wish to box, wrestle, or dance a hornpipe. In short, I am just infirm enough to enjoy all the prerogatives of old age, and to plead them against any thing I have not a mind to do. Young men must conform to every folly in fashion - drink when they had rather be sober; fight a duel if somebody ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... first ray the tents disgorged their inmates, and the human hive began to hum; then came the fight, the maneuvering, the desperate wrestle with Nature, and the keen fencing with their fellows—in short, the battle—to which, that nothing might be wanting, out burst the tremendous artillery of ten thousand cradles louder than thunder, and roaring and crashing ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... food was issued, and many of the forlorn ones began to feel the rare sensation of being stuffed quite full and rendered incapable of wishing for more! But this was a mere interlude. Like little giants refreshed they rose up again to play—to swing, to leap, to wrestle, to ramble, to gather flowers, to roll on the grass, to bask in the gladdening sunshine, and, in some cases, to thank God for all His mercies, in spite of the latent feeling of regret that there was so little of all that enjoyment in the slums, and dark courts, and ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... like the way he likes to fight—not with his fists, I mean, necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to—wrestle with, you know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is for him to—roll me in the dirt and walk ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... great hope and consolation is, that you yourself are conscious of it. All you have to do now, is to pray unceasingly—wrestle in prayer, and you will ultimately triumph. Sing spiritual songs, too; read my tracts with attention; and, in short, if you resist the dev—hem—Satan, they will flee from you. Give that letter to Mr. M'Clutchy, and let me see you on the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Friedrich, eminently practising this style, has a most complex multifarious Briarean wrestle with big Daun and his Lacy-Loudon Satellites; who have a troublesome time, running hither, thither, under danger of slaps, and finding nowhere an available mistake made. The scene is that intricate Hill-Country between Schweidnitz ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the power of repose, and I would advise anybody who may be in earnest in this matter to be specially on guard during moments of physical fatigue, and to try the effect of eating and rest. Do not persist in a blind, obstinate wrestle. Simply take food, drink water, go to bed, and so conquer not by brute ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... assure you that among the stupid people at Watchett (compared with whom our folk of Oare, exceeding dense though being, are as Hamlet against Dogberry) what with one of them and another, and the firm conviction of all the town that I could be come only to wrestle, I do assure you (as I said before) that my wits almost went out of me. And what vexed me yet more about it was, that I saw my own mistake, in coming myself to seek out the matter, instead of sending some unknown person. For my face and form were known at that time (and still ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... one here," said Utgard-Loki, looking at the men sitting on the benches, "who would not think it beneath him to wrestle with thee; let somebody, however, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to the ground many a man not less strong ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of clothes and had nothing but a large knife, which was buckled around his waist. Drawing his knife, he rushed forward and was met by the bear, when a regular hand-to-hand fight was commenced. He did not wrestle long before he found an opportunity to use his knife, and plunging it up to the hilt, he soon had the bear lying prostrate at his feet. Having lost all his clothes, it became necessary that he should do something in his nude state. The bear's skin was the ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... And while we wrestle and strive My master, the miller, stands And feeds me with his hands; For he knows who makes him thrive, Who ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... interest myself in a race which accounts me a prodigy and an outcast, and which has treated me as such? No; by all the ingratitude which I have reaped—by all the wrongs which I have sustained—by my imprisonment, my stripes, my chains, I will wrestle down my feelings of rebellious humanity! I will not be the fool I have been, to swerve from my principles whenever there was an appeal, forsooth, to my feelings; as if I, towards whom none show sympathy, ought to have sympathy with ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Badang. Now there was a powerful athlete at the court of the King of Kling, who had no rival in the country. His name was Madia-Bibjaya-Pelkrama. The King ordered him to go to Singapore with seven vessels; "Go," said he, "and wrestle with this officer. If he defeat you, give him as a prize the cargo of the seven vessels; if you are victorious, demand of him ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... escape from death on the gallows. Consider that: it is no rhetorical flourish; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact,—emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming; undertook a Hercules' Labour and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean Hydra-coil, wide as England, hissing heaven-high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quack-heads; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest wrestle I have heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed and cut it down a good ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... kind to their pupils that they crack all the educational nuts for them, with the consequence that the children become passive and die mentally for want of activity. The true teacher will allow his pupils to wrestle with their problems without interruption until they arrive at a conclusion. If some pupil "goes into the ditch" and flounders he should usually be allowed to get out by his own efforts as best he can. Here is the place where the teacher "should be ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him rebounded on her! She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her to move a hand. One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back. Then she tried to wrestle away. But she was utterly powerless. His dark face bent down closer and closer. Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle. She was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic eyes of a snake. Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... sleep will do and dare the same In manner like. Kings take the towns by storm, Succumb to capture, battle on the field, Raise a wild cry as if their throats were cut Even then and there. And many wrestle on And groan with pains, and fill all regions round With mighty cries and wild, as if then gnawed By fangs of panther or of lion fierce. Many amid their slumbers talk about Their mighty enterprises, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... means let us culture physical energy. Let there be more gymnasiums in our colleges and theological seminaries. Let the student know how to wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle see who is the strongest. The health of mental and spiritual work often depends on physical health. If I were not opposed to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the book column in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land the condition of each critic's liver and spleen ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... in its morals, in the morals spread upon it by Prussia, the effect of that great storm wherein three hundred years ago Europe made shipwreck and was split into two. This war was the largest, yet no more than the recurrent, example of that unceasing wrestle: the outer, the unstable, the untraditional—which is barbarism—pressing blindly upon the inner, the traditional, the strong—which is Ourselves: which is ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... the West; Polly went home for the summer; Maud was taken to the seaside with Belle; and Fanny left alone to wrestle with housekeeping, "help," and heartache. If it had not been for two things, I fear she never would have stood a summer in town, but Sydney often called, till his vacation came, and a voluminous correspondence with Polly beguiled the long days. Tom wrote once a week to his mother, but the letters ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Musicians wrestle everywhere: All day, among the crowded air, I hear the silver strife; And — waking long before the dawn — Such transport breaks upon the town I think it ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to meet the exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle with the distracting wind and the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a bad stove. How'd you like to cook on this?"—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of her never going over to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him you will have to fight him fairly. I know enough of these English boys to know that with your hands you would not have the least chance with him. He could thrash you both at once; for even little English boys do not wrestle, tear, and kick, but hit straight out just as ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... a position for conversation at the exact moment that the demand is made upon me. I have just come to the end of a long wrestle with my umbrella. It has at last got its wicked will, and has turned right inside out! All its whalebones are aspiring heavenward. It is transformed into a melancholy cup—like a great ugly flower, on a bare stalk. I lay the remains calmly down beside me, and affront the blast and the tempest alone! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Civilisation,' 1870, p. 69) gives other and similar cases in North America. For the Guanas of South America see Azara, 'Voyages,' etc. tom. ii. p. 94.), says:—"It has ever been the custom among these people for the men to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter, and well-beloved, is seldom permitted to keep ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... skirts of civilisation, in careless, uncared-for wretchedness, without settled homes, or regular occupation,—the miserable camp followers of life's warfare,—living habitually from hand to mouth, in a reckless wrestle with the world, for mere existence. I do not mean these, but the households of our common working people. Amongst the latter one sometimes meets with striking differences, in cleanliness, furniture, manners, intellectual acquirements, and that delicate compound of ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... as a bell. If everybody does as much as the miners will you'll have plenty of help. We don't believe everything the papers say. You seem a cool one and if the others will only keep cool you'll give the squatters a big wrestle yet." ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... again. "There's a big buck woods-boss up in Pennington's camp," he remarked irrelevantly. "He's a French Canadian imported from northern Michigan by Colonel Pennington. I dare say he's the only man in this country who measures up to you physically. He can fight with his fists and wrestle right cleverly, I'm told. His name is Jules Rondeau, and he's top dog among the lumberjacks. They say he's the strongest man in the county." He unlatched the gate. "Folks used to say that about me once," he continued wistfully. "Ah, if I could have my ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... frolic like big boys. Benten plays the guitar, and Bishamon lies down on the floor resting with his elbows to hear it. Hotei drinks wine out of a shallow red cup as wide as a dinner plate. Daikoku and Fukuroku Jin begin to wrestle, and when Daikoku gets his man down, he pounds his big head with an empty gourd while Toshitoku and Ebisu begin to eat tai fish. When this fun is over, Benten and Fukuroku Jin play a game of checkers, while the others look on and bet; except ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... Christophe would leave her in the middle of a sentence. She was not angry with him. She was angry with herself. She thought herself stupid, tiresome, ridiculous: all her faults assumed enormous proportions and she tried to wrestle with them: but she was discouraged by the check upon her first attempts, and said to herself that she could not do it, that she was not strong enough. But ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... continued for five and twenty minutes, and unfolded the works of the Devil in such minute and vivid detail that Burnbrae talks about it to this day, and Lachlan Campbell, although an expert in this department, confessed astonishment. It was a mighty wrestle, and it was perhaps natural that Donald should groan heavily at regular intervals, and acquaint the meeting how the conflict went, but the younger people were much shaken, and the edification even of the serious ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, would let events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the unburied. With the readiness of all incisive character acting on emergencies, he stamped himself upon the place and time. He went to his task as the soldier goes to the front under raking fire, with gleaming eyes and iron muscles. The fever of the fight was on him. He seemed to wrestle with disease for his patients, and to trample death beneath his feet. He glowed over his cures with a positive physical dilation, and writhed over his dead as if he had killed them. He seemed built of endurance ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... and Harvey are intertwined even more closely than those of Greene and Lodge; but the conjunction is not a grasp of friendship but a grip of hatred—a wrestle, not an embrace. The fact of the quarrel has attracted rather disproportionate attention from the days of Isaac Disraeli onwards; and its original cause is still extremely obscure and very unimportant. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... but I will never despair of my dear fatherland. Your hand has girt it round about with cliffs and peopled it with a peaceful race. It is my last refuge, and thither I am carrying my bride. With your strong arm restore me to my beloved home. I will wrestle with you, fight with you; you cannot shake me off. I will not let you go until ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... would do nothing. He knew that I had joined a conspiracy to ruin him; that I was in league with Rogers, who was in league with Braman and Foster, and that all were banded together to take all he had away from him. In the course of that two hours' wrestle I was tempted several times to throw up the whole affair, and there were some bitter and savage word-passages that left both of us heated. I could do nothing with him; he must hear from Rogers personally. Finally I got the "Standard Oil" wire, and Rogers talked so plainly ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... at this Persian court were trained to many manly exercises. They were taught to wrestle and to run. They were instructed in the use of such arms as were employed in those times, and rendered dexterous in the use of them by daily exercises. They were taught to put their skill in practice, too, in hunting excursions, which they took, by turns, with ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fight with himself. He could not turn away abruptly and leave her standing there; if the victory were to be won, it must be by sheer wrestle with the temptation, for her sake as well as his own. To let her so much as suspect his feeling were as bad as to utter it; nay, infinitely worse, for it would mean that he must not see her after to-night. He and she would then be each other's peril in a far direr ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Some recoiled from the collision, wounded and bleeding, but still to battle again. Some fought hand to hand; while several pairs had clutched, and were striving to fling each other in the desperate wrestle of death! ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned how ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... aside to let her pass, which she did, making room for me to sit down beside her on the narrow plush-covered seat. But I didn't care to sit. I was so crushed, it seemed that, if once I sat down I shouldn't have courage to rise up again and wrestle with ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... human life are not enemies that fill man's streets with banners and charging cannon. We wage war against the dust mote ambushed in the sunbeam; we fight against weapons hurled from those battleships called drops of impure water; we wrestle with those hosts whose broadsides invisible rise from streets foul, or fall from poisoned clouds. Such enemies that lurk in dampness and darkness, a thousand fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... who painted that gorse cant?" burst out Brady. "Damn it all, Tarrant, if a chap can teach us to paint, perhaps he can teach us something else as well. Look at that gorse, I tell you. That's the truth, won with many a wrestle and heartache, I'll swear. You know as well as I do what went to get that, and yet you say there's nothing behind the paint. That's cant, if you like. And as to your religious spirit, what's the good of preaching sermons ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... "Stand back! Fear this sign!... Stronger than steel I am made by this ring; never shall you rob me of it!" "You teach me," he replies, with his dark calm, "to detach it from you!" He reaches for it, she defends it. They wrestle. She escapes from him with a victorious cry. He seizes her again. The former Valkyrie, reinforced by the Ring, is a match very nearly for the stalwart Waelsung. A shriek is heard. He has caught her hand, and draws the ring ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... kindlings. I'm afraid of the transitory stage we're coming to—that epoch of chaos between the death of the old and the birth of the new. Frankly, I like the old way best. I love the license of it. I love to wrestle with nature; to snatch, and guard, and fight for what I have. I've been beyond the law for years and I want to stay there, where life is just what it was intended to be—a survival of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... my father! this accept, Which in remembrance of the funeral rites 770 Of my Patroclus, keep, for him thou seest Among the Greeks no more. Receive a prize, Thine by gratuity; for thou shalt wield The cestus, wrestle, at the spear contend, Or in the foot-race (fallen as thou art 775 Into the wane of life) never again. He said, and placed it in his hands. He, glad, Receiving it, in accents wing'd replied. True, oh my son! is all which thou hast spoken. These limbs, these hands, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... came forward for the third time, his dark eyes flashed to the eyes of the girl like steel to a magnet. They seemed to plead, to wrestle with him. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... the time goes, when people are busy, happy, and working together. At least Kate and Adam were happy, for they were always working together. By tacit agreement, they left Polly the easy housework, and went themselves to the fields to wrestle with the rugged work of a farm. They thought they were shielding Polly, teaching her a woman's real work, and ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him fiercely by the throat and shouting for assistance. No one was, however, near, and for a few moments we struggled desperately. He was unarmed, and I, having unfortunately dropped my sword in the encounter, our conflict resolved itself into a fierce wrestle for the possession of the weapon which must give victory to the one into whose hands it fell. Once Samory, wiry and muscular like all Arabs, notwithstanding his age, stooped swiftly in an endeavour to snatch ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... wrestle now began between the two men. Manston was the taller, but there was in Edward much hard tough muscle which the delicate flesh of the steward lacked. They flew together like the jaws of a gin. In a minute they were both on the floor, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the train. I'll engage a berth for her—mustn't lose more time about it," and Jarvis hang-up his receiver without waiting to hear anything further. Then he had a wrestle with the Pullman ticket-office, in the attempt to secure a full sleeping-car ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... surprise; he did not fire. I struck up the barrel, and closed on him. We grappled pretty tightly, and in the wrestle the gun went off. The man loosened his hold. "Lord ha' mercy! I have not hurt you?" he ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... C. A. DAWSON SCOTT has powerfully suggested the atmosphere of the strange and tragic household, mourning its dead mistress; and she understands the peculiar quality of the Cornish people and the Cornish seas. I have not read her other novels, but, if she will promise to wrestle with one or two rather irritating mannerisms, I will promise to look out for her next one. I have no prejudice against the Wellsian triplet of dots, but really Mrs. Scott does overdo it. And a good deal of her quite penetrating psycho-thingummy was spoiled for me by her trick of conveying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... returned Paul, stretching his limbs, which were by this time entirely released, and endeavouring to restore the suspended circulation, "you have some judgmatical notions in these matters. Now here am I, Paul Hover, a man who will give in to few at wrestle or race, nearly as helpless as the day I paid my first visit to the house of old Paul, who is dead and gone,—the Lord forgive him any little blunders he may have made while he tarried in Kentucky! Now there is my foot on the ground, so far ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... omission was simply a matter of make-up, as it would be hard to compress the poem into the space allotted to it, without using a much smaller type than was usual in Punch; and an odd number of verses is a serious matter for a sub-editor to wrestle with when he has to arrange a poem into double columns of a given depth. The missing verse, which, to do Mark Lemon justice, is the one most easily spared, runs ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... to be found, 'as the truth is—in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil, and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the deceitful lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will be found ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... all places were equally happy so long as they were out of doors. I do not know just how long it takes to become saturated with the elements so that one takes no account of them. Myself can never get past the glow and exhilaration of a storm, the wrestle of long dust-heavy winds, the play of live thunder on the rocks, nor past the keen fret of fatigue when the storm outlasts physical endurance. But prospectors and Indians get a kind of a weather shell that remains on the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... evening show, the circle of natives about our tent being pretty large, they engaged, the greatest part of the afternoon, in boxing and wrestling; the first of which exercises they call fangatooa, and the second foohoo. When any of them chooses to wrestle, he gets up from one side of the ring, and crosses the ground in a sort of measured pace, clapping smartly on the elbow joint of one arm, which is bent, and produces a hollow sound; that is reckoned the challenge. If no person comes out from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Who'll wrestle with dangers dire, Since Colin is gone? Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave, Thoughtless of self, human life to save, Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire? Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire, Since Colin is gone? ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... problem of the desert was attacked with a will, some of them replying to the commiseration of Eastern farmers by saying that it was easier to scoop out an irrigation ditch than to cut forests and wrestle with stumps and stones. Private companies bought immense areas at low prices, built irrigation works, and disposed of their lands in small plots. Some ranchers with an instinct for water, like that of the miner for metal, sank ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the new local editor, I take it. I've just left a little item for Murren, I suppose he's not in from the wrestle yet. My name's Hammerly. All the boys know me and I've known in my time fourteen of your predecessors, so I may as well know you. You're from ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... of these pictures a man seated upon the ground is being tortured by the breaking of his teeth, while a furious fellow holds a club suspended over him, in act to shatter his thigh-bones. Naked soldiers wrestle in mad conflict, whirl staves above their heads, fling stones, displaying their coarse muscles with a kind of frenzy. Even the classical subjects suffer from extreme dramatic energy of treatment. Ceres, seeking her daughter through the plains of Sicily, dashes frantically on a car ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... look that you grow not; Stay as you are and be loved forever! Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not; 35 Mind, the shut pink month opens never! For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle, Twinkling the audacious leaves between, Till round they turn and down they nestle— Is not the dear mark still to be ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and Pietro Cortonas and the like. Well might Guido exclaim, 'The fellow mixes blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion, nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him, and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... penance for eating twenty-three cherries instead of eighteen) the penitent of fourteen standing, barefooted, in the coldest nights of winter, upon the hearthstones, almost utterly naked, and shivering like a leaf, beneath the mingled effect of frost and devotion. At first I attempted to wrestle with this exceeding holiness, but finding my admonitions received with great distaste and some horror, I suffered my brother to be happy in his own way. I only looked with a very evil and jealous eye upon the good Abbe, and examined, while I encouraged them, the motives of his ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pure, more chaste, I would not spare her for your wildest prayer Nor her best virtue. Is the earth's mouth full? Is the grave satisfied? Discrown me then, For life is lord, and men may mock the gods With immortality." "I sue no more, But I command thee spare this woman's life, Or wrestle with Alcides." "Wrestle with thee, Thou puny boy!" And Death laughed loud, and swelled To monstrous bulk, fierce-eyed, with outstretched wings, And lightnings round his brow; but grave and firm, Strong as a tower, Alcides waited him, And these began to wrestle, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... please his mother, Roscoe took off Uncle Sam's service coat, put on a kitchen apron, and went into his little familiar dark closet to wrestle with chemicals. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... soared mind raves up and down her cell Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake? Add not to death the bitter fear of hell; Take pity on thy future self, poor man, While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can; Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife Of meeting all its terrors in the van Just at the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... should inspire every reader's genuine interest. Here is the memorable Crome passage: "A living master? Why, there he comes! thou hast had him long, he has long guided thy young hand towards the excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst attain if thou shouldst persist and wrestle, even as he has done, midst gloom and despondency—ay, and even contempt; he who now comes up the creaking stair to thy little studio in the second floor to inspect thy last effort before thou departest, the little stout man whose face is very dark, and whose eye is vivacious; that man has attained ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... one of those devoted fellows who will wrestle hard to convince one loved of error; but failing, forthwith change their wrestling to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and by and by there would be an exultant shout, and one of the boys would pretend to come on a valuable find—a big silver coin perhaps, a patacon, and there would be a great gabble over it and perhaps a fight for its possession, and they would wrestle and roll on the grass, struggling for the imaginary coin. That finished, the dead ostrich would get up and place himself among the hunters, while the boy who had captured him with his bolas would then play ostrich, and the chase ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... quartet was rising from the breakfast-table an hour later. "Why, bless youh soul! I wouldn't think of letting you go from undeh my roof in such weatheh as this! Tell him it's his duty to stay, Ardea, my deah; persuade him that he'll neveh have a betteh oppo'tunity to wrestle with the wickedest old ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... her knees and was praying aloud: praying to the Virgin with sighs and sobs and all her soul: wrestling so in prayer with a dead saint as by a strange perversity men cannot or will not wrestle with Him, who alone can hear a million prayers at once from a million different places,—can realize and be touched with a sense of all man's infirmities in a way no single saint with his partial ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... And now I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll let this law end of the building take care of itself and we'll give our active energies to the paper. You do the editing and I'll do the business. You put stuff into the columns and I'll wrestle with the express agent. And I'll divide ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... the doubt, fear, and irresolution of a man who pushes metaphysics into the supernatural world. Dark prophecies accumulated omens over his head; men united in considering him born to disastrous destinies. Whenever he had sought to wrestle against hostile circumstances, some seemingly accidental cause, sudden and unforeseen, had blasted the labours of his most vigorous energy,—the fruit of his most deliberate wisdom. Thus, by degrees a gloomy and despairing cloud settled over his mind; but, secretly sceptical ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the thews that wrestle with the world; She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last they set them each to each, Like perfect music unto noble words. Then comes the statelier Eden back to man; Then springs the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not yet remembering himself. For a little he stood by the elm-tree, clutching the ridges of its bark. Even so would he wrestle tomorrow, and Stephen, imperturbable, reply, "My body is my own." Or worse still, he might wrestle with a pliant Stephen who promised him glibly again. While he prayed for a miracle to convert his brother, it struck ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... when the fit was on me, I should have broken away, and gone there. As truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw me near him when he would. Was that fancy? Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wrestle with the power that ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... wilfulness of retort, I accuse you of a narrowness and pettiness of understanding with regard to America. Give me leave to "wrestle a fall" with you on this theme. And as I can with but twoscore years match your threescore and five, let me entreat of your courtesy to set that circumstance aside, and to constitute me, for the nonce, your equal in age and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... government of the several classes is strictly enforced, and nothing is permitted contrary to the established order and regulations of the games. Excessive violence is mercifully forbidden, and those who enter to wrestle or box, race or leap, for the prize, draw ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... beasts to Dracontius, and bade him lead the way to his racecourse. He merely waved his hand and pointed to where they were standing, and said, "There, this ridge is just the place for running, anywhere, everywhere." "But how," it was asked, "will they manage to wrestle on the hard scrubby ground?" "Oh! worse knocks for those who are thrown," the president replied. There was a mile race for boys, the majority being captive lads; and for the long race more than sixty Cretans competed; there was wrestling, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to him from what is religious in the "Odyssey"; and, says Gogol, this book contains the idea that a human being, "wherever he might be, whatever pursuit he might follow, is threatened by many woes, that he must need wrestle with them—for that very purpose was life given to him—that never for a single instant must he despair, just as Odysseus did not despair, who in every hard and oppressive moment turned to his own heart, unaware that with this inner scrutiny of himself he had already said ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... he said, "that's terrible, isn't it? It's no use trying to carry on until I've got that under the hatch. Look here, would you mind, just as a favour, keep things going while I wrestle with that question?—I know it's asking a ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... agree, that, "A verb neuter expresses neither action nor passion, but being, or a state of being."—L. Murray. Yet, according to their scheme, such words as walk, run, fly, strive, struggle, wrestle, contend, are verbs neuter. In view of this palpable absurdity, I cannot but think it was a useful improvement upon the once popular scheme of English grammar, to make active-intransitive verbs a distinct class, and to apply the term neuter to those few only which accord with the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle with, like that of Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights to interrupt the speed of her career, or internal difficulties, that the inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his. He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, minister to ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... at Cyprus, was willing that my pen should trauell about the Christian and Turkish affaires, which there lately haue happened: perswading himselfe, that somewhat thereby I might benefit this our natiue countrey. Against whose reasonable motion I could not greatly wrestle, hazzarding rather my slender skill in attempting and performing this his requested taske, then he through my refusall should seeme to want any iot of my good will. In offering vp the which newes, although ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... thirteen when I had my great wrestle with loneliness and desertion that night under the old apple-tree at Tempe; and the next three and a half years are not of much concern to the reader who is interested only in the history of Vandemark Township. I was just a growing boy, tussling, more alone than I should have been, and ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... you," was the answer. "There is a king in Eleusis whose name is Cercyon, and he is a great wrestler. He makes every stranger who comes into the city wrestle with him; and such is the strength of his arms that when he has overcome a man he crushes the life out of his body. Many travelers come to Eleusis, but no one ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... Those living sheltered lives take quick alarm when the mechanism of one of their number goes wrong, but people who wrestle with the earth for a living feel little surprise if their labours are too much for them now and then, and the body gives way in ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... were not beneath one like Margaret—one who was religious as she. It requires time for religion to avail anything when self-respect is utterly broken-down. A devout sufferer may surmount the pangs of persecution at the first onset, and wrestle with bodily pain, and calmly endure bereavement by death; but there is no power of faith by which a woman can attain resignation under the agony of unrequited passion otherwise than by conflict, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... advanced in Europe, and as of old the Netherlanders, in their immortal fight for freedom against the monstrous and appalling tyranny of Spain, were stirred to heroic deeds by the psalms of Clement Marot, even so to-day, where a few desperate and devoted men are moved to wrestle with a brutal despotism, the Marseillaise is their battle hymn. It is to Paris that the dearest hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey |
