"Gripe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... addressed the stranger. "Buy a watch, most noble northern Thane—buy a watch, to count the hours of plenty since the blessed moment you left Berwick behind you.—Buy barnacles, to see the English gold lies ready for your gripe.—Buy what you will, you shall have credit for three days; for, were your pockets as bare as Father Fergus's, you are a Scot in London, and you will be stocked in that time." The stranger looked sternly at the waggish apprentice, and seemed to grasp his cudgel ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... vulgar tradeswoman, mother of Dick, of whom she is very proud, although she calls him a "sad scapegrace," and swears "he will be hanged." At last she settles on him L10,000, and he marries Corinna, daughter of Gripe the rich scrivener. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... beautiful than the half Cree girl. When they had gone he still saw her, and the vision troubled him. They came in again at night, when the fire was sending red and yellow lights up and down the tepee walls, and the more he watched Oachi the stronger there grew within him something that seemed to gnaw and gripe with a dull sort of pain. Oachi was beautiful. He had never seen hair like her hair. He had never before seen eyes more beautiful. He had never heard a voice so low and sweet and filled with bird-like ripples of music. ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... hot gushing blood spirted forth in a quick jet into the very face and mouth of the fell murderer. A terrible convulsion, a fierce writhing spasm followed—so strong, so muscularly powerful, that the stern gripe of Cataline was shaken from the throat of his victim, and from ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... bamboo poles lashed together, and to let one or two at most at a time dive for fish, which are taken from them the moment they bring them to the surface. These birds, not much larger than the common duck, will seize and gripe fast fishes that are not less than their own weight. When the proprietor judges the first pair to be pretty well fatigued, they are suffered to feed by way of encouragement on some of the fish they have taken, and a second pair are dispatched ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... tea with prunes which render it palatable, confection of senna, syrup of senna, and the sweet essence of senna are generally very readily taken by children, but all have the disadvantage of being liable to gripe. The German liquorice powder, as it is called, which is composed of powdered senna, liquorice powder, fennel, and a little sulphur with white sugar, is freer from this drawback than any other preparation, and when mixed with a little water is not ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... sisters, When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like, They hail'd him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If 'tis so, For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mind; For them, the gracious Duncan have I murther'd, Put rancours in the vessel of my peace Only for them; and mine eternal jewel Given to the (b)common enemy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... astral lamp were as mild as moonbeams, and as unsatisfactory. But the light fell strong and red beneath the shade, and the full glare of the astral lamp seemed centred on that pudgy hand, in its inevitable glove, that had fixed so firm a gripe on the back of the mahogany chair as to strain open one of the fingers of the tight, tawny kid-glove worn by Dr. Englehart. This had parted slightly just above the knuckle of the front-finger, and revealed the cotton ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... freed Rashleigh from my hold, and securing me, notwithstanding my struggles, in his own Herculean gripe, he called out, 'Take the bent, Mr Rashleigh—make ae pair o' legs worth twa pair o' hands; ye hae done that before ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... hands, and rose to his feet, breathless, panting, lacerated, bloody; and fronting, with reeling eyes, the glaring look and grinning teeth of his baffled foe, now struggling (but struggling with disdain) in the gripe ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Body of a Hog," is ultimately to return to earth again. Nor is the delight of some of those who profit by his enforced assistance less keenly realised:—"I remarked a poetical Spirit in particular, who swore he would have a hearty Gripe at him: 'For, says he, the Rascal not only refused to subscribe to my Works; but sent back my Letter unanswered, tho' I'm a better Gentleman than himself.'" The descriptions of the City of Diseases, the Palace of Death, and the Wheel of Fortune from which ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... succession of visiters, her house was deserted; and, at the expiration of the year, the proud fair, awakened from her golden dream by the clamours of her importunate creditors, found herself without one friend to rescue her valuables from their rapacious gripe. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the church—'meeting,' we ought to say—in that vicinity, that speaking disparagingly of him would have appeared like assailing Christianity. It is true, that many an unfortunate fellow-citizen in Suffolk had been made to feel how close was the gripe of his hand, when he found himself in its grasp; but there is a way of practising the most ruthless extortion, that serves not only to deceive the world, but which would really seem to mislead the extortioner himself. Phrases take ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... streets. Fire-escapes ran zigzag down the meanest of them. Women shouted their neighborhood jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... offended Dwarf by every argument he could think of, he heard him with his eyes bent on the ground, as if in the deepest meditation, and at length broke forth—"Nature?—yes! it is indeed in the usual beaten path of Nature. The strong gripe and throttle the weak; the rich depress and despoil the needy; the happy (those who are idiots enough to think themselves happy) insult the misery and diminish the consolation of the wretched.—Go hence, thou who hast contrived to give an additional pang to the most miserable ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... his feet in a twinkling, thrust out his hand, gave his ancient crony the gripe of a giant, and slapping the other hand on a bench, "Sit down there," ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... carried Richard from the railway-station some five miles to the smithy. When the old man heard it stop, he threw down his hammer, strode hastily to the door, met his grandson with a gripe that left a black mark and an ache, and catching up his portmanteau, set ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... wit of Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we—as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators—when the blood trickles we are tickled, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... name. No; her father's name was Meanwell, and he was for many years a considerable farmer in the parish where Margery was born; but by the misfortunes which he met with in business, and the wicked persecutions of Sir Timothy Gripe, and an overgrown farmer called Graspall, he was effectually ruined. These men turned the farmer, his wife, Little Margery, and her brother out of doors, without any of the necessaries of life ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... as a brother to poor Beverley, I will pursue the robber that has seized him, and snatch him from his gripe. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... golden coal to crown the bowl— My pipe and I alone,— I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:— It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... which grew up out of the ruins; whereas Jesus Christ was born in the time of Augustus, i. e. when the Roman empire itself was in the height of its splendour and vigour. Mr. Everett in p. 201, endeavours to escape the strong gripe of the prophet Daniel, by maintaining that these strong and weak parts, into which the Roman empire was to be divided, meant that it should be divided into "strong and weak institutions." Now to turn this sensible interpretation head ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... was long, straight, and narrow, and seeing it was quite solitary, his eye fell upon the forlorn man, and remorse shot through his heart. For a moment the hardest of all kinds of avarice, that of the genteel, relaxed its gripe. For a moment the most intolerant of all forms of pride, that which is based upon false pretenses, hushed its voice, and the Colonel hastily drew out his purse. "There," said he—"that is all I can do for you. Do leave the town ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... lord," he made answer. "Behold the enemy!" Stooping, he raised the red-cloaked figure by its collar and held it up in the firelight. As a murmur of laughter went around, he lowered it again and spoke more gravely. "A hand needs not be large to get a hilt under its gripe, however. The young wolf is of northern breed,—how he penetrated to the heart of an English camp, I cannot tell,—and there grows in his spirit a bloodthirsty disposition. He seeks my life because in a skirmish, a few days gone by, I had the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... thinking of myself forsaken, And thee, dear Loiterer, in the wood o'ertaken With passion for those bold and wanton ones, Who knit thine arms as poison-plants gripe trees With twining cords—their flowers the braveries That flash in the green gloom, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... up to and over her moorings. Bringing the anchor out of the ground, however, was not so easily managed; and it was not till all the musical resources known to sailors on such occasions were nearly exhausted that the tenacious gripe of Trotman's patent was released, when a slow drift with the tide showed that the great ship was again set free. In another minute, without shouting, confusion, or hurry of any kind, and with less noise than is made by a 100-ton coaster, a slight ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... hands disdain a golden bribe, And never gripe the poor; This man shall dwell with God on earth, ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... frequent; With thieves and perjured fellows they associate; At courts they inquire after feasts; Every senseless word they bring forward; Every deadly sin they praise; Every vile course of life they lead; Through every village, town, and country they stroll; Concerning the gripe of death they think not; Neither lodging nor charity do they give; Indulging in victuals to excess. Psalms or prayers they do not use, Tithes or offerings to God they do not pay, On holidays or Sundays they do not worship; Vigils or festivals ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man, who, when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... assure you that I shall always bear it in mind," said Rodney, stopping long enough to give the operator's hand a cordial gripe and shake. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... fate, in vain, Unclasp'd his iron gripe to set thee free? Still dost thou flutter in the jaws of death; Snar'd with thy ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... art of cheating at cards, composed of the following associates: bankers, those who play booty; the gripe, he that betteth; and the person cheated, who is styled the vincent; the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... let none of these poor shifts or sleights deceive you. You will quickly see that the drift of such publication was only to sell off some Packets of Quack Remedies, and hedge you into his clutches, where 'tis odds but he will pinch, if he does not gripe you to death."[225:1] ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... with an expression of pain, to bare the arm which he had grasped, by drawing up the sleeve of her gown, and it appeared that his gripe had left the purple marks of his iron fingers upon her flesh—"My lord," she said, "as a knight and gentleman, you might have spared my frail arm so severe a proof that you have the greater strength on your side, and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... chief-larder, administrator, and disposer thou art; and take care, I beseech thee, O lord, that the precious works of supererogation, the goodly pardons, do not fail us in time of need; so that the devils may not find an opportunity to gripe our precious souls, and the dreadful jaws of hell may not swallow us. If we must pass through purgatory thy will be done. It is in thy power to draw us out of it when thou pleasest. Here Homenas began to shed huge hot briny tears, to beat his breast, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... the light-brain'd king Have done their homage to the lofty gallows, And he himself lies in captivity. Be rul'd by me, and we will rule the realm: In any case take heed of childish fear, For now we hold an old wolf by the ears, That, if he slip, will seize upon us both, And gripe the sorer, being grip'd himself. Think therefore, madam, that imports us much To erect your son with all the speed we may, And that I be protector over him: For our behoof, 'twill bear the greater sway Whenas a king's name shall be under-writ. Q. Isab. Sweet ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... looked black in the face, and ran the risk of strangulation under the gripe of this Amazon, Mr. Clarke having disengaged himself of his hat, wig, coat, and waistcoat, advanced in an elegant attitude of manual offence towards the misanthrope, who snatched up a gridiron from the chimney corner, and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... that the come bote. that help might come to thee? heom thuthte alto longe. They thought it all too long that thu were on live. that thou wert alive, for heo weren graedie. 115 for they were greedy to gripen thin aeihte. to gripe thy property. nu heo hi daelith heom imang. Now they divide it among them, heo doth the withuten. they do without thee, ac nu heo beoth fuse. eke now they are prompt to bringen the ut of huse. 120 to bring thee out of house; bergen ...
— The Departing Soul's Address to the Body • Anonymous
... passed in Africa without illness,—though I went abroad after dark, and bathed in the river during the heat of the day,—made me believe myself proof against malaria. But, at length, a violent pain in my loins, accompanied by a swimming head, warned me that the African fever held me in its dreaded gripe. In two days I was delirious. Ormond visited me; but I knew him not, and in my madness, called on Esther, accompanying the name with terms of endearment. This, I was told, stirred the surprise and jealousy of the Mongo, who forthwith assailed the matron of his harem with a torrent of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... skepticism. Not less true to all time are the details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets. When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth his strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. The power of music, the power ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... death-gripe on the plain, The grappling monsters on the main, The tens of thousands that are slain, And all the speechless suffering and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... change, and the eyes which he fixed upon me became so darkly vivid, that I almost lost sight of everything else)—'if he were what you have described him, think you, girl, he could find no briefer means than wedding contracts to gain his ends? 'twas but to gripe your slender neck until the breath had stopped, and lands, and lakes, and all ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the act of being hurried off by their captors. It was then my heart was wrung, by the spectacle of Gabriella struggling in the arms of the chief. I was helpless to interfere. I was prostrate upon the earth, and held fast in the gripe of two brawny savages—one kneeling on each side of me. I expected them at every instant to put an end to my life. I awaited the final blow—either the stroke of a tomahawk or the thrust of a spear. I only wondered they were ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... prophesie vpon it dangerously: Yong Arthurs death is common in their mouths, And when they talke of him, they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the eare. And he that speakes, doth gripe the hearers wrist, Whilst he that heares, makes fearefull action With wrinkled browes, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a Smith stand with his hammer (thus) The whilst his Iron did on the Anuile coole, With open mouth swallowing ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... beldams in the streets Do prophesy upon it dangerously: Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths: And when they talk of him, they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist; Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... she was sadly frighted, but her good Sense taught her, that the only Security she had was in keeping herself concealed; therefore she laid very still, and breathed very softly. About Four o'Clock these wicked People came to a Resolution to break both Sir William Dove's House, and Sir Timothy Gripe's, and by Force of Arms to carry off all their Money, Plate and Jewels; but as it was thought then too late, they agreed to defer it till the next Night. After laying this Scheme they all set out upon their Pranks, which greatly ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.—Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... fully eight feet in length. As we drew nearer we saw that it had also an extraordinary long snout. It seemed in no degree afraid of True, and he evidently considered it a formidable antagonist. Presently it lifted itself up on its hind legs, when True sprang back just in time to avoid a gripe of its claws. Still the creature, undaunted by our appearance, made at him, when, seeing that he was really in danger, John and I rushed forward. We then discovered the creature to be a huge ant-eater, which, though it had no teeth, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... —Save one, who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider press's gripe; 130 And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice! The ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... guaco, using its wings, succeeded in striking its antagonist upon the upraised head, and quickly following up the blow, planted his talons so as to encircle the throat of his victim. The effect of his gripe was instantly apparent. The reptile unfolded itself, and the slender coral body was seen writhing and twisting along the ground. But it did not remain long upon the ground, for in a few moments the guaco rose into the air, and carried the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... seized it with his teeth, but with such force, that instead of twisting it out of the hunter's hand, he broke it short off by the barrel. The hunter immediately attacked him again, but his weapon was too short, and the lion fixed his claws in his breast, tearing off all his flesh, and endeavored to gripe his shoulder with his mouth, but the gun-barrel was of excellent service. Driving it into the mouth of the beast with all his strength, he seized one of the creature's jaws with his left hand, and, what with the strength and energy given by the dreadful ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... opened t'other morning; I looked towards the common horizon of heads, but was a foot and a half below any face. The handsomest giant in the world made but one step across my room, and seizing my hand, gave it such a robust gripe that I squalled; for he crushed my poor chalk-stones to powder. When I had recovered from the pain of his friendly salute, I said, "It must be George Conway! and yet, is it possible? Why, it is not fifteen months ago since you was but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... am most afraid of is my having told him plainly that he was in my power; it's apt to make sprats of his size flounce desperately, in the mere hope of proving themselves whales after all, if it's only to their miserable selves. Never mind; he can't break my tackle; and besides, that gripe of the hand seemed to indicate that the poor wretch was beat, and thought himself let off easily—as indeed he is. We'll hope so. Now, zoophytes, for ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... draw his volatile substance and his tincture: And let the water in glass E be filter'd, And put into the gripe's egg. Lute him well; And leave him ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... sudden gripe. "Hold my hand firm. Keep me in my balance," he whispered, and throwing himself over to the whole extent of his body, and long right arm, managed to catch hold of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... things, may strive to counteract this progressive self emancipation from cruel falsehoods and superstitions, but in vain. The terms of salvation are seen lying in the righteous will of a gracious God, not in the heartless caprice of a priesthood nor in the iron gripe of a set of dogmas. The old priestly monopoly over the way to heaven has been taken off in the knowledge of the enlightened present, and, for all who have unfettered feet to walk with, the passage to God is now across a free bridge. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... did blesse the happie land? Eurymine, Oh wilt thou not attend? Flie from thy foe, Ascanio is thy friend: The fearfull hare so shuns the labouring hound, And so the Dear eschues the Huntsman wound; The trembling Foule so flies the Falcons gripe, The Bond-man so his angry maisters stripe. I follow not as Phoebus Daphne did, Nor as the Dog pursues the trembling Kid. Thy shape it was; alas, I saw not thee! That sight were fitter for the Gods then mee. But, if in dreames there any truth ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... forward deck; she braces herself, every rod and rivet and timber seems to lend its support; you almost expect to see the wooden walls of your room grow rigid with muscular contraction; she trembles from stem to stern, she recovers, she breaks the gripe of her antagonist, and, rising up, shakes the sea from her with a kind of gleeful wrath; I hear the torrents of water rush along the lower decks, and, finding a means of escape, pour back into the sea, glad to get away on any terms, and I say, "Noble ship! ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... repeated earnestly; the flap, Against the obdurate pane, of thy small wing;— He hears thee not—he heeds not—but, at morn, The ice-enamoured schoolboy, early afoot, Finds thy small bulk beneath the alder stump, Thy bright eyes closed, and tiny talons clench'd, Stiff in the gripe of death. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... ordered another man to go instead of me. "I'll make you pay for this another day," he cried out, looking at me. I saw the mate shaking hands with several on board before he stepped into the boat. "Remember the case, Jack," said old Tom as he passed me, giving me a gripe by the hand. "You ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... elicited even by the religious persecution. There were many inhabitants who were earnest and sincere Catholics, and who therefore considered themselves safe from the hangman's hands, while there were none who could hope to escape the gripe of the new tax-gatherers. Yet the Governor was not the man to be daunted by the probable unpopularity of the measure. Courage he possessed in more than mortal proportion. He seemed to have set himself to the task of ascertaining ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dark smoke in volumes rose! I saw the darkness of the mist Encircle thee, O Nose! Shorn of thy rays thou shott'st a fearful gleam 25 (The turtle quiver'd with prophetic fright) Gloomy and sullen thro' the night of steam:— So Satan's Nose when Dunstan urg'd to flight, Glowing from gripe of red-hot pincers dread Athwart the smokes of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and mortal's agony, With an immortal's patience blending:—vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... had as many ready witty jests as any man living, at which he would not smile himselfe, but deliver them in a grave and serious manner: He was very liberall, of what he had not in his owne gripe, and would rather part with 100.li. hee never had in his keeping, then one twenty shillings peece within his owne custody: He spent much, and had much use of his Subjects purses, which bred some clashings with them in Parliament, yet would alwayes come off, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... was just made in time, as the irritable Celt had begun to entertain the idea of challenging the Spaniard to mortal combat. As it was, however, his good nature at once gave way to the pacific overture that was made him. Seizing the apologist by the hand, with a gripe that produced some dismal contortions of countenance on the part of him on whom it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... a fruitless crown, And put a barren scepter in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... she true? Have I so little honour? Why, then, a prize so easy and so fair Had never 'scaped my gripe: but mine she is; For that's set down as sure as Henry's fall. But my ambition, that she calls my crime;— False, false, by fate! my right was born with me. And heaven confest it in my very frame; The fires, that would have ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the almost universal sentiment of the nation, the King should expiate his crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in their gripe were not midnight stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be a spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. That the ancient constitution and the public opinion of England ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... failed me, I might have quoted that line often and appropriately enough. But every agent in the "robbery"—from the vainglorious Virginian, my chief captor, down to the smooth Secretary, whose velvet gripe was so loth to unclose—seemed provokingly bent on exaggerating the importance of their prize. Perhaps the very interest felt in my release, and the exertions unsparingly used—especially in Baltimore—to secure it, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... shortly after the sun rose, and watched by him until he awoke Another good night's rest had greatly benefited him. During the day, recurring to his misfortune, he told me that when the lasso first fell over his shoulders, he fancied for the moment that he was in the gripe of some wild beast, but immediately he felt himself drawn from his horse, the truth became apparent to him. He was stunned by the fall, and lay insensible on the ground, quite unconscious that the ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3 above ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending;—vain The struggle! vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... march. But the temperate can. If backward to come up to the vital principle of this work, they will prevent its accomplishment. But the banner of triumph will wave in peace over all the land, hailed by thousands of grateful captives from the gripe of death, in spite of all the warring of the "mighty to drink wine," if those who abhor intemperance, and think they would be willing to make a great sacrifice to save their children or friends from its blasting curse, will only come up to the little effort of entire ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... and canst not know us, what we are! The hand she feels upon her is the gods', That reacheth her e'en here, with bloody gripe! Then strive not thou to balk the gods' just doom. O, hadst thou seen her in the dragon's cave, Seen how she leaped to meet that serpent grim, Shot forth the poisonous arrows of her tongue, And darted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... changed into a threatening growl that would have suited a wolf's throat, and a hand clutched at my sleeve. I stood motionless. The muttering growl sank to a moan again, the chain sounded no more, but still the hand held its gripe of my garment, and I feared to move. It knew of my presence, then. My brain reeled, the blood boiled in my ears, and my knees lost all strength, while my heart panted like that of a deer in the wolf's jaws. I sank back, and the benumbing influence of excessive terror ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... many a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, Consign'd to vultures, and to wolves a prey, Your toils are past; no more ye wake to feel Lust's savage gripe, or rapine's reeking steel! And Thou, to whom my wedded faith was given, On earth my solace, and my hope in heaven, Approv'd in manhood, as in youth ador'd, Belov'd while living, as in death deplor'd, O stay thy flight! Around this ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... barbarous, savage taste! To eat one's mother ere itself was born! To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste, And scoop it ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... true, cavernously deep; but there were no full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father's, strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... general without soldiers, and a sovereign without subjects. The prestige of his name was gone; and had the Chamber of Deputies invested him with the Dictatorship, as was suggested, it would have been "a barren sceptre in his gripe," and the utmost stretch of power could not have collected materials to meet the impending invasion. At no period did he show such irresolution as at this time. He tendered his abdication, and it was accepted. He offered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... ground, An' Shamus O'Brien throws one look around. Then the hangman dhrew near, an' the people grew still, Young faces turned sickly, and warm hearts turn chill, An' the rope bein' ready, his neck was made bare, For the gripe iv the life-strangling cord to prepare; An' the good priest has left him, havin' ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,—but Death, who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... and with me oft she sat: Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 'You are not Ida;' clasp it once again, And call her Ida, though I knew her not, And call her sweet, as if in irony, And call her hard and cold which seemed a truth: And still she feared that I should lose my mind, And often she believed ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... my head seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the noise of waters ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Pist. Let Vultures gripe thy guts: for gourd, and Fullam holds: & high and low beguiles the rich & poore, Tester ile haue in pouch when thou shalt lacke, Base ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the man who held it behind him, and walked up among us, who with our heads bowed, and breathless with fear, awaited our impending fate. I happened to be standing the foremost, and grasping my arm with a gripe which made my heart sink, with his hand which held the sword he bent down my head still lower than it was. I made sure that he was about to cut off my head, when the women, who had risen from the ground, ran crowding round him, and with mingled entreaties and caresses strove to induce him ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... that had been proved, but merely as a precaution till their cause should come to trial There were instances in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey. The harems of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries respected in the East by governments which respected nothing else, were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to submission than the Hindoos, sometimes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up!" quoth Little John. "Disgrace, sayest thou? Methinks it is more disgrace for one of our garb to wring hard-earned farthings out of the gripe of poor lean peasants. It is ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... short time. The daily quest for food continued. The meat-man rarely proved a success, but the ash-cans were there, and if they did not afford a meat-supply, at least they were sure to produce potato-skins that could be used to allay the gripe of ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... but the "Nawth'n scum," Made these "gen'l'men" turn as white As a head o' hair in a single night! Cleaned their army completely out, (We're going to give that another wipe!) On the double-quick, by the shortest route,— Wrung their stronghold from their gripe,— Brought their garrison right to taw, And made 'em get down to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Doughby lost his balance, the stag, which was now recovering its strength, drew itself violently back, and in an instant the Kentuckian was floundering in the water, struggling with the deer, to whose horns he held on with the gripe of a tiger. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... lance, And wear curled periwigs, and chalk their face And still are poring on their pocket-glass; Tired with pinned ruffs and fans and partlet strips And busks and verdingales about their hips; And tread on corked stilts, a prisoner's pace, And make their napkin for a spitting place, And gripe their waist within a narrow span, Fond Caenis that wouldst wish ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... startling as it was instantaneous. The vampyre sprang to his feet, as he had been suddenly impelled up by some powerful machinery; and, casting his cloak away from his arms, so as to have them at liberty, he sprang upon Charles Holland, and hurled him to the ground, where he held him with a giant's gripe, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the Ploughes principall hale, and doth belong to the left hand being a long bent peece of woode, some what strong in the midst, and so slender at the vpper end that a man may easily gripe it, which being fixed with the rest presenteth ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... at Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe her to death. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... were glued to his sides by the bear-like embrace of Henri, while Dick tied a handkerchief quickly yet firmly round his mouth. The whole thing was accomplished in two minutes. After taking his knife and tomahawk away, they loosened their gripe and escorted him swiftly over ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... twelve months. And he such a clever dog, too! the best player, all to nothing, driven to the wall, by a cursed obstinate run of infernal luck. And he used to scowl, and grind his teeth, and nearly break the keys and shillings in his gripe in his breeches' pocket, as imprecations, hot and unspoken, coursed one another through his brain. Then up he would get, and walk sulkily to the brandy-flask and have a dram, and feel better, and begin to count up his chances, and what ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the loss of the actor. His former regret too is resuscitated. A mere paragraph rounds the little life of your actor, his entrances and exits, and he who "appeared" on one stage in 1790, as Sir Francis Gripe and Jemmy Jumps, disappeared from that greater stage, or all the world, as Joseph Munden. We have often thought these farewells of actors must be with them dismal affairs, especially in old age. They must remind them of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... apprehensive are sometimes the most courageous. Just then, however, her former lover was coming along the street, and, catching a glimpse of what had happened, was on the spot in an instant, took the dog by the throat with a gripe not inferior to his own, and having thus compelled him to relax his hold, dashed him on the ground with a force that almost stunned him, and then with a superadded kick sent him away limping and howling; whereupon the fool, attacking him furiously with a stick, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me." Just such a creature was Barere. In the hands of the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins; he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not very delicate lover in Congreve's lively song valued the conquest of a prostitute ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but is more satisfied that "it might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the deck of his ship to defend his companions from the descending fangs of Scylla, or rather, with indignation and anguish, seeing them already snatched up, and writhing in the mysterious gripe." In such fanciful humours, it might be made to mean any thing or any body. And we are, after all, quite at a loss to know whether the conjecture is offered as a specimen of "invention." He considers the cartoon of Pisa "the most striking instance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... found; Sheaves heaped on sheaves here thicken up the ground. With sweeping stroke the mowers strow the lands; The gath'rers follow, and collect in bands: And last the children, in whose arms are borne (Too short to gripe them) the brown sheaves of corn. The rustic monarch of the field descries, With silent glee, the heaps around him rise. A ready banquet on the turf is laid Beneath an ample oak's expanded shade. The victim ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... perished, Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve cupboards And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice! ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... being so great, that every thing till now has been pollarded that would have passed twenty feet in height: this is done to support the vines, and not suffer their rambling produce to run out of the way, and escape the gripe of the gatherers. I have eaten too many of these delicious grapes however, and it is now my turn to be sick—No wonder, I know few who would resist a like temptation, especially as the inn afforded but a sorry dinner, whilst every hedge provided so noble a dessert. Paffera pur la malattia[Footnote: ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... barrel.—But scarcely had he laid hold of the outermost rim with both hands, when the barrel was swayed down from the opposite side. A shipwrecked man, whose long wet hair streamed down over his face, fixed his nails, as it were the talons of a vulture, on the hoops of the barrel; and by the energy of his gripe—it seemed as though he would have pressed them through the wood itself.—He was aware of his competitor: and he shook his head wildly to clear the hair out of his eyes—and opened his lips, which displayed his teeth pressed ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey |
