"Gripe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arms she spreads, With viperous twistings bound; and threatening shakes Her tresses: loud the serpents noise, disturb'd; Sprawl o'er her shoulders some; some, lower fall'n, Twine hissing round her breasts, with brandish'd tongue, Black poison vomiting. With furious gripe, Two from her locks she tore;—her deadly hand Hurl'd them straight on; the breasts of Athamas, And Ino, hungry, with their fangs they seiz'd; Fierce pains infixing, but external wounds Their limbs betray'd not: mental was the blow, So direly struck. Venoms most mortal, too, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... execrations. Judith, being the stronger of the two, had the advantage, and she had seized her opponent by the throat with the intention of strangling him, when a most terrific crash was heard causing her to loose her gripe. The air instantly became as hot as the breath of a furnace, and both started to their feet. "What has happened?" ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the 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, and—oh, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... 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 I heard ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... distinguished himself by his devotion during the dreadful plague which visited London in 1625 (Charles I.). Kentish, of whom Calamy entertained a high opinion, had been persecuted by the Government. Knowle, another minister of this chapel, had fled to New England to escape Laud's cat-like gripe. In Cromwell's time he had been lecturer at Bristol Cathedral, and had there greatly exasperated the Quakers. Knowles and Kentish are said to have been so zealous as sometimes to preach till they fainted. In Thomas Reynolds's time a new chapel was built at the King's Weigh-house. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was on 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," cried ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Then the Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing, their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand labours by Juno's malign decrees. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... cowering and trembling before his adversary, seeking to cover himself with his weapon, but, from his trembling hold, ineffectually. The stature of the youthful Scotsman appeared towering, as he stood over him with his uplifted sword, refusing to strike a defenceless man, but holding him with a gripe of iron; his cheek flushed crimson, his nostrils distended, for his soul was moved with a mightier, darker passion than had ever stirred its depths before. The soldiers of both parties, joined, too, by some from the castle—for ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... feelings on taxation, and on a variety of dues exacted by their clergy, were murmured in proverbs—Lo que no lleva Christo lleva el fisco! "What Christ takes not, the exchequer carries away!" They have a number of sarcastic proverbs on the tenacious gripe of the "abad avariento," the avaricious priest, who, "having eaten the olio offered, claims the dish!" A striking mixture of chivalric habits, domestic decency, and epicurean comfort, appears in the Spanish proverb, La muger y la salsa a la mano de la lanca: "The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... love and comfort. She could not catch every word, but there was a sense of promised peace and comfort, which began to soothe the fluttering heart, for the first time enjoying a respite from the immediate gripe of deadly terror. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who, after "being purified in the 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 ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... of the frigate "Lively," has been transmitted to posterity with little diminution. "Nothing in the world was ever more noble than the transaction of the Captain from beginning to end, and the glorious group of your ship and her two prizes, fast in your gripe, was never surpassed, and I dare say never will." Yet it may better be looked upon as another of those "fortunate" occurrences which attend—and in Nelson's career repeatedly attended—the happy meeting of opportunity and readiness. Doubtless they were ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... hand is round thee thrown! That desperate grasp thy frame might feel, Through bars of brass and triple steel!— They tug, they strain!—down, down they go, The Gael above, Fitz-James below. The Chieftain's gripe his throat compress'd, His knee was planted on his breast; His clotted locks he backward threw, Across his brow his hand he drew, From blood and mist to clear his sight, Then gleam'd aloft his dagger bright! —But hate and fury ill supplied The stream ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... several minutes straight, drawing the admiring glances of his assistants. It was safe enough for a high-ranking labman to gripe about Security—in fact, it was more or less expected. Scientists ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... 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 ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... living thing, and deliberately making a desert of every populous place, that grass might more abound for their horses and their flocks—the long and weary domination of these desolating masters; the gradual relaxation of the iron gripe with which they crushed the country; the pomp and power of the Russian church, even in the worst times of Tartar oppression; the first gathering together of the nation's strength as its spirit revived; the first great effort to cast off the load under which its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... the ground, lay Sir Robert's sword-belt, which had given way in the scuffle. A huge splinter from the massive door-post had been wrenched off by an almost superhuman effort—one which nothing but the gripe of a despairing man could have severed—and on the rock outside were left the marks of the slipping and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 they do not heed. The birds do fly, the fish ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... 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 as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... caught her in savage gripe. "What," cried I, shaking her to and fro despite my weakness, "what ha' you ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... peace. And so, because the emperor hates this peace, Therefore the duke—the duke will force him to it. All parts of the empire will he pacify, And for his trouble will retain in payment (What he has already in his gripe)—Bohemia! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bright noon of genius—great Augustan age. Such was thy Queen, and such th' illustrious time That nurs'd thy muse, and tun'd thy soul to rhyme; Yet wast thou fated sorrow's shaft to bear, Augmenting still this catalogue of care; The gripe of penury thy bosom knew, A gloomy jail obscur'd bright freedom's view; So life's gay visions faded to thy sight, Thy brilliant hopes enscarf'd ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... gripe thy guts: for gourd, and Fullam holds: & high and low beguiles the rich & poore, Tester ile haue in pouch when thou shalt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... going on below. Gibbs found the mate and seized him, while Atwell and Church came down and struck him with a pump break and a club; he was then dragged upon deck; they called for Dawes to come to them, and as he came up the mate seized his hand, and gave him a death gripe! three of them then hove him overboard, but which three Dawes does not know; the mate when cast overboard was not dead, but called after them twice while in the water! Dawes says he was so frightened that he hardly knew ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... still disturbed by my cough; but what thanks have I not to pay, when my cough is the most painful sensation that I feel? and from that I expect hardly to be released, while winter continues to gripe us with so much pertinacity. The year has now advanced eighteen days beyond the equinox, and still there is very little remission of the cold. When warm weather comes, which surely must come at last, I hope it will help both ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... more eligible that the Muses should have several more stories to descend, when their nine ladyships are invoked so to do—and that the pen should be taken out of the scraggy hand of a gentleman in rags, and be placed in the plump gripe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... your friendship, and assure you that I shall always bear it in mind," said Rodney, stopping long enough to give the operator's hand a cordial gripe ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... 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 to be ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 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 ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... 'Let vultures gripe thy guts, for gourd and Fullam holds, And high and low beguiles the rich and poor. Tester I'll have in pouch, when thou shalt ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... tightened my grasp of the brute's throat. His eyes were already starting from his head, and his tongue was hanging out. My anxious hope was, that, even after they had killed me, they would be unable to undo my gripe of his throat, before the monster was past breathing. I therefore threw all my will, and force, and purpose, into the grasping hand. I remember no blow. A faintness came over ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Fenwolf by the throat, clutching him with a terrific gripe, and in a few seconds the miserable wretch would have paid the penalty of his rashness, if a person had not at the moment appeared at the doorway. Flinging his prey hastily backwards, Herne turned at the interruption, and perceived old Tristram ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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, sparkling stars ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... ground, thus allowing Tom to get back his club. Before, however, either of them could repeat the blow, the seal, recovering, again dashed at Tom, who had to leap out of its way, narrowly escaping an ugly gripe on the leg. Willy had again loaded, but was afraid to fire lest he might hit either of the seamen. The seal now stopped, seeming doubtful at which of his assailants he should next rush. When they stopped the creature stopped also; and directly they moved, either to one side or the other, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... with Homer, Virgil and our Milton; though unlike bright Patroclus and the peerless Lycidas, the subject of the eulogy had not suffered change when it was penned. The eulogy in question compared Ralph to Demosthenes, and said that he must go on in his high course, and gripe the palm from Graecia's greatest son; and that from the obscure shades of private life, his devoted Tumles would watch the culmination of his genius, and rejoice to reflect that they had formerly partaken of lambs-wool together in the classic ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... got to be interwoven with 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 place of deeds, sentiments those of facts, and ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... sentence; for Frank sprang upon him like a tiger, and seizing his throat, with a powerful gripe, threw him to the ground; and, hastily catching up the musket which had fallen from his enemy's hand, dealt him a severe blow on the head. The muscles of the rebel instantly relaxed; and Frank—after unbuckling ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... 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. She was beautiful, and yet with her beauty ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ox the sturdy youth prepare: ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... grasp, overtake, snatch, capture, discover, grip, secure, take, clasp, ensnare, gripe, seize, take hold of. clutch, entrap, lay hold of ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... tell you there is no escape. Afloat or wrecked the Martial Law relaxes not its gripe. And though, by that self-same warrant, for some offence therein set down, you were indeed to "suffer death," even then the Martial Law might hunt you straight through the other world, and out again at its other end, following ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... 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
... butler, 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... from the foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,— Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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
... 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 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... those of Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... all sights and sounds To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, And catered for it as the Cretan bees Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 181 Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe; Then did I entertain the poet's song, My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling, and still gnawed. I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale. Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... will save us long pursuit This day, fear not his flight; so thick a Cloud He comes, and settl'd in his face I see 540 Sad resolution and secure: let each His Adamantine coat gird well, and each Fit well his Helme, gripe fast his orbed Shield, Born eevn or high, for this day will pour down, If I conjecture aught, no drizling showr, But ratling storm of Arrows barbd with fire. So warnd he them aware themselves, and soon In order, quit of all impediment; Instant without disturb they took Allarm, And onward move ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 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.
... as at last he extricated himself from my gripe, 'my daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to make her happy than you. Go, go—I forgive you—I also was once in love, and with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... me to and fro, with his septuagenarian gripe on my collar, as if instead of a patient much bored friend, I was his deadly enemy. When he let go, I found myself in a ring of spectators. 'Shame, shame! to insult an old man like him!' was the general cry. 'Young puppy!' said an ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... and 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 a tailor's ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... street. But he was the fleeter; and I should have lost him, had I not made a sudden turn, and come right upon him in a forsaken alley, where I suppose the poor thing dwelt. I seized him by the collar. He was small and spare, and he trembled under my gripe; but still he held his own, and only wrapped his cloak the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... astonished soldier, disclosed also Roland's features to him, and he fairly yelled with joy at the sight. "'Tarnal death to me!" he roared, first leaping into the air and cracking' his heels together, then snatching at Roland's hand, which he clutched and twisted with the gripe of a bear, and then cracking his heels together again, "'tarnal death to me, sodger, but I know'd it war you war in a squabblification! I heard the cracking and the squeaking; "'Tarnal death to me!' says I, 'thar's ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... They jammed him in the jacket, pinned him tight to the wall, and throttled him in the collar. This collar, by a refinement of cruelty, was made with unbound edges, so that when the victim, exhausted with the cruel cramp that racked his aching bones in the fierce gripe of Hawes's infernal machine, sunk his heavy head and drooped his chin, the jagged collar sawed him directly and lacerating the flesh drove him away from even this miserable approach to ease. Robinson had formed no idea of ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... my holidame! Heavy of heart she seems, and sore afflicted. But thus it is when rude calamity Lays its strong gripe upon these mincing minions; The dainty gew-gaw forms dissolve at once, And shiver at the shock. What says her paper? [seeming to read. Ha! What is this? Come nearer, Ratcliffe! Catesby! Mark the contents, and then divine the meaning. [he reads. 'Wonder not, princely Gloster, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... scrofulous French novel On grey paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... in vain, Thy chirp 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
... me! please your honour? I would not use any jantleman so ill, BARRING I could do no other,' replied the postillion, coolly; then, leaping across the ditch, or, as he called it, the GRIPE of the ditch, he scrambled up, and while he was scrambling, said, 'If your honour will lend me your hand till I pull you up the back of the ditch, the horses will stand while we go. I'll find you as pretty a lodging for the night, with a widow of a brother of my shister's husband that was, as ever ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 are resolved to use it—But I thank you for it—it ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... latter kingdom was in the habit of adopting the politics of France, and [end of page 261] embracing its interests, there seems to have been some repelling principle that kept the little nation out of the gripe of the great one. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... a cockatrice's dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws, Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught obeys but ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... Not sworne then to the Generall States but others, Which the promiscuous multitude gladly followed: When Graves and Vendloe were held by the Spaniard And Nunweghen with violence assaulted, Confusion with one greedy gripe being ready To seaze on all; then when the Sluice was lost And all in muteny at Midleborough, Who then rose up or durst step in before me To doe these Cuntries service? Who then labourd More then the now suspected Barnavelt T'appease ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... I should be less irritated: but he has rescued the poor being of a brother, Edward St. Ives, who had neither courage nor capacity to rescue himself, from the gripe of a gambler. This Edward, who is one of the king's captains, God bless him, and who has spent his fortune in learning the trade, not of a man of war, but of a man of fashion, having lost what ready ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... regretted 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 last farewell, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... 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 ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... our Hieland hills, my leddy? Come, cheer up-trust me, ye'll find as warm hearts among them as ony ye ha'e left in your fine English policies"—shaking her delicate fingers in his hard muscular gripe as ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 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 ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... God help you! Can't you sit in by the hearth with the light lit and herself beyond in the room? You'll do that surely, for I've heard tell there's a queer fellow above, going mad or getting his death, maybe, in the gripe of the ditch, so she'd be safer this night ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... 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, as he cried,— ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... senna 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 generally objected to. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... art A child, 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 hate and death ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... rising from his seat grasped the back of the chair he had been seated on with such a nervous gripe that the strong oak rail broke in two with the pressure, and his heaving chest and quivering lip told the fierce emotions that were struggling for utterance.—The landlady understood ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... thou, fond man, believe thyself secure Because thou'rt honest, and because thou'rt poor? Dost thou on law and liberty depend? Turn, turn thy eyes, and view thy injured friend. 80 Art thou beyond the ruffian gripe of Power, When Wilkes, prejudged, is sentenced to the Tower? Dost thou by privilege exemption claim, When privilege is little more than name? Or to prerogative (that glorious ground On which state scoundrels oft have safety found) Dost thou pretend, and there a sanction find, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 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
... 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 and rend and destroy. ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... want another wife?' he said, with a wild laugh, at the same time wrenching his arm from my gripe, and driving his spear through the fleshy part of the woman's breast and deep into the ground. A shriek rent the air as he drew it out again to repeat the thrust; but before he could do so, I struck him with the butt of my gun on the head. Staggering backwards, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... handling, deciding, and wielding everything—legislation, nominations, elections, "public sentiment," &c.—while the great masses of the people, farmers, mechanics, and traders, were helpless in their gripe. These conditions were mostly prevalent in the north and west, and especially in New York and Philadelphia cities; and the southern leaders, (bad enough, but of a far higher order,) struck hands and affiliated ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... blood. At last, rising from the ground, he took his sabre from 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 ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... off by sham excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender; and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It is easy to see what the end will be,—a life of mean ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... draw forth liberty from confinement in single cities to a fitness for being spread over territories which, experience does not forbid us to hope, may be as vast as have ever been grasped by the iron gripe of a despotic conqueror. The origin of so happy an innovation is one of the most interesting objects of inquiry which occurs in human affairs; but we have scarcely any positive information on the subject; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... lucid stream that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the assassin ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... one of the Genoese; "pay him respect." I accordingly doffed my hat and cried, "Sba alkheir a sidi" (Good-morning, my lord). "Are you Englishmans?" shouted the old grisly giant. "Englishmans, my lord," I replied, and, advancing, presented him my hand, which he nearly wrung off with his tremendous gripe. The other Moor now addressed me in a jargon composed of English, Spanish, and Arabic. A queer-looking personage was he also, but very different in most respects from his companion, being shorter by a head at least, and less complete by one eye, for the left orb of vision ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 stopper, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... which had been 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 exact capacity of the country for wretchedness. He ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
