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Pluck   Listen
verb
Pluck  v. t.  (past & past part. plucked; pres. part. plucking)  
1.
To pull; to draw. "Its own nature... plucks on its own dissolution."
2.
Especially, to pull with sudden force or effort, or to pull off or out from something, with a twitch; to twitch; also, to gather, to pick; as, to pluck feathers from a fowl; to pluck hair or wool from a skin; to pluck grapes. "I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude." "E'en children followed, with endearing wile, And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile."
3.
To strip of, or as of, feathers; as, to pluck a fowl. "They which pass by the way do pluck her."
4.
(Eng. Universities) To reject at an examination for degrees.
To pluck away, to pull away, or to separate by pulling; to tear away.
To pluck down, to pull down; to demolish; to reduce to a lower state.
to pluck off, to pull or tear off; as, to pluck off the skin.
to pluck up.
(a)
To tear up by the roots or from the foundation; to eradicate; to exterminate; to destroy; as, to pluck up a plant; to pluck up a nation.
(b)
To gather up; to summon; as, to pluck up courage.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pluck" Quotes from Famous Books



... meant to take, but Gerald often, so to speak, eluded him. The lad had a way of hinting that they understood one another and Osborn vaguely suspected that he worked upon his prejudices; but he was a sportsman. He had pluck and knew what the Osborn traditions demanded. In fact, Gerald might go far, if ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... my sister's son, and I fear she will never forgive thee. But pluck up courage, go to her and demand thy husband, and she'll have to give him up to thee if thou canst do all that she demands from thee. Take this twig; if she asks what I think she will ask, strike it on the ground thrice and help ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... Netherton having lost their ancestral property, had to begin the world again. They had to begin at the beginning. But they had plenty of pluck and energy. I go back to my great-great-grandfather, Michael Naesmyth, who was born in 1652. He occupied a house in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, which was afterwards rebuilt, in 1696. His business was that of a builder and ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... genuine enthusiasm to describe the fearful glories of the great battle. Even to one who hates the most brutalising of amusements, the spirit of the writer is impressibly contagious. We condemn, but we applaud; we are half disposed for the moment to talk the old twaddle about British pluck; and when Hazlitt's companion on his way home pulls out of his pocket a volume of the 'Nouvelle Heloise,' admit for a moment that 'Love of the Fancy is,' as the historian assures us, 'compatible with a cultivation of sentiment.' If Hazlitt had thrown as much into his description ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... more than ever to be dreaded in that young man? To have robbed him, is nothing; to have addressed the woman he loves, is not much; but to hold in your keeping both his crown and his honor, why, he would rather pluck out your heart ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... Englishman with us—obviously a consumptive. He typified for them the doggedness of British pluck. He had been through the entire song and dance of the Mexican Revolution; a dozen times he had been lined up against a wall to be shot. From Mexico he had escaped to New York, hoping to be accepted by the British military authorities. Not unnaturally ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... to allow poaching on the preserves they claimed. Then Jim thought about Carrie, and felt half ashamed of his caution. She was a partner and although she did not know the difficulties she would not hesitate. He did not know if he was weak or not, but he did not want her to think he had no pluck. While he mused, Carrie came in, looking pale and tired, but she stopped and ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... because she likes to do mischief. She knows she mustn't pick flowers,—so she does it; that's all there is to it. But, if you fancy to have her pluck ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... leaders, men of moral passion, who will show us the hard path of sacrifice, not asking us to do what they are not willing to do themselves; not pointing the way, but traveling in it; men of heroic mould who will say, "If my right eye offend me, I will pluck it out"; men who are willing to go down to political death if the country can be saved by that sacrifice. We need men at home who are as brave as the boys in the trenches, who risk their lives every day in a dozen different ways, without a trace of ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... he proceeded, 'I may tell ye informally that I admire the pluck of ye. But, nevertheless, that will has ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... worthless, yet there are in the great seed-plot of human nature a thousand rudimentary germs, not wheat and not tares, of whose properties we have not had a fair opportunity of assuring ourselves. If you are too eager to pluck up the tares, you are very likely to pluck up with them these untried possibilities of human excellence, and you are, moreover, very likely to injure the growing wheat as well. The demonstration of this lies in the recorded experience ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... Ireland versus England, is enough to show the hopelessness of such a combat. It is a very easy thing to magnify the old heroism of the Irish, and cast opprobrium on the present bearers of the name, as did several newspaper writers recently, for not displaying the "pluck" of their ancestors who fought against Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange. It is forgotten that circumstances have altered considerably since those days when the Irish possessed a regular army led by experienced generals: restore those circumstances, and the Irish of to-day ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... left in his own house. He recalled the parting between them, and the covenant he made, that good faith and stainless honour should be ever betwixt the twain. But the maiden, from whom he came, was willing to take him as her knight! If such was her will, might any pluck him ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... adventures of ail kinds for the hero and his friends, whose pluck and ingenuity in extricating themselves from awkward fixes are always equal to the occasion. It is an excellent story full of honest, manly, patriotic efforts on the part of the hero. A very vivid description of the battle of Trenton is also found in this story."—Journal ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... fancy-work into the beautiful gardens or wandered lazily through the high-walled lanes that shut in the villas and orange groves. Sometimes they found a gate open, and were welcomed to the orchards and permitted to pluck freely the fragrant and rich flavored fruit, which is excelled in no other section of the south country. Also Uncle John, with Beth and Patsy, frequented the shops of the wood-workers and watched their delicate and busy fingers inlaying ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... arriv'd, That never sailing on its waters saw Man, that could after measure back his course, He girt me in such manner as had pleas'd Him who instructed, and O, strange to tell! As he selected every humble plant, Wherever one was pluck'd, another there Resembling, straightway ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... sanctified to their spiritual good. Powers of darkness and of light were struggling for the possession of every soul, and it was the duty of parents, ministers, and teachers to lose no opportunity to pluck the children as brands from the burning." (Johnson Clifton, Old-Time Schools and Schoolbooks, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... grow; and corn, if no care is given to its cultivation, soon becomes but a poor and useless sort of grass. It must be sown fresh every year in ground which has been made ready for it. Did you ever pluck one of the golden ears from a field of corn, and sit down and count how many grains there were upon one slender stalk? And then did you think that every little grain in that ear was itself a seed which, just as the egg contains the bird that is one day to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... exclaimed Zapote the instant after, raising his hand to his head, as if about to pluck out ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... deliberation which he knew how to assume when he desired to be heard without interruption. "I am therefore almost entirely ignorant of your African affairs, but I imagine Jack owes more to your pluck and promptness than has yet transpired. I gathered as much from one or two conversations I had with Miss Gordon when she was in England. I am one ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... as on a rod of steel. It would be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her. Before electricians could mend a bell or locksmiths open a door, before dentists could pluck a tooth or butlers draw a tight cork, it was done already with the silent violence of her slim hands. She was light; but there was nothing leaping about her lightness. She spurned the ground, and she meant to spurn it. People ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... us more than illustrations of pluck in the face of apparent failure. Our heroes show the stuff they are made of and surprise their most ardent admirers. One of the best stories Captain Douglas ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... Little Jancourt, you know, has a tear at command, The rest shall have muslin-wrapp'd onions in hand; An expedient which you, my good Consul, must try, For a drop never yet wag observ'd in your eye! And therefore I think 'twould be better for you The largest to pluck from the beds of St Cloud. When these fellows appear, they shall fall at your feet, Portalis shall pen a few words to repeat; He shall state 'tis the nation's imperial will That you do not your dangerous promise fulfil; But snug in this closet put all into motion, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... your pluck, my boy, and I'll see what I can do, for my old friend's sake, and for your kindness to a little kitten. I may be able to get you into our yard, though you'll have to be content with rough work and very small wages at first. I suppose you haven't a reference ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... bold, brave, courageous, patient under reverses, undismayed by disasters, hopeful amid calamities, like Rome when she sold the field at which Hannibal had his camp. No Cannæ or Pharsalia or Pavia or Agincourt or Waterloo must discourage her. Let her Senate sit in their seats until the Gauls pluck them by the beard. She must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the strong and warring on or plundering the weak; she must act on the square with all nations, and the feeblest tribes; always keeping her ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... over all British South Africa the escape created as much interest as it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed pluck, and because he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill for the time became a sort of popular hero, and to his countrymen his escape gave as much pleasure as it was a cause of ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... 'smirchiness' of feature, he had learned to assume an air of superiority, which by its sheer audacity prevented a casual observer from setting him down as the vulgarian he undoubtedly was; and his amazing pluck, boldness and originality in devising ways and means of smothering popular discontent under various 'shows' of apparent public prosperity, was immensely useful to all such 'statesmen,' whose statesmanship consisted in making as much money as possible for themselves out of the pockets ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... while I took them out, scarce could hold them all in her apron; and at the other end old Pagels pulled nearly as many out of his doublet and coat pockets. My daughter then sat down with the rest of the womankind to pluck the birds; and as there was no salt (indeed it was long since most of us had tasted any), she desired two men to go down to the sea, and to fetch a little salt-water in an iron pot borrowed from Staffer Zuter; and so they did. In this water we first dipped the birds, and then roasted them ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... there skulking. There wasn't one of you dared face Bill, and I did it—a blind man! And I'm to lose my chance for you! I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and were selected. Great interest was taken by their confreres in the progress of the war, especially during the siege and the relief of Ladysmith, where two of the Bristol R.E.'s were among the besieged. One of the staff went through the siege of Kimberley, and another for his pluck was awarded the D.S. Medal. A hearty welcome awaited their return, and this was manifested by means of a supper and musical evening at St. Stephen's Restaurant, ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs

... My friend Christian, you talk of ease in the grave, but can a man go to bliss who takes his own life? All the law is not in the hands of Giant Despair. Who knows but that God, who made the world, may cause him to die, or lose the use of his limbs as he did at first. I have made up my mind to pluck up the heart of a man, and to try to get out of this strait. Fool that I was not to do so when first he came to the cell. But let us not put an end to our own lives, for a ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... fortune to dwell so protractedly in these loftier realms, and that he could long regard as the most perfect verity all that he thought, felt, imagined, dreamed, and fancied—this very fact embittered for him the fruit which he was obliged at last to pluck from the tree ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... never see him more! the hand of death is on him,—cold, clay-cold is its touch! he is breathing his last—Oh murdered Delvile! massacred husband of my heart! groan not so piteously! fly to him, and weep over him!—fly to him and pluck the poniard from his ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... his head upon the block, he bad the executioner stay till he had removed aside his beard, saying, "that that had never committed treason." When the executioner asked his forgiveness, he kissed him and said, "thou wilt do me this day a greater benefit than any mortal man can be able to give me; pluck up thy spirit man, and be not afraid to do thy office, my neck is very short, take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... taken the disposal of the big car, cheerfully enough, but she could not leave behind some absurd little tricks of thought that she had always indulged in. She was as strange to the road as any Picardy peasant and as bewildered, with—shall I say it?—considerably less pluck and spirit than some of them, when the landmarks she had lived by were swept away. But they, you see, had a dim notion of what was happening to them. Elliott had none. She didn't even know that she was being evacuated. She knew only that ways which had always worked before had mysteriously ceased ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... the Columbia, from the mouth of that river to the falls, that is to say, on a space extending about 250 miles from east to west, are, generally speaking, of low stature, few of them passing five feet six inches, and many not even five feet. They pluck out the beard, in the manner of the other Indians of North America; but a few of the old men only suffer a tuft to grow upon their chins. On arriving among them we were exceedingly surprised to see that they had almost all flattened ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... of practice and pluck he had so far advanced that he ran second in the quarter-mile at the Sports. Of course this was not very heroic. He was rewarded for this feat of strength with a patent egg-boiler, which was of no ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... the issue of a fair experiment of the constitution, was avowed by the minority. In others, the chagrin of defeat seemed to increase the original hostility to the instrument; and serious fears were entertained by its friends, that a second general convention might pluck from it the most essential of its powers, before their value, and the safety with which they might be confided where they were placed, could be ascertained ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... so. The girl has beauty, virtue, wit, Grace, humour, wisdom, charity and pluck. Would it be kindly, think you, to parade These brilliant qualities before your eyes? Oh no, King ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... been altogether lacking in the pluck he had displayed thus far had he been deterred by physical suffering from pushing his efforts to the utmost. He would have kept on through torture tenfold worse, and he showed himself ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... copy of a register. If they could do that, need they ever have shot that raffish old lord—I beg pardon, my dear—your highly respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep your pluck up." ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... Private Edwin Horsemanden had pluck as well as sentiment, and he went on. Moreover he had his revenge, for at bottom the 65th was itself tender-hearted, not to say sentimental. It believed in lost loves and lost blossoms, muslin dresses, and golden chains, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... could lift him up to it, if she could pluck the heart out of him and warm it in her own hot breast, then there would stand the man for her need. For Isom Chase would not die. He would live on and on, like a worm in wood, until some strong hand fed him to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... plunged in a gloomy revery, had scarcely seemed to hear the last few sentences of his rival): "stay, Maltravers. Speak not of love to Evelyn! A horrible foreboding tells me that, a few hours hence, you would rather pluck out your tongue by the roots than couple the words of love with the thought of that unfortunate girl! Oh, if I were vindictive, what awful triumph would await me now! What retaliation on your harsh judgment, your cold contempt, your momentary and wretched ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is well alight, Philo, pluck up green bushes and tufts of grass and throw upon it, so as to make as much smoke ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... good deal distressed to see the boys in the market-place. They steal just as much as ever they can from the sellers of straw and fuel, pluck out handfuls from the bundles and run away not at all ashamed. If the owner does not chase them they get off with it. If he throws down his load and runs after them they drop the plunder, the owner picks it up, and no ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... take the odd-shaped pod of the wild fleur-de-lis, the common flag, and, winding it up in the flag's own long, narrow leaf, holding one end, and throwing the pod sling-wise, produce a sound through the air like that of the swoop of the night-hawk? And who better than he could pluck lobelia, and smartweed, and dig wild turnips and bring all for his mother to dry for possible use, should, he or his father or she catch cold or be ill in any way? Hopes for the future had he, too. Sometimes a deer had come in great ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... whether natural or revealed; and in denying religion, you deprive the poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and afflictions; you wrest from the hands of the powerful and rich the only bridle to their injustices and passions, and pluck from the hearts of the guilty the greatest check to their crimes—I mean this remorse of conscience which can never be the result of a handful of organized matter; this interior monitor, which makes us blush in the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... with his men, but once more British pluck attempted the impossible, and the Highland brigade was chosen to lead this forlorn hope. That night the pipers wailed Lochaber no more for the mangled dead of the MacGregors, the MacLeans, and the MacDonalds who lay in windrows with their faces to the foe. This ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... bright, unaffected little books of travel.... Altogether a very agreeable little book, and I congratulate Mrs. Tweedie on her pluck ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... first speaker; "how comes it, pray, that this overgrown child, who seemed the other day to be held as nicely in leading-strings as need be—this raw boy, whose hot-headedness, simplicity, and indolence rendered him as easy a pigeon to pluck as one could desire; how comes it, I say, that he has taken alarm in this sudden manner, so as to refuse to come here any more? you've bungled this matter most shamefully, sir, and must take ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... Indians and hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that our life should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... has, like radiant energy, been returned to God who gave it; but, unlike the case of radiant energy, the Creator has not established any regular source of vital supply from without, no elixir of life for organic nature in general. There is no longer within easy reach a tree of life from which we may pluck and eat and live forever. And as the individual grows old and dies, so do species and even whole tribes degenerate and ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... clung. A few yards beyond the termination of this avenue we left the path and entered a wilderness of climbing plants. Carefully advancing (for there were arms stretched out on every side ready to pluck flesh or clothing), we took our stand opposite the coils of ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... hundreds of thousands. But that is no reason why I should hate the present possessors of landed property in the Far West or in the Far South. That is no reason why I should wish to dispossess them of land which they have legitimately acquired, whether they owe it to their luck or to their pluck, to favourable circumstances or ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... mystery in truth. Its simplicity is often disfigured with unnatural and ridiculous superstitions, and these sometimes are so prominent as to conceal it. They certainly, with many, bring it into disrepute. The more intellectual pluck these off and cast them away. They see and know the truth. Yonder birds obey an instinct: the chill to their more sensitive natures warns them that the winter, or the tempest, or the rain-storm is upon them; they obey this instinct and fly from ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... reached the highest pitch. The Battalion was not slow in playing its part. One of the early casualties was Lieutenant Moberly, who performed a daring daylight reconnaissance up to the German wire. He was wounded and with great difficulty and only through remarkable pluck regained our lines. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... ruination of some natures, and as year after year went by and his wits broke themselves on a stone wall, he grew into a very different man from the handy lad the Johnnies had taken prisoner. One thing he never gave up, and that was his pluck; and he had plenty of use for it when, after seven years, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Cromwell and the council. Their favourite topic was the Dutch war. God, they maintained, had given Holland into the hands of the English; it was to be the landing-place of the saints, whence they should proceed to pluck the w—— of Babylon from her chair and to establish the kingdom of Christ on the continent; and they threatened with every kind of temporal and everlasting woe the man who should advise peace on any other terms than the incorporation of the United Provinces ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... right at the volley, and took me almost into the arms of some natives who came running from that side. A big induna blazed at me, missed me, and then fumbled at his belt for another cartridge. It was not a proper bandolier he had on, and I saw him trying to pluck out the cartridge instead of easing it up from below with his finger. As I got my horse steady and threw my rifle down to cover him, he suddenly let the cartridge be and lifted an assegai. Waiting to make sure of my aim, just as his ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... say unto him, The Lord saith thus; Behold, that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up, even this whole land. And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord: but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goesth. Jeremiah ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... adj.; disagree, come amiss &c. 24; clash, jar, jostle, pull different ways, conflict, have no measures with, misunderstand one another; live like cat and dog; differ; dissent &c. 489; have a bone to pick, have a crow to pluck with. fall out, quarrel, dispute; litigate; controvert &c. (deny) 536; squabble, wrangle, jangle, brangle[obs3], bicker, nag; spar &c. (contend) 720; have words &c. n. with; fall foul of. split; break with, break squares with, part company with; declare war, try conclusions; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to God's praise and usque ad Hebreos (*), and had paid their reckoning, some of them began to say, "How shall we be received by our wives when we return home?" "God knows if we shall be excommunicated." "They will pluck us by the beard." "By Our Lady!" said one, "I am afraid to go home." "God help me! so am I," said another. "I shall be sure to hear a sermon for Passion Sunday." "Would to God that my wife were dumb—I should drink more boldly than ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... flies through the mouths of men. But if so, how many thousands of heroines there must have been, how many thousands there may be now, of whom we shall never know. But still they are there. They sow in secret the seed of which we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble, ill- dressed woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who nurses a bedridden mother, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the pluck of women!" Matthew exclaimed reverently, down in his throat. "I'll be here, Ann, whenever you want me, and if you say that chickens must fill my future life, then chickens it shall be," he added, rising to the surface ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... a man in my life," said Carson. "He shows a lot of pluck; he never once owned that the thing was too much for him. But I got him to talking—a little. Didn't need to talk much; the whole place was shouting at ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... discontented, with her watry eyes Bent on the earth: the unfrequented woods Are her delight; and when she sees a bank Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell Her servants what a pretty place it were To bury lovers in, and make her maids Pluck'em, and strow her over like a Corse. She carries with her an infectious grief That strikes all her beholders, she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh, and sing again, and when the rest Of our young Ladies in ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... one of those simple affairs which might have been done by any aviator possessing skill and pluck, only fortunately for these three officers nobody else ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... not fail to plume himself on the joint favors of Chimborazo, how humiliated he would be to learn that Lord K., more fastidious in his amours, more exalted in his ambition, had not, four thousand fathoms above sea, feared to pluck ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled, snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets above the load of silver-and-red ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... in her brother's place; I will one day enter as master the palace before whose closed portals they once insolently kept me two hours waiting. I swore that night to be revenged for that insult, and now the moment has come. Father, the fruit of revenge is ripe, and you must pluck it!" ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... Canada. None of his fastidious relatives seemed inclined to hold out a hand to him. Perhaps this was not very astonishing, but I was a little hurt that he did not afford me the opportunity. In one way, however, the lad was right. He was willing to stand on his own feet. There was pluck in him." ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... the escort of a strong convoy which had passed along the road some miles in front. Next morning both convoy and opposition had disappeared. The cavalry rode on amid a country of orange groves, the troopers standing up in their stirrups to pluck the golden fruit. There was no further fighting, and on June 4th French had established himself upon the north of the town, where he learned that all ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... past, Plucked thee, and placed within his breast, And there by guardian angel nurst, Thou took'st a shape of human grace, Until, a lowly flower at first, Thou grew'st the first of mortal race. Alas! if I who still was blessed When thou wast but a lowly flower— To pluck thy image from my breast, Though thus thou will'st it, have no power; Thou still to me, though lifted high In hope and heart above the glen, Where first thou won my idol eye, Must spell ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... inclinations, smothered her every girlish inspiration, her every womanly instinct to the dictates of that power which came straight from the hands of the gods; now she felt actual physical nausea at the sight of this pitiable coward, who—wallowing in his own cruelty—had not even the unreasoning pluck of a brute ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... dress I put on to keep the rain off. (Aside). Ah! what a satisfaction it would be for me to kill him! Let us pluck ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere

... who had lingered behind to pluck a wild flower, at this moment came running after ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... he said, with a deep solemnity of voice and manner, "'administer to a mind diseased—pluck from the memory'—Ah! away with the quotation and the reflection." And he sprung from the sofa, and going to the window, opened it, and leaned out for a few moments in silence. When he turned again towards ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in; then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country; then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... a little way from the rickyard, and said she would pluck the pigeon that very night after work. She was always ready to do anything for us boys; and we could never quite make out why they scolded her so for an idle hussy indoors. It seemed so unjust. Looking back, I recollect she had very ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... had been unharnessed, and a man was trying to lead him away in spite of Louis's remonstrances. The man had hold of one side of the bridle, while Louis, with a pluck unknown before, kept a firm grip on the other, the horse being tugged at on both sides; and had he not been the angel he was, there would have been ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... stood for a moment a little apart, glaring the one upon the other. They seemed ill enough matched; Blunt was fully half a head taller than Myles, and was thick-set and close-knit in young manhood. Nothing but Myles's undaunted pluck could have led him to dare to face an enemy so much ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... non-commissioned officers of their respective troops. They succeeded in their laudable task. Surgeon-Captain Pinches, whose horse had been shot under him on the north side of the khor, was saved by the pluck of his orderly, Private Peddar, who brought him out on his horse. Meanwhile, Captain Kenna and Lieutenant Montmorency, who were accompanied by Corporal Swarbrick, saw Lieutenant Grenfell's body and tried to recover it. They fired at the dervishes ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... fresh with the new year), so dispirits him, who can't do this, that he comes to the conclusion that his class and order have no business with a new year, and really are 'intruding.' And though he will pluck up for an hour or so, at the christening (I think) of a neighbour's child, that evening: still, when he goes home, Mr. Filer's precepts will come into his mind, and he will say to himself, 'we are a long way past the proper average of children, and it has no business to be born:' ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... did as he was bidden, for a few years ago he had been the complaisant victim of Hetty's pleasantries, and felt a light touch on his lips. Then, there was a pluck at his belt, and Hetty was several yards away when he made a step forward with his eyes wide open. She was laughing at him, but there was a ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... said, "and do as your father desired. God will provide." She had the most perfect faith in Providence, and believed that if she did her duty, she would be supported to the end. She had wonderful pluck and abundant common sense. Her character seemed to develop with the calls made upon her. Difficulties only brought out the essence of her nature. "I could not fail to be influenced by so good ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... sisters in fusty convents, or having heard a few sermons in Mr. Platitude's "chapelle," seek for admission at the establishment of mother S—-, who, after employing them for a time in various menial offices, and making them pluck off their eyebrows hair by hair, generally dismisses them on the plea of sluttishness; whereupon they return to their papas to eat the bread of the country, with the comfortable prospect of eating it still in the shape of a pension after their sires are dead. Papa (ex uno ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... along: a man who has no sense of the golden age, nor any power of living in the present: a man with common desires, cupidities, ambitions, just like most of the men you know. Suppose you reveal to that man the fact that if he will only pluck this gold up, and turn it into money, millions of men, driven by the invisible whip of hunger, will toil underground and overground night and day to pile up more and more gold for him until he is master of ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... came under the control of the victors. Captain Louis proceeded in his cutter up the Tiber and planted the British colours at Rome, becoming its governor for a brief time. The naval men had carried out, by clever strategy and pluck, an enterprise which Sir James Erskine declined to undertake because of the insurmountable difficulties he persisted in seeing. General Mack was at the head of about 30,000 Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did not prevent them ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... in was foremost of all the company, and as we travelled, I being alone in the waggon, began to try if I could pluck my hands out of the manacles, and as God would, although it were somewhat painful for me, yet my hands were so slender that I could pull them out and put them in again, and ever as we went when the waggons made most noise and the men busiest, I would be working to file off my bolts, ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... can possibly be more irritating to a dog than sheep? Master and dog were coming home together, and were persistently mobbed by a party of a dozen. Both agreed that if any real pluck lay at the back of the attentions so freely bestowed, the view entertained of the proceedings might be somewhat modified. But both were well aware that there was nothing of the kind; that the bold front was a sham, that inquisitiveness was the origin of it all, and that funk in reality filled ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... here and there perfectly truthful and candid. He was the son of a well-to-do country Squire, but the father had long since ejected his offspring from the paternal mansion; he had really travelled and had often displayed pluck. But his chief gifts were his good-humour, his ardent imagination, and a persuasive tongue that gained for him the trusting confidence of his victims almost before he himself knew that he meant to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various

... opiate of the restless, the mother's or the lover's breast to the bruised and disappointed; it is the sure retreat of the persecuted, and the temple-gate of the loving, and pious, and brave. When all else leaves us, it is faithful. But where are we wandering to pluck garlands from ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why it is I—the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door was closed to within an inch ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... dreamers whine Of the pleasures of wine For lovers of soft delight; But this is the song Of a tipple that's strong— For men who must toil and fight. Now the drink of luck For the man full of pluck Is easy to nominate: It's the good old whiskey of old Kentuck, And ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... our own money and our men Shall a dreadful war begin. Between the sickle and the suck All England shall have a pluck." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... glanced at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Horne Tooke, who after enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left posterity to pluck out "the heart of his mystery." I will say at once what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the individual; the interest we feel in external ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... willing to work, and take pleasure in doing so. All perform the harder parts of farming with an energy that is surpassed by no other laboring class in the world. Farmers deserve praise for this, I think, for it requires a great deal of pluck to work as hard ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... minded to meet with a Glug Pluck three hardy hairs from a rabbit-skin rug; Blow one to the South, and one to the West, Then burn another and swallow the rest. And who shall explain 'tis the talk of a fool, He's a Glug! He's a Glug of the old Gosh school! And he'll climb a tree, if the East wind ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis

... running after five or six half-starved geese; but the truth is, these boys were only watching for an opportunity to steal an odd goose of their neighbor's, while they pretended to look after their own. They used also to pluck the quills or the down from these poor live creatures, or half milk a cow before the farmer's maid came with her pail. They all knew how to calculate to a minute what time to be down in a morning to let out their lank, hungry beasts, which they had turned ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... forfeited my bail. I have shown the estimate I put upon my duty by appearing to discharge you as my bail in the face of the indignity I have put upon you, and knowing full well what I was to encounter. Show half my pluck and it will serve you well. I am not yet your prisoner, and by the Eternal! I will not be till to-morrow, when I shall be content with that position. On your peril answer me. Will you fulfil your agreement? Will you be a man or ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... shore and household. The borders of Tennessee and Kentucky were closely picketed; and no means of cunning, or perseverance, were omitted to prevent the passage of anything living, or useful, into the South. But none of this availed against the untiring pluck and audacity of the inland blockade-breakers. Daily the lines were forced, spies evaded, and bold "Johnny Reb" passed back and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... securely by the neck and raised it aloft; the other now was biting so fiercely at the back of his neck that he did not take time to dash the first one to the ground, but still holding it aloft with his left hand sought to pluck the ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes

... matter of fact, pluck was just what she had not, really; she had merely subordinated one terror to another. She was desperately afraid of Racksole's revolver, but she was much ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... between the professional and the amateur soldier. The Regular crowd think the war belongs to them... But I liked their pluck. They're arrogant to Death himself when he comes ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... of the window, and rush into the fresh woods after the birds that had just flown away, or in search of the squirrel of which he had caught a glimpse. What a penance it was to write his copy, while the wild roses beckoned him to come and pluck them! ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... see the Master catch the infuriated dog by the ruff than he scrambled to his feet; ducked under the policeman's arm and set off, around a corner, in something better than record time. Somehow, the encounter had deprived him of the nerve and the pluck to stand his ground and to explain that he had merely been trying to help with the luggage. His only desire, just then, was to put as many thousand miles as possible between himself and the tawny demon that ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... thousand fields of incident, adventure, and bitter trials, they had proved their stanch heroism and their fortitude; they had lived and endured nobly. I remember the enthusiasm with which they responded to my appeals; I remember their bold bearing during the darkest days; I remember the Spartan pluck, the indomitable courage, with which they suffered in the days of our adversity. Their voices again loyally answer me, and again I hear them address each other upon the necessity of standing by the 'master.' Their boat-song, which ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... busy himself with nest-building. Clarian's ardent, impetuous nature must evolve results, would not content itself with mere sensations. So he began to study Shakspeare,—not, as he had studied the philosophers, to pluck out and make his own some cosmical, pervading thought, but to find matter for Art-purposes. I think, that, if ever there was a born artist, who united to a fine aesthetic sense the fervor of a devotee, Clarian was that one, heart and soul. Some men make a mistress of Art, and sink down, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... take the air, and pluck a few of these fragrant blossoms,' replied Monica hastily. 'I will presently conduct you to the Manor myself, and ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... Clara, "I am not going to have you talking to me in that way! You have no right to do it, and you have no business to do it," she added, trying to pluck up a spirit. "Is there anybody that I value more than I do you and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... wall, I pluck you out of the crannies— Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... wait for a few years before you throw yourself away on such a man as Dr. Reed. I know that you have been greatly tried; nothing is so trying to a girl as to come out with her sister who is the belle of the season, and I must say you have shown a great deal of pluck; and perhaps I haven't been considerate enough. But I, too, have had my disappointments—Olive's affairs did not, as you know, turn out as well as I had expected, and to see you now marry one who is ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... he had time to form an exact idea of the situation, there was no mistaking the agitation of which he instantly became the object, and this soon enabled him to pluck up courage, although the adventure of Kazah did come back rather vividly to ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a young girl's resourcefulness and pluck, and the ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... alone, I fear Monny's favourite protegee, who started out to "see the world" on a legacy of two thousand dollars, and won Miss Gilder's admiration (and hospitality) through her unassuming pluck. To my mind she is the ideal adventuress of a new, unknown, and therefore deadly type; but for once I rejoiced at sight of the pallid, fragile woman, so cheerful in spite of frail health, so frank ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... great day of all the year. There are millions of cherry blossoms on trees larger than many of our largest apple trees—wonderful double-flowering, beautiful trees, just one mass of pink blossoms as far as the eye can reach. They do so reverence these blossoms that they rarely pluck them, but carry about bunches made of paper or silk tissue that rival the natural ones in perfection. No person is so poor that he cannot, on this great festal day, have his house, shop, place of amusement or, at least, umbrella bedecked with these delicate blossoms. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... in the beds of streams by the accumulations of snow which presently turned to ice and moved slowly down the valleys, began at once to pluck out blocks of granite from their starting-points, and settle themselves in cirques. They plucked downward and backward, undermining their cirque walls until falling granite left precipices; armed with imprisoned rocks, they gouged and scraped their beds, and these processes, constantly repeated ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... the youngest and the greenest showed the least nervousness as they waited there in that melancholy little orchard under the incessant scream of shells. That unshakable British coolness, part sheer pluck, part a sort of lack of imagination, perhaps, or at least of "nerves," left them as calm and casual as if they were but drilling on the turf of Hyde Park. And with it persisted that almost equally unshakable sense of class, that touching confidence in one's superiors— the young clerk's or mechanic's ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... for the maiden's pillow, Far beyond the Atlantic's billow, Love's apple, and when we have found it, Draw the magic circle round it;(1) Fearless pluck it, then no charm That it bears may do us harm; Place it near the sleeper's head, It will bring love's visions nigh, And when the pleasing, dreams are fled, The waking, pensive maid will sigh, Till her bosom has possessed, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... pluck. He had acquired considerable experience and knowledge of Indian "devilments" on his way across the plains, and, if the Apaches comprehended the situation, it was not to be supposed that he was not ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... anything else. His pluck is certainly wonderful, but even with his pluck he can't dissolve again. His Church Bill has given him a six months' run, and six ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Abner Joyce. He claimed as a matter of course the right to be present at such conferences. Joyce himself had the strength and the pluck to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... avail to these old bones if the Temple be rebuilded, and I die without placing my hands on the eyelids of my boy and blessing him in Thy name? I will pluck from this Christian image the last jewel and dispose of it, that he may return and place his hands in mine, and receive my benediction, and gladden ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... strong and permanent railway bridge across the Tsavo river makes excellent reading; whilst the courage he displayed in attacking, single-handed, lions, rhinoceroses and other dangerous animals was surpassed by the pluck, tact and determination he showed in quelling the formidable mutiny which once broke out amongst his native ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... who made the satisfaction of his lusts the condition of needy girls' securing work, all the while careless that he was conducting them along the first stage of a downward journey, which might lead to unsuspected depths of degradation. She itched to pluck him by the beard, to tell him what she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... to pluck up courage and begin to talk and write soberly about the war. At first the mere horror of it stunned the more thoughtful of us; and even now only those who are not in actual contact with or bereaved relation to its heartbreaking wreckage can think sanely about it, or endure to ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... used to that," said the old woman, with a patient smile; "that makes no difference in God's plans. Thou must pluck up thy heart, and have courage, child, for there is a long life before thee. A dark cloud is shading thy path now, but 'twill pass away, and thou wilt ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... so does Ashton, and both have strong, lusty voices, but seem to have lost all heart, and the rest of the party are getting discouraged at the many and serious delays they are causing us. I have used every means to induce them to rally and pluck up heart, but it seems all to be totally lost upon them. It is a very trying situation for me, and I trust God will guide me, and help me to do what is right and just to all I have in my charge. Mulcahy acknowledged riding horses in depot out kangarooing, also to taking apples, biscuits, jam, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... ear to mouth. The lessening sounds became all at once like the silence; and when the hounds, beaten back, slunk, whimpering, to heel, she lowered her eyes until she looked straight into the face of Christopher Blake. "My God! You have pluck!" he said, and his face was like that of a dead man. Still holding the dog above her head, she lay motionless against the body of the tree. "Drive the beasts away," she pleaded like a frightened child. Without a word he turned and ordered the hounds home, and they ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... opportunities in life, and he knew better than any one else that he was prone to waste his haymaking sunshine in timid procrastinations. But how to make love to Phillida? How offer his odd personality to such a woman as she? His mother's severe hints about young men who could not pluck ripe fruit hanging ready to their hand spurred him, but whenever he was in Phillida's presence something of preoccupation in her mental attitude held him back from tender words. He thought himself a little ridiculous, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... There is a tremendous demand from all quarters. Washington's buying is unlimited; the commission-houses are tumbling over one another to get aboard and the shorts are scared to a paralysed muteness. They don't know whether to jump in and cover or to stand their present hands, but they have no pluck to fight the rise, that is certain. The news bureaus have just published the story that I am buying for Randolph & Randolph, and they for the insiders; that the new tariff is as good as passed; and that at ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... he shouted, insolently, turning on Buckhurst. "I tell the truth; and if this man can afford to pay hundreds of francs for a telegram, he must be rich enough to pluck, I ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... aflame, And, when my reverent lips touch thy white hand, Each little nerve with such wild passion thrills That there is nothing which I would not do To gain thy love. [Leaps up.] Bid me reach forth and pluck Perilous honour from the lion's jaws, And I will wrestle with the Nemean beast On the bare desert! Fling to the cave of War A gaud, a ribbon, a dead flower, something That once has touched thee, and I'll bring it ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... Chevalier? I have joined the Grand Company. If the rest are cowards, I am not: I stand ready to pluck the peruke off the head of any man in New France, and carry it on my sword to the Place d' Armes, where I will challenge all the world to come ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... about Virgil's tomb and the laurel, seems to be at length settled, by the testimony of two travellers, given separately, and without a communication with each other. These both say, that attempting to pluck off a branch of the laurel, it followed their hand, being, in fact, nothing more than a plant or bough recently cut, and stuck in the ground for the occasion. The Cicerone acknowledged the roguery, and said they practised it with almost every traveller, to get money. You will, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... If my Sonne were my Husband, I should freelier reioyce in that absence wherein he wonne Honor, then in the embracements of his Bed, where he would shew most loue. When yet hee was but tender-bodied, and the onely Sonne of my womb; when youth with comelinesse pluck'd all gaze his way; when for a day of Kings entreaties, a Mother should not sel him an houre from her beholding; I considering how Honour would become such a person, that it was no better then Picture-like to hang ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... communication. When I told him of the doubts I had formed in regard to the disposal of the packages brought from the Hotel D——, and how to settle those doubts I had taken that midnight walk down Twenty-seventh Street, he looked astonished, his lips worked, and I really expected to see him try to pluck that flower up from the carpet, he ogled it so lovingly. But when I mentioned the lighted laundry and my discoveries there, his admiration burst all bounds, and he cried out, seemingly to the rose in the carpet, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... pipe, and placing it in his vest pocket as he rose and buttoned his thick pea-jacket up to the chin; "but I'll tell you what it is, if you are a descendant of the hunter of the far west that you boast so much about, it's precious little of his pluck that you've got; an' so I tell 'ee to your face, David Boone. All I've got to say is, that you'd better be wise and take my advice, and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... Lydmouth with the night express now without my head out of the window of the van right away from the viaduct till she pulls up at the station. And what's more, I never shall. It isn't fear, mind you, because I've as much pluck as ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... Bunker's Hill had, in truth, exasperated the people at large, and this exasperation was increased tenfold when, at a later period, news arrived of the invasion of Canada. They saw that it was a rude attempt to pluck a jewel from the British crown, and it excited feelings of resentment in their breasts deep and lasting. Not a few Englishmen who maintained that the Americans were justified in taking up arms to assert their own rights were converted by this step ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and to pluck that fleshy vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... great protector's hand With care and secresy must be convey'd: His bold ambition now avows its aim, To pluck the crown from Edward's infant brow, And fix it on his own. I know he holds My faithless Hastings adverse to his hopes, And much devoted to the orphan king; On that I build: this paper meets his doubts, And marks my hated rival as the cause Of Hastings' zeal for ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... Drift Age. They have each a large company of attendants armed with staves; they fight with each other until winter (the age of darkness and cold) is subdued. They pretend to pluck his eyes out and throw him in the water. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... with sharp lances, with which they essay to kill the bull while protecting themselves and their steeds from his horns. As the bulls in these encounters have not been weakened by many wounds and tired out by much running, the performances of the gentlemen fighters are remarkable for pluck and dexterity. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... and not know the day of his visitation. Ah, that is ruinous indeed, when a man's eyes are blinded as those Jews' eyes were; when a great temptation comes on him, and he thinks it no temptation at all; when hell is opening beneath him, with the devils trying to pluck him down, and heaven opening above him, with God's saints and martyrs beckoning him up, looking with eyes of unutterable pity and anxiety and love on a poor soul; and that poor soul sees neither heaven nor hell, nor anything but his ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... on, and so forth. The pluck of the woman! The marvellous patience and endurance! Did this extinguish her spirit? No; she refreshed herself with reading tales of other writers worsted in the fight—Gissing's New Grub Street afforded her the maximum of melancholy satisfaction—and then she fell to ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... intellect than Maxwell; and yet he allowed Maxwell to snub him, and he toadied Maxwell in return. It was not on the score of riding that Maxwell claimed and held his superiority, for Grindley did not want pluck, and every one knew that Maxwell had lived freely and that his nerves were not what they had been. I think it had come from the outward look of the men, from the form of each, from the gait and visage which in one was good and in the other insignificant. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... Bible in that Country: Struck into a great Passion at the first sight of the Book: He casts with himself how to get it: Where the rest of the English were bestowed: Kept from one another a good while, but after permitted to see each other: No manner of Work laid upon them: They begin to pluck up their hearts: What course they took for Cloths: Their Fare: What Employment they afterwards followed: How the English domineered: What Satisfaction one of them received from a Potter. A scuffle between the English and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... it— separation! What I suffered in that hole, thinking of her, starving for her! In less than three months I was in London again, on leave, and in my old stall at the Pandora. But even then, Farncombe, I hadn't your pluck. ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... this moment a messenger came from Lorenzo's mother, begging the doctor to go at once to San Polo, for that her son had been murdered and Soderini wounded to the death. It was now no longer possible to conceal their doings from the Count, who told them to pluck up courage and abide in patience. He had himself to dine and take his siesta, and then to attend a meeting ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... rime, do now From my high nest of penance here proclaim That Pontius and Iscariot by my side Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay, A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my sleeve; [5] Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again. In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest: They flapp'd my light out as I read: I saw Their faces grow between me and my book: With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine They burst my ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... higher; but he did not possess the power of restraining his followers or of holding them in hand, and the result was, that instead of being their leader he became their instrument. Fond of applause, ambitious of distinction, timid by nature, destitute of pluck, and of that rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin, to avoid the imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the foreground, but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the plot in which he was mixed up egregiously ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... Captain O'Hara, whom I have spoken about before as the only officer of the 86th Brigade left alive and unwounded. He had lately been sent to Egypt to look after prisoners, and I was unaware that he had again joined the firing line, but I fancy he had found the other job much too slow. He was full of pluck, it was not from attempts to save his skin that O'Hara had escaped so long. To-day he and a Turk were sniping each other, and after a time O'Hara had such a poor opinion of his opponent's firing that he got upright to walk away when the Turk hit him through the back. When I went ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... O wretched crowd!— No pleasures ye pluck—no pleasures ye plan In life’s lone road:— Whose eyes are blind to the glories great Of the works of God; And dream that the mouth is the nearest gate ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... flea. Expect to hear him howl, cough, spit, beg your pardon; to see him twist about, sweat, make sheep's eyes, and anything that may come into his head to put off this operation. But be not astonished; pluck up your courage when thinking that you are acting thus to bring a perverted creature into the ways of salvation. Then you will dextrously take the reins, the liver, the heart, the gizzard, and noble parts, and dip them all ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... had been the ultimatum. But Percy did not pluck up enough courage to trust himself, the only ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope



Words linked to "Pluck" :   fleece, plume, rack, cheat, twang, extort, pull, pulling, tweeze, pluck at, draw away, pluckiness, steal, strip, soak, surcharge, chisel, pull together, rob, gather, gutsiness, hustle, pull off, draw off, gutlessness, collect, roll, charge, undercharge, rip off, pick off, hook, wring, tear, gazump, cull, gouge



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