"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disrespect to your generation, Sir Patrick: some of you old stagers did marvels through sheer professional intuition and clinical experience; but when I think of the average men of your day, ignorantly bleeding and cupping and purging, and scattering germs over their patients from their clothes and instruments, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... Sheer, nervous inability to listen is responsible for one phase of interruption to conversation. It is the interruption of the wandering eye which tells that one's words have not been heard. "The person next to you must be bored by my conversation, for ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... on the steps of the pagoda with a programme in his hand. Mose bounced into view, handed his tackle to Shanghai, Curry's hostler, and started for the jockeys' room, singing to himself out of sheer lightness of heart. He knew what he would do with that twenty-two-dollar ticket. There was a crap game every night at the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... with uninterrupted energy she again turned toward the southeast for another military adventure. Rumania still held fast to her neutrality. In Bulgaria the Central Powers were to succeed in gaining a fourth ally, which in sheer military advantage was probably worth more than the accession of Italy to her enemies. Though Russia had won her freedom for Bulgaria in '76, no sentiment drew her to Russia's assistance when Russia was losing. No statesmanship is more matter ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... he too threw down the gauntlet, became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect called to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Nations, is by far preferable. But that consideration does not touch the actual point, which is that we did not seek to set up the principle of balancing that has given rise to so many questions. It was forced on us and was a sheer necessity of the situation. We did all we could to avoid it by negotiations with Germany, which, had they succeeded in the end, would have relieved France and Russia as much as ourselves and would have ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... place was laid out upon a slope, and at its head, immediately beneath the sheer steps of the mountain side stood two edifices very much larger in size than any of those below. One of these resembled the other houses in construction, and was surrounded by a separate enclosure; but the second, which was placed on higher ground, so far as they could ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch her without a word. Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish vanity in thus being granted her friendship? It is almost too boyish to confess at my time of life. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... an adventure in regions fascinating and remote. It is probable that at the time there was not on the North American continent a man more highly endowed than Clark with gifts of sheer psychological power. Belding, young in his world, could not recognize it as such, but he fell the more completely under the wizard-like spell of his companion's imagination. The days, shortened by late sun and long nights, passed with ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... generally calm and unexpressive, was aglow with excitement. Mamoe recognized her gyratory equal in this giant, and often their bodies met in the ecstasy of their curveting. Landers, towering above her, and bigger in bone and muscle than she in sheer flesh, was like a figure from a Saturnalia. The call of the isles was ringing in his ears, and one had only to glance at him to hear Pan among the reeds, to be back in the glades where fauns and nymphs were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... savages upon the whites in their power, that the minds of those who were actors in those scenes, were deprived of the faculty of discriminating between what was right or wrong to be practised towards them. And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Law do desperate Cures, Sir, And you shall see how heartily I'le handle it: Mark how I'le knock it home: be of good chear, Sir, You give good Fees, and those beget good Causes, The Prerogative of your Crowns will carry the matter, (Carry it sheer) the Assistant sits to morrow, And he's your friend, your monyed men love naturally, And as your loves are ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... in the middle of the century. The French commodore displayed very considerable tactical skill; his squadron was handled neatly, quickly, and with precision. With inferior force he carried off a decided advantage by sheer intelligence and good management. Unluckily, he failed in resolution to pursue his advantage. He probably could have controlled the Chesapeake had ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... break down, and at last we reach the place on foot. I have meanwhile drunk three glasses of tea and annihilated several eggs; the efforts at getting warm have also so perfectly succeeded that I feel the need of fresh air. I should, out of sheer impatience, commence shaving if I had a glass. This city is very straggling, and very foreign-looking, with its green-roofed churches and innumerable cupolas; quite different from Amsterdam, but both the most original cities I know. No German guard has a conception of the luggage people drag ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
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— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... extinction with a fall of 670 feet since it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled by it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deep gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... natural, if such a method is indispensable; for no effort, no trouble, ought to be spared for so exalted an aim. But if the only point is the establishment of one opinion in the place of another, then the travelling expenses of even one single Infallible are sheer waste. If you want to spare the two most valuable things on earth, time and money, make all haste to write to Rome, in order to procure thence a lawful decision which shall declare the unlawful doubt. Nothing more is needed; ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... sheer amazement at this insolence, none moved save Peredur, who cried aloud: "I will seek out this man and do vengeance upon him." Then a voice exclaimed: "Welcome, goodly Peredur, thou flower of knighthood"; and all turned in surprise to look upon a little misshapen dwarf, who, a year before, ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... Monck. He and Rupert then became joint admirals for the ensuing campaign. They had the reputation of being two of the hardest fighters alive, and both were convinced of their power of sweeping the Dutch from the sea by sheer hard hitting, a belief which so far at least as Monck was concerned the country enthusiastically shared. The spirit in which the two soldier-admirals put to sea in May 1666 we see reflected in the hitherto unknown 'Additional ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting parties, Cudjoe and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... negroes simply to change the scene of their inaction. Yet it is unquestionably true that quite a large proportion of those who went North in this fashion were men honestly seeking remunerative employment, or persons who left through sheer desperation. In the second stage of the movement the club organizations, special parties and chartered cars did most perhaps to depopulate little communities and drain ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... velvet frocks (/Fluegelroeck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. One scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished to take a view of our own magistracy, who closed the procession in their fifteen ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form—Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo as the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... San Francisco. Immediately behind the town, which lies along the sea, the majestic mass of Table Mountain rises to a height of 3600 feet, a steep and partly wooded slope capped by a long line of sheer sandstone precipices more than 1000 feet high, and flanked to right and left by bold, isolated peaks. The beautiful sweep of the bay in front, the towering crags behind, and the romantic pinnacles which rise on either side, make a landscape that no one who has seen ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the stubborn tug begins. Each boat has her own special course to travel up, and her own special berth of safety, and she knows every jag that will gore her on the road, and every flint from which she will strike fire. By dint of sheer sturdiness of arms, legs, and lungs, keeping true time with the pant and the shout, steadily goes it with hoist and haul, and cheerily undulates the melody of call that rallies them all with a strong will together, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... The block will be cut out to this line and planed up as true as possible. The builder should then project the section lines with a set square on each side of the boat, mark off the profile from the sheer plan, Fig. 65, and cut the block to this line, afterward planing it ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... there a while and stared dejectedly down upon that wild orgy of the earth's upheaval which is the Badlands. She felt as though it was sheer madness even to think of finding anybody in there. It was worse than a mountain country, because in the mountains there is a certain semblance of some system in the canyons and high ridges and peaks. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... resemble. But were it otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere be paralleled. Dulness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to Lottie. With white face and set teeth he sought to keep up to the end. The effort he was now putting forth was less that of muscle than sheer force of will. As with Miss Martell, he, too, was reacting from the tremendous strain that the last hour had brought. He trembled with almost mortal weakness as he slowly mounted the piazza steps. He staggered ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... that nothing could serve his purpose but an exercise of sheer weight and brute force, and he pressed on and on with such fury that Tom almost cried aloud in his fear. But Lord Claud was wary and watchful; he gave way for a while, only parrying the thrusts, and that with not so much ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... expressed with a single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard, with ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... gulch; then pass to the left on a bench along the wall; then up again over broken rocks; then we reach more benches, along which we walk, until we find more broken rocks and crevices, by which we climb; still up, until we have ascended 600 or 800 feet, when we are met by a sheer precipice. Looking about, we find a place where it seems possible to climb. I go ahead; Bradley hands the barometer to me, and follows. So we proceed, stage by stage, until we are nearly to the summit. Here, by making ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... ears, gentle lady," laughed Stephen Strong. "Sheer devilment, mostly. It was the amusement in the beginning to dare him to anything, the maddest feats. He ran off with a nun once, it is said, for a bet, and deposited her in the house of the man she had loved before her vows were taken. That was in Poland. Then he has orgies sometimes at ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... sheer fifteen feet of solid masonry, but my chief delight since landing on Martian soil was the inordinate springiness of my leg muscles against the feeble gravity. I ran and sprang lustily with the aid of the cross-bow, and I remember the doctor's surprised look ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... with impatience, stood with Newton, at the head of the men. When the collision of the two vessels took place, the Windsor Castle, conned so as not to run down the pirate, but to sheer alongside, stove in the bulwarks of the other, and carried away her topmasts, which, drawn to windward by the pressure on the back-stays, fell over towards the Windsor Castle, and, entangling with her rigging, prevented the separation of the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... It is selfishness,—sheer selfishness, that has thus far carried on the war with slavery and wrong in all times; and selfishness must break the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... not fought," the jarl answered. "But I have deeper reason for thanking Ranald than for sparing my own life, or for staying a blow in time out of sheer ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... salaries. It is usually assumed that a hundred or more institutions for Negro training are to-day turning out so many teachers and college-bred men that the race is threatened with an over-supply. This is sheer nonsense. There are to-day less than 3,000 living Negro college graduates in the United States, and less than 1,000 Negroes in college. Moreover, in the 164 schools for Negroes, 95 per cent. of their students are doing elementary and secondary work, work which should ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... Betty in sheer desperation. "We can't any more than get drenched, and our rain coats will be some protection. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... the eminence broke away in a sheer fall to the earth below. At its base a scattering of sundered bowlders and fragments lay, veiled by a growth of small, bushy shrubs to which a spring gave nourishment. Behind this the long spine of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not know who sent me this paper or for what purpose; but let me say that it is sheer waste of postage stamps and material. I hope I am not intolerant of the opinions of others, but I confess that when people talk to me about reading the stars and the lines of the hand and things of that sort I shut up like an oyster. I do not speak of the humbugs who deliberately ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... she had lost her father, but all the scenes of his last days were still so clear to her that it seemed to her often sheer incredibility that the room, the bed, the helpless form, the noise of the breathing, the clink of the medicine glasses, the tread of the doctor, the gasping words of the patient, were all alike fragments ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the stretch of the river between two bends. How are they "borne in a mirror"? The high cliff-like banks are mirrored in the surface of the water. Explain the colour "purple gray". It is the colour of the image of the banks in the water. What is meant by "sheer away"? It means that the "river reaches" curve away like a winding road. Try to see the picture of the winding river, apparently growing smaller as it passes curve after curve. As it seems to recede into the distance, the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... apparently set on drying up one source of revenue after another; who did not shrink from sconcing the powerful landed phalanx like other people; and who at the same time boldly used and manfully defended the most unpopular of all the public imposts. In politics the spectacle of sheer courage is often quite as good in its influence and effect as the best of logic. It was so here. While proposing that the income-tax should come to an end in seven years, he yet produced the most comprehensive analysis and the boldest vindication of the structure ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a duty to appearances and to their hostess. Through two courses, at least, there was dead silence between them. It seemed as though every eye in the room were on them and every mind were speculating. At last, in sheer desperation, Barbara turned to him with the first smile he had seen on her face in days. There was no smile in her eyes, however, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... campaign; Most manfully besiege their patron's gate, And oft repuls'd, as oft attack the great With painful art, and application warm, And take, at last, some little place by storm; Enough to keep two shoes on Sunday clean, And starve upon discreetly, in Sheer Lane. Already this thy fortune can afford; Then starve without the favour of my lord. 'Tis true, great fortunes some great men confer; But often, ev'n in doing right, they err: From caprice, not from choice, their favours come; They give, but think it toil to know to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... commanded by General Brown and Brigadiers Ripley, Porter, and Scott—the latter the future hero of the Mexican war. The darkness through this hotly contested engagement was intense, and the English {332} more than once seemed on the point of yielding to sheer exhaustion as they contested every foot of ground against overpowering numbers of well handled troops. The undaunted courage and persistence of the British and Canadian soldiery won the battle, as the Americans retired from the field, though with a remarkable perversion of the facts this memorable ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Memorial to Congress", by jovial old "Anacreon Moore", have we beheld such an invasion of prize-fight philosophy and race-track rhetoric. We learn with interest that a former United member named "Handsome Harry" has now graduated from literature to left field, and has, through sheer genius, risen from the lowly level of the ambitious author, to the exalted eminence of the classy slugger. Too proud to push the pen, he now swats the pill. Of such doth the dizzy quality of sempiternal Fame consist! Speaking without levity, we cannot but censure Mr. Dowdell's ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal child,"—caught him up only to drop him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... not know the way; she only knew that she ran up one street and down another like the wind. Her state of mind was bordering on insanity. At length she paused from sheer exhaustion, and leaned against a doorway—like any poor outraged ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of his Majesty's judges. He had won his position by sheer hard work and commanding ability. He had not stopped in his career to soothe the outraged dignity of those whom he pushed aside; and he had no intention now of delaying his progress along the railway platform to explain to a marchioness why he had jostled her. It was ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... hundred years," says Johnston, "slaves in Barbados were mutilated, tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve to death, burnt alive, flung into coppers of boiling sugar, whipped to death, overworked, underfed, obliged from sheer lack of any clothing to expose their nudity to the jeers of the 'poor' whites."[133] And yet the owners of these slaves were English, of the same stock under which developed the mild patriarchal type of slavery of Virginia. The difference ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... quarters of the crew. As we had expected for days to see it swept away, the hands had been ordered to sleep in the cabin—the only safe place in the ship. The steward, Abraham, however, persisted in clinging to his berth, stupidly, like a mule—from sheer fright I believe, like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in an earthquake. So we went to look for him. It was chancing death, since once out of our lashings we were as exposed as if on a raft. But we went. The house was ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... week. What tempted Sally, however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood. Industry, so Sally knew, was taking the young girls by the million, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... own lives and their neighbors'. Findelkind said never a word; he was as dumb as Theodoric had been to him; he felt stupid, heavy, half blind; his father pushed him some bread, and he ate it by sheer instinct, as a lost animal will do; the cart jogged on, the stars shone, the great church vanished in ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... which Young says prevailed at this time. With a view to remedy this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and through the sheer gauze of her veil ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... it was from this point—at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose—that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... intensifying the unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road this morning? Perhaps five with their women, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... there are no salons now—I suppose we turn all our conversation into "copy"—or the higher education has eliminated the witty woman—and my uncle became more and more distressed. He said a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every lion's den I had access to. But ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... Warm broke the breeze against the brow, Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail: The Lady's-head upon the prow Caught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the gale. The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel, And swept behind: so quick the run, We felt the good ship shake and reel, We seem'd to sail ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... Rutherford the longer he lived in this sin-poisoned world. And, amongst all those who are now home in heaven, I cannot think there can be many who are enjoying heaven with a deeper joy than Samuel Rutherford's sheer, solid, uninterrupted, unadulterated, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... so outraged. It requires all the proverbial beauty of these senoras and senoritas to carry off respectably such combinations as scarlet and yellow, blue and purple, orange and green; but they do it by sheer force of their beautiful eyes and finely rounded figures. It must be acknowledged that the element of native refinement is too often wanting, and that the whole exhibition of the sex is just a little prononcee. They have no intellectual resort, but lead a life of decided ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... promontory 8 to 10 m. wide runs a range 3000 to 4000 ft. high, with the crest towards the western coast and the valleys towards the eastern. Hence the western Cornice road is a terrace along an always steep, sometimes sheer, mountain side, while the eastern crosses a succession of low maquis-covered spurs, which beyond Cap Sagro flatten and become monotonous. Pino is one of the most beautiful sites on the western coast. It is also important as the spot where the cross-road through the vale of Luri, under ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... so universal from the general ignorance of practical physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in other souls ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... was trembling with the knowledge, and with the sheer joy of the adventure. Nothing could check them; neither cruisers nor monsters; nothing of earth or of space. They were free; they were on their way out—out where a new world awaited—where the Dark Moon ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... 'Liab," said Nimbus quickly, with some of his old-time arrogance. "Yer kin an' yer will. You kin use dat er trac' o' lan' an' make it wuth sunthin' ter our people, an' I can't. So, yer sees, I'll jes be a-doin' my sheer, an' I'll allus t'ink, when I hears how yer's gittin' along an' a-doin' good, dat I'se a pardner wid ye in de wuk o' gibbin' light ter our people, so dat dey'll know how ter be free an' keep free forebber an' ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... is not the word—I know it; but you will be found out, and by sheer force of argument you will ...
— The Republic • Plato
... feelings of jealousy, for with me jealousy can only spring from love as we Europeans understand it. I might very likely have killed her if I had surprised her in the act of deceiving me, but I should have done it, just as one half kills a disobedient dog, from sheer violence. I should not have felt those torments, that consuming fire—Northern jealousy. I have just said that I should have killed her like a disobedient dog, and, as a matter of fact, I loved her somewhat in the same manner as one loves some very ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which roared ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... removing straw). In the dramatic passage in which, returning after being broken in a German prison, he relates some of the horrors of which it is good for us to be reminded, he rose to the height of his fine talent. His exquisite elocution—a remarkable feat of virtuosity—was in itself a sheer delight. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... realized, till those letters came, how entirely the writer of them had gone out of her world. In love and memory she had in a sort still kept him near; without vision she had yet been not fully separated from him. Now these pictures of the other world and of Pitt's life in it came like a bright, sheer blade severing the connection which had until then subsisted between her life and his. Yes, he was in another world! and there was no connection any longer. He had not forgotten her yet, but he would forget; how should he not? how could he help it? In the rich sweep of variety and change and eager ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... and cut ourselves accordingly. At first the cut hurts and stings, and down drops the knife, and we cry out like wounded little babies as we are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Sheer delight in the sport," Hubert answered lazily, for he was sprawling on the sand by his sister's side, and it seemed almost too ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... fine but very fast rain was falling, which soon made her wet to the bones. The wretched little creature ran for some time, and at last stopped from sheer fatigue. The side wall of the road being low at that part, she sat down, and then began to feel the pain from the blows. She put her hands to her head, then to her face, from which she felt a hot liquid pouring that she thought at ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... a profound turn was the sheer indolence of his temperamental breed. He had no liking at all for labor; spreading fish on the flakes, keeping the head of his father's punt up to the sea on the grounds, splitting a turn of birch and drawing a bucket ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... cruelly," I said: "The frail herb lives, and she is dead." I lay dumb, sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air Thickened with twilight shadows dim: I rose and left. I knew each limb Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit They bear in autumn. What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother—a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from; but the field-ice, floating in great quantities, and covering the ocean for miles and miles, in pieces of every size—large, flat, and broken cakes, with here and there an island rising twenty and thirty feet, and as large as the ship's hull;—this, it is very difficult to sheer clear of. A constant look-out was necessary; for any of these pieces, coming with the heave of the sea, were large enough to have knocked a hole in the ship, and that would have been the end of us; for no boat (even if we could have got one out) ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... I ever set eyes on, and as calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compasses. Any fool could see what ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful to be married to a person like that! ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... nothing to go down these coulees; one need only let oneself glide down, but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed and he did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed or wounded our leader, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... crude method of experimentation in psychological reactions; the teaser desires to discover just how the teased will respond. It degenerates, by easy steps, into a thoughtless infliction of pain in sheer enjoyment of another's misery, and then into brutal bullying. When only two children are together mere teasing will not last long; either the teaser will tire of his task or his teasing will ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... they were very nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... first time began the battle, though it would have seemed clearly his best policy to endeavour to draw Villars from the strong position he held. There was little in the way of fine tactics displayed, or even possible, on either side; it was a question simply of sheer pluck and dogged determination. The Highlanders, for the first time, had joined the army of the Allies, and they and the famous Irish Brigade under Villars specially distinguished themselves, if any detachment can be said to have gained special distinction in a fight where ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... is that pickpocket My Diocleides. He bought t'other day Six fleeces at seven drachms, his last exploit. What were they? scraps of worn-out pedlar's-bags, Sheer trash.—But put your cloak and mantle on; And we'll to Ptolemy's, the sumptuous king, To see the Adonis. As I hear, the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... bed, uttering a deep sigh, or rather one of those exclamations which we cannot tell whether they arise from discouragement or simply from fatigue. His Majesty's countenance was sad and careworn, nevertheless he slept from sheer weariness for many hours. I awoke him to announce the arrival of M. de Rumigny, who was the bearer of dispatches from Chatillon. In the condition of the Emperor's mind at this moment he seemed ready to accept any reasonable conditions which might be offered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... no blueprint of the big Swede's plans. All Hands And Feet, depending on his sheer horse power and superior weight, always fought in mass formation, as it were. His modus operandi was to embrace his enemy in those terrible arms, squeeze the breath out of him with one bearlike hug, then lay him on the deck, straddle him, and pummel ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... it fine; and the photographs he printed up that afternoon was the most horrible collection of mince-pie dreams that ever a sane man run afoul of. Rosy used one of the grass huts for a dark room; and while he was developing them plates, they could hear him screaming from sheer fright at being shut up alone ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nails, and built our boat again; We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn; We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn. O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly; By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky; By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content; By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent. Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars, And round in a ring the dog-nosed ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... of moist earth and the sweetness of growing corn. The colt she was driving held his head high, glancing from side to side with youthful eagerness for a sensation, and shying at nothing now and then in sheer excess of emotion over the demand of ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... follow. I should think not. He will know that others must know it. Your brother-in-law will not tell him only. Lefroy, when he finds that he can get no money here, from sheer revenge will tell the story everywhere. When he left the rectory, he was probably as angry with the Doctor as he is with me. He will do all the harm that he can ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the right place, my sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,—I had spent out of sheer copiousness of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly daring manoeuvre, namely, an attempt to capture the Indian canoe! He ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... all than to have lived so utterly in vain. One by one the struggles of the past came up to him; each had seemed a triumph when he was in the glory of strength and hope. The splendid aims of a higher and nobler government, built by sheer truth and nobility of purpose upon the ashes and dust of present corruption, the magnificent purity of the ideal State of which he had loved to dream—all that he had thought of and striven after as most worthy ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the pursuers now rein up sharply. It seemed to them sheer madness to ride out thus to their ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... followed, and he wondered. At first, he had thought it indicated the presence of warriors, but Indians did not cut down trees and doubtless it was due to some other cause, perhaps an old, decayed trunk that had been weighted down by snow, falling through sheer weariness. In any event he was going to see, and, emerging from his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the ravine of the river, down amid the rocks through which it has cut its channel, and in walking up the bed against the stream, in climbing the sides of the various falls, and sticking close to the river till an envious block is reached which comes sheer down into the water and prevents farther progress. This is nearly two miles above the steps by which the descent is made; and not a foot of this distance but is wildly beautiful. When the river is very low ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and pleasure, it was perfectly natural to believe it susceptible of material imprisonment and material torments. Such was the common belief when the doctrine of a physical hell was wrought out. The doctrine yet lingers by sheer force of prescription and unthinkingness, when the basis on which it originally rested has been dissipated. We know great as our ignorance is, we know that the soul is a pure immateriality. Its manifestations depend on certain physical organs and accompaniments, but are not identical ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... road here must have curved sharply, for they were already so close upon us that, almost simultaneously with the sound, we could distinguish the deeper shadow of a small, compact body of horsemen directly in our front. To left of us there rose, sheer and black, the precipitous rock; to right we might not even guess what yawning void. It was ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I am not ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... soon could have come to recognize them, and so an evening at the opera with her would have meant pleasure to himself instead of stolid endurance. Ultimately it might have meant an effective wedge with which to pry against the waste of time, strength and money on the sheer amusement of herself in society. Once he started searching for them, he found many ways in which he might have made his life with his wife different, if indeed he had not had it in his power to effect a complete change by having been firm ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the spring of 1812 was not an unattractive one. A new party, controlled by a remarkable coterie of brilliant young men from the South, whose shibboleth was war with England, had sprung up in Congress, and, by sheer force of will and intellect, had dragged to the support of its policies the larger part of the Republican majority.[164] President Madison was thoroughly in sympathy with these members. He thought war should be declared before ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was Grace, not Keziah, who opened the shanty door in answer to their knock. She was pale and greeted them calmly, but it was evident that her calmness was the result of sheer will power. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seen the expression more than once; doctors see it often, in the sudden revulsion from terror and agony to certainty and peace; I only marvel where he ever met it: but the general effect is unpleasing, marred by patches of sheer ugliness, like that child's foot. There is the same mistake in all his pictures. Whatever they are, they are not beautiful; and no magnificence of surface-colouring will make up, in my eyes, for wilful ugliness of form. I say that nature is beautiful; and therefore nature cannot have been ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,—the employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically, religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies. The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... flat-footed stamping) that people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... veins swelled on his neck, but he kept silent. He looked the cowboy in the eye and was met by a gaze as steady as his own; an aggressive and insolent gaze that had for its backing sheer physical courage and nothing more. It became a battle of mental endurance and Corliss ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... its esteem is to make permanent conquest. I am confident that the nations that have learned the discipline of freedom and that have settled with self-possession to its ordered practice are now about to make conquest of the world by the sheer power of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... obtained an hour's rest, but our leader halted only when our animals showed signs of exhaustion. The Spaniards must have suffered as much as, if not more than, ourselves, as occasionally we came upon a dead horse or a dead man, killed by sheer fatigue. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... say and maintain that all that is sheer nonsense!" exclaimed the Collector with emphasis. "I have examined the old toasting-iron no less than a hundred times, and it isn't five hundred years old! It comes down perhaps from the time of the feud of Soest, when very likely one of the Archbishop's cavalrymen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... nobody goes to a Summer School who could get refreshment through sheer idleness. One of the greatest mistakes of the Middle Ages, and one which has come down to our own time in education, in theology, and in medicine, was that all men's needs, both spiritual, mental, and physical, are the same; and ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... League would not attack a writer or any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it would probably have no difficulty in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless its president were a man of unerring ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... sat in room 407—I in a blue funk from sheer nervousness, Raffles Holmes as imperturbable as the rock of Gibraltar from sheer nerve. It was the usual style of hotel room, with bath, pictures, telephone, what-nots, wardrobes, and centre-table. The last proved to be the main point of interest ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... bows became somewhat sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was almost straight from stem to stern; nor had they learned to divide the topsail into an upper and lower sail, and American vessels were distinguished by their short lower mast and the immense hoist of the topsail. The broadest ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... anxious wits were driven hard. He had drawn to Mr. Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... slowly above the palisade. The anchor dragged on the landward side of the knolls. These were sheer rock that the steel talons clawed ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... this terror of the coasts. His impudent courage and sheer audacity had astonished the world. The wonder was that men were willing to join him in such dare ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... bodies by the recession of the waters has already filled the air with pestilential odors. The worst is feared for the surviving population, who must breathe this poisoned atmosphere. Sharp measures prompted by sheer necessity have resulted in an almost complete subsidence of cowardly efforts to profit by the results of the disaster. Thieves have slunk into places of darkness and are no longer to be seen at their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... for something beautiful, because they had been spiritually starved. And all the riding hard, shooting true and dying game—those poor ethics of the open—had not brought a crumb, not a crumb, of the real bread of life. Nor could mountains of mere energy nor icebergs of sheer nerve! In needing the bread of life—they were different from the others, and so they lingered, unable to speak, while a poor little Tagal—"one of the niggers"—all unconsciously played. "Surely," they thought, "his ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... achieved. Corruption is never so rife as in communities where the demagog and the agitator bear full sway, because in such communities all moral bands become loosened, and hysteria and sensationalism replace the spirit of sound judgment and fair dealing as between man and man. In sheer revolt against the squalid anarchy thus produced men are sure in the end to turn toward any leader who can restore order, and then their relief at being free from the intolerable burdens of class ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... they would figure him as a presiding Mercury, the god of traffic and fiction, with a hammer in his hand instead of a caduceus.—But pray, Mr. Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way? Puff. Egad, sir, sheer necessity!—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention. You must know, Mr. Sneer, that from the first time I tried my hand at an advertisement, my success was such, that for some time after I led a most extraordinary life indeed! Sneer. How, pray? ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... wrote pantoums (pantuns) after the Malay fashion. He published in 1872 a Petit traite de versification francaise in exposition of his metrical methods. He was a master of delicate satire, and used with much effect the difficult humour of sheer bathos, happily adapted by him from some of the early folk-songs. He has somewhat rashly been compared to Heine, whom he profoundly admired; but if he lacked the supreme touch of genius, he remains a delightful writer, who exercised ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... chickens sputter in the oven below, and the water boils off the potatoes, and the pudding is manufactured, and the cloud deepens and glooms, he does not recover his free-and-easy air and manner. He ceases his walk after a little, from sheer weariness, but he thrusts out his arm and seizes a chair with the air of one who has not time to be leisurely, and flings himself into it, and clasps his arms on the table, and bends his head on his hands and ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface. It was named the "Telegraphic Plateau," with a view to its future use. At either edge of this plateau huge mountains, from four to seven thousand feet high, rise out of the depths. There are precipices of sheer descent down which the cable now hangs. The Azores and Bermudas are peaks of ocean mountains. The warm river known as the Gulf Stream, coming northward meets the ice-bergs and melts them, and deposits the shells, rocks and sand they carry on this plain. When it was discovered the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... bank of the sluggish stream with its flood-worn channel and its treacherous patches of quicksand, the wagon thus halted by the sheer nerve and quick-thinking of mother became a very small island in a troubled sea of weltering backs and tossing horns and staring eyeballs. Riders shouted and lashed unavailingly with their quirts, trying to hold back the full bulk of the herd until the foremost had slaked their thirst and gone ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... "Better sheer off and give it a wide berth, then," counseled his chum. "If it were the captain or the chief, you would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... or yielding. The ice broke on the instant; and so rapidly was he moving that a hole twelve or fifteen feet long was torn by the sheer force with which he went against it. As he fell through, he went under once, but luckily came up in the hole he had made, and got his hands and arms on the edges of the ice, which, however, kept bending down and breaking off. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... by Duhm and Cornill, along with XI. 22b, 23, XII. 3b, XVII. 18 for no textual or metrical reasons, but only because these scholars shrink from attributing to Jeremiah such outbursts of passion: just as we have seen them for similarly sheer reasons of sentiment refuse to consider as his the advice to desert to the enemy.(724) Yet they admit inconsistently the genuineness of VI. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and freedom, or Red Gulch and—she is moving. (To JOVITA.) I am harsh, little one, and cold. Perhaps I have had much to make me so. But when (with feeling) I first met you; when, lifting my eyes to the church-porch, I saw your beautiful face; when, in sheer recklessness and bravado, I raised my hat to you; when you—you, Jovita—lifted your brave eyes to mine, and there, there in the sanctuary, returned my salute,—the salutation of the gambler, the outcast, the reprobate,—then, then I swore that you should be mine, if I tore you ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer joy of discord. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... vicious Pernambucan; hence one could scarcely blame him for drawing a pistol and shooting the launchman—fatally, according to Mr. Schultz. Of course, after that, to have lingered longer inside the three-mile limit would have been sheer insanity, so Mr. Schultz, taking matters into his own hands, had uphooked and skipped with doused lights from the jurisdiction ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of the cavaliers could scarce carry them, and that the end was approaching, redoubled their shouts; and pressed more heartily and eagerly than ever upon the Spaniards, driving the cavalry back, by sheer weight, into the ranks of ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... They come to look, and they prefer to stare. Reel off a host of threads before their faces, So that they gape in stupid wonder: then By sheer diffuseness you have won their graces, And are, at once, most popular of men. Only by mass you touch the mass; for any Will finally, himself, his bit select: Who offers much, brings something unto many, And each goes home content with the effect, If ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh, my dear,' he half turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together. And later—we must have advice—medical advice; ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,—the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational worship. And while they are dropping away from the old Church in all directions, they simultaneously, from sheer habit, create new-fangled creeds very much more absurd than anything the Church ever taught, and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... no one who has seen a wild elephant can doubt for a moment that the title belongs to him in his own right. Lord of all created animals in might and sagacity, the elephant roams through his native forests. He browses upon the lofty branches, upturns young trees from sheer malice, and from plain to forest he stalks majestically at break of day 'monarch of ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... you really think the Lord does not know what is good for us? That is sheer unbelief. Take what He gives, and be thankful. Barker, why do you suppose the angels came to the sepulchre so, as they did ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... so fully under the influence of anodynes as not to be cognizant of what was taking place, and Bodine, soldier-like, was not long in reaching his decision. Rising, he went aside with Dr. Devoe, and said, "Miss Wallingford is keeping up from the sheer force of will. Nothing but your command can induce her to yield and take such rest as can be obtained here. I do not think you can interpose too soon. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... gazed at the moon awhile a thrill of sheer madness set him to tumbling, head over heels, upon the fresh hay. Life was full of gladness for him, and his throat cramped with a delicious longing for he knew not what. He wondered vaguely if it were not something new and unimaginably good to eat. It was the nearest ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... he put off to the latest moment any decision as to the course which he should take with respect to the Bill when it came up to him for his sanction. As regards a dissolution, indeed, he felt from the beginning that it would be sheer folly, attended by no small risk. Was he to have recourse to this ultima ratio, merely because a parliament elected a year before, under the auspices of the party now in opposition, had passed, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... street, she started away at a quick walk; but her strength soon failed her. She heard the sound of the snow crunching under a heavy step, and knew that the pitiless spy was on her track. She was obliged to stop. He stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or lack of intelligence, she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She went slowly on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that he could still keep her in sight. He might ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... exclusive attention to the dictates of conscience and by sheer force of will the Wang school of philosophers succeeded in reaching a standard of attainment that served to make them models for posterity. The integrity of heart preached by his followers in Japan has become a national heritage of which all Japanese are proud. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— 'Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... pass which only Grassette knew, the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... By sheer force of will he put aside the insistent weakness, which he knew would get the better of him were he to resign himself to it. By the same force of will he injected into his being a degree of physical energy. But he was a white man, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... "What sheer nonsense! I've half a mind to scold you. Of course, Father is willing to put himself out for you. Only this morning he said he would do all in his power to get a ship ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... works, or stood here and there in groups, doing as they chose. The foremen did not dare to speak to them; if they made a friendly remark they were met with insults. The workers were taking advantage of the fact that they were indispensable; their behavior was sheer tyranny, and they were continually harping on the fact that they would just as soon go as stay. These words made them the masters of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up and at it, again," he exclaimed, common-placely enough, his voice a bit uncertain. Stern had walked narrow girders six hundred feet sheer up; he had worked in caissons under tide-water, with the air-pumps driving full tilt ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... they were among the mountains, till they reached a narrow ledge or shelf scarcely wider than the stage. On one side there was a sheer descent of hundreds of feet, ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger |
