"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... generation the respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... through the gloomy woods; but there was no hesitation on the part of Nellie, who, but for the sturdy teaching of her parents, would have crouched down beside the log and sobbed in terror until she sank into slumber through sheer exhaustion. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... I had bade Davis do, and to think what might happen because of it. I, Roscoe Paine, no longer even a country banker, was at the helm of "Big Jim" Colton's bark in the maelstrom of the stock market. It would have been funny if it had not been so desperate. And desperate it was, sheer reckless desperation and nothing else. I must have been crazier than ever, more wildly insane than I had been for the past month, to even think of such a thing. It was not too late yet, I ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,—tip the scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare. She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was in him, an' see him, an' go him better if it was possible. Nothing over the earth, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... essential thing. What I had to do was to demolish at one blow a truth which had been twenty-seven years in existence and which was all the more firmly established because it was founded on actual facts. That was why I went for it with all my might and attacked it by sheer force of eloquence. Impossible to identify the children? I deny it. Inevitable confusion? It's not true. 'You're all three,' I say, 'the victims of something which I don't know but which it is your duty to clear up!' 'That's easily ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... which this rock, as well as that of Elmiseram and others lying in sight, rose sheer up from the plain, filled them with surprise; for, although these natural rock fortresses are common enough in India, they are almost without an example in Europe. After visiting the fort they rambled through the town, and were amused at the scene of bustle in its ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... one bright afternoon we glided through a narrow entrance into its superb harbour. We appeared to be sailing up a large lake, extending as far inland as the eye could reach, and surrounded with lofty mountains of many different and picturesque shapes. On either side were walls of granite, rising sheer out of the water to a height of nearly 2000 feet, while behind them rose the vast Sugar-loaf Mountain, and a number of other lofty and barren peaks towering up clear and defined against the blue sky. Like mighty giants they surround the harbour, the ground at their bases sloping ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to a great extent, protected it upon three sides. The fourth, that opposite to them, except at one place where a kind of natural causeway led into the town, was also defended by Nature, since here for more than fifty feet in height the granite rock of the base of the hill rose sheer and unclimbable. On the mount itself, that in all may have covered eight or ten acres of ground, and surrounded by a deep donga or ditch, were three rings of fortifications, set one above the other, mighty walls which, it ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation. A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and, slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... away? Art thou a god, that thou, indeed, by favouring whom thou wilt And slighting others, canst at once bring back to life and slay? GCod moulded beauty from thy form and eke perfumed the breeze With the sheer sweetness of the scent that cleaves to thee alway. None of the people of this world, an angel sure thou art, Whom thy Creator hath sent ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying Ransome in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy's face. It was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile. The blood in me ran cold, and I drew in my breath as ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... initiatory process was not very painful, he concluded "to go it, provided they'd promise to run him for constable. Office is the hull any of the scallywags jine 'em for, and I may as well go in for a sheer," said he, thinking if he could not have the privilege of selling liquor, he would at least secure the right of arresting ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... fever which supervened. Apart from the lack of food, a great cause of mortality lay in the change of diet. Potatoes form a bulky article of food, and stirabout, unless very carefully made, used to swell after it was consumed. Many, too, ate raw turnips from sheer destitution, and these also caused swelling of the stomach as well as a dysentery almost always fatal in ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... spoke at once. "It's almost too good to be true," was Jack's quick exclamation. "What do you suppose the surprise will be?" Norman's eager question. While Mary, clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just love to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you swoop down ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... off after his rice-birds, while Uncle Remus leaned up against the wall and laughed until he was in imminent danger of falling down from sheer exhaustion. ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... unfolding in due order under the hand of the poet, from the largest to the least. Now the reader should be informed that every one of these unities has been violently attacked and proclaimed to be a sheer phantasm. Chiefly in Germany has the assault taken place. What we have above considered as the joints in the organism of the poem, have been cut into, pried apart, and declared to make so many separate poems or passages, which different authors have written. Thus the one great ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... as soon as they were gone, 'I think it right to tell you, that we were obliged, out of sheer charity, to take that poor Irish girl into the house. It was impossible to move her without risk ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... result from volcanic activity associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poor soul was inefficient, and he knew it: beneath all her flow of speech ran an undercurrent of wrath against the new learning and all its works. Poverty—sheer terror of a dwindling cupboard and the workhouse to follow—drove her to plead with that which she hated worse than the plague. He heard, and all the while his mind was miles away from her petition; for some chance word or words let fall by her had seemed for an instant ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... being, the young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism. Epicurism which, in my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, precisely because it looks at first sight most like an angel of light. The mass, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... perfection the industrial-financial-democratic scheme of life should have developed an apologetic therefor, and imposed it, with all its materialism, its narrowness, its pragmatism, its, at times, grossness and cynicism, on the mind of a society where increasingly their own followers were, by sheer energy and efficiency, acquiring ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... undoubtedly require modification. Under his reign, English thought was constantly busied with false issues, simply from ignorance of the most effective criticism. It is needless to point out how much time is wasted in the defence of positions that have long been turned by the enemy from sheer want of acquaintance with the relevant evidence, or with the logic that has been revealed by the slow thrashing out of thorough controversy. It would be invidious perhaps to insist too much upon another obvious result: the ease with which a man endowed ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... guns. Ten thousand of these men were hurled against the English centre and right by Danneberg. The carnage was frightful. Between the hostile lines rose a rampart of fallen men. The Russians would probably have swept away the British by the sheer force of greater numbers, had they not been taken in the flank and repulsed by a French regiment which arrived just in time to save their ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure religiosity. The prolongation of life gives place to sheer self-sacrifice as the fundamental "remedy." And indeed what other remedy has ever been conceived for the general ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... left the ridge and headed away from the river, which flowed round a wide curve, and toward dawn they were brought up by a ravine. The roar of water rose hoarsely from its depths. The moon was getting low and the silvery light did not reach far down the opposite side, but they could see a sheer, smooth wall of rock, and the width of the chasm rendered any attempt to jump ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... observations and specialized knowledge is very helpful as we try to produce the best possible publications. Please feel free to continue to write and e-mail us. At least two Factbook staffers review every item. The sheer volume of correspondence precludes detailed personal replies, but we sincerely appreciate your time and interest in the Factbook. If you include your e-mail address we will at least acknowledge your note. Thank ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship's engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play. And then a miracle happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded door, and green ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of this plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to the hills,—a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The ancient boundary of the city proper was the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the man, Mr. Jones," she said sweetly. "It was a sheer accident. He was taken by surprise. In his place I would have emptied the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... verses on Miss Isabella M'Leod of Raza, alluding to her feelings on the death of her sister, and the still more melancholy death of her sister's husband, the late Earl of Loudoun, who shot himself out of sheer heart-break at some mortifications he suffered, owing to the deranged state of his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... right man at last. A day will come soon when I shall take Chum from his present home to his new one. That will be a great day for him. I can see him in the train, wiping his boots effusively on every new passenger, wriggling under the seat and out again from sheer joy of life; I can see him in the taxi, taking his one brief impression of a world that means nothing to him; I can see him in another train, joyous, eager, putting his paws on my collar from time to time and saying excitedly, "What a day this is!" And if he survives the journey; if I can keep ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... figure continued its onward career; and Freeman once more levelled his weapon,—when a voice, which gave him such a start of surprise as well-nigh caused him to pull the trigger for sheer lack of self-command, called out, "Why, you abominable young villain! What the mischief do you mean? Do you ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... make any distinction between the sheep and the goats? But while Mr. Adams, unmoved by argument, anger, or entreaty, thus alienated many and discouraged all, every one was made acquainted with the antipodal principles of his rival. The consequence was inevitable; many abandoned Adams from sheer irritation; multitudes became cool and indifferent concerning him; the great number of those whose political faith was so weak as to be at the ready command of their own interests, or the interests of a friend or relative, yielded to a pressure against which no counteracting force was employed. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... of this character. Some, not inherently vicious nor absolutely depraved, had adopted this lawless calling by reason of some stigma which deprived them of their social position; others, by reason of their indolence; and others from sheer necessity, who found in their dire distress the justification ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... wave were steadily sweeping the vessel onward towards this haven of refuge, and there was nothing to do but to watch the sharpening outlines, and to see, as fog and mist cleared before the sun, the sheer dark rocks and deep valleys of their ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Olga resembled him. She had the same quick, pale eyes, with the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... one of the best counterfeits of genius that has been seen for many a day; so good, indeed, that most men are taken by it for the first quarter of an hour at the least. But for real unmistakable genius,—for that glorious fulness of power which knocks a man down at a blow for sheer admiration, and then makes him rush into the arms of the knocker-down, and swear eternal friendship with him for sheer delight; the "Biglow ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... with the utmost care, so that they might close in upon and reach us simultaneously, as they were now doing. As the brilliant light of the port-fire blazed forth, a shout of astonishment, not very far removed from dismay, burst from the occupants of the canoes, and a momentary tendency to sheer off precipitately became apparent; but this was instantly checked by a loud and authoritative call from the largest canoe—the voice sounding very much like that of Matadi himself—and with an answering yell the savages at once turned the bows of their canoes toward the schooner and began to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down to the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to Miss Adrian's ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... stratagem is mentioned as a very notable artifice. What follows? Why, that the slave was doubly tempted: 1st, by the luxury he witnessed; 2ndly, by the impunity on which he might calculate. Often he escaped by sheer weight of metal in lying. Like Chaucer's miller, he swore, when charged with stealing flour, that it was not so. But this very prospect and likelihood of escape was often the very snare for tempting to excesses too flagrant or where secret marks had been fixed. Besides, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... realization of what it would mean if Numa should suddenly enter the tunnel in front of him; but Numa did not appear and the ape-man emerged at length into the open and stood erect, finding himself in a rocky cleft whose precipitous walls rose almost sheer on every hand, the tunnel from the gorge passing through the cliff and forming a passageway from the outer world into a large pocket or gulch entirely enclosed by steep walls of rock. Except for the small passageway from the gorge, there was no other entrance to the gulch which was some hundred ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In sheer wickedness there seems little enough to choose between Eyraud and Bompard. But, in asking a verdict without extenuating circumstances against the woman, the Procureur-General was by no means insistent. He could not, he said, ask for less, his duty would ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Springhaven had learned, by lore of generations, to build a boat with an especial sheer forward, beam far back, and deep run of stern, so that she was lively in the heaviest of weather, and strong enough to take a good thump smiling, when unable to dance over it. Yet as a little thing often makes all ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... religious persecutions had begun, in the slaying of the Manichean heretics at Orleans. The seasons in their courses seemed to fight against humanity, for famine and pestilence, storm and tempest swept down upon the land and the people died in thousands of sheer starvation. The Roman Empire had crumbled in the dust; after it fell that of Charlemagne into the abyss. The chronicles of Raoul Glaber are full of the most gruesome details of cannibalism, of diabolical appearances, of tortures that cannot be named. The only refuge seemed to be within the walls ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... be said to have depended almost for their very existence upon the horse; and in old pictures the Tartar is often seen lying curled up asleep with his horse, illustrating the mutual affection and dependence between master and beast. Out of sheer gratitude and respect for his noble ally, the man took upon himself the form of the animal, growing a queue in imitation of the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... at once upon a splendid piece of mountain scenery, and soon left behind us the vivid green of the upper valley. To our left a sheer crag rose from the valley in one unbroken slope, and in front the mountains seemed to close and bar all progress. We had five thousand feet to climb from the frontier stone, and I anticipated having to accomplish the larger part of it alone. They ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... waves below. "You are so brave a man that I could not reconcile my conscience to leaving you without a ship. Come, I'll give you, in exchange for the Onslow, my own vessel, the Commodore here. I can vouch for its being a good sailer and valuable, though I got it very cheap. But from sheer philanthropy, I can't give up your crew, you would decimate it; the soldiers, however, you shall have, I don't care what becomes of the ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... carried away by an impulse to rush hunting through Paris, to attach myself to some handsome woman I might meet, to follow her to her door, watch her, write to her, throw myself on her mercy, and conquer her by sheer force of passion. My poor uncle, a heart consumed by charity, a child of seventy years, as clear-sighted as God, as guileless as a man of genius, no doubt read the tumult of my soul; for when he felt the tether ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... communion service bearing his own wine and bread, and in the solitude of his own pew communed with God, if not with his fellow-men. For nearly twenty years did this austere man rigidly go through this lonely and sad ceremonial, until he conquered by sheer obstinacy and determination, and was again admitted ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's wedding, not knowing the lateness of the hour; for her brother Richard had played a trick upon ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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
... And in a little while they were come out of the thick woods and were in a country of steep little valleys, grassy, besprinkled with trees and bushes, with hills of sandstone going up from them, which were often broken into cliffs rising sheer from the tree-beset bottoms: and they saw plenteous deer both great and small, and the wild things seemed to fear them but little. To Ralph it seemed an exceeding fair land, and he was as joyous as it was fair; but the Lady was pensive, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... sculptor, fresh from the Paris schools and Salon triumphs. He had long parted company with Jews and Judaism, and to his ardent irreverence even the Christian glories of Middleton seemed unspeakably parochial. In Paris he had danced at night on the Boule Miche out of sheer joy of life, and joined in choruses over midnight bocks; and London itself now seemed drab and joyless, though many a gay circle welcomed the wit and high spirits and even the physical graces of this fortunate young man who seemed to shed a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... would have laid hands on him, then he laughed from sheer helplessness. "Oh, go on, go on; let's see, there's Clemence and Marie Tellec and Cosette and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... station over-right The balcony, to which he clambered, shows. Ariodantes weened, this while, the knight Would him to seek that hidden place dispose, As one well suited to his fell despite, And, bent to take his life, this ambush chose, Under the false pretence to make him see What seemed a sheer impossibility. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... an incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by dividing their forces against the united strength ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster—it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... no intention of freezing people, but they are hideously ill at ease with me, and say all kinds of foolishnesses from sheer nervousness. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Newman's Life. He said that when he himself was in bad odour for his early Civil List speeches, so that he had been exposed to serious disturbances, and a break-up of his intended meeting at Bristol was threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean dignity, looking curiously out of place, but ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that which seasoned the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency rouses ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... illustrations, for as nonsense these are as admirable as the text. But the greater part of Mr. Herford's work belongs to the realm of pure fancy, and though of a whimsical delicacy often equal to Lewis Carroll's, it is rarely sheer nonsense. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... have hitherto considered, relating to the supernatural lapse of time in fairyland, have attributed the mortal's detention there to various motives. Compulsion on the part of the superhuman powers, and pleasure, curiosity, greed, sheer folly, as also the performance of just and willing service on the part of the mortal, have been among the causes of his entrance thither and his sojourn amid its enchantments. Human nature could hardly have been what it is if the supreme passion of love had been absent from the list. Nor ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... fight those fellows if they attempt to board us, won't you?' he said, going up to the skipper. 'If you will run all the guns over to starboard we can give them a broadside which ten to one will make them sheer off rather than get a ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... fruiterers seemed not to be succeeding in their rivalry with each other and with the Chinese hawkers. The Chinese shops were dotted everywhere, dingier than any other, surviving and succeeding, evidently, by sheer force of cheapness. The roadways everywhere were hard and bare, reflecting the rays of the ascending sun until the streets seemed to be Turkish baths, conducted on a new and gigantic method. There was no green anywhere, only unlovely rows of houses, now gasping with ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting 'for the King;' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,—the infernal element in man called forth, to try it by that! Do that therefore; since that is the thing to be done.—The successes of Cromwell ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of her stout resistance, and before John could climb aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm. Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the icy water, for there were many pieces of ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... grief and faith have put into the word: his mother "was not." It was incredible! He gasped as he stood at the window, looking out over the blossoming lilacs at the Works, black against a fading saffron sky. Ten minutes ago his mother was in the other room, owning those Works; now—? The sheer impossibility of imagining the cessation of such a personality filled him with an extraordinary dismay. He was conscious of a bewildered inability to believe what had been said ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... knows perfectly well that I can go on the stage the day I am twenty-one, yet through sheer obstinacy she refuses to advance me a penny to do as I like with before the 20th ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... help looking like a girl of seventeen," sighed Mrs. Curtis. "If that colonel were but married, or the other young man! I'm sure she will fall into some scrape; she does not know how, out of sheer innocence." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his office rent, his licenses, and other expenses paid, but he shook his fist at the city, in sheer good nature and confidence in his strength, despite the fact he had waited a week for expected employment, and nothing at present loomed ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... have thought that this middle-aged gentleman was taking advantage of an opportunity to bask in the smile of a pretty girl for the sheer pleasure of her company. He was purposely detaining her, but whether from a wish to amuse himself or to mark his indifference to what went on around him she did not fathom. The fact was that Sylvia had wondered herself a good deal about that interview in Mrs. Owen's house, and she was not quite ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Lawrence—flows. But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... if you don't want to be pounded you'd better keep out of the way," answered Dan, with a warning look in his black eyes that made Jack sheer off in haste. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... it up. They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter, until at length, feverish, bitten, bleeding, and hungry, I sought refuge beneath the gauze curtains in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... at the window, looking down into that old-world garden, he was "sensing" the atmosphere keenly, seeking for the note of danger. It was sheer intuition, perhaps, but whilst he could never rely upon its answering his summons, once ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... himself because he was too open and unreserved to disguise his feelings, and because he really considered the praise lavished on Beattie extravagant, as in fact it was. It was all, of course, set down to sheer envy and uncharitableness. To add to his annoyance, he found his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, joining in the universal adulation. He had painted a full-length portrait of Beattie decked in the doctor's robes in which he had figured at Oxford, with the Essay ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain destroyed by larceny? You resisted the power of 150 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every principle of morals from the dread of fifteen hulks, while the expedition itself cost you three times more than the value of the larcenous matter brought away. The French trample on the laws of God and man, not for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always take ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... contrived within them, near their outer edges, that might fairly be compared to caves hollowed in the face of a cliff. The weight upon the lower stories and the substructure was therefore enormous, even to the point of threatening destruction by sheer pulverisation. The whole interior was composed of crude brick, and if, as is generally supposed, those bricks were put in place before the process of desiccation was complete, the shrinkage resulting from its continuance must have had a bad effect upon ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... of blood, for the jugular vein had been cut open as though it had been done with a knife. So much for the head stroke, which is, I may say, exceptional. As a general rule I think the tiger bears down his victim by sheer weight, and then, by some means which I should hesitate to define, although I have seen it, the head is wrenched back, so as to dislocate the vertebrae. One evening two cows were killed before me. I was going to say the tiger sprang ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... corner. But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the Castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should command ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glory eternal. Every man of them who fell had first killed his foeman—some half a score—while of those who survived there was not one so craven as to cry "Quarter!" The white flag went not up till they were overwhelmed and overpowered by sheer ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... sweat stood out on Bentley's bronzed forehead as he renewed his efforts; the stout hickory sapling bent and crackled beneath the pressure of the two men, but held on, and the boat slowly but steadily began to swing clear of the ice. These two Homeric men held it off by sheer strength, until the boat was in freewater, and the men, who had sat like statues in their places, could once more use their oars. The general stepped back into his place, cool and calm as usual, and entirely unruffled by his great exertions. Bentley wiped the sweat from his face, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Bumppo, cried Benjamin, your top-light frightens the fish, who see the net and sheer off soundings. A fish knows as much as a horse, or, for that matter, more, seeing that its brought up on the water. Haul oil, Master Bumppo, haul off, I say, and give a wide ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet room as if wrung from the twitching lips by sheer torture. It went out in silence—a dreadful, lasting silence in which the souls of men, stripped naked of human convention, stood confronting the first primaeval ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself together. These nervous women have often an unexpected fund ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... still not possible, total defensive strength must include civil defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind of protection becomes sheer necessity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on the bluff above—two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an' colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an' lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... swinging the whip over Bengal's nose, the cruel lash cutting the tender snout with every blow. But he was not doing it from sheer cruelty, as many of the spectators who raised their voices in ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... this prison, whose splendor and luxury seemed like sheer mockery, away from this house teeming with bitter memories of past grandeur ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... haste Whopper had been reloading his rifle. Now he swung the weapon to his shoulder. He was greatly agitated but by sheer force of will power calmed himself sufficiently to take aim. Then the rifle cracked out and the bullet hit the bear full in the chest. It made bruin stagger, and he fell back on his side, kicking up a shower of snow ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... same period the development of the older man had been far greater than his own. Covington to-day was, perhaps, as able a business man as Gorham had been when the Consolidated Companies was born, but Gorham in the mean time, by sheer display of extraordinary genius, had become an international figure. The business relations between the two men were closer than ever, but never once was there any question as to which was the master. Covington would not have ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the Americans care much more about it than the rest of us. Then there are different notions about this question of saving time, different notions of what wastes time and what does not, and much which the old world regards as politeness and good manners Americans consider as sheer waste of time. Time is, they think, far too precious to be occupied with ceremonies which appear empty and meaningless. It can, they say, be much more profitably filled with other and more useful occupations. In any discussion of American manners it would be unfair to leave out ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that was his laugh, and 'Baudelaire,' he said, 'was a bourgeois malgre lui.' France had had only one poet: Villon; 'and two-thirds of Villon were sheer journalism.' Verlaine was 'an epicier malgre lui.' Altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lower than English. There were 'passages' in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. But 'I,' he summed up, 'owe nothing to France.' He nodded at ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing the coins, one by one, 'as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;' here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this particular portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour and virtuous industry; 'and I won't stand in your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... like his eme was half my lover, half my tyrant. Of all which I will tell thee hereafter, and what wise I must needs steer betwixt stripes and kisses these last days. But now let us arm and to horse. Yet first lo you, here are some tools that in thine hands shall keep us from sheer famine: as for me I am no archer; and forsooth no man-at-arms save ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... argument, to the effect that this moment of panic revealed the truth of their theory of government; that the custodians of law and order have become the government itself quite as the armed men hired by the medieval guilds to protect them in the peaceful pursuit of their avocations, through sheer possession of arms finally made themselves rulers of the city. At that moment I was firmly convinced that the public could only be convicted of the blindness of its course, when a body of people with a hundred-fold of the moral energy possessed by a Settlement group, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... back to look in sheer astonishment,—he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes. The figure which he took to be Hazlet hastily retreated, and Julian half-persuaded himself that he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the circumstances brought back the trying Death Valley struggles, when this woman and her companions, and the poor children, so nearly starved they could not stand alone, were only prevented from sitting down to die in sheer despair by the encouraging words of Rogers and myself who had passed over the road, and used every ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... found out that she had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister and had wanted to go home and cry in peace, as an English girl should. She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the Spectator will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims. Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... even a lost soul may admire the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and man, stood ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... you as beyond question. What am I saying? The flower of the scientific talent of the time? No; that would not answer. The scientific genius of all subsequent time would have to be included; for how often does history show us the pioneers of science in sheer contradiction with the accepted body of scientific knowledge of their own time! It may take fifty, and it may often take a hundred years of discussion in scientific matters to settle the question as to what is true and legitimate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Venice, more idle than elsewhere, and even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to strangers, to amuse and gain a few pence. We pass over any details of the persecution inflicted on him by English tourists, who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of sheer curiosity and eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales in circulation, were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of course, displeased him, and accordingly in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Peter the Great is notable for the removal of serious checks upon the power of the tsar and the definitive establishment of that form of absolutism which in Russia is called "autocracy." By sheer ability and will-power, the tsar was qualified to play the role of divine-right monarch, and his observation of the centralized government of Louis XIV, as well as the appreciation of his country's needs, convinced him that that kind of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... sheer bewilderment swept across her. How had it come about that she was sitting there like this? Only two days before she had been everybody's friend. Life had been perpetually gay and exciting. She had had qualms indeed, moments of a quick anguish, before the scene in the Spotted Deer. But ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that their total number of one hundred and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight "gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, 1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... if possible, stand and watch the Master Workman doing the work that is to make this region our source of present day joy. We will make the ascent and stand on the summit of Pyramid Peak. This is now 10,020 feet above sea level, rising almost sheer above Desolation Valley ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... and a heavy cornice at the top, and immense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals by small windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extreme steepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its large moat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. To this tall fortress the good Rene retired in the middle of the fifteenth century, finding it apparently the most substantial thing left him in a dominion which had included ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fact, music had ousted literature: "the libraries were closed like sepulchres." But fashionable people were interested in an hydraulic organ, and they ordered from the lute-makers "lyres the size of chariots." Of course, this musical craze was sheer affectation. Actually, they were only interested in sports: to race, to arrange races, to breed horses, to train athletes and gladiators. As a pastime, they collected Oriental stuffs. Silk was then fashionable, and so were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech; for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words. The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy the man of moral energy all compact, whose mere presence, like that of Samuel, the seer, restrains others, softens and transforms them. This is a thing to be written on a man's tomb: "His ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Brought not from this same block divine Inheritance, or hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. "How's this? Have I devoutly treated," Says he, "your godship, to be cheated? Now leave my house, and go your way, And search ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... desperately than against their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt. The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less difficult encounters, he left mourning and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... then of sheer exuberance and with a strong embrace, pressed his head hard against her breast. He yielded passively, made no response of his own beyond a deep-drawn breath or two. A moment later when she had released him and risen to her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was busily engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task,—as good as any boy could have whistled,—and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, all alone ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Fitful snorings and groans and incoherent mutterings broke the stillness. At intervals a man near the door would jump to his feet, proclaiming the end of the world. Sometimes his paroxysm was brief, but again he would keep up his leaping and solemn chanting until he fell to the floor in sheer exhaustion... Gradually even he became quiet, and nothing was audible except heavy breathing and the sound of the watchman in the corridor as he passed by regularly, flashing his light into the room through the slits ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... It is the duty of every faithful subject to serve his prince at the expense of his life; but in the straits to which you are reduced, your strength exhausted, deprived of succor, and without hope of receiving any, would it be reasonable to sacrifice the lives of so many brave men out of sheer obstinacy? Submit in good faith, and no harm shall come to you. We promise you still more, and that is to provide all of you with honorable employment. You shall have no grounds for discontent: for that we pledge you ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... this revelation of the heart of a strong man made tender as a woman's by a power centering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experience of the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is the varioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathy that she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve to his plea that she promise to marry him when he should return and provide a home for her. Her more cautious mother secured a modification of this pledge ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... is chiefly due to Captain Jinks, or, I should say, Major Jinks. They were about to kill us when, by the sheer force of his glance and his powers of speech, he actually cowed them, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... When the Temple came into view, rising majestically in the distance, they shouted to each other, "The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!" out of sheer joy in beholding the sacred structure that ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... stones and sticks. They were treasures to him and he was as important about them as a miser about his shekels. Again and again he counted them, taking a pleasure in their arithmetic. Already he was advanced in mathematics beyond the others and he loved to arrange his wealth for the sheer delight of arrangement; orderliness was an instinct ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... considerably, and in its deep and silent flow winds for many miles between high hills which closely confine it, and in one place rise in a perpendicular cliff 800 feet sheer ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... This is sheer nonsense. Joy smiles in good earnest, and many an aching heart knows too well the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... out of their way all whom they meet; whole troops of dogs come forth from the cemeteries to fight over the offal of the piazzas. Every true believer endeavours as soon as possible to get well behind bolts and bars, and would regard it as a sheer tempting of Providence to quit his threshold under any pretext whatsoever before the morning invocation of the muezzin. He especially who at such a time should venture to cross the piazza of the Etmeidan would have been judged very temerarious or very ill-informed, ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... this work, and have just been looking over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But really such things ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... wide tore free, binding and all, from the edge nearest the centre pole. It split six feet sheer. Andy's feet went over his head, but he kept a tight grip on ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... no answer. But my blood jumped in me with sheer fury, for answer or no answer, I knew who the man beside her was. Close by me I heard Dunn's unmistakable chuckle: and where Dunn was Collins was too. I behaved like a fool. I should have bounced through the bush and grabbed Dunn at least, which ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad |
