"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brief study of the Incas and Chibchas concludes the civilized elements of the Aboriginal South American. To the east of the Andes were a number of tribes, all of which were, to a greater or lesser degree, still in a state of sheer savagery. Near the eastern frontier of the Inca Empire resided such peoples as the Chiriguanos, Chunchos, Abipones, Chiquitos, Mojos, Guarayos, Tacanas; while to the north were similar tribes, such as the Ipurines, Jamamaries, Huitotos, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought that Keith was a little mad. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing from sheer astonishment. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
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— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage, towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the islands of this group 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 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a lot of biscuits for fourpence," said Priscilla, "if you go in for plain arrowroot. Of course they're rather dull, but then you get very few of the better sorts. Take macaroons, for instance. They're nearly a halfpenny each in Brannigan's. Sheer ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... their friends and relatives, they live, depending on each other, like tall trees growing in the same forest. We, however, have been forced in exile by the wicked Dhritarashtra and his sons having escaped with difficulty, from sheer good fortune, a fiery death. Having escaped from that fire, we are now resting in the shade of this tree. Having already suffered so much, where now are we to go? Ye sons of Dhritarashtra of little foresight, ye wicked fellows, enjoy your temporary success. The gods are certainly auspicious to you. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... to win at any cost, by fair means or foul. His rushes, which had slackened, grew more violent. He came at Percy head down; he tried to crowd him into a corner, to throw his arms around him, to overpower him by sheer, ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... distance, but he saw far beyond it the black shadow of forest, in the interminable depths of which he might easily lose himself if the pursuit continued. Whether it continued or not was a matter of sheer indifference to him. He had drawn them far enough, but if they wished to go farther he would be the hunted again, although it might be dangerous ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reasserted herself, this artificial nausea wore away. I took a drive to Millard's Canon, and was surprised at finding a charming wooded road winding up through the canon along a mountain stream. From the end of the carriage-road we walked half a mile to a picturesque waterfall having a sheer descent ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... and "minding" with a corner of her eye the possessor of the same, the tiny Freddy, an imp of mischief uncontrollable by other hand or look than hers. A little lower down, poking into the invisible brook through the paling, was the eldest boy, silent from sheer delight in the unexpected pleasure of coating himself with mud without remark from Nettie. This unprecedented escape arose from the fact that Nettie had a visitor, a lady who had bent down beside her in a half-kneeling attitude, and was contemplating her with a ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... infinite variety, as also of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a mair curiouser ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... even of a Spinola, were not capable of a prolonged effort; there was no money in the State treasury; and the soldiery, as soon as their pay was in arrears, began once more to be mutinous. The bolt had been shot without effect, and the year 1607 found both sides, through sheer lack of funds, unable to enter upon a fresh campaign on land with any hope of definite success. But though the military campaigns had been so inconclusive, it had been far different with the fortunes of maritime warfare in these ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and busy; a life of gasoline and hammers and straining attempts to get balance exactly right; a happy life of good fellows and the achievements of machinery and preparation for daring the upper air; a life of very ordinary mechanics and of sheer romance! ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... jerked open Betsy's adjustment-cover and fairly yelped his dismay. He reached in and swiftly completed corrective changes of amplification and scanning voltages. He balanced a capacity bridge. He soothed a saw-tooth resonator. He seemed to know by sheer intuition what was ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... rest the 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 judge at that ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... opportunity as you're offerin'!" Mr. Cavendish's voice and manner had become entirely confidential and sympathetic, and though fear of their mother could not be said to bulk high on their horizon, yet the small Cavendishes were persuaded by sheer force of his logic to withdraw and dress. Their ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... At dinner, Amaryllis, in sheer kindness of heart, shone with good humour, readiness of reply and flow of conversation. Randal, while he felt that she now and then forced the note, caught her motive, and responding, smoothed her way. But Dick, having from childhood ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... her most painfully had she known of it. The mind turns aside from the contemplation of the effect that a story or two of Kipling's would have produced upon her could she have grasped their vocabulary; she would probably have taken to her bed in sheer fright, as she did in a thunderstorm. Poetry of the heart and emotions, which never verged, even most distantly, upon what her traditions and her susceptibilities told her was the indecorous, satisfied her highest demands, and the less said about nature, ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... helpless craft and got as near to her as possible; but as she lowered her lifeboat, she saw the yacht stagger, stop, and then founder. The tops of her masts seemed to meet, she had broken her back, and the seas flew sheer over her. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... flung open, and a girl ran out. Her hair was disordered, her face pale, and her eyes full of alarm. There she stood on the doorstep, facing the crowd, which in an instant grew as if by magic to three times its former size, and, little knowing what she did, she cried in the eager accents of sheer terror: ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... she was attacked by two American outlaws, while riding on the river bank. One of them seized the bridle of the horse, and the other attempted to drag her from the saddle. Turning upon the latter, she shot him dead, and the other, from sheer amazement at her daring, lost his self-possession and begged for mercy. After compelling him to give up his arms, she allowed him to depart unmolested, as there was no tribunal of justice near by ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... existence of such a being as God—fate had taken pity upon him and, through no act of his own, he was going to be relieved of his intolerable burden. For he knew that, with that fighting mob of raging maniacs struggling madly round the boats, escape was a sheer impossibility, and that in a few minutes—or hours, at the outside—for he was a strong swimmer—he would go down inanimate into the dark depths, and his load of disgrace and humiliation would ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the former British Premier, is one of the gallant men attached to the Hood battalion. He has been through the thick of many fights, and has been wounded more than once, escaping death through sheer good fortune. ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... of the biggest-hearted men who ever left the shores of Great Britain and Australasia, and that the stupendous difficulties confronting them may be properly appreciated. It is no tale of glamour and romance; it is a tale of sheer, hard graft, generally under ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... too much | Vi metas tro da bluo | vee meh-tahss tro dah blue in my linen | en mian tolajxon | bloo-oh ehn mee-ahn | | tohlah'zhohn This is not my | Tio cxi ne estas mia | tee-oh chee neh handkerchief | naztuko | eh'stahss mee-ah | | nahz-too'ko You have torn the | Vi sxiris la punton | vee sheer-eess la lace | | poon-tohn When can I have | Kiam mi povos havi | kee-ahm mee po-vohss it? | gxin? | hah-vee jeen? Return this linen | Resendi tiun cxi | rehsehn'dee tee-oon on... | tolajxon la... | chee tohlah'zhohn | | la... You must bring | Estas necese, ke vi ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... dense and still, where the wind was hoarse, and startled squirrels flew over the fallen trunks and boughs of ruined trees. They rode close to the edge of sheer precipices four hundred feet down, with trout-brooks, like silver threads, winding through the gorges. Great walls of rock rose above and around them, and seemed to shut them in with a frown. Sharp turns in the road brought them ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 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 further ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... lighter pleasures that she was never allowed to gratify. I think she secretly longed for the freedom that had been hers under the broader roof of her father's stately mansion on High Street. But she had, I suspect, neither the courage nor the force of mind to raise an issue, and from sheer inertia remained faithful to the life that she ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... bridge as he heard the click of Belshazzar's nails on the floor of the bathing pool. Then his heart and breath stopped an instant. Beside the dog walked the Girl, one hand on his head the other holding the flowing white robe around her and grasping one of the Harvester's lilies. His first thought was sheer amazement that she was not afraid, for it was evident now that the backlog had awakened her, and she had taken the dog and gone to her mother. Then she had followed the path leading down the hill, around the cabin, and into the sheet of moonlight gilding the shore. She stood there gazing ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... belonged to a boy of twelve, though he looked older—a street urchin—dirty, ragged, with a pinched face and a starved, ill-clad form. A look of sheer desperation came into these eyes when their owner saw the money, and he trembled with excitement as a certain bold and wicked thought came into his mind—a thought born, not of a bad heart, ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... was dying, and fearing that he might be obliged to pay the funeral expenses he stuttered to the bystanders, with passionate gestures, that an hour ago he had discharged the cripple whom he had dragged about with him, out of sheer sympathy, long enough. She was nothing more to him now than the cock in the courtyard, which was crowing to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... combat. He passed into the inner room, and returned in a moment with the girl's bundle. And with his return one glance showed him how nearly his plans were upset. Jessie was clasping Jamie in her arms, kissing him hungrily, tears streaming down her cheeks, while, out of sheer sympathy, little Vada was clinging to her mother's skirts, her small face buried in amongst them, sobbing as though her heart ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... made a circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness. That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me until ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... those who paint in music; but though Handel wrote more great choruses, his debt to Purcell is enormous. His way of hurling great masses of choral tone at his hearers is derived from Purcell; and so is the rhetorical plan of many of his choruses. But in Purcell, despite his sheer strength, we never fail to get the characteristic Purcellian touch, the little unexpected inflexion, or bit of coloured harmony that reminds that this is the music of the open air, not of the study, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... square-sail,—canvass so low that it might easily be confounded with the foam of the sea, at a little distance. She rounded the head-land, and was edging away from the coast, apparently for sea-room, when she took a sudden sheer in our direction. As if curious to ascertain what could have taken so large a square-rigged vessel as the Dawn, into her present berth, this cutter actually ran athwart our hawse, passing inside of us, at a distance ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... What she felt was not so much horror at thought of the deliberate unkindness, as sheer bewilderment at the discovery that a human being existed who cherished a positive dislike to her irresistible self. She had disliked Norah—that had seemed natural enough—but that Norah should return that dislike ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... right. I beg your pardon. [He points to HELENA] Look at her. Wandering up and down from sheer idleness. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... history. "For a 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 Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... continuous thread from the remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third was the long-meditated Body of Divinity, or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hackwork hung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for such labours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking for pedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were they so regarded by Milton. To ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... writing. Walking was a pleasure. I could preach or lecture without effort. Words, thoughts, and feelings were all at hand to do my bidding. What I had charged on myself as idleness, was strengthlessness, the result of sheer exhaustion. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to understand, in the least, what was passing over the girl before him, he weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible conclusion as Jude ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... miracle of truth; I have 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... and human will, however powerful, do against a rampant nor'wester? Very soon our hero was forced to rest upon his oars from sheer exhaustion, while his boat drifted slowly out to sea. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie flashed upon him, and, with a sudden gush, as it were, of renewed strength he resumed his efforts, and strained his powers to ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are papers on Burke, on Dr. Johnson, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as great. One group deals with Scottish History and one with the service of the state. The last is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... their yoke, and are restive under it; their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property; their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy, exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot—that form of love, strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by sheer luck, a Carabineer* happened along, who, hearing all that noise, thought that it might be a runaway colt, and stood bravely in the middle of the street, with legs wide apart, firmly resolved to stop it and prevent ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... Patty was snugly in bed, cuddled beneath the comforting down coverlet, she let herself go, and cried to her heart's content; great, soul-satisfying sobs that quieted her throbbing pulses and exhausted her strained nerves, until she fell asleep from sheer weariness. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... a small and exquisite woman with music in her heart and in the tips of her fingers; his memory of her was dim, but he knew that she had been the maddest and the merriest of all possible mothers—a creature of joy and sunshine and the sheer happiness of existence. And then her sister Mirabelle, who found life such a serious condition to be in, and loved nothing about it, save the task of reforming it for other people whether the other people liked it or not. And finally, her brother John, bald, fat, and good-natured; ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... answered Outzen calmly. "But to disturb the peace of the grave from sheer daring, with the fumes of the punch still in your head,—that is a different ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... was not so much his strength, which was remarkable, that enabled him to keep his hold upon this depending dead weight, as it was sheer desperation. It seemed to be pulling his arms out of their sockets, and his shoulders ached incessantly. At the risk of losing his balance altogether he sought relief by the continual shifting of his position but he knew that the strain was too great for him and that he must ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he felt a little contempt for the part he was playing and a sovereign scorn for his own imbecility, he even anticipated the Marchesa's languid but cutting comments on his failure. One second more, and all was lost—but not a word would come. Then, in sheer despair and with a violence that betrayed it, he seized one of Beatrice's hands in both of his and kissed it madly a score of times. As she interpreted the action, no eloquence of words could have told her more of what she wished to hear. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... I don't understand it. I don't indeed. It is sheer nonsense, and you must get over it. I shouldn't be doing my duty if I didn't tell you that you must get over it. He will be here again in another ten days, and you must have thought better of it by that time. You ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him, at the sky ominously clouded, at the valley below, already deepening into shadow; and, doing so, suddenly he heard his own ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... imagery—hypnotised by symbols and analogies which the necessary development of organised society has rendered obsolete—the ideals even of democracies are still often pure abstractions, divorced from any aim calculated to advance the moral or material betterment of mankind. The craze for sheer size of territory, simple extent of administrative area, is still deemed a ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... The 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 ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man's soul alive. Repentance will save any and every soul alive, then and there: but remorse will not. Remorse may only kill him. Kill his body, by making him, as many a poor creature has done, put an end to himself in sheer despair: and kill his soul at least, by making him say in his heart, 'Well, if bad I am, bad I must be. I hate myself, and God hates me also. All I can do is, to forget my unhappiness if I can, in business, in pleasure, in drink, and drive remorse out of my head;' and often a man succeeds ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... we had provided ourselves with eighteen months' provisions, in pork and flour, calculating that by the time this quantity was consumed, we should have raised enough to support our establishment out of the soil by the sweat of our brows. And thus from sheer ignorance of colonial life, we had laid out a considerable portion of our capital in the purchase of useless articles, and of things which might have been procured more cheaply in the colony itself. Nor were we the only green-horns that have gone out as ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... night, and was quite surprised to find that the Doctor regarded it favorably. All that night she lay awake from sheer joy: at last she was going to be of service—she was going to do something. She tried to tell herself of the hardships of the life, but nothing could dim her enthusiasm. "I hope it will be hard," she cried happily. "I want it hard ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... not!" I protested. "She is not guilty, but this terrible dread and anxiety is, I know, gradually unbalancing her brain. She is a girl of calm determination, and if she believed that you suspected her she would be driven by sheer terror ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... said King Philip. "Do you suppose that any rambling Don is going to take up my time when by a sheer accident his verbosity has started me on a true scent? Out, Aristotle, out! Or, stay, take this note with you to the Captain of the Guard"—and King Philip hastily scribbled upon a parchment an order ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... with sheer eulogy. Eulogy is nice, but one does not learn anything from it. Had dear Charles Reade stopped after writing "womanly grace, subtlety, delicacy, the variety yet invariable truthfulness of the facial expression, compared with which the faces beside yours are wooden, uniform ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple orchards—some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb health—some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular neighbours. But not ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... sleep. The draught acted soon, as Miss Carew learnt by listening at the door and hearing the deep, regular breathing. But the effects passed off, and Molly sat up absolutely awake at one o'clock in the morning. She lay down again and tried to force herself to sleep by sheer will power, but she soon realised the awful impotence ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent peril. Thus he too "kicked against the pricks," hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the more careless about trying to make the best of herself. If nobody cared about her, what did it matter whether she was a dunce or not? So she said boldly that she had been learning nothing; and then the two Enderby girls lifted up their heads and stared at her in sheer amazement. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... struck him was a deep well-hole, and I was perched upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch. What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... a terrified voice. Then out of sheer fright she made an enormous effort over herself, and laughed aloud. Under the influence of that mortal dread, in the supreme exertion she made to destroy the effect of the monosyllable that had escaped her lips, the laugh ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... understood as well as she did the ins and outs of parliamentary law; how to appoint committees and chairmen and count yeas and nays; in other words, how to swing the class along in proper form. They knew all this, but hitherto it had been necessary to call it to their minds each year, when by the sheer force of oratory, ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... calling Mr. Frampton, was going to make a speech. The cry was immediately taken up by the others, who for some moments defeated their own purpose by calling vociferously for "silence for the governor's speech!" Having at length, from sheer want of breath, obtained the required boon, Mr. Frampton, waving his hand with a dignified gesture, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... into the gray they sheer away, On the awful polar tide; And the sailors know they have seen the wraith Of ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... the crew had been excited by the approaching strangers, which were rapidly drawing nearer. They ceased their arguments and strife, therefore, and crowded forward, looking alternately from the foreign ships to their own leader, lightly poised on the sheer-poles scanning the enemy. There were plenty of men of sufficient experience among them to pronounce them Spanish ships immediately, and they therefore anticipated that work lay before them that morning. Presently Morgan sprang down upon the forecastle ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he sat was a good instance of his taste. The silver-plate on it was really remarkable. There was a delightful Caroline tankard in the middle, placed there for the sheer pleasure of looking at it; there was a large silver cow with a lid in its back; there were four rat-tail spoons; the china was an extremely cheap Venetian crockery of brilliant designs and thick make. The coffee-pot and milk-pot were early Georgian, with very peculiar marks; but these vessels ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... that ever turned 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 ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... day. "If only I could have you for my own, what a delight it would be! My whole theory of training is so different,—you should never waste your energies in house-work, my darling, (Johnnie had been dusting the parlor); it is sheer waste, with an intelligence like yours lying fallow and only waiting for the master's hand. Would you come, Johnnie, if Papa consented? Inches Mills is a quiet place, but lovely. There are a few bright minds in the neighborhood; ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he addressed ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Pawle. "Sheer tempting of Providence! I'm amazed! But—how did you get to know Mr. Ashton and to hear of this diamond? ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... has the usual circular towers at the corners 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 ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... angry, but bored, by this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer, narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to convince herself to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... pages in a body; and, finally, the imperial horse-guard (/Hatschiergarde/) itself, in black 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 ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... two sheer dynamic principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... service kept me in continuous joy, as waters invest a fish. I woke from a high dream. . . . And then, but for the fear of seeming cowardly, I would have extinguished my life as men blow out a candle. Vanity preserved me, sheer vanity!" He shrugged, spreading his hard lean hands. "Belhs Cavaliers, I grudged my enemies the pleasure of seeing me forgetful of valor and noble enterprises. And so, since then, I have served ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the first stress of war, were wrenched and shaken with veritable hysteria. At St. Ludwig and Constance those husky soldiers in ironmongery, with shaved heads and beards and outstanding ears, fell into sheer savagery, not because they were bad and savage men, but simply because they were hysterical. The fact ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... is the bank which falls Sheer downward from the second circle there; But on this, side and that the high ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... at the British under command of Sir John French. There followed a retreat that for sheer heroism and dogged determination has become one of the great battles of all time. The British, outflanked and outnumbered three to one, fought and marched without cessation for six days and nights. Time after time envelopment and disaster threatened them, but with a determination that ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... to be used, or any other service in which the bride and bridegroom kneel, cushions for their use should be provided. These are usually covered in white satin, with outer covers of very sheer lawn upon which the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... of Goerlitz, hounded on by their Minister, sentenced Behmen to be banished, and interdicted him from ever writing any more. But in sheer shame at what they had done they immediately recalled Behmen from banishment; only, they insisted that he should confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing of books alone. Behmen had no ambition to write any more, and, as a matter of fact, he kept silence ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... up here seem to think I know mighty little. It's very humiliating! But since they discovered that I am neither "'ristocratic" nor "pious," they seem to be friendly enough. I often find myself wondering if much of the work in the seminary wasn't a sheer waste of time, when I am brought up against the practical, commonplace, everyday life of these people. My friend Mrs. Burke has a fund of common sense and worldly wisdom which is worth more than any Ph.D. or S.T.D. represents, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... and stands up in a long-flapped waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new, picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old man's guard by sheer strength. But it won't do; he catches every blow close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns, after a minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old gamester. Joe now ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... From sheer fatigue these birds often seek a temporary resting place on passing ships. A solitary owl, after a long journey, settled on the rigging of a ship one night. A sailor who was ordered aloft, terrified by the two glowing eyes that suddenly opened upon his own, descended ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer abstraction. There is no such concrete personality or individuality within ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... understood, and tried to raise himself, nearly reaching to a sitting position, but falling back from sheer weakness, and gazing shrinkingly at us as if expecting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Buller tramping heavily at her side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show with the satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallid Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominate this fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into the supper-room, the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... unconscious or openly exercised by speech, is given us in the matter of sleep. Among adults the act of going to bed serves as a powerful suggestion to induce sleep. Seldom do we seek rest so tired physically that we drop off to sleep from the irresistible force of sheer exhaustion. Yet as soon as the healthy man whose mind is at peace, whose nerves are not on edge, finds himself in bed, his eyes close almost with the force of a hypnotic suggestion, and he drops off to sleep. With some of us the suggestion is only powerful in our own bed, that ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... was generally reproaching her partner. Eve was always her partner; and to-night she devoutly hoped that her employer would elect to rest. She always played badly with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, through sheer nervousness. Once she had revoked, and there had been a terrible ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... remember episodes of an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them together, and connecting together all those little matters which had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concentrated will power in bringing back to mind almost completely her two first years at Peuples. Distant memories of her life came back to her with a singular facility, bringing a kind of relief; but the later years seemed to lose themselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... officers." Apparently the common people were moved: they might have yielded, if their superiors had allowed them. But nothing could move those hard hearts; indeed, the sight of blood only inflamed them the more; and they felt certain that by sheer persistence they could break down ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... romantic answer. Royal Thatcher was naturally modest and self-depreciating in his relations to the other sex, as indeed most men who are apt to be successful with women generally are, despite a vast degree of superannuated bosh to the contrary. To the half dozen women who are startled by sheer audacity into submission there are scores who are piqued by a self-respectful patience; and where a women has to do half the wooing, she generally makes a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... fellow. But he's got a wife; and I told him, as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura. I reckon he thought better ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless—as his uncle had proved—for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right! He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage—there was no luck in it—he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... why had Lynda—? And with this thought such a wave of emotion swept over Truedale that he feared, strong as he was, that he was going to lose consciousness. For a moment he struggled with sheer physical sensation, but he kept his eyes upon the small, dark face turned trustingly to his. Then he realized that people were moving about; the body of the house was nearly empty; McPherson, while helping Betty on with her cloak, was commenting ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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
... be, if we are to have any history at all, a struggle, a wrestling, a contest, bloody, unceasing, uncertain in its issue from the first hour until the last. This is no mere warning spoken from the lips only by one who, from sheer weekly necessity, may seem to you formal and official; it is as urgent, as deeply from the heart as though it were a summons from a messenger who has come to you directly from his Master. I beg of you to consider your ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... into it the whole weight of his personality. He grappled like a giant with the rooted obstacles that strewed his path, flinging them hither and thither by sheer force of will. His scorching eloquence blasted every opposing power, consumed every tangle of adverse evidence. It was as if he fought a pitched battle for himself alone. He wrestled for the mastery ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... what they were there for. Here, so far as he had learned, was the only place in London where a starving creature could get work, without a character or qualification of any kind. Hither came those who, through drink, or idleness, or sheer misfortune, had got right down to the foot of the social ladder; waiting patiently in the dim hope that some extra pressure of work inside would occur to give them an hour or two's employment. Well, he did not hesitate long. He seized a moment when ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... worse days' sport than I saw once when we were out after rattlesnakes and nothing else. There was a cave, sir, down under a mountain a few miles to the south of this, right at the foot of a bluff some four or five hundred feet sheer down,—it was known to be a resort of those creatures; and a party of us went out,—it's many years ago now,—to see if we couldn't destroy the nest—exterminate the whole horde. We had one dog with us,—a little dog, a kind of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... morning, General French started. Immediately I received orders from General Cronje to proceed with three hundred and fifty men to check the advancing troops. As I stood on the ridges of Magersfontein, I was able to look down upon the English camps, and I saw that it would be sheer madness to pit three hundred and fifty men against General French's large force. Accordingly I asked that one hundred and fifty more burghers and two guns might be placed at my disposal. This request, however, was refused, and so I ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... rock that, high and sheer, Rose from the mountain's breast, A weary hunter of the deer Had sat him down to rest, And bared to the soft summer air His hot red brow ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... and often "drew the long bow" with daring hand. He loved to astonish people with extraordinary tales, which were sheer inventions, but which no one could disprove. He pretended, too, to have been everywhere and to have seen everything. This weakness made him good game for Barnum, who determined to expose his foibles to ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "Non omnia possumus omnes," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it—to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... pace nor his stride, and before the Eldest Statesman, much hampered by his prisoner and the bucket, could put up any sort of defence, the unknown rescuer had sprung across the stepping-stones, and, catching him by the shoulders, had, by sheer force of speed and surprise, hurled him ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... men in the corner stared at her in sheer amazement, and then both burst into a great roar of laughter, which brought the whole office force to their feet. "Say, Swift, come meet this young mortgage raiser," called the nervous partner. "If you ever get conceited, just ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... culture—in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... older than I be, and I suppose you will think all this sort of thing is clear sheer nonsense, but depend upon it a kiss is a great mystery. There is many a thing we know that we can't explain, still we are sure it is a fact for all that. Why should there be a sort of magic in shaking hands, which seems only a mere form, and sometimes ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... man was quivering with passion. A terrible loathing for himself, for his crime which had been the precursor of this terrible situation, filled his soul to the verge of sheer physical nausea. A red film gathered before his eyes, and through it he saw the grinning face of the inhuman monster who had planned this hideous, abominable thing. It seemed to him as if in the silence and the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sky. Before them the plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, with an indescribable bold look of great altitude; but close to them at one side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock and beyond this a sheer descent. The eye leaped down abrupt slopes of forest to the valley they had left, now a thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic blues and greens, tremulous with heat. On the noble height where they stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... if the prognostications of to-day's schemes may also fail, and countries which they have doomed to progress still remain as is Guayra, their towns deserted, with but the broken spire of some old church emerging from the verdure of the tropics, as the St. Paul's Rocks rise sheer out of the sea. If there is charm in the unknown, there is at least as great a charm in the forgotten, and the Salto de Guayra is one of the most forgotten corners of the earth. To this wild place ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... aligned in a triangular formation about Mallard and his sponsors and, with Captain Bull Hargis of the Traffic Squad as its massive apex, this human ploughshare literally slugged a path through the mob to the side entrance of the hall. By sheer force the living wedge made a furrow in the multitude—a furrow that instantly closed in behind it as it pressed forward. Undoubtedly the policemen saved Congressman Mallard from being crushed and buffeted down under the caressing hands of those who strove with his bodyguard ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... 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, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of 11,500 feet, and from ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... replied the doctor. 'One of the frightened servants chose to take it into his head, that he had something to do with this attempt to break into the house; but it's nonsense: sheer absurdity.' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Colbert did even more notable work. The Italian Republics had made their noble code of commercial rules and maxims. The Dutch had given to the world one of the most wonderful examples of what man may accomplish by sheer pluck and persistent hard work, and commercial institutions founded on a principle of liberty; and neither the terror of the Spanish rule nor the jealousy of England had destroyed her power. Credit, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... fast becoming a public nuisance, she naturally turned to Jefferson for assistance. She wanted to write a book that would be talked about, and which at the same time would open the eyes of the public to this growing peril in their midst—this monster of insensate and unscrupulous greed who, by sheer weight of his ill-gotten gold, was corrupting legislators and judges and trying to enslave the nation. The book, she argued, would perform a public service in awakening all to the common danger. Jefferson fully entered into ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... in an instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle. At eight o'clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the foresail. At eleven o'clock I was no farther along. Blood dripped from every finger-end, while the nails were broken to the quick. From pain and sheer exhaustion I wept in the darkness, secretly, so ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... holdest the sheer steep of Leucas, far seen of mariners and washed by the Ionian sea, receive of sailors this mess of hand- kneaded barley bread and a libation mingled in a little cup, and the gleam of a brief-shining lamp that drinks with half-saturate mouth from ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
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— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The path had widened somewhat, and the dreadful sense of sheer depth below her was less insistent. Nevertheless, the way was far from easy, the steps being little more than deep notches in the cliff. It slanted inwards here however, and she set herself to achieve the ascent with ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... it better," said Mr. Simlins with a sly cast of his eye;—"you can set her to be your 'vice' when you want one. I was comin' up from the river, you see, and came up behind 'em, and I couldn't hear what they said; but when she let him go, I see her give a kind o' sheer look round this way, and then she put up her hand to her cheek and cleared for home like—a gazetteer!"—said Mr. Simlins, who had given this information in an undertone. "Made straight tracks for the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... at least. This danger Sandy perceives, but he dare not check his leaders. Suddenly, within a few yards of the bridge, Baptiste throws himself upon the lines, wrenches them out of Sandy's hands, and, with a quick swing, forces the pintos down the steep side of the ravine, which is almost sheer ice with a thin coat of snow. It is a daring course to take, for the ravine, though not deep, is full of undergrowth, and is partially closed up by a brush heap at the further end. But with a yell, Baptiste hurls his four horses down the slope, and into the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and his guards went down from the town to where the faggot burned, near the road upon a rock was a chantry, it stood at a cliff's edge steep and sheer, and it turned to the sea-breeze; in the apse of it were windows glazed. Then Tristan said to those ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... democracy of the world. Maryland was a picturesque principality under the rule of a dissolute young prince, who enjoyed a great private revenue from his possessions, and yet interfered but little with the individual freedom of his subjects. Pennsylvania was administering itself on a basis of sheer civic equality, and was absorbing from Franklin the principles of liberal thought and education. New York was so largely tinged with Dutchmanship that it resented more than the others the authority of alien England, and fought its ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the way through the somewhat thinly scattered underwood as he replied, "You see, Mister Harry, the place where he's gone to sun hisself is just at the foot o' a sheer precipice, which runs round ahead of him and juts out into the water, so that he's got three ways to choose between. He must clamber up the precipice, which will take him some time, I guess, if he can do it at all; or he must take to the water, which he don't like, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Andreas Sunesen with his priests mounted the hill to lay the sword of prayer in the scales of battle; the Danes rallied, and their swords were not blunt when they turned upon their enemies. Whilst the Archbishop and others prayed, the Danes were triumphant; but when his arms fell to his side through sheer weariness, the heathens prevailed. Then the priests supported the aged man's arms, who, like Moses of old, supplicated for his people with extended hands. The battle was still raging, and the banner of the Danes had ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... night before, looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so sudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and in sheer desperation began to talk. "That's a good enough argument to change any one's mind," she said. "Isn't it queer how many different views of a subject ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... both are dead. Thus it happens that here I am,—alone at the age of seventy, without any soul to care for me, or any creature to whom I can trust my business, or leave my fortune. It is not my fault that it is so; it is sheer destiny. How, I ask you, can I make any 'Last Will and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was to warn the people. To that end I was on my way to the Despatch office when sheer chance switched me into the City Hall tragedy. I possessed myself ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... submitted to the embrace, but her soul had recoiled from it; she had actually fainted under the shock: and ever since, she had declared to her brother, with a pertinacity which he had been unable to understand— which, indeed, had looked like sheer audacity, that he would never marry Margaret Ibbotson. Philip was now convinced that he had done his sister much wrong. Her temper and conduct were in some instances indefensible; but since he had learned all this, and become aware how much of what he had censured had been said and done out ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... was like a trough, and the reef was very near, scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve, it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from the bank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, and he placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lump of coral for a sinker. He baited the hook, and whirling the sinker round in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... tangled locks of glossy black. His face was long, narrow, hook-nosed and sinister; his eyes, as I have described them, a steady and beady black. I could at first glance ascribe great activity, but only moderate strength to his slender, wiry figure. In this I was mistaken. His sheer physical power was second only to that of Captain Selover. One of his forearms ended in a steel hook. At the moment I could not understand this; could not see how a man so maimed could be useful aboard a ship. Later I wished we had more as handy. He ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... one of the doomed wretches as upon the other; and the strange phantasmagoric haze which is thrown around the ship and the lonely voyager leaves their outlines as clear as if we saw them through the sunshine of the streets of Paris. Coleridge triumphs over his difficulties by sheer vividness of imagery and terse vigour of descriptive phrase—two qualities for which his previous poems did not prove him to possess by any means so complete a mastery. For among all the beauties of his earlier landscapes we can hardly reckon that of intense and convincing truth. ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... looked hard down the slope. It must have been a puzzling circumstance for Tull. Venters laughed grimly at the thought of what Tull's rage would be when he finally discovered the trick. Venters meant to sheer out into the sage before Tull could possibly be sure who ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... that. But she goes on, says she, 'Your teeth's fine an' long an' white, maybe you've cleaned 'em some.' Then says the wolf, 'That's so I ken eat folks like you right up.' With that he springs out of the blankets an' pounces sheer on that poor little squaw and swallows her up at one gulp, same as you ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... our obstinacy strikes out against God. We know as well as we know anything, that in doing this and in not doing that we are going every day right in the teeth both of God's law and God's grace; and yet in the sheer obstinacy and perversity of our heart we still go on in what we know quite well to be the suicide of our souls. We are told by our minister to do this and not to do that; to begin to do this at this new year and to break off from doing that; but, partly through ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... far distant, the dredging nets were coarse and weighty, and the capstan of the clumsiest and most primitive description, so that the coral-seeking serfs under contract were worked like bullocks until they were often wont to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion as they hauled away mechanically. We can imagine then with what raptures of joy these ill-treated mortals must have hailed the advent of October, the month that terminated their long spell of suffering and semi-starvation, and with what eagerness they must have returned homewards, the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... says, there is no salvation for him who curses the Holy Ghost, he would, in the frenzy of his despair, swear at that mysterious portion of the Trinity by the hour, and then employ the next in beating his breast in the agony of repentance. Many may think all this sheer madness; but he was not more mad than most of the hot-headed methodists, whose preachers, at that time, held uncontrolled sway over the great mass of people that toiled in the humbler walks of life. Two nights ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... them; yet, as she rose and fell with the 'scend of the sea, shapeless snow- white blotches appeared and vanished again beneath them occasionally. She was coming along very fast, however; and presently, when she took a rather broad sheer, I caught a momentary glimpse of two royals and just the head of a third—the mizzen—proving conclusively that she was full-rigged—as was the Virginia. But, as the skipper had surmised, she was still much too far off ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... vast accumulation of basaltic lava-flows, piled layer upon layer, with intervening beds of bole and tuff, up to a thickness, according to Geikie, of about 3,500 feet. At the grand headland of Gribon, on the west coast, the basaltic sheets are seen to rise in one sheer sweep to a height of 1,600 feet, and then to stretch away with a slight easterly dip under Ben More at a distance of some eight miles. This mountain, the upper part of which is formed of beds of ashes, reaches ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... when on a sudden the trail emerged from the forest, to creep along the face of another precipice. The path was only a ledge jutting out not more than three feet from the solid wall hung with vines; at the edge was a sheer drop of thousands of feet—or maybe not more than 2000, but to Charley, whose left foot hung over the drop, it looked ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... is true of the subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor; and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Duerer, often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Kent's anchor not holding fast, and her driving down into the Salisbury's station, threw this last ship out of action, to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew, for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was now and then, when she could sheer on the tide. The French, during the whole time of the Kent and Tyger's approach towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them, without any resistance on their part; but as soon as the ships came properly to an anchor they returned it with such fury as astonished ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... cold comfort, but he had not expected more, and he strolled away in sheer vacuity of heart and thought to the principal theatre of the city, where just then a bright comic opera was running. The lights, the gay music, the brilliantly-dressed crowd upon the stage, made no impression on his mind, and his saturnine and gloomy face was in such ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands—by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them—should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... heroic 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
... others. The punishment fits the crime perfectly and being self-inflicted there is no injustice. It is true that many men possessed of great brain power play "second fiddle" to shallow-minded men of inferior wisdom from sheer lack of forcefulness on their own part. They lack the full quality of leadership while possessing all save one essential—courage. Fear abides in their hearts and spreads itself as a mantle of gloom over their ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... shaded; what a noise Aunt Debby's pins were making, and could Aunt Judith not read in a lower tone? Nellie was surprised at Miss Latimer's good-humoured patience, and thoroughly enjoyed Miss Deborah's occasional tart remarks, thrown out in sheer desperation. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... death, all along of your cursed rump. Alas! how frightened I am! oh! I have no heart for jests. Ah! machinist, take great care of me. There is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, I shall form food for my beetle.... But I think I am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of Zeus, I perceive. Hullo! Hi! where is the doorkeeper? Will ...
— Peace • Aristophanes |
