"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long way to go. Privatization of government-owned copper mines relieved the government from covering mammoth losses generated by the industry and greatly improved the chances for copper mining to return to profitability and spur economic growth. In late 2000, Zambia was determined to be eligible for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Inflation and unemployment rates remain high, but the GDP growth rate should ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... initiative. Having lost the active mental powers that a human being possesses, they are reduced to the level of machines. The officers and non-commissioned officers, on whom the responsibility of leadership rests, have that spur to maintain their equilibrium, but the private soldiers, who have themselves only to think of, are the most open to this devastating influence. If these machines are to be controlled, as they must ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... gentleman told me that I should frequently be called upon to read hymns and recite verses of Scripture at family dinners in Edinburgh, and I hope I am always prepared to do that; but nobody warned me that I should have to evolve epigrammatic sentiments on the spur of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the twinkling of his eyes one knows it to be human and sagacious. The train winds on in the windy wet, through foothills and then young mountains, following up a swift-flowing river. The chief trees are bare Lombardy poplars. The chief little town is gathered round a sharp spur, with bare towers on its top. The colour ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... heighten community consciousness. Pride in the history of the community is like pride in a good family, and is a strong factor in maintaining the standards of its people. Of course the past may be one of which no one is proud and which they may prefer to forget, but this is a spur to new endeavor as it is to a family ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... done the like. It is ofttimes the best and the safest plan. But the time is at hand, and we must rally around them now. When the hour has struck and when the deed is done, then will it be for us to work—then will our hour of toil come. East and west, north and south, must we spur forth with the tidings. The whole nation must hear it and be roused. The blow must be struck whilst the iron is hot. Thus and only thus can we be secure of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the thought of their approaching separation. In the end they secured their mutual fidelity by a hasty and private marriage. Reproved for his precipitancy and imprudence, Romney replied that his marriage would surely act as a spur to his application: 'My thoughts being now still and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more diligence and success than ever.' While at York he zealously devoted himself to his art. His wife, left at ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... was subjected, says: 'Next she mixed nasturtium-juice with southern wood, and, having bathed my foreparts, she took a bunch of green nettles, and gently whipped my belly all over below the navel.'" It appears also that many ancient courtesans dedicated to Venus as ex-votos a whip, a bridle, or a spur as tokens of their skill in riding their lovers. The whip was sometimes used in antiquity, but if it aroused sexual emotions they seem to have passed unregarded. "We naturally know nothing," Eulenburg remarks (Sadismus und Masochismus, p. 72), ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... itself seemed to him perplexing; nor could he at all simplify the problem by taking the sudden back-somersault into Quincy Bay in search of the fascinating creature he had called a horseshoe, whose huge dome of shell and sharp spur of tail had so alarmed him as a child. In Siluria, he understood, Sir Roderick Murchison called the horseshoe a Limulus , which helped nothing. Neither in the Limulus nor in the Terebratula , nor in the Cestracion Philippi ,any more than in the Pteraspis, could one conceive an ancestor, but, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... informed of her purpose. When he had come to her after the walk, and demanded of her whether she still intended to marry Adrian Urmand, she had answered him falsely. 'I suppose so,' she had said. The question—such a question as it was—had been put to her too abruptly to admit of a true answer on the spur of the moment. But the falsehood almost stuck in her throat and was a misery to her till she could set it right by a clear declaration of the truth. She had yet to determine what she would do;—how she would tell this truth; in what way she would insure to herself the power of carrying ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... could see me, and then ascended—why not say descended, at once?—on the poor little animal. Instead of being crushed at once, as perhaps the rider expected, it darted forward, quite briskly and cheerfully, at six or seven miles an hour; requiring no spur or admonitive to haste, except the shrieking of the little Egyptian gamin, who ran along ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distance and were nearly done in. The ponderous, ungainly engine was just moving, and that was about all. The progress had so fallen that the guards were becoming somewhat alarmed and doubtless considered that if they only badgered us sufficiently they would be able to spur us to such a degree as to enable us to reach ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... begun to repeat and elaborate the story which he had already told regarding his mythical friend who had at last a commercial wireless "televue," as he called it on the spur of the moment, when Jane, the aged caretaker, announced Dr. Scott. The new doctor was a youthfully dressed man, clean-shaven, but with an undefinable air of being much older than his smooth face led one to suppose. As he had a large practice, he said, he would beg ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Drawing off his hat he stretched out his arms to meet it, and his eyes closed as the cool wind struck his throat and face and lifted the hair from his forehead. About him the mountains lay like a tumultuous sea-the Jellico Spur, stilled gradually on every side into vague, purple shapes against the broken rim of the sky, and Pine Mountain and the Cumberland Range racing in like breakers from the north. Under him lay Jellico Valley, and just visible in a wooded cove, whence Indian Creek crept ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with the VIM of these impersonations, the strange scale of language, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a sorrel mare, and urging her with the spur he soon came in range of the red-skin furthest in the ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... full of energy and excitement once more. The pangs of hunger supplemented those of thirst; and, almost raging against them now, he felt that he must fight, and he rose with an effort to his feet, with the tingling numbness feeling for the moment worse than ever, but only to prick and spur him ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... in silence for nearly an hour, and had passed the scene of the robbery by a higher track. Morning had long ago advanced its colors on the cold white peaks to their right, and was taking possession of the spur ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... your regular soldier, whose trade is war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed, most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have, into the upturned phizes of their ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... or seven pounds in weight, the size of a small turkey, and covered with the most beautiful feathers, pale yellow speckled with brown, a long neck and a short, strong beak, long black legs with three toes, the fourth, the spur, missing. That a hawk should knock over a bustard had not happened often, and he regretted that he knew not how to save the bird's skin, for though stuffed birds are an abomination, one need not always be artistic. And there were plenty at Riversdale. His grandfather ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... very able to speak. This surely cannot be fancy, yet it looks something like it. If I knew but the extent at which my inability was like to stop, but every day is worse than another. I have trifled much time, too much; I must try to get afloat to-morrow, perhaps getting an amanuensis might spur me on, for one-half is nerves. It is a sad ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... only green fields, dotted by clumps of trees: racing ground, firm and springy. The air sang in their ears. The fences seemed as nothing; the good horses took them in racing style, landing with no shock, and galloping on, needing no touch of whip or spur. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... consistent. His plays are simple in construction and direct in movement. He strictly avoids rhetorical and theatrical effects, but his dramatic economies often sacrifice all charm and aesthetic appeal. His gray world leaves no hope save the desperate one that conditions so grim may shame and spur society ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Sylvia, automatically responding to her deep-lying impulse to give pleasure, to be pleasing, made an effort to overcome her somber lassitude and spoke of Molly's miraculous competence in dealing with the fire. Her companion said that of course Molly hadn't made all that up out of her head on the spur of the moment. After spending every summer of her life in Lydford, it would be surprising if so energetic a child as Molly hadn't assimilated the Vermont formula for fighting fire. "They always put for the nearest factory and get all hands out," he explained, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Dagobert. "Hanged if I shouldn't. When I have gone into the heat of action, did I rush into it alone? Was I not under the eyes of my commanding officer? Were not my comrades there along with me? In default of true courage, had I not the instinct of self preservation to spur me on, without reckoning the excitement of the shouts and tumult of battle, the smell of the gunpowder, the flourishes of the trumpets, the thundering of the cannon, the ardor of my horse, which bounded beneath me as if the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... containing some of the best lands in the possession of the federal government. Two rivers, however, assume such historical importance, as to merit a more particular mention. Along their courses two Indian confederacies were organized under the spur of British influence, to oppose the advance of the infant republic of the United States. These two rivers were the Wabash and the Maumee, both leading to the principal center of the fur trade of the northwest, the town ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... be sad for long with you about, Emma," she said affectionately. "How can you think of such funny things on the spur ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... Nelson, and that at St Charles was under the command of Thomas Storrow Brown. How these self-styled 'generals' came to be appointed is somewhat of a mystery. Brown, at any rate, seems to have been chosen for the position on the spur of the moment. 'A mere accident took me to St Charles,' he wrote afterwards, 'and put me at the head of a ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... many ways. The endurance goes far beyond any man's original expectations, and the explanation, very likely, lies in the fact that the point of contact is always changing. To apply the same principle to a common worm gear it is only necessary to use a worm in a plain spur gear, with the teeth cut at an angle the wrong way, and set the worm shaft at an angle double the amount, rather than at 90 deg.. Such a worm gear will, I fancy, outwear a dozen of the scientific sort. It would likely be found a convenience to have the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... tramp! along the land they rode; Splash, splash! along the sea; The scourge is red, the spur drops ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... a form may be useful, and the following has been considered a good one for a death-bed will, where the assistance of a solicitor could not be obtained; indeed, few solicitors can prepare a will on the spur of the moment: they require time and legal forms, which are by no means necessary, before ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... attained the age of 15 before ever he discovered that such was not the case. Even backward Portugal has had its eyes opened to see that Rome and progress cannot walk together, but the President of Brazil is so "faithful" that the Pope, in 1910, made him a "Knight of the Golden Spur."] ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... Spur up your steed, brave fellow—the flood is at his heels! Too late! the waves now gird him round; the gallant rider reels; Entombed beneath the debris his warning voice is stilled, But he, I trust, ran not in vain; ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... and greys of the grass, bright tints of willow and poplar, and the speckled forms of the cattle, so far down that they looked like pigmy stock feeding in fairy paddocks. Across the valley there came now and again, softened by distance, the song of the river; and up in the river-bend, on a spur of the hills, were white walls rising from ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... but this has been a day," he murmured, gazing wistfully at his ragged nails. "Till I entered this tub there was nothing but lead in my veins, nothing but marble on my bones. Look at those boots, Breton, lad; a spur gone, the soles loose, the heels cracked. And that cloak! The mud on the skirts is a week old. And that scabbard was new when I left Paris. When I came up I looked like a swashbuckler in one of Scudery's plays. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the same instant—the squat figure streaking for the dim recesses at the farther end of the cavern. He sprinted after the vanishing form. Before he could overhaul it, Ichi rounded a spur of rock; there was a crash, and a yelp of terror and pain. Martin, rounding the corner, came into collision with a round rolling object, and sprawled headlong ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... dinners, or suppers at a restaurant, unless organized on the spur of the moment, are ordered beforehand, and everything, including the waiter's tip, arranged and settled for. If you have not an account at the restaurant, pay the bill at the time you order the menu and reserve the table. Flowers should ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... follows: "You are invited to be present at the funeral services of M. Jean-Frederic Taillefer, of the firm Taillefer & Company, formerly contractor for supplies, in his life-time Knight of the Legion of Honor and of the Golden Spur, Captain of the National Guard of Paris, died May 1st, at his mansion, rue Joubert. The services will be conducted at —, etc. In behalf of——," etc. [The Firm of Nucingen. Father Goriot. The Magic ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the rein sufficiently tight to check her speed, she stopped short, and shook her head angrily. I attempted gently to urge her on—not a step except backwards would she stir—at length in despair I touched her slightly with the spur, and then "the fiend within her woke," and proceeded to make up for lost time with a vengeance. The moment the mare felt the spur she reared until she stood perfectly erect, and fought the air with her forelegs. Upon this I slackened the rein, and, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I climbed up upon one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards from which the dead seem to look down upon all the living. It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus was a mountain of gods. In that church lay the bones ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... will be of short duration. His already matured soul does not need much of Earth's experience to round out its objective existence, before entering the true life in the spiritual realm; there it will remain, my dear children, ever beckoning you on, and contributing to you that energy that will ever spur you to greater effort to realize while yet in the physical form Immortal Life. Tend it carefully, but when the Great Powers that Be summon its soul to go, do not try to hold it here, but add the strength of your united prayers ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... ay, and so highly, that if you do this feat for me, you hire me to you as one hireth an ox or an ass: to use, to ride, to spur, or anything; yours to demand, miserable Grim! Joan's handmaid! for so I have called myself ever since last May-day, when she gave me her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... have been to emerge upon the old pillars and sculptures from the lava pavement of the Via Triumphalis, which wanders grass-grown and untrodden through the woods. A convent, however, which nothing spoils is that of Palazzuola, to which I paid my respects on this same occasion. It rises on a lower spur of Monte Cavo, on the edge, as we have seen, of the Alban Lake, and though it occupies a classic site, that of early Alba Longa, it displaced nothing more precious than memories and legends so dim that the antiquarians are still quarrelling about them. It has a meagre little church ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... loved her all the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all my life, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was in very deed my most conscious and perpetual spur henceforth until the end. ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Dick. As a matter of fact he and his friends had forgotten to name the canoe, but he supplied the name on the spur of the moment. It made a prompt hit ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... brain-work, it makes no difference whether it is done in the form of direct taxation or of indirect,—whether they are compelled to it by authority or allured into it by excitement and emulation. If a horse breaks a blood-vessel by running too hard, it is no matter whether he was goaded by whip and spur, or ingeniously coaxed by the Hibernian method of a lock of hay tied six inches before his nose. The method is nothing,—it is the pace which kills. Probably the fact is, that for every extra hour directly required by the teacher, another is indirectly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... a feint, though this is not perceived by the Austrians as yet. The real movement is on the right hand of the foreground, behind a spur of the isle, and out of sight of the enemy; where several large rafts and flat boats, each capable of carrying three hundred men, are floated out from ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... they named the Santa Rosa, in honor of that saint, whose day it was. This is now the Santa Inez, so called from the mission of that name, established on its bank in 1804. Passing northward along the beach, a sharp spur of the sierra jutting out at Point Sal turned them inland through the little pass followed by the Southern Pacific Coast Line, and they came, on September 10th, to a large lake in the northwest corner of Santa Barbara county, to ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... who realize your needs and lacks, I say: Do not be discouraged. God means by this very feeling of dissatisfaction with yourself to spur you on to seek diligently for higher and better attainments. If you allow yourself to be discouraged, it will only hinder you. God will help you to obtain that which you need. Do not falter because ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... toros: as was manifested by the numerous scars that traversed his flanks and counter; but whatever good qualities he may have once possessed, he was evidently now one of the sorriest of jades—worth no more than the value of his own skin. Notwithstanding the repeated strokes of the spur, which his rider administered without stint, it was impossible to force him into anything more rapid than a shambling walk, and at this slow pace was he proceeding, evidently to the great ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... at the eleventh hour to check Jimmy. This was not a matter, he perceived, to be decided recklessly, on the spur of a sudden impulse. Above all, it was not a matter to be decided before lunch. An empty stomach breeds imagination. He had ascertained that he could sail on the Atlantic if he wished to. The sensible thing to do now was to go and lunch and see how he felt about ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and believing that Senorita had been allowed sufficient time to recover her breath, he began to urge her to a better speed, but, to his surprise, she failed to respond. Neither words nor spur served to move her from the slow walk into which she had fallen. Such a thing had not happened since the beginning of their acquaintance in far-away San Antonio, and the young trooper dismounted to discover what ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... own misfortunes, swept over her soul at the spectacle of the man's helplessness. His sightless eyes struck her like a blow. But there was no time to lose. She was directly in his path: if she stood still he would certainly walk over her, and if she moved he would hear her, so, on the spur of the moment, she gave a nervous cough ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... anger rides—his snow-white beard O'erspreads his breast-plate. Hard the barons spur, For never one but inwardly doth rage That he is far from their great chief, Rolland, Who combats now the Saracens of Spain: If wounded he, will one of his survive? O God! What knights those sixty left by him! Nor king nor captain better ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... names in our language, and I did not know the native ones, so, remembering that at the foot of one I had found some ant-hills covered with beautiful diamond-like quartz crystals, I called it Diamond Butte, and the other, having a dark, weird, forbidding look, I named on the spur of the moment Solitaire Butte. These names being used by the other members of the corps, they became fixtures and are now on all the maps. I had no idea at that time of their becoming permanent. This was also the case with a large butte on the east side of Marble Canyon, which I had occasion ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and gold, with the arrow-patterned sash Tecumseh had given him as a badge of honour at Detroit, he looked, from plume to spur, a hero who could turn the tide of battle against any odds. A ringing cheer broke out in greeting. But he paused no longer than just enough to wave a greeting back and take a quick look round before scaling the Heights to where ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... had leaped, under the spur of necessity, to an independence of understanding beyond his years, allowed himself to be quite misled by the Squire as to his attitude in the matter of the mortgage. In spite of the momentary light reflected from the doctor's shrewder intelligence which ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... desert green with bajadas, prickly pears, and mesquit. To the right, close to a spur of the hills, were the dwarfed houses of a ranch. The fans of a windmill caught the sun and flashed ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... consciousness, and her movement in sitting up recalled me to my duty. I ran to Sir Cyril, and, kneeling down so as to screen his body from her sight, I drew the dagger from its sheath, and began hastily, with such implements as I could contrive on the spur of the moment, to attend to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... rare combination of gifts and experiences. Dowered with the poet's heart, he must yet have passed his 'wander-jaehre' amid the stern solitude of the Austral waste — must have ridden the race in the back-block township, guided the reckless stock-horse adown the mountain spur, and followed the night-long moving, spectral-seeming herd 'in the droving days'. Amid such scarce congenial surroundings comes oft that finer sense which renders visible bright gleams of humour, pathos, and romance, which, like undiscovered ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when "religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... one dark night, with a companion; and, trusting to his knowledge of the country, tried a short cut through the woods, among the old open mines near the Regla road. They had quite passed all the dangerous places, he thought, so he gave his horse the spur, and plunged sheer down a shaft, hundreds of feet deep. His friend pulled up in time, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... moment we were all present, and this portion of the labour was soon completed. Monsieur Le Compte then took his station in the head of the schooner. Making a profound bow to Emily, as if to ask her permission, the signal was given; the spur-shores were knocked away, and the little craft slid off into the water so easily, making so little ripple as she shot a hundred fathoms into the bay, as to give the assurance she would prove a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... elephant sitting on his back, causes him to do whatever he wills, by speaking in such language and expressions as he is accustomed to, all of which the beast understands and obeys, without the use of bridle or spur. But when fire is thrown at them, they are wonderfully afraid and run away, on which occasions it is impossible to stop them; on which account the Indians have many curious devices of fire-works to frighten the elephants, and make them run away. I saw an ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... carpels.—The only instances of this that need be referred to are such cases as those in which spur-like projections, horns, tubercles, or winged expansions, are formed from the surface of the ovary during the course of its development. The extraordinary cornute oranges described and figured by Ferrari, Gallesio, and other writers on the genus Citrus, ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... revolver were found between the mattresses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showing conspired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map of Maryland, gauntlet for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked with the name of Booth's mother—a mother's souvenir for a ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... of the smile that died On the sweet pale lip where his kisses were ... Yet still she turns her delicate head aside, If she may hear him come with jingling spur Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... no distinctive character, if it is capriciously useful or injurious, and is governed by no natural law, if it finds no spur in its usefulness, no check in its inutility, if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who exercise it; in a word, if it has no absolute principles,—oh! then it is necessary to deliberate, weigh, and regulate transactions, the conditions of labor must be equalized, the level of ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... is already far advanced, helmets and armors glitter beneath the rays of the setting sun as the Frenchmen spur along, tears coursing down their cheeks, for they apprehend what must have befallen Roland, who was evidently suffering when he blew that ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... country. This great improvement is the work of Captain Eads. A somewhat similar improvement was the blowing up of about 50,000 tons of rock from the bed of the river at the narrow pass of Hell Gate, near New York. It is to be hoped that these good examples may spur on our friends on the Continent to improve their harbors, so that large channel boats may cross with comfort to the passengers, thus avoiding the excessive expense ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... came within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... awkward, as he turned and looked west. Perhaps two miles off, past a barbed-wire fence and what must be an old tractor trail of the hopeful days of colonization, he saw the blue-green edge of Syrtis Major, the greatest of the thickets, with here and there a jutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hide tingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw only an expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... which we traveled during the morning ran over an exceedingly rough lava formation—a spur of the lava beds often described during the Modoc war of 1873 so hard and flinty that Williamson's large command made little impression on its surface, leaving in fact, only indistinct traces of its line of march. By care and frequent ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... only two trains a day over the single-track spur road that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early morning and one which left just as inconveniently late at ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... sure that I was forsaken by my good Genius, who must have been angry with me.[27] I began to oppose them at first; {but} what need of talking? As long as I was trusty to the old men, I was paid for it in my shoulder-blades. This, then, occurred to my mind: why, this is folly to kick against the spur.[28] I began to do every thing for them that they wished to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... have our laugh out here to make up for all the times when we must listen gravely to solemn nonsense justifying laws passed on the spur ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... enemies had found means to detach them, also, from his interests."—Yet, "under the pressure of all his misfortunes," says a missionary, "I have never remarked the least change in him; no ill news seemed to disturb his usual equanimity: they seemed rather to spur him on to fresh efforts to retrieve his fortunes, and to make greater discoveries than he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... defeat they had suffered at Wareville the year before still stung, and the spur of revenge was added to the spur of need. What they felt they ought to do was exactly what they wanted to do, and they were full of hope. They did not know that the stream flowing over the mountains, now so small, was propelled by a tremendous force behind it, the great white ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Our convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts; and on the spur of the moment, they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in God, this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. You ask me if anything transpires here on the subject of South America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... them across the uncharted seas in great numbers. And to stimulate and spur their continued migration to America these "adventurers" and "planters" were offered land in Maryland by Lord Baltimore—three thousand acres for every thirty persons brought into the state, with the provision of "free liberty of religion." But Pennsylvania offered ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... for their treachery. As for Dick, what with his sword of steel, which sheared through copper weapons and golden armour as though they had been paper, his snapping automatics which slew people at a distance, and his fiercely plunging horse, goaded forward by an unsparing use of the spur, he seemed to the simple Uluans like the incarnation of the god of death and destruction, and after beholding some eight or ten luckless wights go down beneath his sword, they simply turned and fled from him, shrieking with terror. This, added to the confusion occasioned by the fierce ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... yet we are firm friends, and thoroughly understand each other. I should not require another companion on a long mountain tour. All his ways are those of an animal brought up without curb, whip, or spur, trained by the voice, and used only to kindness, as is happily the case with the majority of horses in the Western States. Consequently, unless they are broncos, they exercise their intelligence for your advantage, and do their work rather ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... not come for this joyous reunion; her friends struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands. He dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a woman says what I have said on the spur of the moment? Do you think I merely happened to see you to-day, merely happened to say what I've said? You know better. This has been coming for months. I fought it hard at first; with convention, with your idea of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... revere him. We are prouder of our citizenship because he is our fellow citizen; and we feel that his life and his writing, both alike, spur us steadily to fresh effort toward high thinking and right living. To have written "The Man Without a Country" by itself would be quite enough to make all the nation his debtor. I belong to the innumerable ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... swarm would be at his head now, he supposed; for instead of silencing the angry buzzing around his uncle's memory, he had probably raised a tumult which would deafen his own ears before it was over. Here, as in other hours and scenes, his resolve had acted less as a restraint than as a spur which had impelled him to the opposite ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... 1-1/2 times as long as broad, rounded at the extremities. The left border of the carapace bears a spur-like projection. The ventral cirri are short and thick, and are very characteristic of the species. When moving slowly they look much like nicely-pointed paint brushes, but when the animal is compressed they quickly become fibrillated, and then look like extremely old and worn brushes. These cirri ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... moment she stood looking into the impassive, brutal face of James Brownrigg. Her expression was one of studiousness and consideration; yet the face of James Brownrigg was completely blurred in her vision. She had to force her eyes to see, and spur her mind to think. Then she ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... was accomplished as only your father could manage such a matter on the spur of the moment—consequences accepted with his usual philosophy and bonhomie. If he could have foreseen all the consequences, he would not, I think, have refused to give ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... falls in large quantities it becomes an anxious time for the sheep farmer, and if the flocks are not strong and healthy they are sure to suffer. In snowstorms, the sheep will seek the shelter of some hill or spur, collecting together on the lee side, and here they are sometimes drifted over, when if the snow does not remain beyond a certain period they are mostly safe. As the snow drifts over them the heat of their bodies keeps it melted within a certain area, while the freezing and increase ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... country. And this observation applies more particularly to the officers and the superior class of the colonists: since the disputes and contests which take place between the lower orders of the inhabitants and the common soldiery, generally arise on the spur of the moment, and evaporate with the immediate cause of the provocation; while the others are more frequently the effect of cool and deliberate insult, and consequently settle into a fixed and inveterate hostility. Under ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... against him, and the outlook was indeed dark. But, even in these desperate straits, there was a buoyancy in his spirits that he had seldom enjoyed. Life seemed good while he was yet alive to fight for it; he had youth, strength, hope, and the spur of deeds to be done, all of which roweled his faith whenever it faltered. Even this morning, he felt unaccountably like flinging his arms into the air, and shouting to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... up under the influence of the teachings of these relatives. Joined to this, his location caused him to take an extraordinary interest in Underground Rail Road affairs. He lived near the foot of the southern slope of the South Mountain, a spur of the Alleghenies which extends, under various names, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. This mountain was followed in its course by hundreds of fugitives until they got into Pennsylvania, and were ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... protected by their situation from external dangers. It may be observed in certain favored classes even in communities which, by long and strenuous effort, have conquered nature and raised themselves high in the scale of civilization. The idle sons of the rich, relieved from the spur of necessity, may undergo the degeneration appropriate to parasitic life. In the midst of a strenuous activity adapted to call out the best intellectual and moral powers of man, they may remain unaffected by it, incapable ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... generally imaginary. All I know is that we were somewhere on the northeastern slope of the long chain of mountains beyond Iguvium and Tifernum perhaps near the headwaters of the Sena. On the morning of our adventure we were on a long spur of the main range, so that we were headed not northwest but northeast. The weather was still fine and warm, but autumn was not far off. We hadn't seen a habitation since that at which we had passed the night, and we had made ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... relations are now beginning to be established with the Chinese; but until this is definitely completed the hopes of the merchants here will not rise, in spite of all I do and contrive with them to encourage and spur them on; for, to tell the truth, no certain information comes of a nature to induce them to go. And one of the difficulties consequent upon this commerce and intercourse is, that neither from this land nor from Espana, so ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... mounted. The same instant he lay on his back on the grass, amidst a general laugh, loud on the part of marquis and lady, and subdued on that of the servants. But the next he was on his feet, and, the groom still holding the mare, in the saddle again: a little anger is a fine spur for the side of even an honest intent. This time he sat for half a minute, and then found himself once more on the grass. It was but once more: his mother earth had claimed him again only to complete his strength. A third ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the sharp spur of hunger, I fear that I should have left him to make the bold attempt alone; but, famished as I was, I resolved to swim for my life. With a sudden effort I sprang into the waves; and so, following in the wake of my companion, I struggled ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... ascend a little to the plateau swept by a perpetual breeze, which stands above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. On the west stretch the fine outlines of Carmel, terminating in an abrupt spur which seems to run down sheer to the sea. Next, one sees the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal period; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to which is attached the graceful ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... shoulder of the mountain, the river girding it far below, and the afternoon shadows at their feet. Both carried guns-the tall mountaineer, a Winchester; the boy, a squirrel rifle longer than himself. Climbing about the rocky spur, they kept the same level over log and bowlder and through bushy ravine to the north. In half an hour, they ran into a path that led up home from the river, and they stopped to rest on a cliff that sank in a solid black wall straight under them. The sharp ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... a girl," Christian Young said with slow solemnity. The discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment. "She is only a girl," ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... and laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle, between these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post; and this fence was so strong, that neither man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... like that. Miss Lily avoided thinking of a possible stroke of luck, she who had taken such pains to attain so little, just to become Mrs. Trampy, to have the honor of working for Trampy and feeding Trampy. Oh, she was tired of it, did all she could to find him work, to spur him on! She even wanted him to practise. And she mentioned Tom and Jimmy to him, all those beginners, all the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne |
