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Sway   Listen
noun
Sway  n.  
1.
The act of swaying; a swaying motion; the swing or sweep of a weapon. "With huge two-handed sway brandished aloft."
2.
Influence, weight, or authority that inclines to one side; as, the sway of desires.
3.
Preponderance; turn or cast of balance. "Expert When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway Of battle."
4.
Rule; dominion; control. "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station."
5.
A switch or rod used by thatchers to bind their work. (Prov. Eng.)
Synonyms: Rule; dominion; power; empire; control; influence; direction; preponderance; ascendency.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sway" Quotes from Famous Books



... power, the concentrated moral force, contained in that meeting, and left its doors without one doubt of the complete and ultimate success of the plan discussed. Mrs. Livermore held there a commanding position. A brilliant and earnest speaker, her words seemed to sway the attentive throng. Her commanding person, added to the power of her words. Gathered upon the platform of Bryan Hall, were Mrs. Hoge, Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukee, and many more, perhaps less widely known, but bearing upon their faces and in their attitudes, the impress of cultured minds, and an earnest ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... Tessie would walk toward the screen door with a little flaunting sway of the hips. Her mother's eyes, following the slim figure, had a sort of grudging love in them. A spare, caustic, wiry little woman, Tessie's mother. Tessie resembled her as a water colour may resemble ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... brother Highlander ascribes to him. Men went down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony, heard afar over the veld, swelled up from the frantic and struggling crowd. By the hundred they dropped—some dead, some wounded, some knocked down by the rush and sway of the broken ranks. It was a horrible business. At such a range and in such a formation a single Mauser bullet may well pass through many men. A few dashed forwards, and were found dead at the very edges ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... know that it has often come to my mind what wise men there were formerly throughout England among both the clergy and the 5 laity, and what happy times there were then throughout England, and how the kings who held sway over the people in those days obeyed God and his ministers; and how they preserved not only their peace but their morality also and good order at home and extended 10 their possessions abroad; and how prosperous they were both with war and with wisdom; ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... remarkably handsome in both face and figure. His curled yellow hair was thick, long, and silky in texture. One of his favorite ways of showing his strength was to get four men to grasp handfuls of his locks, each with one hand, as firmly as they could. He would then sway his head round with a jerk, and the four would fall, sprawling, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... ugly taint of personal cowardice which could not but be distasteful to an age of fighting men. With extraordinary skill Argyle had managed to conciliate popular support, while he remained the one overpowering territorial magnate in Scotland, whose unquestioned sway over the western islands was as dangerous to popular liberties as to the authority of the Crown. Clarendon fitly paints him in the words ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... only speak once more, for though thou slay me, Thy heavenly mouth must move, and I shall hear Dulcet delights of perfect music sway me Again—again that voice so blest and dear; Sweet Judge! the prisoner prayeth for his doom That he may hear his fate ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... short time night-marching camel-riders that left the city last night. Traces of old irrigating ditches and fields in one or two places tell the tale of an attempt to reclaim portions of this desert long ago; but now the camel-thorn and kindred hardy shrubs hold undisputed sway on every hand. During the forenoon a small oasis is found among some low, shaly hills that give birth to a little stream, and consequent subsistence, to a few families of people; they live together inside ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... called a king, and when we combine with this the tradition that he was put to death, apparently as a representative of the corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture that we have here another trace of the custom of annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who are known to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and particularly in Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen, to have been so far modified in places that the king's son was slain in the king's stead. Of the custom thus modified ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... of God, for on thy brow Great Fates are writ. Thou cumberest not His earth For petty traffic reared, or petty sway; I see a heavenly choir descend, thy crown Henceforth to bind ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... under the distinguished tutelage of a Saint, dear to those who hail from the Emerald Isle, and called St. Columba of Sillery. Thus the realms heretofore sacred to the Archangel, St. Michael and to St. Joseph, have peaceably passed under the gentle sway of St. Columba, despite the law of prescription. The British residents of Sillery—and this ought to console sticklers for English precedents and the sacredness of vested rights—did not permit the glory of the Archangel ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... original enjoyment of remarkable political rights coincident with American independence; for, while Charles the Second was an exile, and Parliament demoralized, the fugitive king still held nominal sway in Virginia; and when the flight of Richard Cromwell left the kingdom without a head, that distant colony was ruled by its own assembly, and enjoyed free suffrage and free trade: then came what is called Bacon's rebellion—an effective ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... ambition struggles round her shore, Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels. Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay, As duty, love, and honour fail to sway, Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law, Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe. Hence all obedience bows to these alone, And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown; Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms, That land of scholars, and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday; to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only to reappear to-morrow in purple clusters, gave us a beautiful image of himself. Each human ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... as anomalous an aesthetic product as one could well imagine. In a day when magnitude of plan and vividness of color, rhetorical emphasis and dynamic brilliancy, are the ideals which preeminently sway our tonal architects, emerges this reticent, half-lit, delicately structured, subtly accented music; which is incorrigibly unrhetorical; which never declaims or insists: an art alembicated, static, severely restrained—for even when it is most harmonically untrammeled, most rhythmically ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... on the battle ground, left there by the present owner of the property, (W.M. Reinhardt, Esq., grand son of Christian Reinhardt,) in clearing the land, as a memento of the past—where Royalty, for a brief season, held undisputed sway, and feasted on the fat ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... Drumbarrow parsonage for three days. If Mr. Carter did not like clerical characters of her stamp, neither did she like them of the stamp of Mr. Carter. She had heard of him, of his austerity, of his look, of his habits, and in her heart she believed him to be a Jesuit. Had she possessed full sway herself in the parish of Drumbarrow, no bodies should have been saved at such terrible peril to the souls of the whole parish. But this Mr Carter came with such recommendation—with such assurances of money given and to be given, of service done and to be done,—that there was no refusing ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... Ptolemaic system of the universe held complete sway over the minds of men for upwards of twenty centuries, it was difficult to persuade many persons to renounce the astronomical beliefs to which they were so firmly attached, in favour of those of any other system; so that the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... peace held equal sway. Reciprocal kindliness and toleration spread light where darkness had been, and scattered the shadows ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... Would Mrs Jamieson let us? Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire? We all liked Lady Glenmire the best. She was bright, and kind, and sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs Jamieson was dull, and inert, and pompous, and tiresome. But we had acknowledged the sway of the latter so long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now even to meditate disobedience to the prohibition ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... cried, "this cause belongs to the people who have seen their sacred institutions debauched. If I had the power to sway the citizens of New Orleans from the course which I believe they contemplate, I doubt that I could bring myself to exercise it, for it is plain that the Mafia must be exterminated. The good of the city, the safety ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... of the back door sat Bas Rowlett gazing outward, and his physical position, beyond the margin of the group proper, seemed to typify a mental attitude of detachment from those mounting tides of passion that held sway within. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... being seen. Christine had heard neither his ring nor his entrance, so she was utterly unconscious of any presence but her own, and indeed most probably not of that, for there was a strange abandonment to sway of the song as her voice, rich and full and ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder

... flashed about him a magic weapon, the Sword of Flames, that instantly took from my master all power to protect himself. He cried aloud to us, and at once we hurried him away to an inner chamber, far from its dreadful sway. There he lay for a time insensible, and we feared for his life, but at length, tended by his servants, he became able to move a little, and, at last, even to speak. But ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... this extensive region the Hudson's Bay Company held, for many years, undivided sway, and kept in its employment large numbers of men—voyageurs, or canoe-men, and hunters—both whites of European descent (chiefly French Canadians), and also half-breeds and Red Indians. The country was inhabited by ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... to him. Her eyes were looking into his. What she saw in them caused her to close her own quickly. Feeling blindly with outstretched hands, she let herself sway toward him, and in an instant she was wrapped in his arms with his breathless kisses covering her ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... and in consequence of this very movement, the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more. It has its headquarters where it maintains its sway. The Temple preserved the slang of the seventeenth century; Bicetre, when it was a prison, preserved the slang of Thunes. There one could hear the termination in anche of the old Thuneurs. Boyanches-tu (bois-tu), do you drink? But perpetual movement ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... departed may perform a more close and personal agency than this which I have just dwelt upon. Often, it may be, they are permitted messengers for our welfare; guardians, whose invisible wings shield us; teachers, whose unfelt instructions mysteriously sway us. The child may thus discharge an office of more than filial love for the bereaved parents. The mother may watch and minister to her child. The father, by unseen influences, win to virtue the heart of his poor ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... | | Love alone o'er hearts has sway Heart to heart and soul to soul | Ah Love! to thee do we surrender. Love binds us in his fetters. | (yielding to her lover's (placing his arm around MIMI embrace) Love now shall rule our hearts | Sweet to my soul the magic voice alone, ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... appeared. She stood regarding us for a moment, her massive head a little on one side. Then a great smile spread over her countenance, and she started to sway in our direction, wagging a greeting with her hind quarters, as bulldogs do. Two of the puppies loped off to meet her. The long-suffering way in which she permitted them to mouth her argued that she was accustomed to being the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... wise move that atheling's mind over young Heardred's head as lord and ruler of all the realm to be: yet the hero upheld him with helpful words, aided in honor, till, older grown, he wielded the Weder-Geats. — Wandering exiles sought him o'er seas, the sons of Ohtere, who had spurned the sway of the Scylfings'-helmet, the bravest and best that broke the rings, in Swedish land, of the sea-kings' line, haughty hero. {31c} Hence Heardred's end. For shelter he gave them, sword-death came, the blade's fell blow, to bairn of Hygelac; but the son of Ongentheow sought ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... enough; evil Norns hold sway over the world; but their might is little if they find not helpers in our own heart. Happy is he who has strength to battle with the Norn—and it is that I have ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen

... presence shared my lonely hour? —Yes, lovely flower, 'tis not thy virgin glow, Thy petals whiter than descending snow, Nor all the charms thy velvet folds display; 'Tis the soft image of some beaming mind, By grace adorn'd, by elegance refin'd, That o'er my heart thus holds its silent sway. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... For he's, chief of all, the Transport man. He finds the Fleet in coal and victuals (Supplying the beer—if not the skittles); He sees to the bad'uns that get imprisoned, And settles what uniform's worn (or isn't).... Even the stubbornest own the sway Of the Lord of Food ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... that followed the divine pleading. That divine voice leaves no man as it finds him. If it does not sway him to obedience, it deepens his guilt, and makes him more obstinate. Like some perverse ox in the yoke, he stiffens his neck, and stands the very picture of brute obduracy. There is an awful alternative involved in our hearing of God's message, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of his heart which the sudden mention of that name had produced; that name so linked with the mental agony of the past night; that name which had conjured up a waking horror of such might as to shake the sway of reason for a time, and which afterwards pursued its reign of terror through his sleep. After such a night, fancy poor Edward doomed to hear the name of O'Grady again the first thing in the morning, and we cannot ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... they struck wildly and feebly. Iron balls seemed to chain his feet. He plowed doggedly forward, dragging the pack with him. Furiously they beat him, striking themselves as often as they did him. His shoulders began to sway forward. Men leaped upon him from behind. Two he dragged down with him as he went. The sky was blotted out. He was tired—deadly tired. In a great weariness he ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... Draws the full beauty, sucks its meaning dry. For him this life shall be a tranquil joy. He shall be quiet and free. To him shall come No gnawing hunger for the coarser touch, No mad ambition with its fateful grasp; Sorrow itself shall sway ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only, but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is acknowledged. You say, that if those you address were "to spend one day in the South, they would return home with impressions against slavery never to be erased." But the fact is universally the reverse. I have known numerous instances, and I never knew ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... bought by our government at the time of that terrible revolution I told you about. The latter is a regular system, hauls passengers and freight, but the two work together. You will start in with the P. R. R., Mr. Anthony, under my despotic sway." ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... that sees the ever whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that thereby doth find and plainly feel How Mutability in them doth play Her cruel ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... Will and an intelligence merely practical, it was natural for Lady Ogram to imagine that, even as she imposed her authority on others in outward things, so had she sway over their minds; what she willed that others should think, that, she took for granted, they thought. Seeing herself as an entirely beneficent potentate; unable to distinguish for a moment between her arbitrary impulses and the well-meaning motives which often directed ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... old story seemed a preposterously insufficient reason for debarring myself from acquaintance with a highly interesting and important kingdom, one which had played no small part in European history, and might do the like again under the sway of a young and vigorous ruler, such as the new King was rumoured to be. My determination was clinched by reading in The Times that Rudolf the Fifth was to be crowned at Strelsau in the course of the next ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... with the law which you desire? Though why do I say law? he is an opponent of your liberty; he surpasses all the Tarquins in arrogance. Wait till he is made consul or dictator, whom, though but a private citizen, you now see exercising kingly sway over you by his strength and audacity." Many assented, complaining that they had been beaten by him: and strongly urged on the tribune to go through ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... November was drawing to its end when Barlasch returned to Dantzig. Already the frost, holding its own against a sun that seemed to linger in the North that year, exercised its sway almost to midday, and drew a ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... paid To him that earth's foundations laid; Praise to the God whose strong decrees Sway the creation ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... thinkers can ever be enslaved. Hitherto we have been too unreflecting, too much governed by momentary impulses, too much carried away by party cries and unhealthy enthusiasm, and hence completely beneath the sway of designing demagogues. We have left the politicians to do our thinking for us, and accepted too unhesitatingly their interested dicta as our rules of political action. The press has hitherto led the people, and so mighty an engine of political power has been eagerly seized ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... found they had arrived at another of those frequent little Belgian hamlets where, in the past, thrift had held sway, but which were rapidly becoming demoralized under the pressure of the war fever. Most of the men were serving the colors, of course, those remaining being the very aged or crippled, the women, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... more than usually rollicking they stand in a semicircle, with their hands on each other's shoulders, and sway from side to side, trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... pleasing the good taste of the Athenians, while she ministered to their vanity and their vices. The wise and good lamented the universal depravity of manners, sanctioned by her influence; but a people so gay, so ardent, so intensely enamoured of the beautiful, readily acknowledged the sway of an eloquent and fascinating woman, who carefully preserved the appearance of decorum. Like the Gabrielles and Pompadours of modern times, Aspasia obtained present admiration and future fame, while hundreds of better women were neglected ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... individualist, but not as the term is ordinarily understood. He continually emphasized not the rights of the individual, but his duties, obligations, and opportunities. He knew that human character is the greatest thing in the world and that men and women are the real forces that move and sway the world's affairs. So in all his preaching and doing on behalf of a great and efficient navy, the emphasis that he always laid was upon the men of the navy, their efficiency and their spirit. He once remarked, "I believe in the navy of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... who was now a king in all but the name, and far beyond ordinary kings in the power to have his commands obeyed as widely as the winds of heaven could convey them—remembered the feelings that held sway in lowlier, yet, perhaps, in happier days; and, although rarely a guest at Cecil Place, he continued a stanch friend to the family, to whom he had, upon several occasions, extended the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... the Democracy might still have elected a president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did not so desire, but sincerely ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... another class, for many generations still more contemned, degraded, and oppressed; and the time has fully come to deal with it as an offence to God, and a curse to the world wherever it seeks to bear sway." ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... ranges of sward, with those old giant oak-trunks, hollowed within and pollarded at top,—all spoke, in unison with the gray tower, of a past as remote from the reign of Victoria as the Pyramids are from the sway of the Viceroy ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... by the coals, her face in her hands. The light was bad; he could hardly see her now. He heard a sigh that ended in a sob. She rose, oh, so wearily. He saw her sway as she walked; she was throwing wood on the fire. It caught; a flame flared out; other flames followed with their merry crackling and leaping lights. And now he saw Gloria's face. It was drawn and haggard; ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... the contents of public and private libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to contain about 120,000 volumes. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... ages—built by the fathers at such an expense of suffering, of treasure, and of blood, was stricken by traitors' hands from the roll of living Nations, and while an armed oligarchy should establish in its stead a nation founded on a denial of human rights, and under whose sway south of the Potomac more than half of the territory of the old Thirteen Colonies—soil once fertilized by the best blood of the Revolution—should, for generations to come, continue to be tilled by the unrequited ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... time, and he sent for all the trades to come out with the sign of their trade in their hand, and he would see which was the best. And there came ten hundred fishers, having all white flannel clothes and black hats and white scarves about them, and he gave the sway to them. It wasn't a year after that, the half of them were lost, going through the fogs at Newfoundland, where they went for a better way ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory

... this postulated Divinity consists of the Universal Mind, and that the Universal Mind comprises the aggregate Human Intelligence, co-operating with some Moral Centre beyond. And that the spontaneous sway of this Influence is toward harmony—toward the smoothing of obstacles, the healing of wounds. In the axiom that "Nature reverts to the norm," there is a recognition of this restorative tendency; and the religious aspect of the same truth ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... for supper. A few families were very poor, and there I was lucky to get bread and potatoes. In one house I remember the bedstead was very shaky, and in the middle of the night, as I turned over, it began to sway and lurch, and presently all went down in a heap. But I clung to the wreck till morning, and said nothing ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... the contrary, Miss Hartwell was looking out of the window. She saw, below the shafts of sunlight already streaming over the mountain, the line of buckets stop, swing back and forth, saw the cable tremble, and again the long line of buckets sway gently as the cable grew taut and the buckets again slid up and down. Her heart was beating wildly as she lifted her eyes to the dizzy height. She knew well what the stopping and the starting meant. Sharp drawn against the lofty sky, the great cable seemed a slender thread to hold a human life in ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... doing as it pleased, and no one seemed to be able to stop it; and with that jest the conversation was turned to other matters. But Montague sat in silence, thinking about it—wondering what would happen to the world when it had fallen under the sway of this generation of spoiled children, and had adopted altogether the religion ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... gripping in its human intensity. Through this may not children safely gain their needed adventures? And here we come again to the real "Maerchen,"—the fairy tales. They take us into a lovely world of unreality where magic and luck hold sway and where the child is safe from human problems and from scientific laws alike. I have already said in talking of the younger children that I feel it unsafe to loose a child in this unsubstantial world before he is fairly well grounded in a sense of reality. Once ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... took place not many years after the French had been driven out of Russia, and that various prophets had since declared that Napoleon was Antichrist, and would one day escape from his island prison to exercise universal sway on earth. Nay, some good folk had even declared the letters of Napoleon's name to constitute the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... all these, the most terrible, and whose sway endured for the longest period, were the Mongols, as they were called: few, however, of his original Mongolian warriors followed Timour in the invasion of India. His armies latterly appear to have ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... thence! Our savage ancestors, peradventure, migrated from the immemorial East, and, in skins and breech-clouts, rocked the cradle of a supreme race in Scandinavian snows. It has travelled far to the enervating South since then; and, to preserve its hardihood and sway on this continent, must be recreated in the high latitudes ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... but even more will He do for you in the world to come; for not like unto this world is the world of the hereafter; for in this world war and suffering, evil inclination, Satan, and the Angel of Death hold sway; but in the future would, there will be neither suffering nor enmity, neither Satan nor the Angel of Death, neither groans nor ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... we were learning that lawlessness is no remedy for crime. For one, I dare to believe that the people of my section are able to cope with crime, however treacherous and defiant, through their courts of justice; and I plead for the masterful sway of a righteous and exalted public sentiment that shall class lynch law in the category ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... further, I'll say, with your permission, that the life of mortals has two poles—hunger and love. And here it is that one has to open ears and soul! These hideous creatures who are born only to devour or to embrace furiously, one the other, live together under the sway of laws which precisely interdict their satisfying that double and fundamental concupiscence. These ingenious animals, having become citizens, voluntarily impose on themselves all sorts of privations; they respect the property of their neighbours, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... down moonless and dark save for the light of the stars. In the recesses of the rocks and in the bottoms of the valleys intense darkness held sway. But the grounds and the home of Omega and Thalma were ablaze with a thousand lamps, and on the near-by hillsides giant searchlights, which seemed to have no basis, which were born in the bosom of the air ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... Mutimer's mind was keen enough; only amid the complexities of such motives as sway a pure heart in trouble was he quite at a loss. This confession of untruthfulness might on the face of it have spoken in Adela's favour; but his very understanding of that made him seek for subtle treachery. ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... place on the pillow; later she fell into a heavy, drugged sleep. He watched her till it was nearly light, brooding over her unconscious face. No thoughts of a king were his, I think; but once more he lapped them in that young girl's bosom, and let them sway, ebb ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... loving, and it moreover conceals; water is at least caressing,—it laps the greater part of this wreck with protecting waves, covers with sea-weeds all that it can reach, and protects with incrusting shells. Even beyond its grasp it tosses soft pendants of moss that twine like vine-tendrils, or sway in the wind. It mellows harsh colors into beauty, and Ruskin grows eloquent over the wave-washed tint of some tarry, weather-beaten boat. But air is pitiless: it dries and stiffens all outline, and bleaches all color ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... must certainly have under-estimated the spirit of angry hostility towards Germany which then held sway over his people's minds, otherwise he would probably not have gone directly counter to it, as he did in a speech which has now become famous. On May 10th at Philadelphia he gave evidence of his peaceful inclinations in the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... days gone by, the Begs of Rataj were reckoned among the rulers of Bosnia, high in the counsels of the Janissaries, feudal lords of great domains. But I, alas! the last of the Begs of Rataj, whose father even held the sway of a king, have been deprived of my tithes, and reduced to the low condition of a merchant in rugs, a dealer in antiquities, dependent upon the good will of tourists from the West, reduced perhaps one day to sit in a stall in the Carsija. It is not so much ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... and faithful in the private intercourse of life. Interest and ambition exercise considerable sway among them; but pride and vanity none: the distinctions of rank produce little impression. They have no society, no salons, no fashions, no little daily methods of giving effect to minute circumstances. These habitual sources of dissimulation and envy exist not ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... who, as they voyaged, quaff'd With Tristram that spiced magic draught, Which since then for ever rolls 65 Through their blood, and binds their souls, Working love, but working teen deg.?—. deg.67 There were two Iseults who did sway Each her hour of Tristram's day; But one possess'd his waning time, 70 The other his resplendent prime. Behold her here, the patient flower, Who possess'd his darker hour! Iseult of the Snow-White Hand Watches pale by Tristram's ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... Empire had fallen, the Eastern still held its sway as far as the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and continued the contest with the Persian power for the supremacy in Asia. At this time the various creeds and beliefs of the Arabian tribes—which had been much influenced ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... soon as I can," promised Mrs. Grinnell when she could get in a word, and forgetting her usual parting admonition, she hurried sway through the crowd ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... all baggage behind. The defeat of the Dompoasis had its effect, and the little column joined Colonel Burroughs's men unopposed. The combined force then pushed on, until they arrived at a town under the sway ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... Bradford; men, matrons, and maidens fair, Miles Standish and all his soldiers, with corselet and sword, were there; And sobbing and tears and gladness had each in its turn the sway, For the grave of the sweet ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs, necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the universe, being finally exorcised by Yaveh, is now as dead as the mummies who once were men and upheld his undisputed sway. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... prose pictures of the hopeless Jewish resistance to Roman sway adds another leaf to his record of the famous wars of the world. The book is one of Mr. Henty's ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... who should fall into it; nature has given this vegetable murderer a habitat where it is least accessible. But where the cardinal-flower spreads its clubbed suckers, and where the beautiful bells of the water-violet sway among the rushes, there is gravel, which is not always under water. And where the manna tendrils begin to form a thicket, in pressing through which the sailor finds the brim of his hat full of little seeds—the food of the poor, manna ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... the Mayor gives them a character,' said Mr. Datchery, 'of which they may indeed be proud. I would ask His Honour (if I might be permitted) whether there are not many objects of great interest in the city which is under his beneficent sway?' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... with a lyrical extravagance which sometimes comes close to the confines of rodomontade. Charlotte Bronte never arrives at that mastery of her material which permits the writer to stand apart from his work, and sway the reader with successive tides of emotion while remaining perfectly calm himself. Nor is she one of those whose visible emotion is nevertheless fugitive, like an odour, and evaporates, leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... had listened to a solemn sermon of Dr. Posthelwaite's, slipped out of Church before the prayers were ended, and hurried into that deserted portion of the town about the Court House where on week days business held its sway. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian peculiarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school. The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual dissolution, was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway. Then the influence of the school was extended over the whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In that city, however, there were new forces in operation which produced a second grand outburst of intellectual ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "Bon compano, jur a Di!" and then go off into a fit of laughter that lasted an hour, without a thought for the moment of anything that had befallen him in his government; for cares have very little sway over us while we are eating and drinking. At length, the wine having come to an end with them, drowsiness began to come over them, and they dropped asleep on their very table and tablecloth. Ricote and Sancho alone remained awake, for they had eaten more and drunk ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... working harder, he was innocently unconscious of it. He felt a sense of gratitude and wonder that Ida was such a good manager and accomplished such great results with such a small expenditure. He was unwittingly disloyal to his first wife. He remembered the rigid economy under her sway, and owned to himself, although with remorseful tenderness, that she had not been such a financier as this woman. "You ought to go on Wall Street," he often told Ida. He gazed after her now with a species of awe that he had such a splendid, masterful creature for ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... her own. The spirit of the city has not been lost, as in the other capitals. The fair metropolis of France, in spite of many transformations, still holds her admirers with a dominating sway. She pours out for them a strong elixir that once tasted takes the flavor out of existence in other cities and makes her adorers, when in exile, thirst for another draught of the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... any kind or nature whatsoever. But, when in it, to the best of my judgment, discharge the duties of the office with that impartiality and zeal for the public good, which ought never to suffer connection of blood or friendship to intermingle so as to have the least sway on the decision of a public nature." This position was held to firmly. John Adams wrote an office-seeker, "I must caution you, my dear Sir, against having any dependence on my influence or that of any other person. No man, I believe, has ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... one, a union based on common intellectual effort and spiritual sympathy. The period immediately before and after the Christian era might also appear to be one in which the mind of the world as a whole made a great step forward. The union of many nations under the sway of Rome, and the universal diffusion of the Greek language as a means of general communication, made men conscious at this time as they had never been before, of the unity of mankind in spite of all differences of race and speech. A philosophy also was popular ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... there is a return to the introductory melody which is treated contrapuntally by the bassoons and other wind-instruments. The saltarello resumes its sway and is worked up to a fiery ending; especially brilliant are the closing chords scored for full brass ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... Urn or animated Bust Back to its Mansion call the fleeting Breath? Can Honour's Voice provoke the silent Dust, Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold Ear of Death! Perhaps in this neglected Spot is laid Some Heart once pregnant with celestial Fire, Hands that the Reins of Empire might have sway'd, Or wak'd to Extacy the living Lyre. But Knowledge to their Eyes her ample Page Rich with the Spoils of Time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble Rage, And froze the genial Current of the Soul. Full many a Gem of purest ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... puzzled astonishment, Estelle saw it move and sway. A man entered the room with the noiseless tread of a sailor. He was so very tall, with shoulders so broad, that he seemed to till the little room; his head almost touched the ceiling. A neatly trimmed sailor's beard of dark hair ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... upon the solitary tower, as if in the vain insolence with which present power looks upon past decay,—the living race upon ancestral greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly! for modern times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignity stamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Imperial Harlot, all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; and, like her own Messalina, at once ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dear Or slender wrists, then making tight The laces round their ankles light; For folk were wont within that land To cast the ball from hand to hand, Dancing meanwhile full orderly. Lovely to look on was the sway Of the slim maidens neath the ball As they swung back to note its fall With dainty balanced feet; and fair The bright out-flowing, golden hair, As swiftly yet in measured wise One maid ran forth to gain the prize; Eyes glittered and young cheeks glowed bright And ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... I, "I don't hardly think so. A dogie is always under size and poor, and he's layin' around water holes, and he always has a big, sway belly onto him. No, this is no dogie; and, if it's an honest calf, there sure ought to be a T 0 ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... then seemed to them scarcely worthy of notice, sent their vessels by thousands upon the ocean in pursuit of the wonderful riches of the New World. The day of caravans and coasting had passed; Venice had lost its splendour; the sway of the Mediterranean was over; the commerce of the world was suddenly transferred from the active and industrious towns of that sea, which had so long monopolized it, to the Western nations, to the Portuguese and Spaniards first, and then to the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... terrors, but by the force of love. Men are taught that God loves them; they see that love first in the life of Jesus, then on his cross, where he died as the Lamb of God, bearing the sin of the world. Under the mighty sway of that love they yield their hearts to heaven's King. Thus love's conquests are going on. The friendship of Jesus is changing earth's sin and evil into ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... imagination, He is some snake whose fascinating eyes, Fix'd on my trembling bird, have drawn her down Into his pois'nous fangs. How frail our sex! Prudence may guard us from th' assaults of passion, But storm'd the citadel, in woman's heart, Victorious love admits no armistice Or sway conjoint. He ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... to see and prize his jewels more than to sell them, as Esau did his birthright. You read not anywhere that Esau had faith, no, not so much as a little; therefore, no marvel if, where the flesh only bears sway, (as it will in that man where no faith is to resist), if he sells his birthright, and his soul and all, and that to the devil of hell; for it is with such, as it is with the ass, who in her occasions cannot be turned away. [Jer. 2:24] When their minds are set upon their ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... one sees the windows and the paintings in a great cathedral in the first fulness of reverence. To her this was a sacred place. That grief had lost its poignancy, that youth and health with cruel insistence had reasserted their sway over her life, did ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... and Palestine as a vassal state. One of the first Pharaohs with whom we meet in Egyptian history, King Zeser of Dynasty III., is known to have sent a fleet to the Lebanon in order to procure cedar wood, and there is some evidence to show that he held sway over this country. For how many centuries previous to his reign the Pharaohs had overrun Syria we cannot now say, but there is no reason to suppose that Zeser initiated the aggressive policy of Egypt in Asia. Sahura, a Pharaoh of Dynasty ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... another, then, his congregation yielded to his sway. Last of them all to yield was Kathryn, sitting in a front pew and, after her custom, smiling up at him in an admiration which he had come to find galling in its emptiness of any meaning. But, at the last passionately fervent words, her ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... years should have brought more wisdom, he went poaching for supper upon Welsh rabbits. That night all the ghastly time came back, and stood minute by minute before him. Every swing of his body, and sway of his head, and swell of his heart, was repeated, the buffet of the billows when the planks were gone, the numb grasp of the slippery oar, the sucking down of legs which seemed turning into sea-weed, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... fortress-like, while the cadaverous-cheeked Spaniard stands in the gloom with his hand upon his sword, one of the six thousand souls now within this ill-drained city. Successive Spanish governors hold their sway under the Spanish king; and then the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... caution; but twice she saw him slip, the weather-eaten stone crumbling away in his hand and rattling beneath him into the cove. When Hall reached the top, a hundred feet above the sea, she saw him stand upright and sway easily on the knife-edge which she knew fell away as abruptly on the other side. Billy, once on top, contented himself with crouching on hands and knees. The leader went on, upright, walking as easily as on a level floor. Billy abandoned the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... sprinkled with pearls like drops of evening dew. The stems twine about like serpents, and they seem to the knight to move and turn about to show him all their magic splendor. Some of them, with coiling tendrils, like gold wire, sway toward him as if they would catch him and hold him, others dance and wave about on their stems and twinkle as the other stars do, up above the trees, as if they were laughing and mocking at him, and still others bow and bend away from him and beckon him on. The ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... something of the sublime. Was it then a reality, and not a dream? and should I in a very short time be in Rome itself,—that city which had been the theatre of so many events of world-wide influence, and which for so many ages had borne sway over all the kings and kingdoms of the earth? Meanwhile the night became darker, and the torrents of rain more frequent and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... tottering, and it was 'the colors—rally!' Ah, sir! the colors means the life or death of a square at such times. And just then, when horses was a-trampling us and the air full o' the flash o' French steel, just then I see our colors dip and sway, and down they went. But still it's 'the colors—rally!' and there's no colors to rally to; and all the time the square is being cut to pieces. But I, being nearest, caught up the colors in this here left hand," here the Corporal raised his gleaming hook, "but a Cuirassier, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... held sway o'er all this fertile land. Methinks to-day I see him stand alone, Drawing his blanket close around his form; He hath braved all, hath heard the dying moan Rise from the fields of strife; ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... consisting of seventy members. 2 僕射, 周青臣. 3 淳于越. 4 田常. — 常 should probably be 恆, as it is given in the T'ung Chien. See Analects XIV. xxii. T'ien Hang was the same as Ch'an Ch'ang of that chapter. 5 丞相李斯 imperial sway, so that it will last for 10,000 generations. This is indeed beyond what a stupid scholar can understand. And, moreover, Yueh only talks of things belonging to the Three Dynasties, which are not fit to be models ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... of King Tissa, as the champion of the faith. On the recovery of his kingdom he addressed himself with energy to remove the effects produced in the northern portions of the island by forty years of neglect and inaction under the sway of Elala. During that monarch's protracted usurpation the minor sovereignties, which had been formed in various parts of the island prior to his seizure of the crown, were little impeded in their social progress by the forty-four years' residence of the Malabars at ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Friers had by following him with such deuotion, I know not, but sure I am, the Laity did respite their homage till they might see which way the victory would sway; fearing to shew themselues apparently vnto him, least the Spaniard should after our departure (if we preuailed not) call them to account: yet sent they vnder hand messages to him of obedience, thereby to saue their owne, if he became King; but indeed very well contented to see the Spaniards and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... yet in existence that can present us a better government and wiser institutions than the British. Long may Canada recognise her rule, and rejoice in her sway! Should she ever be so unwise as to relinquish the privileges she enjoys under the sovereignty of the mother country, she may seek protection nearer and fare worse! The sorrows and trials that I experienced during my first eight years' residence in Canada, have been more than counterbalanced ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... you did not mean to. Oh, you know!" and the tears came to her eyes, and she touched his hand. The sentence was not clear, but he understood it perfectly, and was touched by what it expressed. Her words meant that, besides the love for her husband which held her in its sway, she prized and considered important the love she had for him, her brother, and that every misunderstanding between them caused ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... and experiences of human beings. The normal life of mankind is shot through and through with the idea that a man's a man; all that is highest in feeling and conduct is closely bound up with it. Lessen its sway over our feelings and thoughts and instincts, and how much benefit in the shape of "preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks" would be required to compensate for the loss in nobleness, in depth, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... used the Spanish language in their prayer-books, Bibles, and codes of communal laws. Such was also the case with the Jews who settled in England. Though they had all gladly adopted the language of the land which they had made their home under the sway of a just and enlightened monarch, they still clung to the Spanish tongue as that of their fatherland, and were loth to banish its use entirely. But in all the schools and colleges in England so much time was in those days devoted to the various branches ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... disposition, he had for their own selfish ends been encouraged by his early guardians in sensual pleasures, and never to the last freed himself from his evil habits. "Dissolute as a man, prodigal as a king, and superstitious as a Catholic, he could not but easily fall under the sway of superior minds,"[46] who undertook to free him from the worries of business, to provide him with money, and to regard his failings with indulgence, and on easy terms to absolve him from those grosser excesses which could not fail at times to trouble ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... barren sport of walking about the monotonous streets of the four professional levels I took a more exciting trip down into the lower levels of the city where the vast mechanical industries held sway. I did not know how much freedom might be allowed me, but I reasoned that I would be out of my supposed normal environment and hence my ignorance would be more excusable and in less ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... respectively the rule of law and the sway of liberty: Halacha is law incarnate; Haggada, liberty regulated by law and bearing the impress of morality. Halacha stands for the rigid authority of the Law, for the absolute importance of theory—the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... influence is not what it should be. But let females be rightly educated, and let them do what a good education will enable them to do, and vice will ere long hang her head, and virtue and piety—which alone exalt a nation, or the individuals that compose it—will resume their sway. Then will the wilderness and the solitary place be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... your public will think that your criticism is a piece of conscientious work. Then, when you have won your reader's confidence, you will regret that you must blame the tendency and influence of such work upon French literature. 'Does not France,' you will say, 'sway the whole intellectual world? French writers have kept Europe in the path of analysis and philosophical criticism from age to age by their powerful style and the original turn given by them to ideas.' ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Sway" :   tilt, rock, vibrate, powerfulness, anti-sway bar, act upon, nutate, weave, waver, oscillate, totter, pitch, power, lash, roll, move, influence, persuade, swing, pitching, careen, move back and forth, shake



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