"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the sea that enabled her to master the new conditions first and most completely and that placed the trident in her hands so firmly that no enemy has ever been able to wrest it from her. Henry VIII paid great attention to the navy. He had fifty-three vessels with an aggregate of 11,268 tons, an average of 200 tons each, carrying 1750 soldiers, 1250 sailors and 2085 guns. Under Elizabeth the number of vessels had sunk to 42, but the tonnage ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... peoples—of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, and Carthage; and methinks that Rome, too, will run the course of other nations, and that some day, far distant maybe, she will sink beneath the weight of her power and her luxury, and that some younger and more vigorous people will, bit by bit, wrest her dominions from her ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the vikings to set foot on the North American continent, which Columbus himself had never seen, were John and Sebastian Cabot, Italians like their predecessor, but in the service of the King of England and with an English ship and an English crew prophetic of the race which was, in time, to wrest the supremacy of the continent from the other nations of Europe. They explored the coast from Newfoundland as far south, perhaps, as Chesapeake Bay, and upon their discoveries rested the English claim to North America, though they themselves are little more than faint and ill-defined shadows upon ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... address. Mavis put on her hat and cloak with a light heart. The fact of escaping from the debasing drudgery of "Dawes'," of being the possessor of a cheque for L2. 12S., the prospect of securing work, if only of a temporary nature, made her forget her loneliness and her previous struggles to wrest a pittance from a world indifferent to her needs. After all, there was One who cared: the contents of the two letters which she had just received proved that; the cheque and promise of employment were in the nature of compensation for ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... overcome him in an unguarded moment, and induced him to avenge an attempt made to dishonor his daughter. The story of the old man touched the Virey, who had a manly heart wrapped up in a forbidding exterior. But it was a delicate undertaking even for a vice-king to attempt to wrest a rich estate out of the clutches of the "Holy Office" without himself being suspected of heresy, or of disloyalty to the Church. Yet Ravillagigedo was never at a loss for expedients when justice was to be done or the oppressed ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... growling in his speech, gnashing his teeth, glaring fiercely, waving one hand at the surrounding hills and shaking the other, clenched, at the unoffending sea—he was obviously stating his grievances, namely, that the white men had come there to wrest from him his native hills and glaciers, and rob him of his wife and children, and that he defied them to come on and do their worst, seeing that, in regard to the whole assembled white world in arms he did not care a button—or a walrus-tusk, for buttons ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... soldiers, and despoiling his land by wars, prosecuted to no good end. He has conquered large territory, but he has paid for it with the blood of his people. Neither they nor he are the better because of those accessions, and the duke has made enemies who will one day surely wrest them from him. A brave prince should not fear to be called a coward because of an act that will bring peace and happiness to his subjects and save their lives, their liberties, and their estates. That great end will ennoble any means. The subjects of Burgundy are frugal ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... with the thought that for three hundred years it had been handed down with honour in the annals of New England. Staunch patriots the Wares had been in the old colony days, sturdy and stern of conscience, and Mary had been taught to believe that their struggle to wrest a living from the rocky hills while they built up a state was as worthy of honour as any knightly deed of the Round Table. She was prouder of those early ancestors who delved and spun and toiled with their hands at yeoman tasks, than the later ones, ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... began to pile up a small bank-account in spite of himself; so he bought an automobile, which served to eat up any monthly profits and guarantee a deficit under the most favorable circumstances. Being thus relieved of financial uncertainty, he laid plans to wrest from Kurtz a full partnership in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... allotted to man; a young doctor, Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose, there is a fascination about the book which compels us to ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Wise to the accession of Charles V (or from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth), Spain was flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths. Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their roots deep down in the hearts of the people; and their romance, their chivalry, their antique traditions, and ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... invasions of France from Switzerland and the Upper Rhine in 1814, and Flanders and the Lower Rhine in 1815, and concluded that a similar result would have attended a like bold invasion under Marlborough and Eugene. There never was a greater mistake. The great object of the war was to wrest Flanders from France; when the lilied standard floated on Brussels and Antwerp, the United Provinces were constantly in danger of being swallowed up, and there was no security for the independence either ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... made by Moses, and established by Joshua, for the due administration of justice throughout the land. "Judges and officers," said the former, "shalt thou make thee in all thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee; and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous." To the same purpose Josephus relates, in his account of the last address delivered by Moses to the Hebrew people, that this ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... thoroughly understood, the army moved down upon the range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's work began; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winter had wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunes from the wilderness, and to hold once more ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... on the side of Russia probably is self-evident. No free American can find desirable a further extension of the Russian world empire and of Russian despotism at the expense of Germany. But how about a country from which once America had to wrest its own liberty in bloody battle? How about England? Where, if England should succeed in downing Germany, would her eyes next be pointed? Has she not herself admitted that she is making war on us principally because ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... excite extreme curiosity and raise the most lively conjectures, which might, in time, reach Wenceslas. On the other hand, if success attended his efforts, it was more than probable that Cartagena would remain quiet, as long as her itching palm was brightened with the yellow metal which he hoped to wrest from the sands of Guamoco. "It is only a chance, Padre," Rosendo said dubiously. "In the days of the Spaniards the river sands of Guamoco produced from two to ten reales a day to each slave. But the rivers have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... profession. It is probable, however, that art has not lost by his change of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures "served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else." He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... by words without knowledge? The apostle speaks of some that did more than darken counsel; for they wrested the counsel of God; 2 Pet. iii. 16. In Paul's epistles, saith he, "are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." Some things in the Scriptures are hard to be known, and they are made harder by such unlearned teachers as utter their own notions ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... not what he wills, should try To will what he can do; for since 'tis vain To will what can't be compassed, to abstain From idle wishing is philosophy. Lo, all our happiness and grief imply Knowledge or not of will's ability: They therefore can, who will what ought to be. Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry. Nor what a man can, should he always will: Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so; And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear. Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... "The fools will make him king if we do not act and act quickly. Get into the city, Pan-sat—let your feet fly and raise the cry that Ja-don has killed the king and is seeking to wrest the throne from O-lo-a. Spread the word as you know best how to spread it that Ja-don has threatened to destroy the priests and hurl the altars of the temple into Jad-ben-lul. Rouse the warriors of the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly admonish each other to keep watch over the gleaming treasure, which their father, the Rhinegod, has intrusted to their keeping, warning them that just such a dark and misshapen creature as the dwarf would try to wrest it from ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... Dyson, who was jealous of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson, seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary. He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had been hired for a paltry sum to come into court ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of children to his folly. If he sent her the verses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping of egg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest the page from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest, her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm's length, read it smiling and approve of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... and other apologists of German Kultur wish to impose upon the world a way of thinking and feeling specifically German. They wish to wrest from France that intellectual supremacy which, according to the clearest thinkers, is still her possession. From this source is derived the phraseology of the Pan-Germans and the ideas and adherents of the Kriegsvereine [war leagues], Wehrvereine, and other similar associations too ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... a long list of troubles that was placed before the Commander-in-Chief. Disturbing as they all were, each requiring prompt and special action, there was one amongst them which stood out in bold relief—the situation at Delhi; and to wrest that stronghold from the hands of the mutineers was, General Anson conceived, his most pressing obligation. But could it be done with the means at his disposal? He thought not; and in this opinion he was supported ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... lessen the yield of fruit though it may increase the size of the vine. Not only must the food be in right proportions but in such condition as to be readily available. Tomato roots have little power to wrest plant food from the soil. The use of coarse, unfermented manure is even more unsatisfactory with this than with other crops. The enormous yields sometimes obtained by English gardeners from plants grown under glass result from a supply of food of the right proportions and ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... with Metellus Pius, a man of repute and a good soldier, though perhaps he might now seem too slow, by reason of his age, to second and improve the happier moments of war, and might be sometimes wanting to those advantages which Sertorius by his quickness and dexterity would wrest out of his hands. For Sertorius was always hovering about, and coming upon him unawares, like a captain of thieves rather than soldiers, disturbing him perpetually with ambuscades and light skirmishes; whereas Metellus was accustomed to regular conduct, and fighting in battle array ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... will find Madame aimable;" and here she looked at the old woman, who started bowing again harder than ever. It was the same at all the other houses. Passing from one to another she commandeered room after room, even managing to wrest a bed from the father of six; and I verily believe that the inhabitants would have burned their dwellings to warm us had the little lady ordered it. All the while she maintained the fiction that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... disastrous contests, to isolate the warlike Sulus from their neighbors in the south, to care for the needs of the empire of the Indies (for one of the reasons why the Philippines were kept, as contemporary documents prove, was their strategic position between New Spain and the Indies), to wrest from the Dutch their growing colonies of the Moluccas and get rid of some troublesome neighbors, to maintain, in short, the trade of China with New Spain. it was necessary to construct new and large ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... on St. Mark's in Venice, on the Square of Verona, on world treasures unreplaceable. The poisoned breath of Germany carries its venom into the land of sunshine and song, whose best day's work in history has been to wrest itself free from the grip of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... hopes which the nation would form of the royal infant. Scarce was he born, when paternal solicitude embraced, as it were, his whole life. Impatient to know his destiny, that solicitude plunged into futurity, determined, if possible, to wrest from time, the secrets of which he was the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... it be—what to Edison indeed is a great charm—an uninterrupted view of the sky; a place virtually unknown before he planted there the rude buildings that house his wonderful inventions; yet now a place known to scientific men all over the world; the Mecca of many a mind seeking to wrest from Nature her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall drop their blood in approbation[8] ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... and mediators. The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the moon's pale rays, which led, alas! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... much curious information; but are deformed by the author attempting to wrest the text of the Norwegian writer (at p. 358. and in note I.) to suit an absurd crotchet of his own. Having seen that essay in MS., I pointed out those errors; but instead of attending to my observations, he would not read them, and got into a passion against the friend who showed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... I will now answer for myself and thousands more. You are too young a man to have known the cause of the insurrection, or rather opposition to the unfortunate King Charles. He attempted to make himself absolute, and to wrest the liberties from the people of England; that his warmest adherents will admit. When I joined the party which opposed him, I little thought that matters would have been carried so far as they have been; I always considered it lawful to ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... practical experiment in his own generation, is foreign for the moment to our present inquiry. But that it was relied upon as an endowment of the most gifted heroes; that it was exercised by them in extremity, as if to subdue nature from whom they had borrowed it, and to wrest the very power of destruction out of her hand; and that such practical conquest was sometimes achieved by them, or is said to have been achieved by them, is just as certain as that Macpherson's translation ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with a defiant courage which perhaps was only understood by the minority of his compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to wrest it from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable Pope, although regarded as an idiot in that terrible period, was possibly an earnest and high-minded man. Scarcely had Peter Damian knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to Gregory VI on his elevation, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet—oh, how sweet—to be thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its shield!—magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... her face on her palm, looking thoughtfully across the yard. Over there the red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned down towards me. Love was on her face now. But her eyes held mine with the determination to wrest from them the last truth they might contain, and her ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... "Wrest I my bread from the sea. In the nine cities on her border have I sold to the markets. Yet never have I seen ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... malformation, malconformation[obs3]; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion[obs3], want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c. v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric[obs3], awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump[obs3], deformed; harelipped; misshapen, misbegotten; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as it had been a creature of volition, and stood upright upon a smooth-faced bowlder. It needed all the man's strength to wrest it thence, and, grasping it securely, he carefully descended, for the last time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward a clump of gnarled trees which appeared to him like the faces of long-lost friends. It seemed to him ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels of His ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and he watched their buggy disappearing down the pass, he found himself possessed of a new and inspiring faith in the approachableness of the great world he was about to confront. He had rather expected to deal with it with hammer and pick,—to wrest the gold of experience from the hardest and flintiest bedrock; and all at once he felt as if he had struck a great "placer" with nuggets of the most agreeable description lying about, ready ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Jerebi and Alniob, and the Emperor of the Maregins, who were all its professed Enemies. Especially the King of Alniob, who, taking Advantage of the Frenzy of one of its Sovereigns, made such a Progress, as to wrest the Sceptre out of his Hands; but the great Zokitarezoul, having compelled him to renounce even the very Title, has brought all the others into Subjection so as to acknowledge his Superiority over all the Sovereigns of Africa. It is to this illustrious Monarch, that the ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... a mistake, I tell you," he cried, starting to wrest himself loose from the officer's grasp, and then suddenly remaining passive as he ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... source and to make others understand that impelled him, even when he availed himself of these projects of study to raise a little money. 'Listen,' he writes to Batt, 'to what more I desire from you. You must wrest a gift from the abbot (of Saint Bertin). You know the man's disposition; invent some modest and plausible reason for begging. Tell him that I purpose something grand, viz., to restore the whole of Jerome, however comprehensive he may be, and spoiled, mutilated, entangled ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... terminate together was conquered by experience or by argument. She had come, in company with Sarsefield and Clarice, to America. What influence might these events have upon the gloomy meditations of Clithero? Was it possible to bring them together; to win the maniac from his solitude, wrest from him his fatal purposes, and restore him to communion with the beings whose imagined indignation is ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... fight, but only fear and panic. Yet dost thou vaunt thee—quotha!—still our best In counsel!—no man's soul is base as thine! Go to, thyself shrink shivering from the strife! Cower, coward, in thine halls! But all the rest, We men, will still go armour-girt, until We wrest from this our truceless war a peace That shall not shame us! 'Tis with travail and toil Of strenuous war that brave men win renown; But flight?—weak women choose it, and young babes! Thy spirit is like to theirs. ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... large family of children, and the prospect of more. I have three sons, who, I see already, have brought into the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves.—Can I look tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from them the birthright of my boys,—the little independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?—No! I will not! should my heart's blood stream around my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... bread that another has reaped and kneaded, is under an obligation to his brother, and cannot say he owes him nothing in return. The poorest of us has received from society much more than his own single strength would have permitted him to wrest from nature. ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Florea," the voice in the box answered. "As it seems to me, they are trying to wrest the scepter from him and the old monarch says that they are not yet ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... confession, when the thoughts of the whole party were suddenly diverted to another channel, by the opening of the door and the entrance of one of those gaunt sons of the forest who were wont to hang on the skirts of civilisation, as it advanced to wrest from them ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... army by sheer genius, with three ships and a handful of men. To Venice had been preserved the valuable island which guards the entrance to the Dardanelles, and to her it was to remain for years, although the Genoese tried many times and oft to wrest it ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... have taken an active part in the politics of the day. "To the king my lord," she writes in one of them, "my gods, my Sun-god, thus says Nin, thy handmaid, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, seven times seven I prostrate myself. Let the king my lord wrest his country from the hand of the Bedwin, in order that they may not rob it. The city of Zaphon has been captured. This is for the information of the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... that he kept close watch of her. He intended to give her no opportunity to strike back at him. He carried his rifle unloaded, so that if she were able, in an unguarded moment, to wrest it from him she could not turn it against him. But there was no joy for her in noticing these small precautions. They only reminded her of her imprisonment; and she wisely ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... home, to dwell with the beasts in the caves of the mountains? History relates that but a little band of ten, inclusive of the Asmoneans, by retiring to the fastnesses of the mountains, formed the nucleus of that brotherhood of heroes who were to wrest victory after victory from the hosts of Syria, and win that unsullied fame which belongs only to those who display firm endurance and devoted courage in ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... of Heaven from hand to hand. In thy blest days no tyrant shall be seen, Thy gracious king shall rule contented men; In thy blest days shall not a rebel be, But patriots all and well-approved of thee. "Such powers are thine, that man by thee shall wrest The gainful secret from the cautious breast; Nor then, with all his care, the good retain, But yield to thee the secret and the gain. In vain shall much experience guard the heart Against the charm of thy prevailing ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... the river bank receive thee safe, Light-bounding o'er the wave, from shore to shore. Be thou our great protector, gracious youth! 20 And if in future times, some envious prince, Careless of right and guileful, should invade Thy Britain's commerce, or should strive in vain To wrest the balance from thy equal hand; Thy hunter-train, in cheerful green arrayed, (A band undaunted, and inured to toils,) Shall compass thee around, die at thy feet, Or hew thy passage through the embattled foe, And clear thy way to fame; inspired by thee The nobler chase of glory shall pursue 30 Through ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... grieved, that she was with a knight To whom he owed so much: because to wrest The lady from his hand, was neither right, Nor yet perhaps would prove an easy quest. He, without quarrel, had no other wight Suffered to part, of such a prize possest; But would endure, Orlando (such his debt) A foot upon ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,[659] constraining the king, as it were, to make use of his left arm to cut off his right, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late Prince of Conde was treated, inasmuch ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... has much more commerce than with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us any dispensation ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... constitutional rights as British subjects; how faithfully I have narrated their wrongs and advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen, and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of England, and provide places of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... my enemy, to wrest some spoil from his unwilling hands would be an exquisite pleasure, to my thinking. But of all sweet favours the sweetest to my notion is the free-will offering of a man's beloved. For instance, how sweet the responsive glance of love for love; how sweet the questions and ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... General Johnston's van; some of her ablest and most venerable statesmen had given up honors and home for the privilege of being freemen! All the South knew that the admission of the state was but an empty form—powerless alike to aid their cause, or to wrest her from the firm grasp the Federal ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... days in this inferno of fire a captured German officer told with his dying breath of a fresh division of Germans that was about to be thrown into the battle to attempt to wrest from the marines that part of the wood they had gained. The marines, who for days had been fighting only on their sheer nerve, who had been worn out from nights of sleeplessness, from lack of rations, from terrific shell and machine-gun fire, straightened ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... had met no violent resistance either from insurgents or from the States. In the Virginia convention of 1788 Patrick Henry had said: "I never will give up that darling word 'requisitions;' my country may give it up, the majority may wrest it from me, but I never will give it up till my grave." Nevertheless, when the requisitions on the States were given up, the chief cause of dispute in the Union was removed. Up to this time the only distinctly sectional legislation had ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... think I have twice worn the order of Maria Theresa since my arrival in this once happy country. I need it not. The immortal memory of her who gave me being is engraven on my heart; that I shall wear forever, none can wrest it from me. But what grieves me to the soul is your having sanctioned these decrees of the National Assembly upon the mere 'ipse ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Bruce again took the field, and defeated the Viceroy at Ardscull, in the co. Kildare, In the month of February some of the chief nobles of the English colony met in Dublin, and signed a manifesto, in which they denounced the traitorous conduct of the Scotch enemy, in trying to wrest Ireland from their Lord, "Monsieur Edward," taking special care to herald forth their own praises for loyalty, and to hint at the compensation which might be required ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... constitutes an apotheosis of Godfrey de Bouillon, first Christian King of Jerusalem; but it is also something more than a mere poetical description of a departed age of chivalry. For there can be little doubt that the poet aspired to be the singer of a new movement which should wrest back the Holy City from the clutches of the Saracens, and set a second Godfrey upon the vacant throne of Palestine. To this important end the experiences of his infancy and his training by the Jesuits had undoubtedly tended to urge the precocious young poet. The ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... instruments. There was a rumpus; neither earthquake nor cyclone would have caused a greater commotion in the community. What, then, did this lying gringo mean by resorting to the trickery of the United States law courts and the power and services of the county sheriff? Why did he wrest their property from them? Had this gringo not always accepted their signatures as a legal tender for the payment of their debts? Had he not told them time and again that their handwriting was better than gold? If ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... accustomed to stand in awe; but now they were more especially apprehensive of danger, because there was a provocation for seeking vengeance. They knew he had every means to involve them in a more signal overthrow than that which awaited himself. The only alternatives were, either to wrest the weapons of destruction from his hands, or render the possessor incapable of wielding them. They were driven almost to desperation, when they reflected on their deeds of wickedness reaching through many years, the record of which was in the hands ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... of all the inquiries he has set on foot to prove my death, and all the investigations he instituted, when he found that the boy who was with me had been set on shore again. I have given him full scope and licence to act as he chose; but I have come at length, to wrest from him that which is not his, and to strip him of a rank to which he has no claim.—Have you anything to say, Harry Sherbrooke?" he continued, fixing his eye upon him. "Have you anything to say ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... forbidden— What destined term may be Within the future hidden For us, Leuconoe. Both thou and I Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false assurance from ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... first historic expedition into the wilds of Virginia. His great-grandfather had accompanied Boone when that hunter first penetrated the "Dark and Bloody Ground," had gone back to Virginia and come again with a surveyor's chain and compass to help wrest it from the red men, among whom there had been an immemorial conflict for possession and a never-recognized claim of ownership. That compass and that chain his grandfather had fallen heir to and with that compass and chain his father ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... (ch. viii. 5.) The effects of the first woe may be supposed to reach from the early part of the seventh century to the latter part of the thirteenth,—the period of Arabian locusts. During the latter part of this time, the Turks were held in check by the Crusaders, who strove to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels. The "four angels" are the four Turkish Sultanies. The river Euphrates is to be taken in this place literally, as designating the geographical locality of these combined powers, which were the instruments employed by the enthroned Mediator, to demolish ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... ill? Who in thy sorrow bears not part? Zeus, Zeus alone! for he, with wrathful will, Clenched and inflexible, Bears down Heaven's race—nor end shall be, till hate His soul shall satiate, Or till, by some device, some other hand Shall wrest from him his ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... mar, But thine be like a star; Let England's, if it float not for men free, Fall, and forget the sea; Let France's, if it shadow a hateful head, Drop as a leaf drops dead; Thine let what storm soever smite the rest Smite as it seems him best; Thine let the wind that can, by sea or land, Wrest from thy banner-hand. Die they in whom dies freedom, die and cease, Though the world weep for these; Live thou and love and lift when these lie dead The ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... mark! Things that solicit sense Hold off from the self-governed; nay, it comes, The appetites of him who lives beyond Depart,—aroused no more. Yet may it chance, O Son of Kunti! that a governed mind Shall some time feel the sense-storms sweep, and wrest Strong self-control by the roots. Let him regain His kingdom! let him conquer this, and sit On Me intent. That man alone is wise Who keeps the mastery of himself! If one Ponders on objects of the ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... she was unable to discern the deeper motive in Mrs. Durlacher's mind in which the proprietorship of Apsley Manor played so vital a part; but she was none the less certain of the designs that were being carried out so effectually to wrest Traill from her side. She was an encumbrance to his career. Had he told her that himself she would, with bowed head, have accepted the inevitable; but, coming to her in this way, this deep-laid plot and all the machinations of a woman whom, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... ferocious than his fellows would attempt this latter alternative, but none had come yet who could wrest the palm of victory from the fierce and ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Alma Mater. For six years, the Gold and Green had failed to annex the Championship, and for the past three, the invincible Ballard machine had rushed like a car of Juggernaut over all other State elevens; one team was determined to wrest the banner from its rival's grasp, and the other fully as resolved to retain possession, hence a memorable gridiron contest, to which even the alumni could find none in past history ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... first visit to the place, weeks after their return to New York. He had not felt friendly to Droom since the day at the prison; but now he was forgetting his resentment, in the determination to wrest from him the names of Jane's father and mother. He was confident that ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... affront; yet these men who constituted the Executive Committee were not those who would lightly do this. He could quite understand their resentment of both his attitude and his words at the last meeting—he had expected them to make an effort to wrest from him, but in such a way as not to jeopardize their own interests, the supreme authority which he had forced from them; yet they all knew him too well even to suggest any transaction on his part so at variance with the standards which he ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... mission whatever." The official announcement of the elevation of the Prince of Pontecorvo was already on its way to Paris. "I was little prepared for this news," replied Napoleon to the letter of King Charles XIII. He wished to wrest from Bernadotte a pledge never to bear arms against France. The marshal formally refused. For a long time in secret hostility to the emperor, he severely judged the errors of his ambition, and the consequences that would result for the peace of Europe. "Go then," said Napoleon, "and let ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Gunther, and with cunning words poisoned his weak mind. The feeble old king was easily made to believe that Siegfried was plotting against his life, and seeking to wrest the kingdom from him. And he forgot the many kind favors he had received at the hero's hand. He no longer remembered how Siegfried had slain the terror of the Glittering Heath, and freed the Burgundians from many a fear; and how he ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... their glasses on the audience. As soon as the last person had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained every nerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel; and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it—(for the orchestra was skilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a long time)—and then Goujart took his arm and, in the middle of the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... been known as troublesome people who had to be reckoned with, but that they should prove strong enough to wrest what had been considered one of the safest seats in the kingdom out of the hands of the Unionists came upon the party as a revelation of the most unpleasant order. For Stephen Strong's dying cry, of which the ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of these contingencies was it the policy of the law or purpose of the Executive to wrest the Province forcibly from Spain, but only to occupy it with a view to prevent its falling into the hands of any foreign power, and to hold that pledge under the existing peculiarity of the circumstances of the Spanish ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... Crusaders are assembled. Six years have elapsed since they set out from Europe, during which time they have succeeded in taking Nicaea and Antioch, cities now left in charge of influential Crusaders. But Godfrey of Bouillon is pushing on with the bulk of the army, because he is anxious to wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the infidels and restore it to the worship of the true God. While he is camping on this plain, God sends Gabriel to visit him in sleep and inspire him with a desire to assemble a council, where, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... did not come. An hour they waited, and a hour after that. Still no crowd of burly men came surging toward them from the Blackburn camp, still no attempt was made to wrest from their possession the waterway which they had taken over as their ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... struggle: the son looks forward to the exact period at which he will be his own master; and he enters upon his freedom without precipitation and without effort, as a possession which is his own and which no one seeks to wrest from him. *a ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... victims from the foe Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow. Each woe they suffered in a hostile land The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned. They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait To wrest the captives from their horrid fate. Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls, Each savage soldier's heart for ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a brother of the late Emperor Francis Joseph and a member of that Kaiserbund and royal system which, while America was busy with domestic difficulties between the North and South, sought to wrest from Mexico her liberty. I wonder if the Mexicans have forgotten the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... their furs to Three Rivers. Some emissaries had gone to Quebec to meet the governor; but the majority of the Indians remained at Montreal to avoid the ambuscade of the Mohawks on Lake St. Peter. Radisson and Groseillers were not the only Frenchmen conspiring to wrest fame and fortune from the Upper Country. When the Indians came back from Quebec, they were accompanied by thirty young French adventurers, gay as boys out of school or gold hunters before the first check to their plans. There were also two Jesuits sent out ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... parley, when some of the men from each side approached the line of demarcation. Joe McKay was the interpreter, and while he was speaking, an Indian, named Little Chief, grabbed at his revolver and tried to wrest it from him. A struggle ensued in which the Indian was worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... is not the negro per se who distracts and threatens to destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... it need not be said, the illustrious wielder of the sceptre which the three above-named princes desired to wrest from him. It does not appear that the sagacious monarch was esteemed by his subjects, as such a prince should have been esteemed. The light-minded people, on the contrary, were rather weary than otherwise ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... years, his work might still have been flourishing at this day, and might have yet continued to flourish till the hand of spoliation and refined barbarism shall be strong and bold enough (should ever such a calamity visit our native land) to wrest these seminaries of Christian principles and sound learning from the friends of religion, and order, and peace. As it is, Henry's establishments survived him little more than a century; and the lands which he had destined to support them passed away into ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the Holy Roman Empire must for the present bow humbly to the Emperor, and submit in silence to the evils of his lot. My duchy of Pomerania the Swedes have appropriated to themselves, and I can not, as I should like, wrest it from them by force of arms, for I have no weapons, no soldiers, no army; I must now try to come to an amicable understanding with them, and, if possible, make peace with them. In Julich and Cleves I am duke, too, as my title vouches, but to be so really ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... given to the world with its exhilarating freshness. But she made no reply to the enthusiastic comments of her companion. Thoughts were in her brain too deep for speech. Not here, not here, in this quiet pastoral scene could she learn the way to wrest the golden circlet of fame from the hands of the silent gods!—it must be in the turmoil and rush of endeavour—the swift pursuit of the flying Apollo! And—as the slow waggon jogged along—she felt herself drawn, as it were, by a magnet—on—on— ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... cried she; 'the more was his impudence to wrest the heavenly sign in his favour. But what make you then of the passing away of the storm when Mr. Truelocke began to preach, and of the sweet calm that had fallen on all things when he ended? was that a witness in favour of ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... sights and sounds of New York she could not help thinking of how different it might all have been if she had not met Kathleen. The busy, endless streets terrified her and the more she saw of the great metropolis the less confidence she felt in her own power to wrest a living from it, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... dim hazy idea of what I was doing, except that I sought to wrest from his hand a knife. We clutched each other savagely, and wrestled there on the edge of the pond. Weights seemed to hang upon my limbs, but I felt the stronger of the two. Gradually I knew I was mastering ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... that, did Boev, the man next in order behind Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great difficulty, while amid the general confusion ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... coming struggle, and he means to be ready for it. He owns the sacred spear wrested from Amfortis; he even aspires to win the Grail; he knows the "guileless one" is on his way to wrest that spear from him. His only hope is in paralyzing the fool by his enchantments as he paralyzed Amfortis, and the same ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... furthermore stating that this full absolution was granted because it had been brought to the knowledge of His Holiness that this noble lady had entered the cloistered life owing to a wicked and malicious plot designed to wrest her castle and estates from her, and also to part her from a valiant Knight, at that time fighting in the Holy Wars, to whom ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... until his visit to Italy, in 1773. Meanwhile his friends were loud in their laudation of the prodigy who, in historical works, they declared, promised to rival the great masters, and in portraiture threatened to wrest the palm from Reynolds himself. He now raised his prices again, charging twelve guineas for a three-quarter portrait, and found no lack of sitters at the increased rate. Whether or not he sought for academic honours is not clear; ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... light. At nine of the clocke they goe to Masse: that ended, to dinner: and after that to seruice againe: and then to supper. You shall vnderstand that at euery dinner and supper they haue declared the exposition of the Gospel of that day: but howe they wrest and twine the Scripture and that together by report it is wonderfull. As for whoredome and drunkennesse there be none such liuing: and for extortion, they be the most abhominable under the sunne. Nowe iudge of their holinesse. They haue twise as much ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... steady as ever, must have carried conviction with it. Certainly Tomba's shuddering had increased, though the little brown man, no match in muscle for the white soldier, made not the least effort to wrest himself ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... Immediately wrest of Daliao are three villages whose people are known as Eto or Ata. Aside from a slightly greater percentage of individuals showing negroid features, these people do not differ in any respect from the Bagobo. It does not seem that they should be classed with the people later referred to as Ata. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... nature, and the safer teaching of our own souls. It is a pity that those who would recommend the Bible as the revealed will of the all-wise and benevolent Creator, should uniformly quote it on the side of tyranny and oppression. I think we owe it to our religion and ourselves to wrest it from such hands, and proclaim the beautiful spirit breathed through all its commands and precepts, instead of dwelling so much on isolated texts that have no application ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... door, and was fumbling with the lock, the third man flung himself upon me, determined that I should not escape. With great good fortune, however, I managed to unbolt the door, and after a desperate struggle, in which he endeavoured to wrest the weapon from my hand, I succeeded at last in gripping him by the throat, and after nearly strangling him flung him to the ground and escaped into the street, just as his associates, hearing his cries of distress, dashed ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... down, gavels in hand, facing each other behind the desk, to get what rest they could. For over two weeks the two houses continued in tumultuous session. Meanwhile men were crowding into Topeka from all over the State: grim-faced Populist farmers, determined that Republican chicanery should not wrest from them the fruits of the election; equally determined Republicans, resolved that the Populists should not, by charges of election fraud, rob them of their hard-won majority. Both sides came armed but apparently ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... sir, to refuse me the small sum which I requested of you for this purpose. I do not wish to wrest what you are unwilling to give. You understand your own reasonings best; but to me they appear to be either erroneous or incomprehensible. I wished to explain to you what my plan of life was, but you refused to hear me. I had no sooner said that I thought it my duty to study how I could best serve ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... our social life by demands for charitable support, or for the more radical treatment by isolation in institutions; indeed, some who are born to fail in this inheritance are with us no more, even though they were of our generation; they have paid the penalty which their effort to wrest the inheritance from us has cost, and the grave of the murderer, the burglar, the suicide, the red-handed rebel against the law of social inheritance, is now their resting place. Society then is, when taken in the widest sense, made up ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... in the night Makrisi brought Mahi de Vernoil, disguised as a mendicant friar. This outlaw pleaded with Sire Raimbaut to head the tatters of Lovain's army, and showed Raimbaut how easy it would be to wrest Venaissin from Prince Guillaume. "We cannot save Lovain," de Vemoil said, "for Guillaume has him fast. But Venaissin is very proud of you, my tres beau sire. Ho, maker of world-famous songs! stout champion of the faith! my men and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... but a single chance to wrest from Mack Murray the prize for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan Ross, the cool and experienced champion of many a hard-fought fight. Again Black Duncan took the hammer. It was his last throw. He had still fifteen feet to go to reach his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Getz, was only an added offense to both him and Absalom. They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz writhed ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... father sent him to rule (1228) with some guardian boyars. In 1239 he married Alexandra, daughter of Prince Bryachislav of Polotsk. At an early age he distinguished himself in constant warfare with the Germans, Swedes and Lithuanians, who tried to wrest Novgorod and Pskov from Russia while she was still suffering from the effects of the terrible Tatar invasion. The most notable of these battles, whereby he won his honorific epithet of Nevsky (i.e. of the Neva), was fought on the banks of the Neva (July 15 1240) against the famous Swedish statesman, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... battle for Christendom. In the 11th and 12th centuries the chivalry of Spain and southern France took up the struggle with the Moors as a holy war. In the autumn of 1096 the nobles of France and Italy, joined by the Norman barons of England and Sicily, set out to wrest the Holy Land from the unbelievers; and for more than a century the cry, "Christ's land must be won for Christ," exercised an unparalleled power ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... who listened to the tale Upstarted with the cry: "God give us grace To wrest that sacred Spear from ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... difficulties not only for the illiterate, but even for the learned. St. Peter himself informs us that in the Epistles of St. Paul there are "certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and the unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."(146) And consequently he tells us elsewhere "that no prophecy of Scripture is ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... spoken, let the synod now leave To wrest the whole Scripture, how souls to deceive; For all they have spoken or taught will ne'er save 'em, Unless they will leave that fault, hell's sure to ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... all Standish, Barbara! Thou 'rt more Standish than I, for thou hast the eyes of those old portraits my poor father vainly tried to wrest from his cousin Alexander. Let me look at ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... an' bauld, Wha haud the pleugh, or wake the fauld, Until your dearest bluid rin cauld, Aye true unto your country be. Wi' daring look her dirk she drew, An' coost a mither's e'e on you; Then let na ony spulzien crew Her dear-bought freedom wrest frae thee. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... directed, about noon, upon the suburb of Czyste. This was defended by forty guns, which made havoc in the Russian ranks, while two battalions of the 4th regiment, rushing upon them in their disorder, strove to drive them back and wrest Wola from their hands. The effort was fruitless, strong reinforcements ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at sea on a sailing vessel; in his boyhood he had rather feared the great gray ocean, and only later in life did he become so strongly attracted by its power and mystery and by the impression of its eternal struggle against those who must wrest a precarious living from its depths that it provided the background for his most striking and characteristic stories. Three summers in Newfoundland and one on the Labrador Coast resulted in The Way of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... made of his request; but I had not done so much and come so far, I had not faced scorn and insults to be cheated of my prize at last; and aware that until we were beyond Auch there must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I was determined that he who should wrest my prisoner from me should pay dearly for it. Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite for a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... carried away Frances by force, Lady Elizabeth made an effort to recover her by a similar method. Gerrard wrote to Carleton[20] that Lady Elizabeth, having heard that Frances was to be taken to London, determined to meet her with an armed band and to wrest her from ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... wise and charitable. I shall not endeavor to wrest the secret from you; but you are so much esteemed by me, that at some future day, when I can follow my own inclinations I will return ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... alarm among those on whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... themselves or seeing others off, till the bell rang, when there was a rush to the tug, and the big paddle-wheels got in motion. The children ran up and down the long, narrow saloon on to the decks at each end, while Miss Prosody was vainly trying to wrest the key of a sleeping-berth from the purser, who, the supply not being equal to the demand, was having rather a hot ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... he must give way when properly attacked. It is not so, however, with a general who indeed waits to receive his enemy, but with the determination to fall upon him offensively at the proper moment, to wrest from him and transfer to his own troops the moral effect always produced by an onward movement when coupled with the certainty of throwing the main strength into the action at the most important ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... care, O fairest and most shrewd of enemies. A half-hour since, it seemed to me an important matter to wrest from you this secret of giving life to images. Now I have seen the miracle; I know that for the man who has your favor it is possible to become as a god, creating life, and creating lovelier living ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... in a deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife. Fights over pots were as frequent and as truculent ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... authority of the Bible rather than the church. The creation of the order of the Jesuits, though directed more against Protestantism than against unbelief, was a witness, like the previous reactionary movement of the scholastic writers in the thirteenth century, to the wish to wrest the use of learning out of the hands of the opponents of the church, and to employ the weapons of reason ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... insistent and strong. What he was saying to himself was that, with a woman of Marcella's type, one must "bear it out." This moment of wreck was also with him the first moment of all-absorbing and desperate desire. To win her—to wrest her from the Cravens' influence—that had been the cry in his mind throughout his dazed drive from the House of Commons. Her hand in his—her strength, her beauty, the romantic reputation that had begun to attach to her, at his command—and he would ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... militia, and six hundred Indians was the cession of a territory and the surrender of a General-in-Chief, a strong fort, the armed brig John Adams, and the two thousand five hundred men, who were designed not to defend their country only, but to wrest Upper Canada from the Crown of Great Britain. To General Hull's fears of the savage ferocity of the Indians, this bloodless victory must, to some extent, however trifling, be attributed. General Hull was evidently superstitiously afraid of an Indian. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Britomarus (of whom Floras and Appian doe make report) was himselfe a Briton, his very name doeth testifie, which signifieth A great Briton. Neither will I wrest that testimony of Strabo (who reporteth Brennus to haue bene a Prause by birth) that I may prooue him also to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... only prohibits the adjudication by the Supreme Court of cases in which appeals may hereafter be taken, but interdicts its jurisdiction on appeals which have already been made to that high judicial body. If, therefore, it should become a law, it will by its retroactive operation wrest from the citizen a remedy which he enjoyed at the time of his appeal. It will thus operate most harshly upon those who believe that justice has been denied them in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... of them, Carroll drew his blanket tighter round him with a shiver. Very shortly, when the little flour and pork was gone and their few cartridges had been expended, he would be reduced to the condition of primitive man. Cut off from all other resources, he must then wrest what means of subsistence he could from the snowy wilderness by brute strength and cunning and such instruments as he could make with his unassisted hands, except that an ax of Pennsylvania steel was better than a stone one. Civilization has its compensations, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the desert sands on the way to Cairo, they approach the Nile to give battle to the Egyptian army, and at the foot of the pyramids the East is defeated by the West. The march is continued eastwards to Syria. Five centuries have passed since the crusaders attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of unbelievers. Now again the weapons of Western lands clash in the valley of the Jordan and at the foot of Mount Tabor, and now the French General obtains a victory over the Turks outside Nazareth. In ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... never seen her trudging behind the mules, he had often spoken of it pityingly. Yet, as he came toward her now, he felt only an unbounded pride—in her unselfishness, and in her brave efforts to wrest a living ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... were behind with their orders; yet so eager were the buyers to get hold of his tungsten that they almost took it out of the bins. He was storing up the ore, preparatory to milling it and shipping only the concentrates; but if they could have their way they would wrest it from his hands and rush it to the railroad post haste. One mysterious buyer had even offered him a contract at seventy dollars a unit—three dollars and a half ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly, he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should wrest ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... I deem thou canst not do it. Nay, she said, staying the words that were coming from his mouth, I wot that thou canst do it if thine heart can suffer it; for thou art stronger than I, and thou mayst break my bow, and wrest this knife out of mine hand; and thou canst bind me and make me fast to the saddle, and so lead my helpless body into thraldom and death. But thou hast said that thou lovest me, and I believe thee herein. Therefore I know that thou canst not will to ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the medium of a flogging to produce that effect on the master. He tried to wrest the key from Catherine's grasp, and for safety she flung it into the hottest part of the fire; whereupon Mr. Edgar was taken with a nervous trembling, and his countenance grew deadly pale. For his life he could not avert ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... the fort at New York, which surrendered without firing a shot. The example was followed by the city and country; and, in a few days, the submission of New Netherlands was complete. After this acquisition the old claim to Long Island was renewed, and some attempts were made to wrest it from Connecticut. That province however, after consulting its confederates, and finding that offensive operations would be agreeable to the union, declared war against the Dutch; and not content with defending its ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... have pick'd and chosen from the world, Swear that thou wilt be true to what I utter; And when I've told thee that which only gods, And men like gods, are privy to, then swear No chance or change shall wrest it ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway |
