"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warn you to look where you stand, and see that you don't lose your heart before you know it. It's an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn't got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a'n't much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman's thought off her troubles, and sometimes they get sp'iled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... clearly the position of the Florentine Republic at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France, by which Charles was left master of Italy, while his partner and ally in these ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... intuitional and instinctive, with prejudices reacting on them, too numerous and too strong to allow him to weigh things fairly and deliberately. Moreover, his mind was too much engrossed by the sole picturesqueness of phenomena to delve deep enough beneath them for their essential relations. This is why it happens that his arguments are often worse than his convictions, the latter being inherited, in general, and at least having the residuary wisdom of tradition together ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... cannot melt? Ah me! how is that rugged heart forlorn! Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt, Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life, in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most people the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and delve in the interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT be done. Meditation in the proper sense should mean the inward deepening of FEELING and consciousness till the region of the universal self is reached; but THOUGHT should ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... audience." The snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve into this ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the tumult of angry tongues, in a land alone, apart, In a perfumed dream-land set betwixt the bounds of life and death, Here will I lie while the clouds fly by and delve an hole where my heart May sleep deep down with the gorse above and red, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... Church is avenged upon the heirs of those who worked its temporal ruin. For here, while mad thousands delve for the gold of their desire, the tramping feet of uncontrolled hosts are heard at the gates of the Sierras. When the fleets give out their hordes of male and female adventurers, there is no law but that of force or duplicity; no principle but self-interest. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... student is very likely to ask—Why does man till the fields? Why does man fell the forest trees? Why does he cultivate domestic animals? Why does he delve in the earth for minerals? These are all strenuous activities that require the outlay of time, talent and strength. We may say that they are sacrifices that he makes and, apparently, willingly. We have ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... for, too. No unexpected call could come to him, no fingers delve into the purse that he might now keep privately to himself. He was going out into a big world where life had never taken him before, and he was going untrammeled; ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... fireballs scorch the sky, Their mining arts the staunch besiegers ply, Delve from the bank of York, and gallery far, Deep subterranean, to the mount of war; Beneath the ditch, thro rocks and fens they go, Scoop the dark chamber plumb beneath the foe; There lodge their tons of powder and retire, Mure the dread passage, wave the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair "I have builded my tomb," said ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dressed at last, although obliged to switch on the lights before this was accomplished. The reflection of himself in the pier glass quite met his deliberate approval, and he glanced inquiringly at his watch, rather eager to delve deeper into this adventure. It was a few moments of seven, and she would undoubtedly be waiting for him in the hall below. He descended the broad stairs, conscious of a thrill of expectancy; nor was he ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom active life leaves with but a few cramped hours of study can hardly come to know the very vastness of the field before them, or how infinitesimally small is the corner they can traverse at the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... scientific control of life, however, is not adequate for that. Electricity and subways and motor cars do not restore the soul; and to know that there are millions upon millions of solar systems, like our own, scattered through space does not restore the soul; and to delve in the sea or to fly in the air or to fling our words through the ether does not restore the soul. The need of religion is perennial and would be though our scientific control over life were extended infinitely beyond our present hope, for the innermost ministry of religion to human life is the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... is a man who dawdles away his time on a fiddle; of what benefit is he to mankind? Do fiddlers build cities? Do they delve into the earth for precious metals? Do they sow the seed and harvest the grain? No, no; they are drones—the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... French peasant of his day marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. They ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in this matter for awhile as though I had not a single doubt as to the authenticity of the old man's tale. I have a theory, and if I am correct I believe I will be able to delve until I strike a clue, and if I do and prove the story correct and solve the mystery, we shall have performed one of the most extraordinary ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... to be found in the soil. But if we pull up one of these little club-shaped roots we shall see that it has gone to work feebly and doubtfully; it seems to have a skulking expectation of dinner without having to dig and delve for it in the rough dirty ground. Nor is this expectation unfounded. Watch the stem of a sister dodder as it rises from the earth day by day, and it will be observed to clasp a stalk of flax very tightly; so tightly that its suckers will absorb the juices of its unhappy ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Johnstone," patiently admitted the man who had dropped into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give a formal dinner to a lot of these bores, and then cut the whole lot when I've once done the decent ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... patched with snowbanks. Deep canyons cut sharply between the ridges and shoulders. Ice fields indicated possible glaciers. I wanted to explore everything at once; wanted to climb the peaks, and delve into the canyons; hunt out the game and ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake was only required as a sign that he was not ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... is necessary to shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away before its time; and this Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at high pressure, a hundred years in a hundred months; the ledger becomes ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... his thoughts quickly. They can delve deeper than the surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a leash ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life—to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries are dreaming sentimental ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... that there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into motives. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... account for the continuous struggle of mankind in certain directions? And, finally, what is it that makes it possible for men to rise beyond themselves, to shake away the shackles of matter and vicinity, and to delve deep into the ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... pilfering. That women had been taxed to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet, for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman he is; susceptible ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... for me," he said. "I don't know when I'll be back. I'm going to the laboratory and the university library. Be ready early in the morning to help me delve into ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... poet's agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve in libraries: ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... for the changed circumstances of the times in which we live, is suddenly thrown back into its old position by the exhumation of some 'decision' from the dust of ages, made by some judge away back in the olden times, resurrected by the research of some antiquarian lawyer, who loves to delve among the rubbish of past generations. The learning, the wisdom, the philosophy of the present is discarded, and the spirits of a lower civilization are conjured from the darkness of vanished centuries, to settle rules for the government of commerce, personal conduct, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... we wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to lead ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the most ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism as the constant ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... quick, then, for I die to-morrow. Delve it one furlong fro' the kidney bean-sticks, Where I may dream she's goin' on precisely As she ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... we are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its manners and customs. Such is a brief summary of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... other, would not reach the calf of Spinoza's leg. Both systems of necessity lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a man who was the most splendid sportsman of his day, whose moors and forests provided the finest game and his stables the finest horses in England. Women who were beauties found that in his stately rooms they might gather courts about them. Men of letters knew that in his libraries they might delve deep into the richest mines. Those who loved art found treasures in his galleries, and wide comprehension and finished ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and opened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought and a vast deal more. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form molecules, and of the continuity between solution and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between Dryden and Settle, Dennis and Addison, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself for ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... and foolish, would not consent to delve into the riches of the ancient city, being too much chagrined over the loss of the idol. It seems he had really promised to give a part of it to Mary Nestor. But he never ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... or appeal to their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that lay ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... in the dusk of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and anxious ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... blust'ring by For it doth vanish like the dew at morn. Quezox: It vomits me to gulp the morsel down Yet I thy hint, subservient, will obey. (Aside) (But wisdom whispers keep thy bolo sharp And his fifth rib, perchance, may feel its prick.) Francos: But Quezox, let us in the future delve, For time doth swiftly waft us to our port. Where I must Caesar's message loud proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures with a smile ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... hurl, Their undulating silks they closely furl. The pick-axe one as a commandress holds, While t'other at her awk'ness gently scolds. One puffs and sweats, the other mutters why Can't you promove your work so fast as I? Some dig, some delve, and others' hands do feel The little wagon's weight with single wheel. And lest some fainting-fits the weak surprize, They want no sack nor ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Tom began to delve through the piles of shattered, reduced rock. The foreman held the lantern close, that the young engineer might have all the light he wanted, and called to miners ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... physician, gold, or sorcery: Away forthwith, and to the fields repair; Begin to delve, to cultivate the ground; Thy senses and thyself confine Within the very narrowest round; Support thyself upon the simplest fare; Live like a very brute the brutes among; Neither esteem it robbery The acre thou dost reap, thyself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... They delve in mines, and risk accident, disease and death, or suffer an abjectly lingering life of impoverishment. Thousands of coal miners are killed every year, and many thousands more are injured, in order that two boys and others of their class may draw huge profits.[188] More than 10,000 ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives, to delve alone ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... thousands feel without the moral courage to utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable wall, against which they batter mentally in vain. They have striven ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... digging Gell,[Sec.3] That mighty limner of a bird's eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell: Who can with him the folio's limit swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographize or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... will trust as I will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.— Mother, good-night.—Indeed, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... eagle of the Austrian Empire: in fact, it would be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a wreath! My forehead wears A hundred leaves—a hundred years I never knew the words: "You must!" And shall my wreath return to dust? Freemen! The door is yet ajar; From northern star to southern star, O ye who count and ye who delve, Come in—before ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Everything is lifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one,—for a communion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart. The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, though independent of language, gives to it life ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I apprehend, that we Should oft restrain our thoughts and sight, Nor delve too far, nor try to see, With deeper, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Hoare Made us that bell which wee ring before, Which men for that good deede praie we they maie thrive, For we having but four bells, they made them five; And out of the grownde this bell they did delve The 24th of Julie, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... withdrawing it was, the opposition which the House of Lords offered to it. Yes; they would have no reclamation of Irish lands, but they would submit to bear increased taxation in order to send the Celtic race by the million to delve in Canada!—yet, even for that it became the Irish people to be duly grateful, inasmuch as it was a decided improvement upon the older colonization scheme of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... understanding of how they came to have the problem that they have. I have yet to encounter the person who protests he has no idea why he doesn't function as he would like to in a certain area. From a practical standpoint, not many have the time nor money required to delve into the unconscious background of the problem. The high cost of treatment is a very real objection and cannot be discounted lightly. People suffering from emotional problems usually suffer financial ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... that, Ken." Patty's quick perceptions had caught the flaw in Kenneth's argument. "It isn't that. It's because you're so absorbed in your work that you'd RATHER dig and delve in it, than to go to parties. That's all right, of course, and much to your credit. But you can't blame me for liking a man who is willing to throw over his business ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... the modern French style with sprawling gigantic figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which seem to wonder how they ever got there, and however they were to keep themselves from falling. London is hopeless! We can but delve its soil when opportunities occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces, exchanges have vanished, or are quickly vanishing, and we cast off the dust of London streets from our feet and seek more ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... already predict; it is rather like a tree, shooting out branches which adapt themselves to the new aspects of the sky towards which they climb, and roots which contort themselves among the strange strata of the earth into which they delve. To us who breathe only the spirit of our own age, and know only the characteristics of contemporary thought, it is as impossible to predict the general tone of the science of the future as it is to anticipate the particular discoveries ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... of all time, Great deeds extolled in prose and rhyme, Delve deep in Clio's treasured store, Exhaust encyclopedic lore— You will not find in one edition A hint ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... buckle my shoe; Three, four, shut the door; Five, six, pick up sticks; Seven, eight, lay them straight; Nine, ten, a good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain; Fifteen, sixteen, the maid's in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, she's a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, my plate's empty; Please, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... before ony body will say, 'Hae, puir man, there's a kirk.' And if no kirk casts up—which is more nor likely—what can a young probationer turn his hand to? He has learned no trade, so he can neither work nor want. He daurna dig nor delve, even though he were able, or he would be hauled by the cuff of the neck before his betters in the General Assembly, for having the impudence to go for to be so bold as dishonour the cloth; and though he may get his bit orra half-a-guinea whiles, for holding ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and see the footstep of God in crystals of alum and sulphur and salt. Here is the chemist's shop of the continent. Enough black indelible ink rushes out of this well, with terrific plash, to supply all the scribes of the world. There are infinite fortunes for those who will delve for the borax, nitric and sulphuric acid, soda, magnesia and other valuables. Enough sulphur here to purify the blood of the race, or in gunpowder to kill it; enough salt to savor all the vegetables of the world. Its acid water, which waits only for ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of liberty, their uncomfortable position could hardly have been endured by these fugitives. William had been compelled to dig and delve, to earn bread and butter, clothing and luxuries, houses and land, education and ease for H.B. Dickinson, of Richmond. William smarted frequently; but what could he do? Complaint from a slave was a crime of the deepest dye. So William dug away mutely, but continued to think, nevertheless. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... politico-social reality is itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to find ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... on the way to her —that his own hands had helped to fashion the rude circlet-and that it was significant of the truth that he sought her not from the vantage ground of wealth, but because of a manly devotion that would lead him to delve in a mine or work in a shop for her, rather than live a life of luxury with any one ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Multitudes of necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... inventor lost little time in beginning his operations. As he had said, the chief need was a fire extinguishing chemical solution or powder. Tom resolved to try the solution first, as it was easier to make. With this end in view he proceeded to delve into old and new chemistry books. He also sought the ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... into the river and was so held under by logs that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save without warning, strangely leading us to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... hands and eyes, but this your nee'le to keep? What devil had you else to do? ye keep, ich wot, no sheep. Cham[50] fain abroad to dig and delve, in water, mire and clay, Sossing and possing in the dirt still from day to day. A hundred things that be abroad cham set to see them well: And four of you sit idle at home and cannot ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to his Spade, and so the Spade began to dig and delve till the earth and rock flew out in splinters, and he soon had the well deep enough, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... in an age of iron and have all we can do to keep the iron from entering our souls. Our vast industries have their root in the geologic history of the globe as in no other past age. We delve for our power, and it is all barbarous and unhandsome. When the coal and oil are all gone and we come to the surface and above the surface for the white coal, for the smokeless oil, for the winds and the sunshine, how much more attractive ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... and this was followed by a long number divided up by several strokes. Within the file were some letters that had nothing to do with my plan and still less to do with demobilization, but I hoped that the Assistant of the Great Man might not delve too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... "Wellfleet" has always been a source of lively interest to those who delight to delve to the roots of things historical. So many of our early towns in Massachusetts were named by the Englishmen who settled them for English towns familiar to them before they came oversea, that England is the natural source from whence such a Saxon-English ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... and soft furs, and ivory tusks of the sea-beast, from the frozen coasts of the north. Never before was country so richly blessed; for Siegfried taught his people how to till the soil best, and how to delve far down into the earth for hidden treasures, and how to work skilfully in iron and bronze and all other metals, and how to make the winds and the waters, and even the thunderbolt, their thralls and helpful servants. And he was as great ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... amongst his reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled—all, like wise men, at this first moment of prosperity, prepared to rush into the bowels of speculation, and to delve new difficulties, in whose depths they might lose themselves at some future day. Stocks which had been accumulating for years now went off in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Warehouses were lightened, ships were laden; work abounded, wages rose; the good ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to attempt a detailed history of the Rogue River war as that task were better left to the historian with leisure to delve into the musty records of the past, but I sincerely hope that when the true story of that bloody time is written the kernel of truth will be sifted from the mass of chaff by which it has thus far been obscured. My purpose is merely to give the facts in a general way as I received them, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... our day the ignorant mob of the Anabaptists is as much filled with immoderate craving for allegory as are the monks. They love to delve in the more mysterious books, such as the Revelation of John, and that worthless fabrication passing under the title of the second and third books of Esdras. For, there you are at liberty to follow your fancy as you please. We recall that Muntzer, the seditious spirit, turned ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... as the law of triumphs enjoins, about which Dio Cocceianus writes. And if it seems to you an irksome thing to delve into books of ancient writers, at all events I will explain cursorily, as best I may, the entertainments pertaining to the triumph. They cause the celebrator of the triumph to ascend a car, smear his face with earth of Sinope or cinnabar (representing blood) to screen his ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... change hands again for twenty-five years. And then—in what state of repair I know not—it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six-sevenths of one per cent, on the purchase price of the gaping ruin sold in 1837. There is a certain poetry in notarial records. But we will not delve for it now. Idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty-five years, or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities the gloomy pile, even when restored ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... good night to Meryl she could not refrain, from just one little delve into the perplexing situation. "If you and Major Carew met at six o'clock and did not get back until seven, you must have had quite a long chat together. Such a new thing for him! I don't think even I, his trusted friend, can boast of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... reprinted are by no means unobtainable; but, to the general reader, they have been hitherto quite inaccessible. Only the largest public libraries have the proper sources of information, and even with these books at hand the student has been forced to delve in a mass of irrelevant material for the hidden object of ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... becoming familiar with history, is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture. The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns into obelisk-like pilasters surmounted by heads, the bronze and ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... won't wear myself out in a district-school for the mean sum they give a woman; I won't delve away here where I'm not wanted; and I won't end my life like a coward, because it is dull and hard. I'll try my fate as mother did, and perhaps I may succeed as well." And Christie's thoughts went wandering away into the dim, sweet past when she, a happy child, lived ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... I wandered around looking for thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?" but they never put off ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... as sorry for such people as I can be and I'd like to help them all," Grace said. "But it makes me actually ill to go near them. How mother can delve as she does in the very slums—well, I can't do it! Walter is ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am not quarreling with textual ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Emile Michel, Member of the Institute of France—that mine of learning about Rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt, decrit et commente, par M. Charles Blanc, de l'Academie Francaise. This sumptuous folio he picked up second hand and conveyed home in a cab, because it was too heavy ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... date of, and should delve into the details of the accident; special note being made of the occurrence of laryngeal spasm, wheezing respiration heard by the patient or others (asthmatoid wheeze), fever, cough, pain, dyspnea, dysphagia, odynphagia, regurgitation, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... well as of specific brain diseases, infections, and gastrointestinal and endocrine conditions, become more and more helpful, even a necessity, in the wards and dispensary of the General Hospital on 16th Street. The layman cannot, perhaps, delve profitably into the details of such a highly and broadly specialized type of work. But he can readily take a share in the best appreciation of the general philosophy and policy ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... error still for e'er and aye, They delve for phantom shapes that ride Across their minds alone,—and they But mock the folly of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no miracle has ever been performed in the world's ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... delve deeply into the characters of these citizens of Forks. It is not good to rake bad soil, the process is always offensive. A mere outline is alone necessary. Ike Carney purveyed liquor. A little man with quick, cunning eyes, and a mouth that shut tight ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... meal I sat in a kind of stupor. I was trying to assimilate the new Blenkiron, and drinking in the comfort of his heavenly drawl, and I was puzzling my head about Ivery. I had a ridiculous notion that I had seen him before, but, delve as I might into my memory, I couldn't place him. He was the incarnation of the commonplace, a comfortable middle-class sentimentalist, who patronized pacificism out of vanity, but was very careful not to dip his ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... twelve Of goods allotment made, So equity dealt out with care The widow's and the orphan's share, And of the aged forced to delve At drudging ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... deeds must be counted the fostering of the musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and is remarkably ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... go to them," said Zell, almost fiercely. "I tell you there is no place for you here, unless you wish to go to perdition. Go home, where you are known. Scrub, delve, do anything rather than stay here. Your big brother can and will take care of you, though ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so deep that it is necessary to delve back to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real significance of it, and of the things she did after ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... suddenly called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. When Ponce's ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... if you love me, delve a tomb, And lay me there the earth beneath; After a year, come see my bones, And make them dice to play therewith. But when you're tired of that game, Then throw those dice into the flame; But when you're tired of gaming free, Then throw those ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... was foreordained to be his wife was not more unbelievable than the consciousness that he, her undeclared lover, her predestined mate and protector, was listlessly permitting her to delve further into the black heart of a land out of which he had promised to convey her with all possible speed, for the salvation of her body and soul.... Yet what could he do, save be passive for the time, and wait upon ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarke never returned to the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... both to moan A kind tradition overthrown, And dawning promise once more dead In the pernicious lowlihead Of not aspiring to be fair. And what am I, that I should dare Dispute with God, who moulds one clay To honour and shame, and wills to pay With equal wages them that delve About His vines one hour ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... When there was none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive:— Before the Planets, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... gravel. I said, 'About N.W.,' and the old man said, 'Well, yes,—rather West of N.W., is not it so, Sir Richard?' And Sir Richard did not know what they were talking about, and they pulled out Mackenzie's Survey," etc., etc., etc.,—more than any man would delve through at this day, unless he were searching for Paul Jones or Denis Duval, or some other hero. "What is the mark for going into Spithead?" "What is the mark for clearing Royal Sovereign Shoals?"—let us hope they were all well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fetch me, a-horseback and fully armed, the best knight King Hugo hath. I will lift my sword and bring it down upon him in such wise it shall cleave helm and hauberk, saddle and steed, and the blade shall delve ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone is ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... also said: A man can protect himself with fists or sword but his best weapon is his intellect. A weapon must be forged in the fire. The fire, in our case, is tribulation. It must also be kept untarnished. If the mind is clean, the body can take care of itself. He said: delve deeply; not too deeply into the past, for it may make you derivative; nor yet into yourself—it will make you introspective. Delve into the living world and strive to bind yourself to its movement by a chain of your own welding. Once that contact is ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the Bread to take them to be their servants, that they might have bread. The strong men said: "O Lords of the Bread, feel our thews and sinews, our arms and our legs; see how strong we are. Take us and use us. Let us dig for you. Let us hew for you. Let us go down in the mine and delve for you. Let us freeze and starve in the forecastles of your ships. Send us into the hells of your steamship stokeholes. Do what you will with us, but let us serve you, that we may ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... to seek freedom. In vain did the tyrant-whose name democracy has enshrined with its glories-pursue them, and exhaust persuasion to procure their return. For three days did they wander the woods, delve morasses, and swim rivers, ere they reached the haven of St. Augustine, where, being provided with provisions, their case was tried, and, albeit, though Turnbull interposed all the perfidy wealth could purchase, their fredeom established. But alas! not so well ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... can't dig you a pathway, so I'm going to carry you to my car. I used to be able to delve once—" ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... peasant—she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,—but that night she was as happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... value everything by its money price, its private utility. The spirit which gives freely, because it knows that it has received freely; which communicates knowledge without hope of reward, without jealousy and rivalry, to fellow- students and to the world; which is content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by the practical ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... morn, What time the ruddy sun Smiles on the pleasant corn Thy singing is begun, Heartfelt and cheering over labourers' toil, Who chop in coppice wild and delve the ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... evergreens, Sturdy and strong! Summer and autumn time Hasten along; Harvest the sunbeams, then, Bind them in sheaves, Range them, and change them To tufts of green leaves. Delve in the mellow mold, Far, far below, And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow, grow! Grow, ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... to delve the darksome dell Where never pierc'd a ray, There to the wailing night-bird tell, 'How love was turn'd ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston |
