"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer to that is, reduce internal revenue taxation until the present surplus is exhausted, and then endeavor so to arrange your tariff that you will not produce more than you need. I think the easiest question to grapple with on this earth is a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... proceeding of Sonny's was a fine game. He would grapple with the dog, hug him, pound him gleefully with his little fists, and call him every pet ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... It was up to me to get ready the testing apparatus—we generally set up special instruments for testing. Judging by the distance, the ship should have been over the break early this morning. She will grapple for the broken cable ends, and as soon as she catches our end she'll send us a message. It's ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... not a mood with which the ocean cannot link itself, nor a problem to which it cannot hint, albeit darkly, a solution. To attempt a description of its external phenomena were a hardy task—much more to grapple with its protean influences on the souls ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... seized me across the chest. A loud ringing noise sounded in my ears. Struggling madly for breath, and with the fear of impending death upon me, I turned and tried to run from a danger I could neither understand nor grapple with. But before I had taken two steps my legs gave way from under me, and uttering a loud cry I fell ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... furrowed Sea, Bresting the loftie Surge. O, doe but thinke You stand vpon the Riuage, and behold A Citie on th' inconstant Billowes dauncing: For so appeares this Fleet Maiesticall, Holding due course to Harflew. Follow, follow: Grapple your minds to sternage of this Nauie, And leaue your England as dead Mid-night, still, Guarded with Grandsires, Babyes, and old Women, Eyther past, or not arriu'd to pyth and puissance: For who is he, whose Chin is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... can come before the Congress than this of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce is an absolute and unqualified grant, and without limitations ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... be," says Billy, "but I'll fight you." And he buckled on his hide belt, and swung his stick three times round his head, to give him the strength of a thousand men besides his own, and went for the giant. And at the first grapple Billy Beg lifted the giant up and sunk him in ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... proposed to use against the fast-weakening Confederacy in concerted movements. Sherman's part in the great plan has already been traced. The hardest task, that of facing Lee, the hero of Vicksburg and Chattanooga [he] reserved for himself. Greek thus met Greek, and the death-grapple began. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... found In that slight startle from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... their stillness, their immobility, it came to me that Emperor and Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip; the realization was as definite as though, like Ruth, I thought with Norhala's ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... preceded and are destined to follow it. But there is good reason to believe, after all, that in one way it will be held remarkable, perhaps even unique,—as an age of violent contrasts, violent extremes. Here we are, seeking (however pathetically) to grapple with problems whose solution would wear an almost millennial tinge. There are men among us—and men of august intellects, too—who urge upon society the adoption of codes and usages which would assume, if practically ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... examples. I am not sure that Eli Whitney, when he fell with his cotton gin among the thieves of the South, did not fare quite as badly and suffer quite as much as Solomon de Caus. For to be clapped fair and square into a dungeon is at all events a plain martyrdom, with which one can grapple philosophically or go mad a discretion, while to be only half honored and nine-tenths plundered, dragged meanwhile through courts and newspapers, may be better or worse, according to one's measure. After all, the good old Roman plan of putting a man to death for inventing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... That is to say, it must not be merely a spasmodic effort coping with the misery of to-day; it must be established on a durable footing, so as to go on dealing with the misery of tomorrow and the day after, so long as there is misery left in the world with which to grapple. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... curious how the mind responds to the need for making an effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once. I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... how the Trojan horse Held seventy men in his belly? This dragon was not quite so big, But very near, I'll tell ye; Devour'd he poor children three, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he ate them up, As one would ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of it has become ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... weightier in her eyes. The tremendous difficulties of the future presented themselves very clearly to her mental view, and she knew that before long they would not be mere shadows of things to come, but actual problems with which she must grapple, and upon the solution of which she must concentrate all her strength. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, the earth would close for ever over what remained of those poor beings whose departure from life had saddened her own and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... or even twenty miles, is really a better place to be if you are seeking to fix in your mind a reasonably full picture of the scope and effect and consequences of the hideous thing called war. Back there you see the new troops going in, girding themselves for the grapple as they go; you see the re-enforcements coming up; you see the supplies hurrying forward, and the spare guns and the extra equipment, and all the rest of it; you see, and can, after a dim fashion, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the awl—and renegades from the lowest handicraft employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of tub preachers ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... state. Will not the progress of industry and happiness cause a steady increase in population, and must not the time come when the number of the inhabitants of the globe will surpass their means of subsistence? Condorcet did not grapple with this question. He contented himself with saying that such a period must be very far away, and that by then "the human race will have achieved improvements of which we can now scarcely form an idea." Similarly Godwin, in his fancy picture of the future happiness of mankind, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... That face of his I do remember well, Yet when I saw it last, it was besmear'd As blacke as Vulcan, in the smoake of warre: A bawbling Vessell was he Captaine of, For shallow draught and bulke vnprizable, With which such scathfull grapple did he make, With the most noble bottome of our Fleete, That very enuy, and the tongue of losse Cride fame and honor on him: What's the matter? 1.Offi. Orsino, this is that Anthonio That tooke the Phoenix, and her fraught from Candy, And this is he that did the Tiger boord, When ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a busy town, did no business at all that day. Tradesmen and workmen in small groups at every street-corner discussed a mystery—or rather a series of mysteries—with which, as they well knew, one man alone was competent to grapple. To his good offices they had forfeited all right. Nevertheless, a crowd hung about all day in front of the Mayor's house, nor dispersed until long after nightfall. At eight o'clock next morning ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was glad to accept. Such lectures were of a much more general character than those given in the university, but by them I sought to bring the people at large into trains of thought which would fit them to grapple with the great question which was rising more and more portentously ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of this young French soldier, in face of the enemy who is to attack on the morrow, resumes the strange ecstasy in which was rapt the warrior of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies coming to the grapple. He, too, sees the turbulence of mankind as a dream that seems to veil the higher order and the Divine unity. He, too, puts his faith in that 'which knows neither birth nor death,' which is 'not born, is indestructible, is not slain when this body is slain.' This is ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... shows that "it was not until the Protestant England of Elizabeth had come to a life-and-death grapple with Spain, and not until the discovery of America had advanced much nearer completion, so that its value began to be more correctly understood, that political and commercial motives combined in determining England to attack Spain through America, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... sword, with scabbard of massive gold and silver, the hilt set in brilliants. The gift was accompanied by a letter expressive of the givers' appreciation of the brilliant services rendered to the nation, and was a grateful reminder to Farragut, then watching before Mobile for his last grapple with the enemy in his front, that his fellow-countrymen in their homes were not wanting in recognition of the dangers he had incurred, nor of those he was still facing on ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet and grapple ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... after losing so much money in South America, is going there, to see if he can grapple any of it up from the mines of Mexico, or wherever else ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... bearing the inscription, "It is forbidden to walk over the growing grain." As we passed through the rolling land of Belgium under the brow of "The Scherpenberg," with Mount Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with dugouts, it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple, not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living underground like moles, and that at any moment the air might be filled with shells carrying death ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... all Corneille's masterpieces are concerned with the same subject—the combat between indomitable egoism and the forces of Fate. It is in the meeting of these 'fell incensed opposites' that the tragedy consists. In Le Cid, Chimene's passion for Rodrigue struggles in a death-grapple with the destiny that makes Rodrigue the slayer of her father. In Polyeucte it is the same passion struggling with the dictates of religion. In Les Horaces, patriotism, family love and personal passion are all pitted against Fate. ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... rat-catcher went back again," said the wood-mouse. "The young forester stayed here and is still here; and I don't expect he will ever go. He intends to grapple seriously with the mouse-plague, as he calls it, meaning the field-mouse. The mast and acorns are being gathered earlier than usual, so that we may starve to death. He wants to let cats loose in the woods, I heard him say. And owls are to be imported, as if there were not enough of ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... new courage was awaking in him, which helped him to grapple with his despair. He would bury the dead past, and go on into the future making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than Mr. Clifford, whose intellect ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Jesson's novel was the principal event of the following week. There had come no word from Emily de Reuss, nor had Douglas himself sought her. Better, he told himself, to face his suffering like a man, grapple with it once and for all, than to become even as Drexley and those others, who had never found strength to resist. She was beautiful, magnetic, fascinating, and he loved her; on the other hand there was his self-respect and the strength of his manhood. He was young, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... To fully grapple with this mystery, we may still hold to the faith that final victory comes only to pure truth, and yet we may find that imperfect truth will often achieve a slow and late acceptance. The victory may then be ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it were from the wall, was, by these means, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... said French, because. both art and the conception demanded these spiritual symbols. The man and woman against the rock whereon the angel sits are emblems of the highest types created. The man looks upward and outward with one hand clenched, ready to grapple with life. The woman reaches out for sympathy and support; her fingers find this in the hand of the man at the back of the rock. Man and woman are encircled by the snake, the earliest symbol of eternity and reproduction, a figure appearing, curiously enough, in every religion, and ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... "We'll grapple with tackle," replied Driggs, going toward an equipment box that stood on the forward end of the scow. "We'll use the same kind of tackle that we've sometimes dragged the bottom with ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... therefore, is bound to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:—Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived from one another by gradual modification, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in her hands and begun to cry. She was a mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... himself the invisible messenger that took the word across the boundary. He could not fathom the mystery, he could not picture to himself the missing link in the chain. As was always the case with him, his mind began at once to grapple with its problem—in this instance the riddle of the missing link. He actually forgot ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... drawn down with the ship until she reached the bottom. As soon as she grounded, the water boiled and bubbled a great deal, and then I found that I could swim, and began to rise to the surface. A man tried to grapple me as I went up; his forefinger caught in my shoe, between the shoe and my foot. I succeeded in kicking off my shoe, and thus got rid of him, and then I rose to ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... wood against my face. The boat gave a sudden tremor, and, with a quick, sharp cry of pain, the negro next me leaped into the air, and went plunging overboard. I flung forth a hand in vain effort to grapple his body, yet never touched it, and everything about became black ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... only half a league distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg. The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with: he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner. We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, saying that he was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... quotation in the preceding chapter we have seen what Schiller hoped for when he resolved to grapple with the Kantian philosophy. He was in pursuit of that which would help him as a poet. He felt that a little philosophy had done him harm by quenching his inner fire and destroying his artistic spontaneity. The rules were continually coming between him and his creative impulses. His hope ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... they essayed to hurl it back; how madly rushed up the grenadiers of the 32nd; with what a yell the brave Irish of the 10th dropped down among them from the branches of the trees above; and how like the deadly conflict of the lion and tiger in a forest den, was the grapple of the pale English with the swarthy Sikhs in that little walled space the rebels thought ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... about it, then. The case is bad enough as it stands, Heaven knows, and we've got to grapple with it as soon as we get home. We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, unless something has happened to him. I wonder if anything can have been good enough to happen to ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... to grapple with him, but he had grown so stiff from his wound that he could hardly stir. He was looking death close ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... be more admirable than the truthfulness and ease of the figures. Wilkie, in his representations of a crowd, excelled in introducing heads, and hands, and faces, and parts of faces into the interstices behind,—one of the greatest difficulties with which the artist can grapple. Here, however, is the difficulty surmounted—surmounted, too, as if to bear testimony to the genius of the departed—in the style of Wilkie. We may add further, that the great massiveness of the head of Chalmers, compared with ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... was the widow's name, was but little over thirty. She had a strong, thoughtful face, and a firm mouth, that spoke a decided character. She was just the woman to grapple with adversity, and turning her unwearied hands to any work, to rear up her children in the fear of the Lord, and provide for their necessities as well as circumstances ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... statistical. "A horse is an animal with four legs—one at each corner," is fairly representative of the kind of information he seeks. When he becomes diffuse, we may feel sure he has had help. Sissy Jupes are of course to be found, who cannot grapple ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... conversions from Buddhism. Idolatry, as it is represented in story books for children, under its grossest form of fetichism, may be easily conquered, but the vast spirit of Pantheism is more difficult to grapple with. That Buddhism, as understood by the more enlightened Lamas, is Pantheism, there can be no doubt. All created beings emanate from, and return to, Buddha—the one eternal and universal soul—the principle and end of all things, and of whom all things are the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... keeping the table between them. He looked at the door, calculating whether he could make a spring for the ax before Carlson could grapple him. Carlson read in the glance an intention to retreat, made a quick stride to the door, closed it sharply, locked it, put the key in his pocket. He stood a moment looking Mackenzie over, as if surprised by the length he unfolded when on his feet, but ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the hedge and they went on again Grace looked at Kit. He had not got his color back, his lips were set and his gaze was fixed. The shock had broken his control and brought her enlightenment. He loved her, but she needed time and quietness to grapple with the situation. Her heart beat and her nerves tingled; she could not see the line she ought to take. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... am through with it this time I am not at all sure I shall ever try it again while I am so busy with other work as I am now. Often by the time I get to five o'clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a stewed owl, after an eight hours' grapple with Senators, Congressmen, etc.; then I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well mottled with bruises elsewhere. Still I have made ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... his present purpose Trevennack knew not, nor did he even care. Stung with pain and terror he rushed forward blindly upon his enraged assailant, and closed with him at once, tooth and nail, in a deadly grapple. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... he flung himself forward, meaning to scale the steps and grapple with his parallel, but in a moment the strong arms of Sigurd held him in the grip of a bear. Then he who stood at the summit of the steps, and wore the likeness of the lord of Sicily, lifted his hand and spoke, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and reflective charger went slowly. The officer's face was grimy and perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He turned his horse ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... to my mind in a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in various ways to secure all that seemed most attractive about the project, or which filled my soul with longing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with my subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer contact with the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis for closer study of philosophical questions. I had been astonished at times to hear even the grave and virtuous Lehrs, openly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... is too much animal courage in society and not 29:1 sufficient moral courage. Christians must take up arms against error at home and abroad. They must grapple 29:3 with sin in themselves and in others, and continue this warfare until they have finished their course. If they keep the faith, they will have the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... thought of immortality. I know not how it may be with you, but I am not ashamed to confess that to me the idea of eternal continuance of my conscious being is an awful thought, rather depressing and bewildering than delighting and attractive. I, for my part, do not believe that men generally do grapple to their hearts, with any gratitude or joy, that solemn belief of immortal life unless they feel that it is life with, and in, and like, Jesus Christ. 'To depart' is dreary, and it is only when we can say 'and to be with Christ' that it becomes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... you, too, that only such a world-wide communication of the highest good that has blessed ourselves will correspond to the proved power of that Gospel which treats as of no moment diversities that are superficial, and can grapple with and overcome, and bind to itself as a crown of glory, every variety of character, of culture, of circumstance, claiming for its own all races, and proving itself able to lift them all. 'The Bread of God which came down from heaven' is an exotic everywhere, because it came down from heaven, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reality even when the views which produce it are wrong. To face a panic one must first of all realise the intrinsic facts, and then allow for the misreading of others. It is the plastic and ingenious mind which will best grapple with these unusual circumstances. It will invent weapons and expedients with which to face each new phase of the position. "Whenever you meet an abnormal situation," said the sage, "deal with it in an abnormal manner." That ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... mind, and immediately attempted to relieve himself of the powerful constriction by getting at the snake's head. But the serpent had so knotted himself on his own head, that Mr. Cops could not reach it, and had thrown himself on the floor in order to grapple with a better chance of success, when two other keepers coming in broke the teeth of the serpent, and with some difficulty relieved Mr. Cops from his perilous situation. Two broken teeth were extracted from the thumb, which soon healed, and ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... sitting in thoughtful silence. Looking up, he now said, "Incident to this expected shock, there may be a variety of dangers. If, gentlemen, you will allow me, I will enumerate them; and we shall, perhaps, by taking them seriatim, be in a better position to judge whether we can successfully grapple with them, or in any way ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in which ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... to step forward to grapple with him, when a warning cry from Elaine stopped him for ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... remain attracted by the country's political stability and high education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. Low prices for coffee and bananas have hurt the agricultural sector. The government continues to grapple with its large deficit and massive internal debt. The reduction of inflation remains a difficult problem because of rises in the price of imports, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. Costa Rica recently concluded negotiations to participate in the US - ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... assaults could possibly be, for the cleverness of the evasion gives additional zest to the attack. The Press is a hard dog to muzzle, and, like dogs in general, only vicious when muzzled. The Japanese will soon find it safer to "let Truth and Error grapple" in the full face of day, for they are not ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... double rhyme, sustains the mood of victorious but not lightly won serenity of soul—"too full for sound and foam." It is, among songs over the dead, what Rabbi ben Ezra and Prospice are among the songs which face and grapple with death; the fittest requiem to follow such deaths as those. Like Ben Ezra, the Grammarian "trusts death," and stakes his life on ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Sand often lays her finger on sore places, fails, however, not only to prescribe the right remedy, but even to recognise the true cause of the disease. She makes now and then acute observations, but has not sufficient strength to grapple successfully with the great social, philosophical, and religious problems which she so boldly takes up. In fact, reasoning unreasonableness was a very frequent condition of George Sand's mind. That the unreasonableness of her reasoning remains unseen by many, did ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... this desire shows itself in this also, namely, in that it is willing to grapple with the king of terrors, rather than to be detained from that sweet communion that the soul looks for when it comes into the place where its Lord is. Death is not to be desired for itself; the apostle chose rather to be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven, 'that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... She cannot grapple with her heart, Till, in the city's bound, She cries, to ease the joy-born smart, "I ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... assuredly was, swept also by a new emotion which I did not in the least comprehend, I yet fully realized the utter helplessness of my position in point of resistance. They were twenty to one. However much I longed to grapple with him who mocked me, the very thought was insanity; my only possible chance of escape lay in flight. To realize this was to act. I leaped backward, trusting for a clear field in my rear, and an opportunity to run for it, but the door by which ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Unconditioned is a criticism, partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy, to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to grapple,—the problem of the Unconditioned. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... rather, that its chief result is a wholesome quickening of the better nature of this poor man—that its chief accomplishment is to send him back to his home kinder, truer, and stronger, thru either the relaxation or the instruction, to grapple with the difficulties of life. I greatly fear that, as usually conducted, its influence upon the adult is at best but the temporary slaking of an unhealthy and never-satisfied thirst, and that upon the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... cowardice, but has a strange intoxication with blood and would like to thrust a lance into the neck of every one she meets; coquets a great deal with the thought of marriage; takes up her art and paints a few very successful pictures; tries to grapple with the terrible question, "What is my unbiased opinion concerning myself?" pants chiefly for fame. When the other lung is found diseased the diary becomes sometimes more serious, sometimes more fevered; she is almost racked to find some end in life; shall she marry, or paint? and at last ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... work as an anatomist, but to aid his studies in Greek philosophy and New Testament criticism, and to enjoy Homer in the original. In middle life, too, he dipped sufficiently into Norwegian and Danish to grapple with some original scientific papers. When he was fifteen, Italian as well as German is set down by him in his list of things to be learnt, though for some time the pressure of preparing for the London matriculation barred the way; and on ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... him over the half-buried rocks. He stood again on the brink with his poor worn face turned to the sky. He had come to the end of his reasoning. The tired brain had ceased to grapple with the cruel problem that had so tortured it. He knew now what he would do to help Dicky. And somehow the doing did not seem hard to him, somehow ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... many ages at the business of living, the custom should not be dismissed too summarily as mere vain and heathenish superstition. At any rate, Margaret had reasoned it out that she must get the advantage in the impending initial grapple and tussle of their individualities, or choose between slavery and divorce. With him handicapped by awe of her, by almost groveling respect for her ideas and feelings in all man and woman matters, domestic and social, it seemed to her that she could be worsted ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... its wake. Presently they came to a small hill. Climbing to the top, they found they could command a good view of the advancing German columns, which they could see in the distance, and which were even now almost close enough to grapple hand-to-hand with the horsemen swooping down ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... at him for a moment, speechless through sheer lack of comprehension. Then she glanced at Lady Elisabeth and the truth dawned upon her. It was more than she could grapple ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... get to work, too. You can't have been of much use to Gossom lately." And she settled herself at her desk with the telephone book. As she called the hotel where Senator Thomas usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned to her brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with the problems suggested by Percy's letter of the morning. But by the time she had succeeded in getting the Senator, her voice was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... "Grapple with them? No. That is not our game: we have better things to do. Violence disgusts me. I know only too well what would happen. All the old embittered failures, the young Royalist idiots, the odious apostles of brutality and hatred, would seize on anything I did and bring it to dishonor. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... timid animals will fight desperately under the stimulus of sex-passion. Hares and moles battle to the death in some cases; squirrels and beavers wound each other severely. Seals grapple with tooth and claw; bulls, deer and stallions have violent encounters, and goats use their curved horns with deadly effect.[53] The elephant, pacific by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. Thus, the Sanskrit poems frequently ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... furnishings of that choicely appointed chamber, and rested at last upon the lean, crooked figure of a man whose back was towards me and who was busy with some phials at a table not far distant. Then recollection awakened also in me, and I set my wits to work to grapple with my surroundings. I looked through the open window, but from my position on the bed no more was visible than the blue sky and a faint ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... made of any size desired without impairing distinctness of vision!" He wrinkled his brow and fell to making geometrical diagrams on the envelope, but neither his theoretical mathematics nor his practical craftsmanship could grapple with so obscure a request, and he forgot to eat while he pondered. He consulted his own treatise on the Rainbow, but to no avail. At length in despair he took up the last letter, to find a greater surprise awaiting him. A communication from ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple. Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in places, a score of combatants met sturdily upon the plain, lunging with knife and sabre bayonet, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... foot from the ground. The snake had not moved; and on getting up to him I struck him with the lance on the near-side, just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it firm in its place, while I dashed head foremost into the den to grapple with the snake and to get hold of his tail before he could do ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... "Grapple my ship with that," he cried, pointing to the crippled Spaniard, "for I would have possession ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... has gone out of the West. Amiable gossip and sharp trader that he was, his visits once brought a sharp business grapple to the farmer's wife and daughters, after which, as the man of trade was repacking his unsold wares, a moment of cheerful talk often took place. It was his cue, if he chanced to be a tactful peddler, to drop all attempts at sale and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... but the fire was going out where she sat, and she would like a cup of tea or some refreshment. She did not look at Jack, but, completely ignoring him, addressed herself to Zuleika with what seemed to be a direct challenge; in that feminine eye-grapple there was a quick, instinctive, and final struggle between the two women. The stranger triumphed. Zuleika's vacant smile changed to one of submission, and then, equally ignoring her brother in this double defeat, she hastened to the kitchen to do the visitor's bidding. The woman closed the door ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... brought with it a quickening, a sickening of the heart, and a dreariness that, whilst being depressing in the extreme, was, withal, sublime. Sublime and mysterious; mysterious and insoluble. A thousand fancies swarmed through my mind; yet I could grapple with none; and I was loth to acknowledge that, although there are combinations of very simple material objects which might have had the power of affecting me thus, yet any attempt to analyse that power ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... it ought to be, that is how Amy has seen it several times in the past week; and now that we come to the grapple we wish we could give you what you want, for you do want it, you have been used to it, and you will feel that you are looking at a strange middle act without it. But Steve cannot have such a room as this, he has only two hundred and ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... impossible where the dominating feeling of the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless. The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... not very easy to grapple in public with the man whose name all smart London happens to be coupling ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... preparations was only equaled by their vast lack of intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of ship adopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy but totally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 ships carried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small, intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... this view, an air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism, spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the only type, and much ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... courage that never failed. But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. It was not the general's business to build up Congress and grapple with finance, but Washington addressed himself to the new task with his usual persistent courage. It was slow and painful work. He seemed to make no progress, and then it was that his spirits sank at the prospect ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... mortar-vessels were of a second attack of the same nature; and accordingly he put in readiness one hundred and fifty small boats with picked crews, and well supplied with axes and grapnels, whose duty it was to grapple any future rafts, and tow them into a harmless position. They did not have long to wait. At sundown that night, Commander Porter reviewed his little squadron of row-boats as they lay drawn up in line along the low marshy shores of the mighty ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and we "entered into their labors." I never enjoyed soldiering more than during the weeks we were in this place. Much of the time the weather was good, and we drilled, did picket duty, and got in readiness for the next grapple. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... rising in the night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber door. One blow would beat it in. "You might do murder before you know it," Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand? He ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... might pass into the forest without observing them. If it did, the danger would be at an end; if not, the brave boy had summoned up all his energies to meet and grapple with it. He held the loaded musket in his hand, ready at a moment's notice to raise it to the level and fire into the face of the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... for having such a man, and not being exposed to all the vagaries of a young schoolmaster, or, perhaps, still worse, schoolmistress, with all the latest musical fancies of the training colleges. Neither had he to grapple with the tyranny of the leading bass nor the conceit and touchiness that seems inseparable from the tenor voice, since Mr Robins kept a firm and sensible hand on the reins, and drove that generally unmanageable team, a village choir, with ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... who are wise, For if we give up and concede Immortality, There's nothing to check its wide Universality. The toad-stool and thistle, the donkey and bear Must live on forever,—the Lord knows where. I tell you, dear sir, that Science must wake up And grapple these spooks to crush them, and break up This world of delusion of Phil. D's and D.D's, Who are all in the dark, as dear Huxley agrees, Proud Huxley's "The Prince of Agnostics," you see, And Huxley and I ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life, the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand, pointing to serene skies, she opened to him fair glimpses ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... connection with these new combinations. Truth is relative, and the best truth of our own is worth testing under various conditions and circumstances. The truth or falsehood which is not our own has a right to say the best for itself that can be said. Let truth and falsehood grapple. Let us hear the counter-truth or the rival falsehood which is the complement or the criticism of our own, and hear it stated with the utmost skill. A Luther would surely be the wiser for an evening spent ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... man for sin, is the object of the wrath of God. How dreadful therefore must his case be who continues in sin; for who can bear and grapple ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... you at dinner," called Alfred gaily over his shoulder and Jimmy was left to grapple with his first disappointment at his friend's ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... in a play should represent a combat. In "Memories and Portraits," Stevenson says: "A good serious play must be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." Goethe, in his "William Meister" says: "All events oppose him [the hero] and he either clears and removes every obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their victim." But it was the French critic, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who defined dramatic law most sharply and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... and this ancient mother still rise bloody but unbowed. The realization of the vision, however, would call for capital on a scale as vast as that of a modern war or an international industrial enterprise. At the very outset it would engage England in nothing less than a death-grapple, especially as regards the shipping on the West Coast. If ships can not go from Liverpool to Seccondee and Lagos, then England herself is doomed. The possible contest appalls the imagination. At the same time the exploiting that now goes on ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... possible, making westward and trying to reach the Swan River. This expedition is especially noteworthy as being the first one in which a camel was made use of, and to Horrocks, is due the credit of first introducing these animals as baggage carriers. When at the head of the Gulf, and about to grapple with the unknown land to the west, his gun accidentally went off, and he received the charge in his face. He lived to return to the station, but ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc |
