"Grope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dare disturb him," she replied. "Nature may know best; it may be Nature that cries to be alone; and we grope in the dark. O yes, I would leave ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... asking for your bed, leddie," said Bob Tubbs, the old man whose acquaintance I had so unceremoniously formed. "Ye'll find it there, for'ard, if ye'll grope your way. It's not over airy, but it's all the warmer ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... examples, to shew with what eagerness those who imported inventions were taken by the hand, on the bare probability of success, while the inventors of machines, and of methods of manufacturing entirely new, and of still more importance, were left to grope their way, and, until crowned with success, rather considered as objects of pity than of ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... cannot lead the lives we would, But grope in dumb amaze, Leaving the straight and flowery paths ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Uberta slammed the door in the faces of her visitors, and left them to grope their way in the dark down the steep stairway. It was highly characteristic, both of the senior and the junior Hahn, that without a word of explanation they drove home amicably in the ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... an Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position which ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and our torrid zone? 140 Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no cure, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand What barbarous invader sack'd the land? 150 But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king; When nothing but the name of zeal appears 'Twixt ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... no instruments for estimating this distance. But I knew that the sun's rays, even in the clearest seas, could reach no deeper. So at precisely this point the darkness became profound. Not a single object was visible past ten paces. Consequently, I had begun to grope my way when suddenly I saw the glow of an intense white light. Captain Nemo had just activated his electric device. His companion did likewise. Conseil and I followed suit. By turning a switch, I established contact between the induction coil ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... towards evening, and Falkenberg was still tuning, I took a bit of something to eat in my pocket and went off for a walk, to be out of the way so they should not ask me in to supper. There was a moon, and the stars were out, but I liked best to grope my way into the dense part of the wood and sit down in the dark. It was more sheltered there, too. How quiet the earth and air seemed now! The cold is beginning, there is rime on the ground; now and again a stalk of grass creaks faintly, a little mouse squeaks, a rook comes soaring ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... is actually coming to Europe next year," he explained. "He is, without doubt, the most accomplished of men in the dreadful science of detecting crime and, were he here, he could assuredly read into these abominations a meaning for which we grope in vain. Do not think," he added to Jenny, "that I undervalue the labours of Mr. Brendon and the police, but they have come to naught, for there are strange forces of evil moving here deeper than the plummet ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... forward—a whole moral aeon beyond Byron and Shelley; and a step, too, in the right direction, just because it is a step forward— because the path of deliverance is, as "Locksley Hall" sets forth, not backwards towards a fancied paradise of childhood—not backward to grope after an unconsciousness which is now impossible, an implicit faith which would be unworthy of the man, but forward on the road on which God has been leading him, carrying upward with him the aspirations of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... perfect animal health, but there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and well-meaning—stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all unconscious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... was so pitch dark that he had almost to grope his way, for it was impossible to see a hand's breadth in front of him. In the adjacent country not a leaf moved. Only some night-birds flying across the road from one hedge to the other brushed Pinocchio's ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... it may be recognized. In the new science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... blackened nuts and some of the dry moss he had put there were lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, and was ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... grope their way, till their arms come in contact. Then, closing in mutual embrace, they sink together upon ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out—he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... himself, "don't forget the gospel according to Jonesy. You can't dam up the tributaries of the heart. Some day you must come to me. That much is immutably written. For God's sake come now while the road is still clear. Otherwise we shall grope our ways to each other, even if it ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... among the obscurities of providence, The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before commission. In these things we grope and flounder; and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... is then spun around so as to confuse his sense of direction. He then says, "Still pond; no more moving!" whereupon the other players must stand still, being allowed only three steps thereafter. The blindfolded player begins to grope for the others. When he catches one, he must guess by touching the hair, dress, etc., whom he has caught. If he guesses correctly, the player changes places with him. If incorrectly, he must go ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... woman the right to sing bass? The brave old chorals of Germany would hardly be sung with much effect were the airs denied to the masculine voice, yet if it be man's prerogative to sing bass, it is surely woman's to sing treble. If it be usurpation for her to grope among the gutturals of the masculine clef, it is gross presumption for him to attempt to leap the five-rail fence that stands between him and high C. I put this consideration forward for the purpose of stopping every caviller's mouth upon the subject, until I present arguments of a broader ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no better. If you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman who gives you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams. Grope in the ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with my arrows, or strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its life. If I must have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a remove from the earth as I can. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and the Dusarian warrior who had been detailed to duty upon the Thuria. Carthoris walked close to the left side of the latter. Now they came to the dense shadow under the side of the Thuria. It was very dark there, so that they had to grope for the ladder. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... few sentences that meant much to each of them; down town by arrangement in a cafe, or once or twice for dinner; and once for a day in the country, though not alone; and he was always the same. Sometimes, on night duty, she would grope for an adjective to fit him, and could only think of "tender." He was that. And she hated it, or all but hated it. She did not want tenderness from him, for it seemed to her that tenderness meant that he was, as it were, standing aloof from her, considering, helping when he could. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... which he had left his gun. He made another fire, and again the same result. A third time he set to work; and now, to make certain of his getting back, again, he tied a line to a tree close beside his fire, and then set on to gather wood. Again the fates smote him-his line broke, and he had to grope his way in weary search. But chance, tired of ill-treating him so long, now stood his friend—he found the first fire, and with it his gun and blanket. Again he travelled on, but now his strength began to fail, and for the first time his heart sank within ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the sky with rosy winnowings Of dove-like wings, a Spirit, to the God Who gave her thee, and so recalls. She is A pure devoted woman, and thy child— Thus far I understand thy soul's repinings. But so to start as shaken by a dream From an unquiet couch, to grope in night And wailing darkness, thus to storm and rave, To mock the God of battles and thy might; To let the rod that scourg'd the pestilent land Fall from thy tender hold—I had not thought Of this, and I had rather died than see it. True thou wert less than father, more than ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... son even as myself to me, As you to him showed his own life again? Now he is dead, and all I looked to see In him removes to you—less near and plain, Confused with other blood; and what will be I groping cannot tell, and grope in vain. For men have turned to other ways than mine: Yourself are less ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... her, and they were as the eyes of a child born blind; blank, yet they sought; tortured, yet dry of tears. His head was tilted back, and a little sideways. So may you see an infant's as he nuzzles to his mother's breast. The two hands seemed to grope for a moment, then fell limp ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the marquee towards the farther corner where the stores were kept. Raymonde, as leader, went first, with her body-guard in close attendance behind her. Very, very gently she drew back the curtains and entered the larder. It was pitch-dark in here, and she began to grope her way along the wall. Then she stopped, for in front of her she fancied she heard breathing. She listened—all was silent. She started again, intending to go to the far side of the table. She put out her hand to guide herself, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... I cannot leave off going to church, but the support I want I must find out for myself. Perhaps if I had been born two hundred years ago, I might have been caught by some strong enthusiastic organisation and have been a private in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray for any more pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I can lie ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... which most of the cafe chantants are situated, is bright with electric light, the back streets of the city are lit by flickering oil-lamps, and here the stranger must almost grope his way about after dark. If wise he will stay at home, for robbery and even murder are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt the night-houses in quest of prey. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... is still stunned by that terrific experience, and I grope vainly for means of expression by which I can reproduce the emotions which we felt. Perhaps it is best and wisest not to try, but merely to indicate the facts. Even Summerlee and Challenger were crushed, and we heard nothing of our companions behind us save an occasional whimper from the lady. As ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would soon clear up. They had only proceeded a short distance, however, when they got on to a sandbank, where they were obliged to remain for two hours, feeling the gravest anxiety all the time. At last the tide floated them off again, and they endeavoured to grope their way through the fog, passing several vessels, which were only visible when quite close upon them. Mr Montefiore was standing near the bow of the ship, when suddenly a steamer was seen to be quite close to them, and before it was possible to avoid her, she struck their bow ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... dark, and to all appearance, untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he touched curtains. From the position ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... met hand to hand by the Afghan defenders, who had recovered from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing. But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was neither time nor space for methodic street fighting, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... never make me calm, This bowl my grief would never drown. For grief like mine there is no balm In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town. And if I see what I can see, I know not any way to blind it; Nor more if any way may be For you to grope or fly to ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... among the vast and noble scenes of Nature,—we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy; we walk here in the light and open ways of the Divine Bounty,—we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinth ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hardly say, with her booty in her mandibles; I see her hurry away from her comrades, thinking that she is rejoining them; I see her retrace her steps, turn aside again, try to the right, try to the left and grope in a host of directions, without succeeding in finding her whereabouts. The pugnacious, strong-jawed slave-hunter is utterly lost two steps away from her party. I have in mind certain strays who, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... we grope along, And if we go amiss We learn at least which path is wrong, And there ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be the bridel sesed, And seide: "O thou, which hast desesed 3010 The Court of France be thi wrong, Now schalt thou singe an other song: Thin enterdit and thi sentence Ayein thin oghne conscience Hierafter thou schalt fiele and grope. We pleigne noght ayein the Pope, For thilke name is honourable, Bot thou, which hast be deceivable And tricherous in al thi werk, Thou Bonefas, thou proude clerk, 3020 Misledere of the Papacie, Thi false bodi schal abye And soffre that it hath deserved." Lo, thus the Supplantour ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... replied Kaiber; "you are stone-headed. We shall be dead directly; wherefore ate you the mussels?" This was beyond what my patience in my present starved state could endure, so I got up and began to grope about for a stick or something to throw in the direction of the chattering blockhead; but he begged me to remain quiet, promising faithfully to make no more mention of the mussels. I therefore squatted down, in a state of the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... like a woman and Kate Chanceller, who wore skirts and had the body of a woman, was in her nature a man. Kate and Clara spent many evenings together later and talked of many things not usually touched on by girl students. Kate was a bold, vigorous thinker and was striving to grope her way through her own problem in life and many times, as they walked along the street or sat together in the evening, she forgot her companion and talked of herself and the difficulties of her position in life. "It's absurd the way things are arranged," she ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Wigwam," of the strange Indians who were sometimes met by the hunters and trappers, and well as by the red men themselves. They were dusky explorers, as they may be termed, who like Columbus of the olden time, had the daring to pass beyond the boundaries of their own land, and grope through strange countries they had ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they almost necessarily ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... stainless purity is possible; believe that a life of perfect holiness is possible; believe that the realization of the highest truth is possible. He who so believes, climbs rapidly the heavenly hills, whilst the unbelievers continue to grope darkly and ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... they had escaped—all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his bare feet until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. I don't care to see anything like that ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... grope my way back, I heard the murmur of voices. I made my way in the direction of these sounds to seek for assistance. Suddenly, there fell upon my ears the notes of a piano and a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... art, how much more so in our country, separated as it is by the broad Atlantic from the artistic world, which few comparatively can ever visit: many of our young artists, for the want of such an institution, are obliged to grope their way in the dark, and to spend months and years to find out a few simple principles ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... in the saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept. Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with a clear head and every faculty on the qui vive—much as a man might grope for a time in a dark strange room, then find a door and step out into ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... terrible relic of some remote superstition. It may have been that the abhorrence and extinction of evil was roughly typified, or that it was understood that the death of the victim would, as if he were a scapegoat, cleanse the worshippers of the sins with which he was thus loaded. It is idle to grope where all is, and must be, dark; all that can be asserted with any certainty is that the preliminary eulogy, a more modern practice, was intended to enhance the value of the offering which they were about to make ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... believed in, in those dirty little souls,—no, those clean little souls, overlaid with all outward mire and filth of body, clothing, speech, and atmosphere, for a mile about; through which they could no more grope and penetrate, to reach their own that was hidden from them in the clearer life beyond, than we can grope and reach to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... love where intellect, spirit and sex find their perfect mate. Love is the great enlightener. And in my own mind I am fully persuaded that comparatively few mortals ever experience this rebirth that a great love gives. We grope our way through life. Nature's first thought is for reproduction of the species; she has so overloaded physical passion that men and women marry when the blood is warm and intellect callow. Girls marry for life the first man that offers, and forever put behind them the possibilities ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... She did not yet know that those who are most sincere find it more difficult than the others to say what they think. Words, in their souls, are like climbing plants which, sown by chance in the middle of a roadway, waver and grope, send out tendrils here and there in despair and end by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... Gap was a total surprise to him. My army about doubled his in size, but he had all the advantages of natural positions, of artificial forts and roads, and of concentrated action. We were compelled to grope our way through forests, across mountains, with a large army, necessarily more or less dispersed. Of course, I was disappointed not to have crippled his, army more at that particular stage of the game; but, as it resulted, these rapid successes gave us the initiative, and the usual impulse ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... swallowed up beyond recovery. Still, he felt convinced that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the cave had been, and, bidding Flora to sit down and rest while he further investigated, he began to grope about here and there among the confused mass of rocks, studying them intently as he did so. For upwards of two hours Leslie searched and toiled in vain; but at length he came upon a piece of rock face that seemed familiar to him, and upon removing a number of blocks of splintered rock he ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... from the King's chamber, and revived by the sharp air in the street I managed to grope my way to my father's house. To him I told nothing, for he was proud of me, and should I have killed him? Yet he was much perplexed at my determination, for I never showed my face ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... throw the Israelites into dungeons, God brought darkness upon them, the darkness of hell, so that they had to grope their way. He that sat could not rise up on his feet, and he that stood could not sit down. The infliction of darkness served another purpose. Among the Israelites there were many wicked men, who refused to leave Egypt, and God determined to put them out of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... he was now where there was an abundance of material with which a raft could be constructed that would obviate this exposure, but the building of such a rude craft, under the circumstances, was next to impossible. He had no implement except his pocket knife, and might grope about in the darkness for hours without getting together enough timber to float ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... them away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... with all that we at present are. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant confidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only take the grace we have. To this touchstone let us bring all claims to higher holiness—they who are perfect ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as he slept, or did the thing which he thought he saw actually occur! Some stones slipped from off the mound and, to his eyes looking down into the grave, it seemed that Strangeways' hand began to grope frantically after the locket which had been about his neck, and that, finding it missing, his face became angry and he strove to rise, causing the stones to fall and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Cap'n, but they ain't no blessed good, an' I bet my head on that. See, if you drives all them plugs well through her, and they sticks out good an' proper outside, it ain't so hard to grope around under the mud an' grab a holt on 'em. Then 'tain't very hard, genelmen, to paddle away a bit o' mud about each bunch o' plugs, an' when that's done, 'tis about all done. I'll lash a wire to them long plugs, and stretch her ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from any bravery or presence of mind, but from utter annihilation of both qualities in the shock and surprise of it all. At last I began trying to grope my way toward the door. I found it. Some people—I heard and felt rather than saw—were standing about the battered-in door, and there was the sound of water hurrying past the door-way. The Rhine was ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a vast relief for the moment, but little comfort could our friends take from the fact. Their enemies were not likely to go far, when they would suspect that something of the nature described had occurred, and they would return and grope along shore for their victims. So certain was Dr. Marlowe of this turn that he believed the wisest course was for the entire party to abandon the boat, and, as may be said, "take to the woods." They had ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... been an usher at the play with the other new members and worn the club colors in his buttonhole to be admired by the girls and envied by the other fellows. But now there was none of that charmed fellowship for him. He nourished his feeling of bitterness and hatred until his scheming mind began to grope for some way of spoiling the success of the play. As usual, he turned to his friend, Abraham Goldstein, who was about the only one who had not shown any coolness. Together they watched their chance. The play progressed ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of light anywhere, and none of those smells of smoke and food which proclaim habitation. It was an eerie job scrambling up the steep bank east of the place, to where the flat of the garden started, in a darkness so great that I had to grope my way like a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... have studied him 'is to be without a knowledge of the most important documents of contemporary history.' More: to contrast those fair, large parchments in which he has stated his results with those tattered and filthy papers which the latter- day literary rag-picker exists but to grope out from kennel and sewer is to know the difference between the artist in health and the artist possessed by an idiosyncrasy ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the battleship is a part of the night. Below deck all is dark save perchance a thin, knife-like ray emanating from a battle-lantern. The lookouts, straining their eyes into the black for long, arduous stretches, are relieved and half-blind and dizzy they grope along the deck to their hammocks, stumbling over the prostrate forms of men sleeping beside the 5-inch guns, exchanging elbow thrusts with those of the gun crews ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... youth he had been brought up by his mother in very strict religious principles; had read a large number of theological works, and that Barrow's writings had most pleased him; that he regularly went to church, that he was by no means an unbeliever who denied the Scriptures, and wished to grope in atheism; but, on the contrary, that all his wish was to increase his belief, as half-convictions made him wretched. He declared, however, that he could not thoroughly understand the Scriptures. He also added, that he entertained the highest respect ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... standing there with bound hands in the thick gloom, he seemed to catch a slow and sighing sound, as of troubled breathing. Again he called. No answer. Then he understood the truth. And, unable to grope with his hands, he swung one foot slowly, gently, in the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... from observation to science, from practice to theory, and play with edged tools long before we know what knives mean. For, like Hop-o'-my-Thumb and his brothers, we are driven out early in the morning to the edge of the forest, and are obliged to grope our way back to the little house whence we come, by the crumbs dropped on the road. Alack! how often the birds have eaten our bread, and we are captured by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... guilt may lie in the forgotten folds of hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to blast the memory of the dead! What precious words, again, have been destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the doubt and anguish of the living! In this, as in all we do, we grope about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough have been bitterly lamented by those who "did for the best" in keeping or destroying ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hours before, they ascended to the Staked Plain, and are now nearly across it. Guided by the traitor, they had no need to grope their way, and have made quick time. In a few hours more they will pounce upon the prey for which they have ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... moon Creep up the heaven to-night; I in darksome noon Walking hopefully, Seek my shrouded light— Grope for thee! ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... was dark and empty when Ritter and his following entered. They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man that led them to seats in the parquet. Gradually, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they could distinguish the vast windowless cave, with its rows of seats, its galleries ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... mortals, who advance no pretence to superior wisdom and ability, to see the huge mistakes made by both these very sagacious personages,—Dr. Riccabocca, valuing himself on his profound acquaintance with character, and Randal Leslie, accustomed to grope into every hole and corner of thought and action, wherefrom to extract that knowledge which is power! For whereas the sage, judging not only by his own heart in youth, but by the general influence of the master passion on the young, had ascribed to Randal sentiments wholly foreign to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is all this you say? I sense but vaguely what I fail to grasp; I glimpse mysterious, strangely clouded visions,— But can not understand. I grope in darkness! ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... be known," says Grettir; "hast thou not heard that I have ever been a treasure-hill that most men grope in with ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... lightning showed me was a column, standing in exactly the opposite direction from my own house. I could now locate myself correctly, and the lightning becoming every moment more vivid, I was enabled to grope my way by slow degrees to the mess, where I expected to find someone to show me my way home, but the servants, who knew from experience the probable effects of a cyclone, had already closed the outside Venetian shutters and barred all the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... across the Frauengasse, throwing its dust upon Desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission. When it broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly for their happiness—as the heathen grope for an unknown God—and threw down carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest will and crushed the stoutest heart, it was only working out its destiny. The dust sprinkled on Desiree's ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the artist still goes back for materials and begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage: otherwise all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for them. No, no, I must return to the sitting-room. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... "Beelzebub, the chief of the devils," was revived. The utter foolishness of such a conception was demonstrated, as it had been on an earlier occasion to which we have given attention.[921] The spiritual darkness, in which evil men grope for signs, the disappointment and condemnation that await them, and other precious precepts, Jesus elucidated in ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no, he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He would be startled to ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... for those who, when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such "strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when sorrow and bereavement overtake them—the lowering shadows of the dark and cloudy day—have still to grope after an unknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first time, the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Colonel, your mighty intellect has not yet comprehended the philosophy of religion. Oratorically you soar like the condor when its shadow falls upon the highest peaks of the Andes, but logically you grope among the pestilential shadows of an intellectual Dismal Swamp, ever mistaking shadow for substance. You are frittering away your mighty intellectual strength with the idiosyncrasies of creeds and the clumsy detail of cults, instead of considering the psychological phenomena ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... glides off in the direction of his horse; which happens to be nearest, like Cypriano's cowering in a crevice of the rock. Soon beside it, he is again seen to plunge his hand into the alparejas, and grope about, just as when searching ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... force was in both of them; both were enigmas; but the deeper we penetrate into Borrow, the more we like him; not so with the blue-eyed Dean. Borrow's depths are dark and tortuous, but never miasmic; and as we grope our way through them, we may stumble upon treasures, but ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and speaks Till sots and lovers from one string Dangle and dance in the same ring. Tom, of your piping I've heard said And seen—that you can rouse the dead, Dead-drunken men awash who lie In stinking gutters hear your cry, I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh, Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then You set them dancing, these dead men. They stamp and prance with sobbing breath, Victims of wine or love or death, In ragged time they jump, they shake Their heads, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... To grope in the valley of despair one moment and skip along the summit of beatitude the next was a little too much for ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... as he had appeared, and with this solemn warning ringing in his ears, the Baron found himself in inky darkness again. This time he did not hesitate to grope madly for the door, but hardly had he reached it, when, with a fresh sensation of horror, he stumbled upon a writhing form that seemed to be pawing the panels. He was, fortunately; as quickly reassured by hearing the voice of Mr. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... and shadows to grope in, Stretching out hands to the starbeams to guide us, Finding no place but our life's loves to hope ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... One that gives lights should not be an object of jealousy with others. Lights, again, should not be stolen, nor extinguished when given by others. One that steals a light becomes blind. Such a man has to grope through darkness (in the next world) and becomes destitute of resplendence. One that gives lights shines in beauty in the celestial regions like a row of lights. Among lights, the best are those in which ghee is burnt. Next in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... profound darkness when he landed, and the moon having gone behind a bank of cloud, he had to grope his way to Mrs. Prettyman's cottage, shouldering the axe. The isolated position of the house alone made the adventure possible, he reflected; he could not have cut down a tree in the hearing of neighbours, and as to old Elizabeth herself, he hoped she was deaf. Most old women were, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in with ease. Madame de Venelle was so used to her trade of watching us, that she rose even in her sleep to see what we were doing. One night, as my sister lay asleep with her mouth open, Madame de Venelle, after her accustomed manner, coming, asleep as she was, to grope in the dark, happened to thrust her finger into her mouth so far that my sister, starting out of her sleep, made her teeth almost meet in her finger. Judge you the amazement they both were in to find themselves in this ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... varied success, but on the whole with a steady gain for freedom; and now here, on the same field where it originated, is the long strife to be finally settled. On these same fields the same freedom is to culminate in unquenchable splendor, or to set forever, leaving mankind to grope in darkness and ignorance under the misrule of despotic tyranny. We are in arms not only to suppress an odious uprising of despotism against freedom within our own borders, but to show by our example, to all the nations of the earth, what freedom ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... further yet ... O, mist of suns I grope amidst your light, O, further yet, what vast response From what transcendent height? Wild wings that burst thro' death's dim night I can but pause and hark; For O, ye are too swift, too white, To follow across ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... easily accessible shelves but are placed out of reach to be labored for, like the views one gets of the valley here only after paying the price in an exceedingly toilsome journey. He was content to grope in a dead past for glories ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect. Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... made Herculean efforts to rehabilitate it. Jill played her polka till she was tired, and Tom, after setting out all the duplicate "goes" in the hall, retired to grope in the wet grass for a few of the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their inclinations might ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sun looks dull to me this morning. I have come from such a riotous dream. All last night I walked in a realm of such golden splendor, that I think even in our fullest noon I shall only see enough light to grope by for ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and the child's mother, than old school-friends—friends who had scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush. It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen, made straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked up in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. "She's coming to see me—that's for YOU," Strether's counsellor continued; "but ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Her air was wild and frightened; her trembling hands were stained with mud, seen by the light of the lantern she bore, and which she again hung in its accustomed place, stealing quietly away into the darkened hall, to grope her way up-stairs. All this while the farce of sending for Dr. Craig was being enacted, and Morton was out on his fruitless mission ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... curses for one kindly word,—they bear themselves toward their former masters very much as white men and women would under the same circumstances. True, by such deportment they unquestionably harm themselves; but consider of how little value life is from their stand-point. They grope in the darkness of this transition period, and rarely find any sure stay for the weary arm and the fainting heart. Their souls are filled with a great, but vague longing for freedom; they battle blindly with fate and circumstance for the unseen and uncomprehended, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... for her. I don't know how he left her, exactly. He did a tremendous business, but he spent as he went. He was a good fellow—I always liked the doctor! Terrible affair! Terrible affair! Jason! Where is that advertisement of Grope County Iowa Mortgage? You have filed it in the wrong place! Be more careful ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... we turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to uniformity. Especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as 1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt. If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may find it necessary to make a division ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... focus of all rays Passing through Nature and the soul and mind. It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze, That had it not, at intervals, a haze, Grading both Angel and the Human-kind, The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind, To grope in Heaven, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... I waxed old, The blynd boy, Venus baby, For want of cunning, made me bold In bitter hyve to grope for honny: But when he saw me stung and cry, He tooke his ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... massive stone, each with its separate entrance. I know that the first two are empty. It is in the third that the Ogress dwells, unless, indeed, she has already set out upon her nocturnal hunt for human flesh. Pitch darkness reigns within and I have to grope my way. Quickly I light a match. Yes, there she is indeed, alone and upright, almost part of the end wall, on which my little light makes the horrible shadow of her head dance. The match goes out—irreverently I light many more ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I can help mould her little mind—see it opening up, one chamber of wonder after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to get!" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair |
