"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night of her coming she went straight to the Anemones, who stood in their green kerchiefs and didn't know how to hold out any longer. And one, two, three! there they stood in their newly-ironed white collars, and looked so fresh and so pretty that the Starlings sang their prettiest songs out of sheer joy in them. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... said the Bishop in a low voice. 'And the wedding is to be soon. Her long solitude and sufferings justify haste. What you said was true. Sheer weariness and distraction have driven her to me. She was quite passive at last, and agreed to anything I proposed—such is the persuasive force of trained logical reasoning! A good and wise woman, she perceived what a true ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... unskilled in war except with savages, and it is hardly probable I shall be able to outwit the trained guardsmen of Spain. Yet this I will say: I have determined to venture all at your desire. As I possess small skill or knowledge to aid me, I shall put audacity to the front, permitting sheer daring either to succeed or fail. But it would be wrong, Madame, for me to encourage you with false expectation. I deem it best to be perfectly frank, and I do not clearly see how this rescue is to be accomplished. I can form no definite plan of action; all I even hope for is, that the good God ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... had fallen of late years from a position of moderate comfort into sheer struggle for subsistence. Jessica, armed with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting governess. At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something of hysteric ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... loveth Me not, keepeth not My word"; nor does such a one perform any "feeding of sheep," i. e., he is no pope at all, as they explain it. Thus it comes that the same passages which are cited in its favor are against the papacy; a just retribution for those who treat the holy Word of God in sheer madness, as though it were fool's talk, and who would make out of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... 1783, with our recognition of your right and power to be a free and independent people. Of those who fought against you I say nought. But I must speak of those who fought for you—who brought to naught, by sheer hard blows, that family compact of the House of Bourbon, which would have been as dangerous to you upon this side of the ocean as to us upon the other; who smote with a continual stroke the trans-Atlantic power of Spain, till they placed her once vast and rich possessions at your mercy to this ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... Here also there has been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness of the human debacle. The only aspect of the powers above them has seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... sportsman," his mother observed. "I wish you could convert your friend, Mr. Furley. There's a perfectly terrible article of his in the National this month. I can't understand a word of it, but it reads like sheer anarchy." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile. Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless—as his uncle had proved—for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right! He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage—there was no luck in it—he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... she excused herself. She rested her cheek on the child's head and looked over at the doctor. She wore a dark crimson silk, the bosom filled with sheer white muslin that was caught together under her soft chin by a little pearl pin; her lace undersleeves were pushed back so that William could see the lovely lines of her white wrists. Her parted hair fell in soft, untidy waves down over her ears; she was staring absently across David's head into ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... head with a look of apprehension). The devil is a sly rogue. Their worships might perhaps desire my company a little longer than I should wish; and, for sheer farce sake, I may ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bronte never could go on the moors. She was frail and weak, poor woman, when she came to live in the oblong grey stone parsonage on the windy top of the hill. The village ran sheer down at her feet; but she could not walk down the steep rough-paven street, nor on the pathless moors. She was very ill and weak; her husband spent nearly all his time in the study, writing his poems, his tracts, and his sermons. She had no companions but the children. And when, in a very few ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento, and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara facade that is sheer ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... in the month of August, Mr. Benjamin Staff sat at table in the dining-room of the Authors' Club, moodily munching a morsel of cheese and a segment of cast-iron biscuit and wondering what he must do to be saved from the death-in-life of sheer ennui. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Internet access in public libraries uniquely promotes First Amendment values, by offering low barriers to entry to speakers and listeners. The content of speech on the Internet is as diverse as human thought, and the extent to which the Internet promotes First Amendment values is evident from the sheer breadth of speech that this new medium enables. To survive strict scrutiny, a public library's use of filtering software must be narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest, and there must be no less restrictive alternative that could effectively ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... this text is true, the text itself will tell me why. It is 'the God of peace' that is going to 'bruise Satan.' Do you keep yourself in touch with Him, dear friend? And do you let His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit and life? It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you do not take the medicine. The slow process by which, at the best, many Christian people 'bruise Satan under their feet,' during which he hurts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sinister effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and there have been such words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... apartment lay that mutilated head, a sheer fabrication of papier-mache. He wondered if Mrs. Cassidy had swept it out ... the head that had meant so much to him. There was no hope any more. If he were still free in Paris he would have one look at that tomb, and then ... well, he had had ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fierce Spirit of the Hurricane himself, the sea Azrael, in storm and in darkness, came thundering on with stunning violence, tearing off the snowy scalps of the tortured billows, and with tremendous and sheer force, crushing down beneath his chariot wheels their mountainous and howling ridges into one level plain of foaming water. Our chainplates, strong fastenings, and clenched bolts, drew like pliant wires, shrouds and stays were torn away ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... I did not mean to deceive you—at least not at first. Neither did Branwen. I knew nothing about it till she came home, after being with you at the Swamp, and told me that she was impelled by sheer pity to follow you, intending to nurse you; thinking at first that we had let you go to die alone. Then she was caught in the woods by robbers, and she only escaped from them by putting on a boy's dress and running away. They gave chase, however, caught her up, and, had it not been for you, would ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Conrad moved from group to group, leaving a wake of energy. By sheer personality and grit he gained his ends, though railway construction was as foreign to his life's plans, past ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... asked the momentous question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the sheer pole we passed within a foot of a figure lounging across the rail at the poop break, and we knew it was Swope. There had been no word from ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... among us are in the habit of holding up as a perfect model, is not the character of a benefactor but of a martyr, a spirit from a higher world lacerated in its passage through this uncomprehending and perverse existence, healing and forgiving out of sheer compassion, sustained by his inner affinities to the supernatural, and absolutely disenchanted with all earthly or political goods. Christ did not suffer, like Prometheus, for having bestowed or wished to bestow any earthly blessing: the only blessing he bequeathed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... so great, were the barbarous excesses committed by the savages upon the whites in their power, that the minds of those who were actors in those scenes, were deprived of the faculty of discriminating between what was right or wrong to be practised towards them. And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... general colouring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side, and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessary matter, always poured itself forth in writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was sheer pleasure to him." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... grateful to you for having been the occasion of this little outing. What good travellers we are, if we had only faith; no man need stay in Edinburgh but by unbelief; my religious organ has been ailing for a while past, and I have lain a great deal in Edinburgh, a sheer hulk in consequence. But I got out my wings, and have taken a change ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my evil deeds by blowing out my brains if I ever ill-treated her again. These periods of exaltation sometimes lasted several hours, during which time I exhausted myself in foolish expressions of love and esteem. Then morning came; day appeared; I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and I awakened with a smile on my lips, mocking ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... them round his arms and with sheer strength Swing down the hammer, clinch him to ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... was forced through Congress under party pressure, and by the sheer weight of a large Democratic majority in both branches, it met from the first a decided and unmistakable popular condemnation in the free States. While the measure was yet under discussion in the House in March, New Hampshire ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the head of the table not been the mother of a large family, she might possibly have dropt the carving knife and fork, in sheer astonishment at the unaccountableness of the question, but as it was, she had heard so many other odd ones before, that she did not by outward sign demonstrate the amusement she felt at this, but simply said,—"Perhaps he could"—for she knew ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... out to Febrer certain window-like caves in the most sheer and inaccessible cliffs of the smaller island. Neither goat nor man could reach them. Uncle Ventolera knew what was hidden within those dark passages. They were beehives; beehives centuries and centuries old; natural retreats of bees that, crossing the straits between Iviza and the Vedra, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had lost. It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone out of it. Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... John Kemp—here you be on the brink of eternity, above the old quarry. There's a sheer drop of a hundred feet. We'll tie your legs and hang you by your fingers. If you hang long enough, you'll have time to say your ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... himself. Had she come to him with some scheme for changing everything about the place, making him think that the alterations were a matter of taste or of mere personal pleasure, he would probably have given his assent at once, thinking nothing of the money. But all this was sheer display. Then he walked up and saw the flag waving over the Castle, indicating that he, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, was present there on his own soil. That was right. That was as it should be, because the flag was waving in compliance with an acknowledged ordinance. Of all ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... measure. "It is all the work of God" and Nicholas had passed into his cell well pleased. And the next evening he had called softly to the masterpiece of the Creator, as she went by, and the girl, startled and fearful at first, had spoken a few words out of sheer pity for the hungry, lonely soul looking out so wistfully at her; and then how soon had come other meetings, the plan to escape—that final vision which had seemed to justify ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... of northern Romanism. If Catholics are wrong and on the way to perdition and blisters there are 33,000 of them here moving in that very awkward direction at the present. A number so large, whether right or wrong cannot he despised; a body so great, whether good or evil, will, by its sheer inherent force, persist in living, moving, and having, a fair share of being. You can't evaporate 33,000 of anything in a hurry; and you could no more put a nightcap upon the Catholics of Preston than you could blacken up the eye of the sun. That stout old Vatican gentleman who storms this fast world ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... wept unrestrainedly. To tell the truth, I knew not what to do, and Pierrebon kept his head well to the front, looking neither to the right nor to the left. In sheer desperation I asked her not to weep, whereat she wept the more; and then I touched her shoulder with my hand, as one would caress a child; but she shook me off, turning a face that seemed scared with terror to me, and I could only stammer out an ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark—so, it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... your energies be bent on occupying the advantageous position first. So Ts'ao Kung. Li Ch'uan and others, however, suppose the meaning to be that the enemy has already forestalled us, sot that it would be sheer madness to attack. In the SUN TZU HSU LU, when the King of Wu inquires what should be done in this case, Sun Tzu replies: "The rule with regard to contentious ground is that those in possession have the advantage over the other side. If a position of this kind is secured first by the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
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— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... strongest men and Nations: all this is as a road to thee, paved smooth through the abyss,—till all this end. Till men's bitter necessities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience with thee is done; and there is no road or footing any farther, and the abyss yawns sheer!— ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... rejected by Duhm and Cornill, along with XI. 22b, 23, XII. 3b, XVII. 18 for no textual or metrical reasons, but only because these scholars shrink from attributing to Jeremiah such outbursts of passion: just as we have seen them for similarly sheer reasons of sentiment refuse to consider as his the advice to desert to the enemy.(724) Yet they admit inconsistently the genuineness of VI. 11, XI. 20, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... to the plunging beast, and began to belabor it with his quirt, to take the spirit out of it. The wolf had never felt the sting of a whip before. It was such a new experience to it that it stopped bucking in sheer amazement. But Ted did not discontinue, and the wolf slunk upon the ground, its wild nature thoroughly tamed ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... rich yellow sand seen nowhere south of Assouan in such glorious colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a shaduf to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or stony hills on each side. Grand beyond thought ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... of women who know just enough to appreciate their compliments—women who deprecate their "strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is due to sheer inability to produce a ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... night at Newcastle and went forward next morning to Alnmouth, which according to a map with which I had provided myself, was the nearest station to Ravensdene Court. And soon after arriving at Alnmouth the first chapter of my adventures opened, and came about by sheer luck. It was a particularly fine, bright, sharply-bracing morning, and as I was under no particular obligation to present myself at Ravensdene Court at any fixed time, I determined to walk thither by way of the coast. The distance, according ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... regular motion; by which change of direction, order succeeded to confusion in the arrangement of its component parts. The philosopher adds that the deluge was produced by an uncourteous salute from the watery tail of another comet; doubtless through sheer envy of its improved condition; thus furnishing a melancholy proof that jealousy may prevail even among the heavenly bodies, and discord interrupt that celestial harmony of the spheres so ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... disturbed the civil rights deputy. The services had fortuitously avoided several (p. 565) potentially embarrassing incidents when officials were invited to attend segregated functions, and Fitt warned Paul that "if we don't erect a better safeguard than sheer chance, we're bound somewhere, sometime soon to look foolish and insensitive."[22-33] He wanted McNamara to issue a policy statement on the subject, admittedly a difficult task because it would be hard to write and would require ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... those which Sir Walter Scott used to thread the wilds of Scotland to gather up; but we value them not. By-and-by, posterity will anathematize us for letting our old national stories die in blind contempt or sheer ignorance of their value. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and declared that old Mrs. Scratchard was envious, because she had lost all her own tail-feathers, and looked more like a worn- out old feather-duster than a respectable hen, and that therefore she was filled with sheer envy of anybody that was young and pretty. So young Mrs. Feathertop cackled gay defiance at her busy rubbishy neighbour, as she sunned herself under the bushes on fine ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the English prayer meeting Sabbath evening, February 18th, in that desponding state that sometimes follows intense and protracted desire, when its object is not attained. At such times, the sensibilities seem paralyzed, and emotion dies of sheer exhaustion. The pupils had retired; so also had Miss Rice; and she was left alone. Her thoughts brooded over the state of her charge, but she had no strength to rise and carry those precious souls to ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... assured myself that such deductions were of little or no use, and yet, I could not help minutely examining the pretty trifles lying on the desk. I scrutinized the handkerchief for a monogram or an initial, but it had none. It was dainty, plain and fine, of sheer linen, with a narrow hem. To me it indicated an owner of a refined, feminine type, and absolutely nothing more. I couldn't help thinking that even Fleming Stone could not infer any personal characteristics of the lady from that blank square ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... had overcome many things in her life by the sheer force and persistency of her will. But she could not get the better of heredity. Rachel was her father's daughter at all points, and Isabella Spencer escaped hating her for it only by loving her the more fiercely because of it. Even ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Clare started again in sheer surprise. She had expected tears, fainting, angry words, a passionate appeal—anything rather than what she heard. Brook produced a silver case which gleamed in the moonlight. Lady Fan took a cigarette, and her companion took another. ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... was from the no'th, an' I went over every bit o' landscape in the country until at last I figgered out the' was only one place in Texas that filled the bill. A path swung around a crag an' the' was a shelf of stone ten feet below it an' eight feet wide, then it cut off sheer, fifty feet to the rocky bank of a creek. I reached out with my hand an' felt the edge of it, an' it give me an awful chill. I don't like to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, out of sheer mischief, that he should employ the dormant energies of the crew in hauling both cables up on deck and turning ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... readily be able to see that these two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... prospect," said the sculptor; "for it was from this point—at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose—that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kind to you also personally. (2) The next is, instead of a good deal of unnecessary abuse, to have the Navy so organised that it can and must be superior to the French. All beyond these two points is sheer nonsense. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... contentions. If it feels itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... passed into the inner room, and returned in a moment with the girl's bundle. And with his return one glance showed him how nearly his plans were upset. Jessie was clasping Jamie in her arms, kissing him hungrily, tears streaming down her cheeks, while, out of sheer sympathy, little Vada was clinging to her mother's skirts, her small face buried in amongst them, sobbing as though ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... pessimism is too well known to most of us to be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly, as a Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What really saved me was the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... on his way South. He spent a week in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days. On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with panic—an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning to him with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... little. But she had listened to all Monsieur had said, and if he continued to talk she would not think of going to sleep. Whereupon she closed her eyes, and when I opened mine I saw that her head had slipped along the smooth wooden back of the carriage and rested on Paragot's shoulder. Through sheer kindliness and pity he had put his arm around her so as to settle her comfortably as ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... would be solemnly decided. Note well. Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie—they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural—the little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest, lawful bantling all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and as you are the legitimate urchin, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is very curious," said Inspector Walters, dropping his hands on his knees in sheer amazement at such an extraordinary statement from a man whose clearness and accuracy of perception had been so fully justified by ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... heard at the Futurist, and between us and Harris and Ike the Dropper several couples were one-stepping, each in their own sweet way. As the music became more lively their dancing came more and more to resemble some of the almost brutal Apache dances of Paris, in that the man seemed to exert sheer force and the woman agility in avoiding him. It was an entirely new phase of afternoon dancing, an entirely new "leisure class," this strange combination of Bohemia ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up the rocks to a cleft—a hole in the sheer rock overhung by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... all her might; and telling her to eat all that was left upon the dish, sat by, watching her with the utmost satisfaction in her countenance, though she certainly had not had a very capital dinner herself. Poor little Tibb! She looked as if she hardly knew how to eat, for sheer joy! However, she did finish at last; and then, running up to Friskarina, called her her only friend—her deliverer from starvation—and said many other very affectionate things besides. But Friskarina cut them short, by begging her ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... leaving us unscathed? To suppose any such thing would be—to say the least of it—foolishness. The probability was that they would attack us, sack the place, carrying away everything that took their fancy, including the treasure-chests, murder Billy and me, and burn down the house out of sheer ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... and from almost every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident—I shouldn't value it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... evening service again! Only fifty people out, and it was a sheer waste of fuel and light. The sermon was one of the dullest I ever heard. I believe Mr. Jones is growing too old for our church. We need a young man, more up with the times. He is everlastingly harping on the necessity of doing what we can in the present to save souls. To hear him talk ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... the church of St. Sophia, and were therein, besought their lord and the emperor to come to their relief; for if they received no help they could not hold out, especially as they had no provisions. Through sheer distress and sore need, the Emperor Henry and his people agreed that they must once more abandon thought of going to Adrianople, and cross the straits of St. George, to the Turkish side, with as many people as they could ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... northern blue, and the mist of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over all—confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher and a higher altitude of human lights—what a wonderful sight rising sheer out of the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... belief he may ask, "How can God see so many condemned in hell when He can save them all in an instant from pure mercy?" And more such things, which can only be called an atrocious indictment of the Divine. From the above it may be evident that belief in instantaneous salvation out of sheer mercy is the flying fiery serpent ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... cried Paul, dropping the morsel he was sucking, from sheer reluctance to abandon the hump, and casting a fierce and direct look into the very teeth of the unconscious physician. "I reckon, stranger, you have a mind to bag ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; but the invulnerable armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... the cutter's crew remains mute, not one essaying to speak a word. They are silent, less from surprise than sheer stark terror. Fear is depicted on their faces and observable in their attitudes, as no wonder it should. What they have just seen is sufficient to terrify the stoutest hearts—even those of tried tars, as all of them are. A ship manned by ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... sheer youth of her (he realized) more than in aught else, lay her chiefest charm. She could be little more than a child, indeed, if he were to judge her by the purity of her shadowed eyes and the absence of emotion in the calm and direct ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of his life when he was at New York, living in that little cottage at Fordham, where his poor wife died. He was always borrowing money, from sheer necessity, to keep himself and his wife from starvation. Once while in New York he was so hard pressed that Mrs. Clemm went out to see if she could not get work for him. She went to the office of Nathaniel P. Willis, who was the editor and proprietor of The Mirror. Willis was then ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... that their total number of one hundred and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight "gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, 1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition arrived with reinforcements and supplies, only thirty-eight were ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... schooner, without firing or showing any unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... which, partly doubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and partly ambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the Gothic bridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in sheer descent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which shot along the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and bleeding, and half drowned with the water which in their terror and surprise found easy way into their ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... was still crouching in the corner, his face uplifted and torn with agony. He gave one fearful sob, and then he sank forward; drawing himself by the sheer force of his arms he crawled again into sight, and lay clinging to the sofa. Then he gave ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... quaint words, the curious phrases I had learnt during our exile at the Pescadores Islands—by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar book, without attaching the least sense to them—should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... she was "Lorelei," and had no concealments from the world, "Mascotte" never sped more bravely. Through the wide Noord Canal she took us as unconcernedly as if our hopes and fears for the future were nothing to her. Out of sheer spite at her lack of sympathy, I enjoyed my private knowledge that, whatever happens to her, she is certain to lose her companion, "Waterspin." But she didn't know that; so she jogged on, purring, in blissful ignorance of the separation in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... talent, treason against treason—in all this Randal Leslie would have risen superior to Giulio di Peschiera. But what now crushed him was not the superior intellect,—it was the sheer brute power of audacity and nerve. Here stood the careless, unblushing villain, making light of his guilt, carrying it away from disgust itself, with resolute look and front erect. There stood the abler, subtler, profounder criminal, cowering, abject, pitiful; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to where the ledge ended in a sheer drop down to the sea; and putting something very carefully in his pocket, he rose to his feet ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... his heart he knew it would not be she he saw. He slept little during this period, and looked a good six or seven years older than his real age. This was succeeded by one of the phases of numbness when partly reaction, because the mind cannot keep stretched too tautly, and partly sheer physical fatigue from the hard work he drove himself to every day, made for a merciful slough of the spirit in which it all the time deceitfully gathered itself together for ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... for the palanquin that finally came in sight showed by its richness that it could belong only to royalty, and by its beauty and grace, only to a woman. Made of silver and rock crystal, studded with diamonds and pearls, and hung about with sheer curtains of embroidered yellow silk, the palanquin belonged without doubt to a young girl of the royal house. As it appeared under the high arch of the outer gate, a roar of joy and greeting arose from the waiting ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... for the office, and, being defeated in the court below, appealed to the Supreme Court. He then became very much exercised over his appeal, because I was one of the Justices. There were not wanting persons who, out of sheer malice, or not comprehending any higher motives of conduct than such as governed themselves, represented that I would improve the opportunity to strike ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... in truth, is itself an islet, being cut off from Brefar by a channel, scarcely eight feet wide, through which the seas rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the headland rises grim and stark—a very Gibraltar of the birds, that roost in regiments ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... water. And then, when one hand was loosed in the struggle, she twisted it through his long hair, and dragged back his head till his eyes were nearly starting from their sockets. Anastasia Bergen had hitherto been a sheer woman, all feminine in her nature. But now the foam came to her mouth, and fire sprang from her eyes, and the muscles of her body worked as though she had been trained to deeds of violence. Of violence, Aaron Trow had known much in his rough life, but never had ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence was intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to find her in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer horror ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... is far more artificial, far more an embodiment of mathematical convenience, than is commonly believed by those who philosophise on physics. Thus even if (which I cannot for a moment admit) the persistence of some entity were among the necessary postulates of science, it would be a sheer error to infer from this the constancy of any physical quantity, or the a priori necessity of any such constancy which may be empirically discovered. In the third place, it has become more and more ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... another, and a third on both. At last, and whether by design or accident, the bows of the Good Hope were liberated; and the ever-ready Lawless, who had maintained his place at the helm through all the hurly-burly by sheer strength of body and a liberal use of the cold steel, instantly clapped her on the proper tack. The ship began to move once more forward on the stormy sea, its scuppers running blood, its deck heaped with fallen men, sprawling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of magic comes out most clearly in magical dances. We think of dancing as a light form of recreation, practised by the young from sheer joie de vivre and unsuitable for the mature. But among the Tarahumares (Carl Lumholtz, "Unknown Mexico", page 330, London, 1903.) in Mexico the word for dancing, nolavoa, means "to work." Old men will reproach young men saying "Why do you not go to work?" meaning ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... "I have heard of your bravery, but this is sheer recklessness. And to pretend you have forgotten the inn! I ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... did not last very long, the opposing forces being so unequally matched; so, as soon as Frank and his coadjutors had been borne down by the sheer weight of numbers, their conquerors hustled them into the corner of the deck under the break of the poop, where the captain was still lying, throwing them down beside him and telling them they had better keep quiet now they had had ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and licked sheer out of go an' grit, From the times of Pharaoh down to the Khe-dive; Till you 'ardly feel yerself one bloomin' bit, And I almost wonder you are left alive. But we've got you out of a good deal of that, Sir EVELYN and the rest of us. You foller; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... of sheer military genius and derringdo combined resulted in his all but single-handed winning of the fracas between Continental Hovercraft and Vacuum Tube Transport, and thus inflicting defeat upon none other than Marshal Stonewall Cogswell ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... has happened to make you so merry?' she said, as he threw up his cap in sheer exuberance ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... never thought of their wearing out like that, and he leaned up, gazing at the stocking in sheer astonishment. His mother mistook the look on his face for another kind of surprise. "How can they have got into such a state? They were quite sound when I bandaged your ankle. Were they sound when you ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... pair of eyes belonged to a boy of twelve, though he looked older—a street urchin—dirty, ragged, with a pinched face and a starved, ill-clad form. A look of sheer desperation came into these eyes when their owner saw the money, and he trembled with excitement as a certain bold and wicked thought came into his mind—a thought born, not of a bad ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... Ark swept onward, and by the time the scene with the torches was enacting beneath the trees, it had reached the open lake, Floating Tom causing it to sheer further from the land with a sort of instinctive dread of retaliation. An hour now passed in gloomy silence, no one appearing disposed to break it. Hist had retired to her pallet, and Chingachgook lay sleeping in the forward part of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... shut the field against simple merit; anyhow, discouraged it. A person might have all the qualities for a Governorship, except part and parcel in the peerage. On the other hand, it was injurious to the Colonies, because it set up men on an eminence, not for sheer merit, but because they happened to be born to rank. How did Napoleon Bonaparte make his army? By opening the very highest places to ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... make the customary bow, which blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit better than ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... great and small shot charge him, board him thwart the hawse, on the bow, midships, or, rather than fail, on his quarter; or make fast your grapplings to his close-fights and sheer off' [which would tear ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... became swollen and visible. He was reduced to only skin and bones. Indeed, it has been heard by us that the righteous-souled Matanga, while practising those austerities at Gaya, dropped down on the ground from sheer exhaustion. The lord and giver of boons, engaged in the good of all creatures, viz., Vasava beholding him falling down, quickly came to that spot and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals, diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. Par exemple, madame, par exemple!" And, with a frantic gesture and a roar of laughter, he literally tore off his huge moustache with both his hands, at a single pluck. "And my chevelure also, madame. See, here it goes—all for despair—hurra, hurra, hurrah! ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... metaphor, being its motto. It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black wall of cloud seemed to rise sheer from the water and join the gray sky that arched over the great flat spaces. And in the absence of stars, the earth itself seemed to gain in vastness and mystery, its own awfulness, as it sped round, unlessened by those endless perspectives of vaster planets. And from the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... we were caught by one of the sudden southwesterly gales which are the terror of the Mediterranean, and more dangerous than a full-grown Atlantic gale. The cliffs to the north of Argostoli were in sight, looming sheer rock above the sea line, and the wind, rapidly increasing, blew directly on shore, bringing with it a quick, sharp sea, and getting up before long a cross sea by the repercussion from the cliffs, so that in the complicated tumult of waters ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of every calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of increase, and the like; its human history, discovery ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... set out on his exacting adventure. On the voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips that he must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader with his fists and triumphed by sheer strength of body and will. A second mutiny he also quelled, and then took his ship to Jamaica where he got rid of its worthless crew. His enterprise had apparently failed; but the second Duke of Albemarle and other ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, Anna Myhrman, the youngest daughter of the family, he soon became attached by the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... contrast, as far as outward characteristics went, was offered by the other great orator of the same time. Sheil was very small, and of mean presence; with a singularly fidgety manner, a shrill voice, and a delivery unintelligibly rapid. But in sheer beauty of elaborated diction not O'Connell nor any one else could surpass him. There are few finer speeches in the language than that in which he took Lord Lyndhurst to task for applying the term "aliens" to the Irish in a speech on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... who does the actual thing which brings you within the power of the law. I am not over-scrupulous, you know. I hate wrongdoing, but I have never been able to treat as equal criminals the poor man who steals for a living, and the rich financier who robs right and left out of sheer greed. I agree with you that crime is not an absolute thing. The circumstances connected with every action in life determine its morality or immorality. But, Peter, it isn't worth while ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morbid imagination—diseased and disturbed with long brooding, sick with the monotony of repeated sensation—to be disengaged from all this immensity, a sense of a vast oppression, formless, disquieting. The terror of sheer bigness grew slowly in her mind; loneliness beyond words gradually enveloped her. She was lost in all these limitless reaches of space. Had she been abandoned in mid-ocean, in an open boat, her terror could hardly have been greater. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... forget this sensitive nature of the animal, and to treat it as a mere thing.—We have a perfect right to sacrifice the pleasure of an animal to the welfare of ourselves. We have no right to sacrifice the welfare of the animal to our capricious feelings. We have no right to neglect an animal from sheer unwillingness to give it the reasonable attention which is necessary to provide it with proper food, proper care, proper shelter, and proper exercise. A little girl, reproved for neglecting to feed her rabbits, when asked ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... "Better sheer off and give it a wide berth, then," counseled his chum. "If it were the captain or the chief, you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... words on any given subject, but wholly non-communicative as regards himself. He perhaps was possessed of more intuition than his manner would reveal, although he gave every appearance of arriving at his conclusions by the sheer force of logic. His words and deeds never betrayed his whole mind, of that she was certain, yet he could assert himself rather forcibly when put to the test, as in the painful incident at the Coffee House. He would never suffer from ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... Marx rose and left the room. I was seized with one of those sudden and unaccountable panics, and from sheer embarrassment—my mood was far too tragic to admit of flippancy—blurted out, 'You must come to America, Mr. President, as soon as all this trouble is settled, and see how ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... on their hind legs, and then not only butt, but "make a cut down and a jerk up, with the ribbed front of their scimitar-shaped horn, as with a sabre. When the O. cycloceros attacked a large domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of the head, and then bounding out of the way before the blow could be returned." In Pembrokeshire ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... extend fifteen miles from Fort Lee to Piermont, a sheer wall of trap rock from 300 to ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... her, through sheer will, to lift her eyes to his. They were startled and sullen. With a start he saw, what he had missed before, that this woman, his wife, was a stranger. But he had himself well in hand now and his gaze did not falter. There ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Parliament, the view of the Government being that they must cut their legislative Ulster according to their Protestant cloth. Mr. CLYNES announced the intention of the Labour Party to wash their hands of the Bill, which he regarded as a sheer waste of time. Undeterred by the prospect of this calamity the House passed Clause I. by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... invested instrumental music with a wonderful poignancy and power of expression, elevating it to the point of being the medium of expressing some of the greatest thoughts we possess. In so doing, however, he shattered many of the great idols of formalism by the sheer ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... called to see her the following afternoon and found her surrounded with women and gowns and flowers. The women fled when he approached, but the gowns and flowers remained, and there was talk upon them till at last, in sheer desperation, Clement said: ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... to her tirade, carelessly rocking back and forth on the two rear legs of his tilted chair. When finally she stopped for sheer want of breath ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... did not stop to consider, but vanished on the instant, and Devine, breaking into a little laugh from sheer relief, fancied that they had jumped behind adjacent trees. Saunders, who stood gazing into the shadows, waved ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... from sheer exhaustion, he threw himself on his couch, and fell into a troubled sleep, filled with broken and distorted visions of the scenes that had occupied his waking hours. But he gradually became quieter, and it ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay bright under the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Exaggeration or false coloring is as much a violation of integrity as a direct falsehood. Equivocation is often falsehood. Deception in all forms is opposed to integrity. Mock manners, pretended emotions, affectation, policy plans to secure attention and respect are all sheer falsehoods, and in the end injure her who is guilty of them. Respect and affection are the out-growth of confidence. She who secures the firmest confidence will secure the most respect and love. No love ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... almost cruel to have denied this mother a share in the triumphs of that evening. And with that, she realized that Mrs. Condor had ceased singing. A hum broke loose, followed by applause. Claire grew faint. Her head began to swirl. She clutched the piano stool and by sheer terror at the thought of creating a scene she managed to keep her consciousness as she felt Mrs. Condor's hand upon her shoulder and heard a voice that ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... like, so long as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot, but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day—of course he has. But if he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Bo-tree, that he began his career as "The Enlightened." He was now a Buddha, and claimed to have attained Nirvana. All that has been written of his having left his palace with the purpose of becoming a saviour of mankind, is the sheer assumption of the later legends and their apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... a moment all the house would be laughing ... at first out of sheer nervousness over the delay in the progress of the play—then ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... lusty freshmen had shouted together as they leaped forward, and the prolonged yell was repeated when all the assembly had instantly turned and for a moment in sheer astonishment were gazing at the startling approach of men ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... batteries of trench mortars, until the front line of German trenches had been reached. Then, wave after wave, the advance was continued, in the face of a furious British fire, until the defenders were compelled to draw back through sheer force and weight of numbers. The German waves moved forward at the calculated rate of 200 yards every four minutes, wherever it was found possible to do so. Each wave, on reaching its objective point, dropped to the ground and opened fire with rifles and machine guns, placing a barrage ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... again in sheer misery. "I dunno, I'm sure, whatever made me take and do it. I've stood so much more from all of 'ee and never so much as opened my lips. I reckon 'twas the weather made me ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... is always regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself being good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil for sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the good that is willed in ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... an ever higher and more tragic key. Nobody indeed of the party was the least tragic. Everybody walked, fished, flirted, and laughed from morning till night. Yet every newspaper, every post, brought news of some death that affected one or other of the large group; and amid all the sheer physical joy of the long days in the open, bathed in sun and wind, there was a sense in all of them—or almost all of them—that no summer now is as the summers of the past, that behind and around the laughter and the picnicking there lay the Shadow ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would make the Snail let go his support and, at the very least, precipitate him from the tall stalk whereon he is blissfully slumbering. Now any game falling to the ground would seem to be so much sheer loss, for the Glow-worm has no great zeal for hunting-expeditions: he profits by the discoveries which good luck sends him, without undertaking assiduous searches. It is essential, therefore, that the equilibrium of a prize perched on the top of a stalk and only just held in position by a touch ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... blew—not up the road or down it, though that's bad enough, but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines they used to rule in the copy-books at school, to make the boys slope well. For a moment it would die away, and the traveller would begin to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... their hob-nailed brogans, you would think they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set, who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals; now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them something of the dignity of their animals; ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville |
