"Sheer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grinding intellectual labour that could be completely obviated by Inspiration. I did it myself, so I know what it's like. Up till the time I was thirty-eight I was a writer like you—a writer without Inspiration. All I wrote I squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work. Why, in those days I was never able to do more than six-fifty words an hour, and what's more, I often didn't sell what I wrote." He sighed. "We artists," he said parenthetically, "we intellectuals aren't much appreciated here in ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... occupied a flat plateau, slightly elevated above the surrounding country, and on the brink of a sheer drop of some six or seven thousand feet to an arm of the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... mercuryball game. Was there some reason behind his companion's strange actions? In vain, Tom racked his brain to find the answer. There had to be some explanation. Yet what could it possibly be? He tossed and turned and worried and finally—comfortable as the monorail car was—he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... adventurers determined, at all hazards, to cross to the opposite side, in hopes of finding a country that might afford them sustenance. A frail bridge was constructed by throwing the huge trunks of trees across the chasm, where the cliffs, as if split asunder by some convulsion of nature, descended sheer down a perpendicular depth of several hundred feet. Over this airy causeway the men and horses succeeded in effecting their passage with the loss of a single Spaniard, who, made giddy by heedlessly looking down, lost his footing and fell ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... energy of despair at their task of clearing the deck, in spite of the twofold danger of being burnt and stunned by the hot falling stones. While we were engraved in this struggle, and enveloped in the sheer blackness of a veritable hell, a new and terrible danger came upon us. This was the approach of the tidal wave caused by the final eruption, which occurred about 12.30 to 1 p.m. The wave reached us at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... to expose the sheer foolishness of this argument. The first absurdity is that the women who are in comfortable circumstances could continue to be cultured and of social value if they were the mothers of large families. Neither could they maintain their ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... and the substance of his thoughts was that this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet, innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the world in general she was still the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Dunstanborough Castle. As the wind fell light, we pulled in to have a look at it, papa being anxious to do so, as he had visited it in his younger days. The weather-beaten ruin stands on the summit of a black cliff, rising sheer out of the ocean. Three towers, one square, and the others semicircular, remain, with the greater portion of the outer wall, enclosing several acres of green turf, over which, instead of mail-clad warriors, peaceable sheep ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... minutes before we could get her clear. In the meantime the fire began to blaze up in a very alarming manner under the mizzen chains, where, by the attraction of the two floating bodies, she seemed resolved to continue; but on our putting the helm up, and giving the vessel a sheer the contrary way, as soon as we were before the wind, she parted from us, to our great joy, and was soon in a volume of flame. Our reason for setting her on fire alongside was to save time, as we wanted to go in chase ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... visible track. Stonor searched the beach for half a mile in either direction without being able to find a single track in any wet or muddy place, and without discovering any place where one had struck up the bank into the bush. On the down-river side he was halted by a low, sheer wall of rock washed by the current. He made sure that no one had tried to climb around this miniature precipice. From this point the rapids still swept on down out ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... in the trim skirt and stainless blouse, clipped by the close belt; and with the bit of narrow black velvet ribbon round her throat. Even in the morning she appeared once more with a clear parting in her brushed and burnished hair. Even in the morning her soft skin was once more sweet in its sheer cleanness. And in the evening there soaked through and fell and hung about her that old fragrance of violets that invariably ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... generally, I think, to the latter. Life everywhere appeared to me as blocked from the full delivery of its sweet and lovely message. Some counter influence stopped it—suppression; or sent it awry—exaggeration. The house itself, mere expression, of course, of a narrow, limited mind, was sheer ugliness; it required no further explanation. With the grounds and garden, so far as shape and general plan were concerned, this was also true; but that trees and flowers and other natural details should share the same deficiency perplexed my logical soul, and even dismayed it. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... associated with the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge Saint Helena: rugged, volcanic; small scattered plateaus and plains Ascension: surface covered by lava flows and cinder cones of 44 dormant volcanoes; ground rises to the east Tristan da Cunha: sheer cliffs line the coastline of the nearly circular island; the flanks of the central volcanic peak are deeply dissected; narrow coastal plain lies between The Peak and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... impossibility. It was startling, grimly thrilling. There was the sense among some about the table of struggling mentally to break the spell which this coldly unemotional creature of science had cast. At length Dane spoke as though by sheer physical effort. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the lookout for him, suddenly increased. He grew afraid, at last, to look up—What if the Eyes should be there! He bore the ever-increasing horror as long as he could, then—better starve and have done with it than die like a dog from sheer fright!—he stepped cautiously, softly, starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked carelessly towards Third ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... life and death. No doubt she was right. Both she and the neighborhood had to wait, and her efforts did something to make the period more bearable for both of them. The only sufferer was poor Mr Gainsborough, who was driven from Blentmouth and the curiosity shop by the sheer terror of encountering ladies from villas who told him all about what his daughter was going ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... hours upon the grass, And gazed into the tenderest blue of heaven— Cleansed as with dew, so limpid, pure and sweet— All flecked with silver packs of standing cloud Most beautiful! But watch them narrowly! Those clouds will sheer small fleeces from their sides, Which, melting in our sight as in a dream, Will vanish all like phantoms in the sky. So melts our heedless race! Some weaned away, And wedded to rough-handed pioneers, Who, fierce as wolves in hatred ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... certain shock. Some sort of pedestal had hitherto been needful to her existence; she was learning that Dunstone was an unrecognized elevation in this new country, and she had seen a woman attain to a pinnacle that almost dazzled her, by sheer ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reins into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of sheer compassion, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... teeth. I must lift his head from the water, and cover him up with my own coat while I fetched help. But when I stooped down a deadly faintness came over me. My fingers were palsied with horror. I had a sudden irresistible conviction I could not touch him. It was a sheer impossibility. There was something between us more potent than the dread of a dead man—something inimical between us two, the dead and the living. I staggered away and ran reeling to the road, plunging blindly through ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could take it, and charged again, roaring curses. By sheer weight he bore Hanlon back across the floor, and got in a couple of heavy blows. Hanlon's right cheek was badly bruised, and that eye almost closed. But he was fighting methodically, almost viciously. He was in and out, slashing and ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... of their hands, but scarcely saw them through the tears of sheer weakness that filled my eyes. The capacity for deep emotion was deadened in me; the strain had been too great; the reaction had left me scarcely capable of realizing the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of the blusterer. She set him down as a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low, good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... house there was a balcony. And just as the boy walked by, the doors were thrown open, and a yellow light streamed through the fine, sheer curtains. Then a pretty young fru came out on the balcony and leaned over the railing. "It's raining; now we shall soon have spring," said she. When the boy saw her he felt a strange anxiety. It was as though he wanted to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... eye the possessor of the same, the tiny Freddy, an imp of mischief uncontrollable by other hand or look than hers. A little lower down, poking into the invisible brook through the paling, was the eldest boy, silent from sheer delight in the unexpected pleasure of coating himself with mud without remark from Nettie. This unprecedented escape arose from the fact that Nettie had a visitor, a lady who had bent down beside ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... abandon her, and we had to drag her with a bull camel and beat her along, until she crossed this instalment of Gibson's Desert: but she never left this spot, which I have named Buzoe's Grave. I don't think this old cow had been poisoned—at least she never showed any signs of it; I believe it was sheer old age and decay that assailed her at last. The position of this welcome watered spot was in latitude 24 degrees 33', and longitude 123 degrees 57'. It was by wondrous good fortune that we came ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... not," she declared. "While Aunty was alive, to paint seemed to be the only way to be free. It gave me the excuse for coming here, for getting away a few hours a day. Now—well, just to be free seems enough. I don't suppose a man knows how a woman hungers for that—for just sheer, ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the entire planet. Their problem was one of application of power. The rotation of the planet made it impossible to use a series of driving apparatus, even could these be anchored, but again the sheer immensity of the task ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... lake, and shut out all the neighbourhood. Even if they had climbed to the loftiest known turret, they would have found it swathed in a garment of clinging vapour, affording no refreshment to the eye, and no hope to the heart. There was one lofty tower that rose sheer a hundred feet above the rest, and from which the fog could have been seen lying in a grey mass beneath; but that tower they had not yet discovered, nor another close beside it, the top of which was never seen, nor could be, for the highest clouds of heaven clustered continually around ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... in the universe, is the only home of life, then the disproportion of mechanism to result seems absolutely appalling. If, on the other hand, all the million million of suns are pouring out vital heat to a like number of inhabited planetary systems, the sheer quantity of life, of struggle, of suffering implied, seems a thought at which to shudder. We are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience: "Since this ingenious combination of yours was at best such a questionable boon, surely you might have been ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow, Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere upon earthe: for Nash inveyed ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all concerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to the silence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it was not at him, after her first wide glance, that she looked, but, still as if through the crystal bottle, at her mother, and the look was, at all events, a confession of utter inadequacy to deal with ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... where she was expected, and she framed a story for her delay, by having met such a very polite young man. Your father returned to his regiment, and thus did they, like two privateers, who when they meet and engage, as soon as they find out their mistake, hoist their colours, and sheer off by ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compasses. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... form always. But many people, though they feel the tremendous significance of form, feel also a cautious dislike for big words; and "reality" is a very big one. These prefer to say that what the artist surprises behind form, or seizes by sheer force of imagination, is the all-pervading rhythm that informs all things; and I have said that I will never quarrel with that ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... acquiescence of the other seamen in this act of retributive justice. Jackson, with a loud oath, attempted to spring into the boat, but was repelled by the seamen; again he made the attempt, with dreadful imprecations. He was on the plane-sheer of the brig, and about to make a spring, when a blow from a handspike (the same handspike with which he had murdered the unfortunate seaman) struck him senseless, and he fell back into the lee-scuppers. The boat then shoved off, and had not gained more than two ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... hour drew on, Barry's head, from sheer weariness, sunk upon his breast. In his sleep he became aware of some one near him. He sat up, dazed and stupid from his exhaustion and his grief, and found ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... and graceful schooner with a magical turn for speed, she mounted sixteen long twelve-pounders and carried a hundred officers, seamen, and marines, and was never outsailed in fair winds or foul. "Out of sheer wantonness," said an admirer, "she sometimes affected to chase the enemy's men-of-war of far superior force." Once when surrounded by two frigates and two naval brigs, she slipped through and was gone like a phantom. During his first cruise in the Chasseur, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... "—So in sheer desperation he turned nurse to Squawk and ran errands for its mother, wondering the while how it was that some men had all ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... I caught my horse and made my way to the gate, to discover that my worst fears were realized; a large section of the cliff had split off the Mesa and slid down into the narrow gateway completely filling the space and leaving a wall of over one hundred feet of sheer precipice for us to climb before we could ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... visible; thick trees and hanging creepers intervened; between and through the foliage we first saw the water glancing and shining in its descent. The effect was perfect. After some little further and more difficult progress, we stood beneath the fall, of about 150 feet sheer descent. The wind whirled in eddies, and carried the sleet over us, chilling our bodies, but unable to damp our admiration. The basin of the fall is part of a circle, with the outlet forming a funnel; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... spots; "but if I disappeared, and couldn't be found, I just guess the whole town would take a fit. But I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen. Whew, come near doing it right then, on the left. I must sheer off more the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... body with as much ease as the little humming-bird. But this is not all. We are informed that this enormous bird possesses a power in its wings, so far exceeding what is necessary for its own conveyance through the air, that it can take up and fly away with a whole sheer in its talons, with as much ease as an eagle would carry off, in the same manner, a hare or a rabbit. This we may readily give credit to, from the known fact of our little kestrel and the sparrow-hawk frequently flying off with ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer, and with a parting shot and a laughing "Farval!" he leaped from the sinking boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out, he swam twice round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy; now ducking to escape the pursuing stream, or now, while floating on his back, sending a return shot with telling force against the men at the pump—for he still ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... forth the infamy of the government, and louder and louder he yelled, till one marvelled at his endurance. Rougher and hotter grew his repartee till, by sheer abuse, he gained the ascendancy; but there was no sane statement of what he would propose as a remedy. Grandma Clay happened to rise as he neared the finish to see about a reticule she had dropped, and proved a target for those ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the battery, the fight raged. The Plothow battalion, which had been stationed in advance of it, had been attacked and enveloped on all sides by the Austrians; but had defended themselves splendidly and, though forced back by sheer weight of numbers, had maintained their order and done heavy execution by their fire. The battery had been lost, but those who had been driven out rallied and, with the Plothow men, made so furious a rush forward ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... I have no right to interfere in your affairs. Still, we're old friends. To wait, Henschel, just on account of what people will think—that's sheer nonsense, no more, no less. If you are quite seriously thinking of marrying again, it would be better both for you and for the child if you did it soon. You needn't be overhasty; assuredly not! But if you've quite made ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... knew he was directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Poivre, where they hoped to drive in their wedge, and to further shorten that line across which French troops must retreat if indeed the salient was to be evacuated. And towards the east, towards the apex of the salient, outlying advance-parties of the French had been driven in by sheer weight of guns and numbers, and were now back on the heights of the Meuse, their line drawn from that held by their comrades in the neighbourhood of Louvemont, close to the Cote du Poivre, round about Douaumont and its village, and so to Vaux and south of it. Here, indeed, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... anticipated. She had persuaded Phillips to take a small house and let her furnish it upon the hire system. Joan went with her to the widely advertised "Emporium" in the City Road, meaning to advise her. But, in the end, she gave it up out of sheer pity. Nor would her advice have served much purpose, confronted by the "rich and varied choice" provided for his patrons by Mr. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... he lived not long. Soredamors had such grief thereat that she could not live after him. For sheer grief she died when he died. Alis and Cliges both mourned for them as they were bound; but in time they ceased to mourn. For all mourning must come to an end; all things needs must cease. Ill is it to prolong mourning, for no good ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... taken her tweezers. He picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking with furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too far for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer folly to have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders, Stafford put the little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and, after a moment or two of consideration, made for the inn by the nearest way, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the air lock. She was right. At the moment they outnumbered the enemy, but when the others returned the Agronians could overpower them by sheer weight of number. And they could return ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... shutters,—the window looked on the little backyard I have before described; there was no ledge without,—nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ceremony with them, and that he need not hesitate to eat his fill. Morgan thought it extraordinary she should so persistently refuse to believe in the sincerity of his small consumption of food, but, attributing her solicitude to sheer good-nature, he was sorry to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... construction days. He's been here ever since steel was laid. They say he averted a bad smash once by sheer nerve or pure Irish luck. Anyway, he has a sort of guarantee of his job for life. Not a bad old boy when ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... "Sheer off there," roared Jack at the top of his lungs, to the occupants of the other boat; "do you want to ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer physical numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream, seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed to them, bounding over the corpses of their countrymen, and with yells of wild joy ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cultivator's village. Behind it, rose another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue with air, whilst in the background towered range upon range, here rising abruptly into points and peaks, there ramp-shaped or wall- formed, with sheer descents, and all of light azure hue adorned with glories ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... criminals, and of big world people. An hour's intense mental concentration told me nothing; the dark of the hour before dawn gave way to the cold breaking of morning light, and yet I tossed in an agony of blank and futile reasoning. I must have slept from the sheer blinding of the brain somewhere about that hour; and in my dreaming I got what wakefulness had denied to me. There in my sleep was the whole history of the stones written for me. I remembered the Liverpool landing-stage; the departure of the Star liner, City of St. Petersburg, for New York; ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... could suggest would be for him to put in the first and second teams at the same time," declared Phil. "Then we might have a chance to win by sheer weight of numbers!" ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... gasped involuntarily, incredibly. Sheer wonder survived his instinctive recoil. It was the bolt, striking ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... argument. He looked satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to-morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Leonard, "is with ourselves. We assume every boy to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for music. We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin, and put our daughters down to strum at the piano. Nine times out of ten it is sheer waste of time. They sent me to Cambridge, and said I was lazy. I was not lazy. I was not intended by nature for a Senior Wrangler. I did not see the good of being a Senior Wrangler. Who wants a world of Senior Wranglers? Then why start ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... part in Carlist conspiracies on the death of Ferdinand VII. The authorities exiled him and he absconded to Morella to join the forces of the pretender Don Carlos. In a very short time he rose by sheer daring, fanaticism and ferocity to the front rank among the Carlist chiefs who led the bands of Don Carlos in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia. As a raider he was often successful, and he was many times wounded in the brilliant fights in which he again ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... an altitude, from the clearing where they stood, of at least a thousand feet sheer up, dazzled their eyes in the bright sunshine. To the left of the peak, the sides dropped down almost perpendicularly to the level floor of a valley many thousand feet below. To the right, the snow-fields stretched across ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!)—should be drawing to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Science of Language;" but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, amere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you want to know and to understand the method by which they have been obtained. You want ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... two other parties (how sad that they must be so called!) are enfeebled, mine, to all appearance, has been strengthened, nevertheless I well know that, whenever I go beyond my duty, God will no longer bless me; and I shall do so whenever, without reason and in sheer lightness of heart, I attack my king and trouble the repose of his kingdom. . . . I declare, then, first of all to those who belong to the party of the king my lord, that if they do not counsel him to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is a fascinating stocking for evening wear. It is sheer, almost cobwebby, and will enhance any evening gown. The colors are gold, silver, light blue, corn, pale green, black, and white. It is splendid ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... had taken quick note of the surroundings, the location of the home itself, the arrangement of the grounds. There was a spreading lawn on all four sides, unbroken by plant or bush or tree—sheer prodigality of space, the better to display a rambling but most artistic pile of gray granite. Masking the road and the adjoining grounds was thick, impenetrable shrubbery, a ring of miniature forest ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... confess it in the general, yet promptly and pointedly deny it in every particular, if our hearts retained more than the "magni nominis umbra," when we preached up the Protestant principle? Is it not sheer wantonness and cruelty in Baptist, Independent, Irvingite, Wesleyan, Establishment-man, Jumper, and Mormonite, to delight in trampling on and crushing these manifestations of their own pure and precious charter, instead ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... for more? The extraordinary devotion to a volume of natural history, which after generations of use has become more like a mop-head than a book, may be seen in the reproduction of a "monkey-book" here illustrated; this curious result being caused by sheer affectionate thumbing of its leaves, until the dog-ears and rumpled pages turned the cube to a globular mass, since flattened by being packed away. So children love picture-books, not as bibliophiles would ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... oar, until I was twenty-seven years of age. During that time I was at the fishing every day, summer and winter, when it was fishing weather, and living in the midst of the ocean; and I have no hesitation in saying that if fishermen had been dependent on fishing alone, they would have died from sheer want, leaving their families out ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... each one o' them two mush-heads was tryin' to act the part of a ole cow which has had her calf took. They goes a-moonin' about the boat that mournful it 'ud make you yell jus' out o' sheer nervousness. First one 'ud up an' hold his head on his hand an' lean on the fence-rail that ran around the boat, and sigh till he'd raise his pants clean outa the top o' his boots. An' then the other 'ud go off in another part o' the boat an' he'd sigh an' moon ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... 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 as ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... house was built against the sheer yellow stone facing at the base of Lost Chief range, known incorrectly as the Yellow Canyon. The house of half a dozen rooms was the most picturesque cabin in the valley, for Grandfather Rodman had built the roof with an overhang, giving the house the hospitable shadows of a little Swiss ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... answered, slowly drawing my thread through the sheer cloth. "No, Nickols will live his own way regardless of the cogs on which it grinds. I shall have an enormous task in keeping up with the social side of his life, but Nickols is not the kind of a man who takes a woman into ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Soda made the ward-kitchen seem like heaven. Alas, the supply of soda considered sufficient by the Dry Store authorities never lasted beyond Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the dinner-tin had to be cleaned out not by alkaline agency, but by sheer slogging hard labour. And when at last I stood it on edge to dry, and thought to go off duty with a clear conscience, I generally found that I had overlooked ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... been destined to exhibit the humanity which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is "donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... individuals in both classes who never become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise, may refuse to join in any concerted action ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... inquest I met him, and asked him about it. 'Do you really mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'I know perfectly well what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.' The doctor was usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... almost the happiness of these two. It swept from him the sense of loneliness which had oppressed him a short time before, and when at last, after they had talked for a long time beside the fire, the colonel's wife lifted her pretty head drowsily and asked if she might go to bed, he laughed in sheer joy at the pouting tenderness with which she rubbed her pink cheek against the grizzled face above her, and at the gentle light in the colonel's eyes as he half carried her ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... sky, like ocean blue, gleamed between the treetops. Hardly a rustle of wind in the fine-toothed green branches disturbed the quiet. When I got fully out of sight of camp, I started to run as if I were a wild Indian. My running had no aim; just sheer mad joy of the grand old forest, the smell of pine, the wild silence and beauty loosed the spirit in me so it had to run, and I ran with it till ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... had no hope; he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain, earth alone has ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... ago he had been quite unknown—a struggling journalist savagely treated by Fate. And for sheer need once of saner employment for his leisure hours, he poured out some of the bitterness that a severe attack of indigestion had deposited on the wholesome substratum of his nature in perhaps as fierce a novel as had yet ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... toil? Are they coming again? Will they bring those terrible white soldiers who broke the hearts of the Hadendoa and almost destroyed the Degheim and Kenana? What should draw them up the Nile? Is it for plunder, or in sheer love of war; or is it a blood feud that brings them? True, they are now far off. Perchance they will return, as they returned before. Yet the iron road is not built in a day, nor for a day, and of a surety there are war-clouds in ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the ridges where the coast abrupt Dips greyly westward, Circe's strong-armed son Swept down the foam of sharp-divided straits And faced the stress of opening seas. Sheer out The vessel drave; but three long moons the gale Moaned round; and swift, strong streams of fire revealed The labouring rowers and the lightening surf, Pale watchers deafened of sonorous storm, And dipping decks ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... stretch of sand. Next, the river, smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... this intention. There evolves not a selected group of strong individuals, but a strong community, strong because both full of life, or rich {134} in incentive, and also harmonious. And within such a community the strength of individuals lies not in a sheer power to resist the strain of competition, but in the rational and moral capacity to utilize the resources of the entire community. Through moral organization the strong are made stronger at the same time that the weak ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... You actually suspected him of taking my coins? Why, Paul, whatever put that notion into your head?" demanded Jack, in sheer astonishment. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt sheer into the glistening water. Now they were floating slowly towards the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of white tents, and the smoke of a fire was ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... above the other one, and at the moment of impact with the ball it should just have resumed its original position slightly below the left. It often happens, however, that even very good golfers, after a period of excellent driving, through sheer over-confidence or carelessness, will fall into the way of dropping the right shoulder too soon, or, when they do drop it, letting it go altogether, so that it fairly sinks away. The result is exactly what is to be expected. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... saw, she was too wise to allow this to be noticed, and feigned the utmost coolness and indifference, even when they went from Germany to Paris, where the brilliancy and luxury of the shops almost took away her breath for sheer wonderment. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... speaking is rest. I have often noticed that speakers at exhibitions have in many cases failed to do themselves justice from sheer exhaustion. A day or two of repose previous to speaking, enables the speaker to bring to the performance that vigor of the faculties which is indispensable to the highest success, Webster told the Senate, and truly, no doubt, that he slept soundly on the night previous to the delivery of his second ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 a bit ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Prince,' is the most perverse and passionate being in the whole world. What is more, he throws money away as if it were dust. The day on which he gave the thrashing with blows like falling leaves and flowing water, he dragged (lit. pull alive, drag dead) Ying Lien away more dead than alive, by sheer force, and no one, even up to this date, is aware whether she be among the dead or the living. This young Feng had a spell of empty happiness; for (not only) was his wish not fulfilled, but on the contrary he spent money ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there flattened into interminable, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... from sheer ignorance that you place yourself in such a position of danger. Sheathe your sword at once, sir, and let his Majesty pass. Do you not know that there are guards here at every turn? My royal master's guests will be well protected without ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... agent. But bad generalization a priori is fully as common; which is properly called false theory; conclusions drawn, by way of deduction, from properties of some one agent which is known or supposed to be present, all other co-existing agents being overlooked. As the former is the error of sheer ignorance, so the latter is especially that of semi-instructed minds; and is mainly committed in attempting to explain complicated phenomena by a simpler theory than their nature admits of. As when one school of physicians sought for the universal principle ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... they moved a few feet down-stream and stood looking at the frothing cataract that dropped the great river a sheer ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... conclusion, that I fully agree that it is "sheer fiscal stupidity" and "socially inexpedient as well" to permit "mushroom fortunes" to be built out of war profits. I believe there ought to be imposed a large excess war profits tax on the English model upon a fair and well conceived ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... at the end selected for the bow, and two inches and five-sixteenths at the stern; the stern-post (s t) is laid off, and the outer line of the stern (t f); and finally the curved lines a f and a v are drawn, completing what is called the sheer plan. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker than the Arabs could follow them. Mr. Damer started off at a pace which soon brought him to the end of his tether, and from that point was dragged up by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby accomplishing the wishes of the men, who induce their victims to start as rapidly as possible, in order that they may soon find themselves helpless from want of wind. Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... miles and miles, in pieces of every size—large, flat, and broken cakes, with here and there an island rising twenty and thirty feet, and as large as the ship's hull;—this, it is very difficult to sheer clear of. A constant look-out was necessary; for any of these pieces, coming with the heave of the sea, were large enough to have knocked a hole in the ship, and that would have been the end of us; for no boat (even if we could have got one out) could have lived in such a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... each other. They could not say to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it was sheer precipice without trees. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... folly, sheer folly. How could she look like Mrs. Urquhart? Imagination carries me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle temper have produced a like result in sweetening the expression. That is all, and yet I remember the one woman when I look at the other, and ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... promise, no matter what Mr. Bennett or any one else says, if I tell you that I'm worrying over your being here? I don't feel it's the right thing for you. And it's certain Grandma will change her will if she hears you're living with me. It's a miracle I didn't dry up in my part to-night from sheer anxiety and absent-mindedness. You'd hate me to fail through you, dear ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... each other a long searching look; then Perkins resumed, "That's right, Leftenant, take yer bearin's. I don't see ez you kin do me any special good, ner harm nuther. Ef yer want no news or help from me, we kin sheer off right yere ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... steadiness of nerve to the greatest test, by keeping the precipice constantly in view, except when hidden by the fog. Indeed, they could drive their alpenstocks through the overhanging rim of frozen snow, and look sheer down through the hole thus made to the amphitheatre below. One of the guides left them, unable longer to endure the sight of these precipices so close at hand. As they neared their goal they feared lest the mist might, at the last, deprive them of the culminating moment for which they ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Sheer instinct seemed to have stirred them to this animosity against animals whose aspect, in some respects, ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid |
