"Shift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boy's hand, he was conscious of a sudden wild inclination to use his own arms and legs in a way he had never before known or dreamed of, yet that seemed curiously familiar. The balance and adjustment of his physical frame sought to shift and alter; neck and shoulders, as it were, urged forward; there came a singular pricking in the loins, a rising of the back, a thrusting up and outwards of the chest. He felt that something grew behind him with a power that sought to impel or drive him ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the Governor; his ironic aristocratic sympathy with the radical point of view appeared superficial and unconvincing beside Benham's moral repudiation. And yet what after all was the simple truth about Gideon Vetch? What was the true colour of that variable personality, which appeared to shift and alter according to the temperament or the convictions of each observer? She had never known two men who agreed about Vetch, except perhaps Benham and his disciple, Stephen Culpeper. Each man saw Vetch differently, and ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... consort, she of the sunbonnet. Restored to some extent by her tarrying in the shade, she began to shift and hitch about uneasily upon the board-pile. At length she leaned a bit to one side, reached into a pocket and taking out a snuff-stick and a parcel of its attendant compound, began to take a "dip" of snuff, after the habit of certain of the population of that region. This ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... in focus the central disc is surrounded by an intermittent diffraction pattern, i.e. for instance the system of rings may appear along, and near, three or more radii. If these shift when the points of support of the lens are ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... evidently don't quite like our looks. I suppose her captain thinks that, having hauled his wind, we shall now make sail in chase of him if we happen to be an enemy. But I know a trick worth two of that. You did quite right, Mr Bowen, not to shift your helm. Let him stand on another three miles as he is going, and then we will show him who and what we are. Just so; there goes his bunting—Dutch, as you thought. He is beginning to feel a little anxious. Perhaps it would ease his mind a bit if you were to ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... I don't know nothin' speshul or much touchin' Injuns, an' if I'm to dodge the disgrace of ramblin' along in this desultory way, I might better shift to a tale I hears Sioux Sam relate to Doc Peets one time in the Red Light. This Sam is a Sioux, an a mighty decent buck, considerin' he's Injun; Sam is servin' the Great Father as a scout with the diag'nal-coat, darby-hat sharp I mentions. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... too will have my kings, that take From me the sign of life and death: Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds, Obedient to my breath. Wordsworth's Rob Roy.—Poet. Works, vol. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... did it alone, with a make-shift paddle. Also, the canoe leaked badly, and one-third of her time was devoted to bailing. By clear daylight she looked vainly for Hikueru. Astern, Takokota had sunk beneath the sea rim. The sun blazed down ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... desire to be friendly with the senior New York Senator; but one position he avowedly maintained. It was that he was not to blame for being President of the United States; that he had taken the oath of office, and was the man responsible to the people for the administration, and he could not, dare not, shift that obligation; and, more than that, he must give the "recognition" due friends to the men who had aided him in breaking down Mr. Conkling's policy at Chicago. If that was a crime he was a criminal. He was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... considered pretty thoroughly how wrongfully they, with all others in similar circumstances, had been year in and year out subjected to unrequited toil so resolved to leave masters and mistresses to shift for themselves, while they would try their fortunes ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... required, and I then took Nero as a passenger, and he seemed to enjoy the new gratification with a praiseworthy decorum; till, when I was trying to turn the boat round, the movement caused him to attempt to shift his quarters, which he did with so little attention to the build of our vessel, that in one moment she was capsized, and in the next we were swimming about in the pool ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... passes, Trenck sent his adversary's make-shift sword flying through space, and with his own he met the lieutenant full ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the old proverb, qui omnibus placere studet. We regret that any one policy must of necessity displease a few members, yet do not see how any improvement could be effected by making a change which would merely shift the displeasure to another and even more continuously industrious group. It is significant that the Gothic party have no editorial candidate of their own to offer, so that the thankless and toilsome office ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of fish; others, of a nicer frame, find out proper beds to deposite them in, and there leave them; as the serpent, the crocodile, and ostrich: Others hatch their eggs, and tend the birth, till it is able to shift for itself. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... we may justly doubt the virtue of his motives. William Walker, perhaps the foremost of them all, invaded Lower California in 1854, attempted to found a republic, was defeated, and later conquered Nicaragua and became its president, only to shift about in his meteoric career of destiny and sail against Honduras, where he was captured, court-martialled, ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... most charming recollections of my boyhood is that of my mother standing at our gate with a lamp in her hands, sending one boy out in the early morning darkness, to his work, and at the same time welcoming another boy home. My brother was on the day shift and I on the night, which meant that he left home as I was leaving the mills, about half past two in the morning. On dark nights—and they were all dark at that hour—my mother, thinking my little brother afraid, would go with him to the gate and, holding ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... to shift position, and to struggle against the intruder vainly. Some fought in his favor. The vision of convent peace grew dim. She must take it with tears, and his sorrow would cloud its beauty. Marriage, always so remote from her life, came near, and tried to prove the lightness of its yoke with ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... his place behind her chair, then silently beckoned to Penny to shift from her own chair opposite Carolyn Drake to the chair Nita Selim had left to go to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... cornstalks, stripped long since of fodder, stood with down-hanging ears like rows of soldiers at attention with knapsacks upon their lean backs. It was as if, overnight, Nature had suddenly got in a hurry to shift her ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... it was but for a day. Antony, therefore, changing his mind, marched away upon this road that night, commanding that everyone should carry water sufficient for his own use; but most of them being unprovided with vessels, they made shift with their helmets, and some with skins. As soon as they started, the news of it was carried to the Parthians, who followed them, contrary to their custom, through the night, and at sunrise attacked the rear, which was tired with marching and want of sleep, and not ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... an' couldn't bring 'emselves to quit. Then along comes the storm, an' right wher' they're working it washes a great lump o' the hill down. Hundreds o' thousands o' tons of rock an' stuff it would have needed a train load of dynamite to shift." ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... about changing his position with infinite labor. The left leg was helpless, and so was the right arm. Yet, after much labor, he managed to stuff a roll of the blankets into the corner and then shift himself until his back rested against this support. But his strength deserted him again. His pipe was dropped down in the left hand, ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... but almost as bad. The girl was a waitress or something like that in a restaurant. She's very common; her father died in prison. You can imagine the blow to old Jeffries. He turned the boy adrift and left him to shift ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... her discovery, she promptly ignored her former partisanship of that gentleman, and was for taking Florence straightway into confidence. Larcher for once did not deplore the instantaneous completeness with which the feminine mind can shift about. Edna despatched a note bidding Florence come to luncheon the next day; she would send a cab for her, to ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... larger and more powerfully built than Chester, turned upon his second opponent. By a quick shift of position, he grasped the lad's throat with his left hand and with his right aimed a hard blow at his face. This the lad struck up with his left arm, and before the German could repeat the blow, let drive ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... I can help you there," he answered. "Yesterday I was out fishing and took lunch for myself and the boatman; but the fish wouldn't bite, so we came back without eating it, and it is still in the locker. Shift a little, please, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the mirage shift and vanish And fade and glare by turns along the sky; The haze of heat may all the distance banish To the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... right back where we started from," mourned Red to himself. "If it's one of the customs of this country saying 'howderdo' an hour at a stretch, I pass it up." Aloud, he said, "Coming along fine—how's your father?" "Cuss me if I don't shift the cut a little, ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... now leaned over the top round, suspended thus between heaven and earth, grasped the lance with both hands, so that the ladder might not be thrust beyond the perpendicular. In quivering voice he passed down the word that no man was to shift foot or hand until he had made bargain with the sentinel who held them ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... and best of all, his Insie was very thankful to him for his good behavior; and he scarcely could believe that she wanted him to go. To go, however, was his destiny; and when he had made a highly laudable and far-away salute, it happened—in the shift of people, and of light, and clothing, which goes on so much in the winter-time—that a little hand came into his, and rose to his lips, with ground of action, not for assault and battery, but ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... duty would walk in, seal it up, turn on the equipment, wait until the gauges registered sufficient air and heat, and then remove their space suits. When it was time to leave, they would don suits, open the door, and walk out, and the next shift would enter and repeat the process. Earlier models had permanent compartments, but they took up too much room in craft designed for carrying as many men and as much equipment as possible. They were strictly work boats, and hard experience ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... is not much different, nor the hinderance considerable (provided they be early and carefully removed) I will finish what I have to say concerning these trees in the seminary, and shew how they are there to be raised, transplanted, and govern'd till they can shift ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... of Nature betrays itself in many an almost passionate outbreak of angry remorse. Addison tells us that he took particular delight in the reading of our old English ballads. What he valued above all things was Force, though in his haste he is willing to make a shift with its counterfeit, Effect. As usual, he had a good reason to urge for what he did: "I will not excuse, but justify myself for one pretended crime for which I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this translation, but in many of my original poems,—that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... precipitously from the eastern shore, as to render the carols of the birds plainly audible. This was not the worst. The third canoe had taken the same direction, and was slowly drifting towards a point where it must inevitably touch, unless turned aside by a shift of wind, or human hands. In other respects, nothing presented itself to attract attention, or to awaken alarm. The castle stood on its shoal, nearly abreast of the canoes, for the drift had amounted to miles in the course of the night, and the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Oh, it is easy for you to talk; you are able to shift for yourself, if need be. But remember the boys, Thomas; and think a little of yourself too, ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... of human ignorance and depravity are, I have to inform your Grace that a small party of those very people, some short time after, actually contrived to make their escape, and after travelling for many weeks through the country, made shift to reach the sea-coast, near Botany Bay, but in a part where no boat has ever been seen. Providentially, however, a boat had lost her way in going to George's River and found those unhappy deluded wretches, on a place where they had been nine days, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... the body in a vessel, impelled by the pangs of hunger. All food having disappeared from the world of men, those ascetics, desirous of saving their lives, had recourse, for purposes of sustenance, to such a miserable shift. While they were thus employed. Vrishadarbha's son, viz., king Saivya, in course of his roving, came upon those Rishis. Indeed, he met them on his way, engaged in cooking the dead body, impelled by the pangs ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... contend, that every act is to be judged according to its own nature, whether it be good or evil, he will demonstrate, that we render virtue impossible, and exclude it entirely from the world. On the other hand, if we shift our position, and contend that no act is to be judged according to its own nature, but according to the goodness or badness of its origin or cause, he will also reduce this position, diametrically opposite though it be to the former, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Unfortunately she lacked Leonetta's fertility in finding means by which to draw the general attention upon herself, and being overanxious as well, her tactics frequently failed. She would descend to every shift to thwart her sister's wiles,—only to find, however, that it was more often Stephen Fearwell or the Incandescent Gerald, than Guy and Denis, who allowed themselves to be diverted from their orbit round Leonetta, to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... a wondrous cavity below in black rock, where it gathered and gathered, nobody could think how—not coming from anywhere else, but beginning just there, and nowhere beyond. When, later on, he had to shift its source, and carry it back to the great sky, it was no less marvellous, and more lovely; it was a closer binding together of the gentle earth and the awful withdrawing heavens. These were a region of endless hopes, and ever recurrent despairs: that his beloved, an earthly ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... bitter Cause of Complaint against the Doctrine itself. I therefore think it was impossible, such a Covenant should ever be proposed to Adam; a Covenant which, if ratified, tended only to make those wretched and miserable, who without it, had they been left to shift for themselves, would have used their Liberty and Rational Powers aright, and have pleased and obtained God's Favour thereby. To talk of its being of general Service, can never be of sufficient Authority to silence this Argument. ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... of boys in your position who are thrown out in the world after confirmation and left to shift for themselves, without a soul to lend ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... composite picture which we have been considering has not sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... belief that it stood and would stand on the same basis in law as any other. Hence, it is not possible for society to insist on the whole of its claim. It could only resume its full rights at the cost of great hardship to individuals and a shock to the industrial system. What it can do is to shift taxation step by step from the wealth due to individual enterprise to the wealth that depends on its own collective progress, thus by degrees regaining the ownership of the fruits of its ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... unrelieved hardness of daily life—the need, which never lifts from them, of making shift and doing all things for themselves—there has always been another influence at work upon my neighbours, leaving its indelible mark on them. Almost from infancy onwards, in a most personal and intimate way, they are familiar with harrowing experiences of calamity such as ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... constant sum of power made up of items among which the most Protean fluctuations are incessantly going on. It is as if the body of Nature were alive, the thrill and interchange of its energies resembling those of an organism. The parts of the 'stupendous whole' shift and change, augment and diminish, appear and disappear, while the total of which they are the parts remains quantitatively immutable. Immutable, because when change occurs it is always polar—plus accompanies minus, gain accompanies loss, no item varying in the slightest degree ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... lion's den to the top of a wall, and does not know how he has come there. Later he comes down just as suddenly. And in still other parts of the story there occurs just as rapid changes of scene as one is accustomed to in dreams. Characteristic also is the fact that objects change or vanish; the shift of scene resembles also, as often in a dream, a complete transformation. Thus, for instance, as soon as the wanderer has left the wall, it vanishes without leaving a trace, as if it had never been. A similar change is also required in the garden scene where, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... and, by Jingo! he's holding his lead of 'em well; Hark to him clouting the timber! It don't seem to trouble the swell. Now for the wall — let him rush it. A thirty-foot leap, I declare — Never a shift in his seat, and he's racing for ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... story, sparkling with the free, outdoor, life of a mountain ranch. Its scenes shift rapidly and its actors play the game of life fearlessly and like men. It is a fine love story ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... first met you, you gripped my hand," I answered. "I am reckoned a strong man, yet I could not shift your hand a fraction of an inch. Now you suggest that you are weaker than a half-drowned ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift the responsibility on to others—that's all! WE'LL see, right enough, that he goes through ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... is a cat, a dog, a silly hen, An owl, a bat,—where they are wont to lodge That still sojourn, nor care to shift their quarters. Thou'rt constancy? I am glad I know thy name! The spider comes of the same family, That in his meshy fortress spends his life, Unless you pull it down and scare him from it. And so thou'rt constancy? ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... squall, the little 40-ton sloop, heavily laden as she was with military stores, sprang a leak, and to save themselves the crew were forced to run her aground on a gravelly beach under the lee of a projecting headland. The situation at best was most critical, for if the wind should shift but a few points the sloop must inevitably break up; and not only was the one boat available a mere skiff incapable of living in a heavy sea, but even should they all succeed in safely getting ashore with muskets intact and ammunition ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... likewise they looked to have had a large quantity of goods distributed among them in reward for their hospitality, they soon became weary of us; and after lessening our allowance from day to day, they at length left us to shift for ourselves. In this forlorn state, we had to range about the woods in search of fruits and roots, which last we had to dig from the ground with our fingers for want of any instruments. Hunger had quite abated the nicety of our palates, and we were glad to feed on every thing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... condition, with symptoms of opium, on the same evening isn't natural. It points to the fact that the boss of the den has UNLOADED! He's been thoughtful where his lady clients were concerned, but probably the men have simply been kicked out and left to shift for themselves. If we only knew one of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... except a woman's, she had changed her mind. He dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just before time for the night shift, and to give her two red apples he had been saving for her. She looked at the apples as if they were invisible and she could not see them, and standing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor, with its cuttings and scraps and litter of fabrics, ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... think myself happier than they that have overcome, considering that I leave a perpetual fame of virtue and honesty, the which our enemies the conquerors shall never attain unto by force or money.' Having so said, he prayed every man to shift for himself, and then he went a little aside with two or three only, among the which Strato was one, with whom he came first acquainted by the study of rhetoric. Strato, at his request, held the sword in his hand, and turned ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... his heart with his hand, and strive to set his whole body in motion, as though he were perishing with cold, and hasten to shift his eyes to a fresh place, and again to another. When they led Jesus away from Caiaphas, he met His weary eyes quite close, and, somehow or other, unconsciously he ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... of cold and abject soul-nausea he shut the book, put it away on a bookshelf in which he saw a gap, and went to turn out the lamp. As the flame flickered and died out he heard Jimmy's foot shift ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... tobacco and spitting, actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end—how he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and dancing about naked in the cold, running and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... forward under encouragement by the State governments. "It would be cruel," says Mr. Madison, "to neglect them, and to divert their industry into other channels; for it is not possible for the hand of man to shift from one employment to another without being injured by the change." Again: "There may be some manufactures which, being once formed, can advance towards perfection without any adventitious aid; while others, for want of the fostering hand ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... then made a sign of resignation. "I reckon it's all we'll know! Well, the tide's falling and we must shift for some kernels before the sun is hot. Better ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... which he said had been brought to him by a monk from a far distant convent in the easternmost corner of Saxony, on the borders of Bohemia; (the reader will be pleased to observe not "Hungary" although the country adjacent to it;—so circumstances shift and vary, in the lapse of years, and owing to the inconstancy of men's intentions). The new codex was an affair at once startling and gratifying: it was such a triumph over darkness in the progress ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into the bathroom about 8.30 A.M. when I am trying to get off to sleep. They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the garden-path, which rather spoils ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... small fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... some measure checked by the advanced posts of the British line, who piqueered with the enemy for some hours before the battle began. Both armies were destitute of artillery, except two small pieces on the side of the French, and a single gun which the English seamen made shift to draw up from the landing place. This was very well served, and galled their column severely. At length, about nine in the morning, the enemy advanced to the charge with great order and vivacity, though their fire was irregular and ineffectual. On the contrary, the British forces reserved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... often is intermittent. If preventive measures are instituted at the outset, there is hope of relieving the discomfort and averting the miscarriage; but if the warning goes unheeded, the pain will gradually shift to the lower part of the abdomen and become more severe. It often happens that the cramp-like abdominal pain of threatened miscarriage is confused with that associated with intestinal indigestion. A simple test will sometimes ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... the deviser, cheerfully. "But when queer and fatal things happen in a room and there's only one opening, it's just as well to keep your eye on that, no matter how small it is. Better still, perhaps, if you'd shift your office." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... account of the state of the navy, the neglect of business by Charles and his brother, and the want of money. On the 8th of October, 1665, he writes: "I think of twenty-two ships, we shall make shift to get out seven. (God help us! men being sick, or provisions lacking.) There is nothing but discontent among the officers, and all the old ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... won't," Polder replied; "there's a train back at eleven. I have to be at the mills for the day shift to-morrow. I came out because I had to talk a little about Mariana." He had deserted the more formal address. "And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason; it ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... searching the ruins of ancient Greece, we found nothing but pusillanimous, sham imitations of Egyptian art. Would we not despise such a paltry method of making matter serve for mind—such a miserable make-shift to save the labor of invention? And yet it is this same servile imitation of classical and foreign models that is fettering the progress of art in America. Instead of honestly constructing what we want, and then decorating ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... circle of my historical mythological inquiry. What will you say to this? For I have written the whole especially for you, to come to an understanding with you. I arrive at the same point which you aim at, but without your roundabout way, which is but a make-shift. But in the fundamental conception of nature-religion, we do certainly agree altogether. If you come to Germany, you will find here with me the proof-sheets of Book V.(b) (about pages 1-200) which treat of this section, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... air and constant exercise of the country. Odd enough that during cold weather and cold nocturnal journeys the cold never touched me, yet I am no sooner settled in comfortable quarters and warm well-aired couches, but la voila. I made a shift to finish my task, however, and even a leaf more, so we are bang up. We dined and supped alone, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... wandering about Germany with the beggar whose thoughts were bounded by his paunch. They exploited but a small area, and with smaller success than either had anticipated. Though now and then they were flush, there was never a regular meal; and too often they had to make shift with mouldly bread and water, and to lie on stale straw, and even on the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... my Kings that take From me the sign of life and death: 90 Kingdoms shall shift about, like ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... all their part is at an end. The master and mistress thenceforth transact their affairs by deputy. They are sovereigns, and responsible for nothing. The garons are the cabinet, and responsible for every thing; but they, like superior personages, shift their responsibility upon any one inclined to take it up; and all is naturally discontent, disturbance, and discomfort. We wonder that the Marquis has not mentioned the German table-d'hte among his annoyances; for he dined at it. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that, and have had perfect leave to think, since she will not talk of it. Paiutes have the art of reducing life to its lowest ebb and yet saving it alive on grasshoppers, lizards, and strange herbs; and that time must have left no shift untried. It lasted long enough for Seyavi to have evolved the philosophy of life which I have set down at the beginning. She had gone beyond learning to do for her son, and learned to ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... chorusing farewells coming back to him over their shoulders. When they were out of sight he went back to the place on the hilltop where he had stood beside Roberta, and thought it all over. In that way only could he make shift to prolong the happiness ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... while he was in the air. He struck the water with his feet. There was a chilling shock; and then, as he went down, the shield on his left arm caught the water in its hollow and bore him upward. Nature reasserted itself; by a mighty tug at the straps he wrenched away his breastplate, and could make shift to float. The short harbour waves lifted him, and he saw Caesar striking out boldly toward the now rapidly approaching galley. Even as the general swam, Drusus observed that he held up a package of papyri in his left hand to keep it out of the wet; in uttermost ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... generally come for—everybody, to our surprise, kotows to us, and we acknowledge the attention by giving a shilling to whoever holds out his hand. Now, nobody ever kotows to us at home. We'd get suspicious right away if they did and shift our wallets to the other pocket; not that we are not generous, but we don't like that sort of thing. We do here—that is, some of us do, because it marks the difference in rank, and we all, being kings, are tickled to death ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... commissioned officer at the post was the partially disabled cavalry captain, acting temporarily as adjutant, because incapacitated for taking the field. He had waited until the last possible moment, trusting that a shift in conditions might bring back some available officer. Now he had to choose between his duty as commander and as father. Further delay ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Henri's shift to the rear of the car. He drove with a sort of irritable feverishness, until Henri leaned over and ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... presented, that some means might be found to avert it. But the dreadful crisis had arrived. Had the whole board of authority been present, I should be glad to believe, for the honor of humanity, that they would have been moved to relent, as they would not have been able to shift the responsibility from one to the other, as is the wont of such bodies when ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... to them in the whole history. Or what if it were a little insipid, there was no conjuring that I remember in "Pope Joan;" and the "Lancashire Witches" were without doubt the most insipid jades that ever flew upon a stage; and even these, by the favour of a party, made a shift to hold up their heads.[4] Now, if we have out-done these plays in their own dull way, their authors have some sort of privilege to throw the first stone; but we shall rather chuse to yield the point of dulness, than contend for it, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... idol of her young devotion, removed the memory of what had occurred at home, and collected around her heart all the joys and terrors that in maidenly diffidence characterize the interview she was about to give her lover. Oh how little do we know of those rapid lights and shadows which shift and tremble across the spirits of the gentle sex, when approaching to hold this tender communion with those whom they love. Nothing that we remember resembles the busy working of the soul on such occasions, so much as those lucid streamers which flit in ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of, and yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... had Mrs. Ellsworth usurped the reins of government than she proceeded to drive away the poor negroes from the cabin. Thereupon mammy's son and his wife removed to the coal mines of Fayette County, and left the old woman to shift for herself. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... lordships that never durst adventure to see them. Malignancy I expect from these, have lived 10 or 12 years in those actions, and return as wise as they went, claiming time and experience for their tutor that can neither shift Sun nor moon, nor say their compass, yet will tell you of more than all the world betwixt the Exchange, Paul's and Westminster.... and tell as well what all England is by seeing but Mitford Haven as what Apelles was by the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Houston's departure, Lyle started out one afternoon for the little cabin, at an hour a little later than she went to pursue her studies, or for reading. She knew that at this time, Jack usually came off his shift, as he and Mike were expert miners, and always completed their task some time in advance of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... was considered where help was needed, in those days. Goodnight instantly ordered six men to shift saddles to their strongest horses, left the outfits to get on as best they might, and spurred away with his little band to his ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to see a deeper realization on the part of the people that this is their Commonwealth, their Government; that they control it, that they pay its expenses, that it is, after all, only a part of themselves; that any attempt to shift upon it their duties, their responsibilities, or their support will in the end only delude, degrade, impoverish, and enslave. Your institution points the only way, through self-control, self-denial, and self-support, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... sailor jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable Island. Breakers were sighted. The Delight signaled that her captain wanted to shift southwest to deeper water, but Gilbert wanted to enter the St. Lawrence and signaled back to go on northwest. That night a storm raged. The provision ship ran full tilt into the sand banks of Sable Island, and was battered into chips before the other ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... So shift the scenes of life; each age is swayed by its own motives, but the man is the same. At ten his mind was set upon cakes, at twenty it is set upon his mistress; at thirty it will be set upon pleasure; at forty on ambition, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... moved, until its farther end rested upon the opposite cheek of the crevasse, lapping the hard ice by several feet. Then the cables were held taut, and securely fastened to the belaying-pin. The nearer end of the pole was tied with other ropes—so that it could not possibly shift from its place—and the yawning abyss was now ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was focused, it could be clamped tightly in place by screwing up the trunnion and swivel nuts. But the sun mirror had to be constantly shifted to keep the shadow on the patch. Another way of focusing the mirrors was to stand behind the instrument with the head close to the station mirror, shift the sun mirror until the entire station mirror was reflected in it, with the white patch squarely over the unsilvered spot; then still looking at the sun mirror, the station mirror was shifted until the reflection of the ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... to loose the beast and shift it to his own stall; he was passing behind it when Hindley finished his speech by knocking him under its feet, and, without stopping to examine whether his hopes were fulfilled, ran away as fast as he could. I was surprised to witness how coolly the child gathered himself up and went on with ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... gave signs that there was more strain on them than they could bear. This drove us from our room to the stairs in the trunk, on which we sat in a state of fear till the worst of the storm was past. Then we went down to the shed we had built on the ground at the root of the tree, and made the best shift we could. All our stores were kept here, so that the space was too small to hold us, and the smell from the beasts made it far from a fit place for six of us to dwell in; but it was at least safe for a time, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... me without borrowing. This affair is out of the part of society; 'tis the act of one single person. Let us live and be merry amongst our friends; let us go repine and die amongst strangers; a man may find those, for his money, who will shift his pillow and rub his feet, and will trouble him no more than he would have them; who will present to him an indifferent countenance, and suffer him to govern himself, and to complain according ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... pig, and when he is well scalded, cut off his head, then slit him down the back, take out his bones, lay him in a dish of milk and water, and shift him twice a day—for the rest, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... land of impermanence. Rivers shift their courses, coasts their outline, plains their level; volcanic peaks heighten or crumble; valleys are blocked by lava-floods or landslides; lakes appear and disappear. Even the matchless shape of Fuji, that snowy ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... how this happens, I am persuaded that the world, remaining continually the same, has in it a constant quantity of good and evil; but that this good and this evil shift about from one country to another, as we know that in ancient times empire shifted from one nation to another, according as the manners of these nations changed, the world, as a whole, continuing ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... take it as a joke or not. 'Yes, 'ugh' and be damn'd to you,' say's I: you may go and 'ugh' in hell next—and with that snap went the triggers, and into their curst carcasses went the balls. The one I killed outright but t'other the Delaweer chief, was by a sudden shift only slightly wounded, and he sprung on his feet and out with his knife. But I had a knife too, and all a disappinted father's rage to boot, so at it we' went closin' and strikin' with our knives like two fierce fiends of the forest. It was noble sport sure-LY. At last ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... loquacity of the Call-duck is highly serviceable, these birds being used in decoys, this quality may have been increased by selection. For instance, Colonel Hawker says, if young wild-ducks cannot be got for a decoy, "by way of make-shift, select tame birds which are the most clamorous, even if their colour should not be like that of wild ones."[451] It has been {282} falsely asserted that Call-ducks hatch their eggs in less time than ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin |
