"Tough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to these the Queens exert their might; One the left side, and t'other guards the right: Where each, by her respective armour known. Chooses the colour that is like her own. 60 Then the young Archers, two that snowy-white Bend the tough yew, and two as black as night; (Greece call'd them Mars's favourites heretofore, From their delight in war, and thirst of gore). These on each side the Monarch and his Queen 65 Surround obedient; next to these are seen The crested Knights in golden armour ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Boers hadn't buried themselves instead of the guns!" Carew remarked, as he wrestled with a tough thong of bully beef which yielded to his jaws much as an India-rubber ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... be president, Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted in his ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... a tough nature, and minded neither heat nor cold; only when a large bluebottle fly buzzed round his nose he whisked his broad hat to drive the tormentor away, and said to himself that summer had its drawbacks even in Germany, though there were certainly more flies and mosquitoes ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... street where he had first seen the beloved form of Ericson, a certain old mood began to revive in him. He had been working at quadratic equations all the morning; he had been foiled in the attempt to find the true algebraic statement of a very tough question involving various ratios; and, vexed with himself, he had risen to look out, as the only available zeitvertreib. It was one of those rainy days of spring which it needs a hopeful mood to distinguish from autumnal ones—dull, depressing, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to dine with some of the officers of the Coldstreams whom they had met on board the "Ripon." The meal was a rough one, for the country had been completely eaten up by this immense accession of strangers. Still, the caterer had succeeded in procuring some tough fowls in addition to the ration beef, and as these were washed down by champagne, there was no reason ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... Levellers. And what this man writes of—levelling men's estates, of taking in of Commons, that none should have more ground than he was able to till and husband by his labour—proving unpracticable by reason of so many tough old laws which had fixed propriety; yet it is pursued by the Quakers as much as they well can, in thouing everybody, in denying Titles, Civil Respects, and terms of distinction among men, and at first they ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... to all comforts now!" exclaimed an old Nomeite dubiously, "for we won't find any on shore; leastwise not unless it has improved more in the last ten months than I think it has. It was a tough place enough last summer, and that's no josh either!" looking around him at the ladies of the party and evidently wondering what they would think ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Copenhagen has threatened to withhold its annual subsidy of $130 million - roughly one-third of the islands' budget revenues - unless the Faroese make significant efforts to balance their budget. To this extent the Faroe government is expected to continue its tough policies, including introducing a 20% VAT in 1993, and has agreed to an IMF economic-political stabilization plan. In addition to its annual subsidy, the Danish government has bailed out the second largest Faroe bank to the tune ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... such a man, outwardly lean, tough-looking, well put together and active, though not, indeed, powerful, looking at the poor white-faced girl and asking the secret of her strength, as though he envied it. But at that moment, the natural situation was reversed. His eyes were lustreless, tired, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... arm in her dream, and woke. Later in the day she met her neighbour, who complained of a pain in the arm, just where the farmer's wife seized it in her dream. The place mortified and the poor lady died. To return to Montezuma. An honest labourer was brought before him, who made this very tough statement. He had been carried by an eagle into a cave, where he saw a man in splendid dress sleeping heavily. Beside him stood a burning stick of incense such as the Aztecs used. A voice announced that this ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the counting-house. Becky, you come too. We must barricade the place. I'll run round and fasten up every door. They will have a tough job to get in," ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... tough steaks," observed he grimly. Later on he carved several fine steaks from the turtle and cleaned the upper shell carefully, wisely concluding to retain it for the usefulness it was sure to afford sooner or later. "There is one thing ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... display, were in no request there. He languished after the friends and the society he had left behind; and wrote over incessantly for books from England. One that was sent him at this time was an Essay on the Principles of Human Action; and the way in which he spoke of that dry, tough, metaphysical choke-pear, shewed the dearth of intellectual intercourse in which he lived, and the craving in his mind after those studies which had once been his pride, and to which he still turned for consolation in his remote solitude.—Perhaps ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the Larch with all its fibers Shivered in the air of morning, Touched his forehead with its tassels, Said, with one long sigh of sorrow, "Take them all, O Hiawatha!" From the earth he tore the fibers, Tore the tough roots of the Larch Tree. Closely sewed the bark together, Bound it closely to the framework. "Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree! Of your balsam and your resin, So to close the seams together That the water may not enter, That the river may ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... have disappeared several times in some crevice. The three other blacks carried the litter. At the head, Dick Sand sounded the earth. The choice of the place to step on was not made without trouble. They marched from preference on the edges, which were covered by a thick and tough grass. Often the support failed, and they sank to the knees ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... face, Siddhartha watched the leaving monk. The sleep had strengthened him much, but hunger gave him much pain, for by now he had not eaten for two days, and the times were long past when he had been tough against hunger. With sadness, and yet also with a smile, he thought of that time. In those days, so he remembered, he had boasted of three three things to Kamala, had been able to do three noble and undefeatable ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... fire in her cracked cooking stove; but though she busied herself with her daily duties for the next hour, her face was unusually serious, and her mind agitated. She was reflecting earnestly on the new charge that had been thrust upon her, and wondering whether a tough old woman who had never had the measles could escape ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... shaft was a little, tough mud-rat, who excited in me the liveliest sense of aversion. Pat Doogan was his name, but I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... them; the world was wet in an instant; a little mist of water splashed up two inches high off the ground; the gorse tossed and swayed its tough arms; the sea and the struggling craft upon it vanished like a dream; from the heart of the storm ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... to me particularly mouldy, and in fact too high-flavored with antiquity. I could not help comparing some of the ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so many old cheeses. They have a tough gray rind and a rich interior, which find food and lodging for numerous tenants who live and die under their shelter or their shadow,—lowly servitors some of them, portly dignitaries others, humble holy ministers of religion many, I doubt not,—larvae of angels, who will get their wings ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... came to the manse every Friday evening for many years, and he and my father discussed everything and everybody;—beginning with tough, strong head work—a bout at wrestling, be it Caesar's Bridge, the Epistles of Phalaris, the import of {men} and {de}, the Catholic question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... mean masters. Both of my old grandfathers had good masters. I had an uncle, Anderson Fields, who had a tough master. He was so tough that Uncle Anderson had to run away. They'd whip him and do around, and he would run away. Then they would get the dogs after him and they would run him until he would climb a tree to get away from ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... reached the skirts of the mountains, and the road now began to ascend. After a while it grew somewhat steeper, and decidedly rougher. And now Bob found, to his immense relief, that the pace was at last beginning to tell upon the tough sinews of the fiery animal which he bestrode. The ass could not keep up such a pace while ascending the mountain. Gradually his speed slackened, and Bob at length began to look about for a soft place, where he ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grene shawe;" All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have 40 Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze: He would ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... immense creature. He sat in an upright chair that seemed to have been provided especially for him. The great bulk of him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, tough fiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea thing. One ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... said the officer, wiping the perspiration from his brow, 'and strong as a bear, but I've tackled as tough hands as him in my day, and so has poor Bill Maddox there. I hope the Earl will settle a good pension on his widow—it will be sad news for her and her four poor children:—stone dead. He took the famous highwayman, Jack Blount summut in this way, five years ago. Well, he's gone, and as the tide ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... still used, too, their primitive breastplates and greaves of twigs interwoven with cordage. [ Some of the northern tribes of California, at the present day, wear a sort of breastplate "composed of thin parallel battens of very tough wood, woven together with a small cord." ] The masterpiece of Huron handiwork, however, was the birch canoe, in the construction of which the Algonquins were no less skilful. The Iroquois, in the absence of the birch, were forced to use the bark of the elm, which was greatly ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... there was barely time to regain the latter by quickly leaping from one cake of ice to the other as the waves and current tore them apart. It took us four hours to reach land, or rather the foot-ice securely attached to it, and here, worn out after the tough struggle against the forces of nature, every man took a much-needed rest. It was not until 7 A.M. on June 19 that our feet actually touched the soil of America, six months to a day after our departure from the Gare du ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Chief," he drawled, drawing a huge clasp-knife from his pocket, "I been grazin' on this here Alasky range nigh on to twenty yars, and so help me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a bunch o' hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts a-singin' o' the female sect." With a movement of his thumb Kayak Bill released the formidable blade of the knife, and nonchalantly, dexterously, began using it ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... moment. It occurred to him that it must be pretty tough to be responsible for the things that other men's lives depend on—when you can't share their danger. But just then the smell of coffee reached his nostrils. He trailed the scent. There was a coffeepot steaming on the table in ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... conceal them from us, and he was very angry that it had come to our knowledge; but, as he had acknowledged the fact, he had no objection to talk about it. He told us that human flesh required a greater number of hours to cook than any other; that if not done enough it was very tough, but when sufficiently cooked it was as tender as paper. He held in his hand a piece of paper, which he tore in illustration of his remark. He said the flesh then preparing would not be ready till next morning; but one of his sisters whispered in my ear that her brother was deceiving ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... bring your treaty of truce, but some old dotards from Acharnae[180] got scent of the thing; they are veterans of Marathon, tough as oak or maple, of which they are made for sure—rough and ruthless. They all set to a-crying, "Wretch! you are the bearer of a treaty, and the enemy has only just cut our vines!" Meanwhile they were gathering stones in ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... was tough and musky, but it could be eaten, must be eaten, ind was eaten. During the time required for jerking a quantity of it, Glover made a boat out of the two hides, scraping them with a hunting knife, sewing them with a sailor's needle and strands of the sounding-line, and stretching them on ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... those things, and sometimes lent an hand, I had by this means so full knowledge of the methods of it, that I wanted nothing but the materials; when it came into my mind, that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my stakes that grew, might possibly be as tough as the sallows, and willows, and osiers, in England; and I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... and top views of a tool designed to rough off wrought iron, or a tough quality of steel. You will notice, that what is called the top rake (A) is very pronounced, and, as the point projects considerably above the body of the tool itself, it should, in practice, be set with its cutting ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... affectionate nickname—they knew him among themselves as 'little Bobs.' His administrative capacity he had proved in the post of Quartermaster-General in India. Ripe in experience of war, Roberts at the age of forty-seven was in the full vigour of manhood, alert in mind, and of tough and enduring physique. He was a very junior Major-General, but even among his seniors the conviction was general that Lord Lytton the Viceroy, and Sir F. Haines the Commander-in-Chief, acted wisely in entrusting to him the most active ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... merely mentioned here. The Canadian corps now known everywhere to consist of shock troops second to none on the western front, was frequently used as the spearhead with which to pierce particularly tough parts of the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... know as I think mich on these science gents. They're allays a-bringin' in some new-fangled thing or other, but generally there's nowt in 'em. Still, to 'blige the company, I'll do owt raisonable. I'm tough has a crocodile's tongue, and can stand a goodish bit o' jingo and nonsense. Here goes, yer honour." Voltaire eyed him doubtfully, and Simon coolly ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Temper-pin, a fiddle-peg; the regulating pin of the spinning-wheel. Tent, heed. Tent, to tend; to heed; to observe. Tentie, watchful, careful, heedful. Tentier, more watchful. Tentless, careless. Tester, an old silver coin about sixpence in value. Teugh, tough. Teuk, took. Thack, thatch; thack and rape the covering of a house, and so, home necessities. Thae, those. Thairm, small guts; catgut (a fiddle-string). Theckit, thatched. Thegither, together. Thick, v. pack an' thick. Thieveless, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and the friction would play an important part in taking up the horizontal shear. Dowels without head or nut would be much less efficient; they would be more like the stirrups in a reinforced concrete beam. Furthermore, wood is much stronger in bearing than concrete, and it is tough, so that it would admit of shifting to a firm bearing against the bolt. Separate slabs of concrete with bolts or dowels through them would not make a reliable beam. The bolts or dowels would be good for only a part of the safe shearing strength of the steel, ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... "A tough case!" he whispered as we sat by him. "Our man has his spies out, and my every step is dogged ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... effervesces, just as the transparent bubbles are wont to rise in rainy weather. Nor was there a pause longer than a full hour, when a flower sprang up from the blood, of the same colour {with it}, such as the pomegranates are wont to bear, which conceal their seeds beneath their tough rind. Yet the enjoyment of it is but short-lived; for the same winds[66] which give it a name, beat it down, as it has but a slender hold, and is apt to fall by ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ever married her, and I found it out in a month. She wasn't so much to blame as you might think," he pursued thoughtfully. "You see she had a tough time of it, and she was little and weak, and everything was against her. She came out West first to teach school, and then she got mixed up with some skunk of a man who pretended to marry her when he had a wife living in Chicago, and after that I guess she went ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... fire set by Seth Craddock in celebration of his return to Ascalon was in Morgan's ears like the roar of the sea; the heat of it drew the tough skin of his face as he rode fifty yards from it into the center of the square. There he stopped, his rifle across his ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me not unfrequently of the sons of ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... water is brought in a system of pipes from a lake five miles away, and as it is only for summer use the pipes are not buried from the frost, but wander along the surface, through the ferns and brambles of the tough little sea-side knolls on which the cottages are perched, and climb the old tumbling stone walls of the original pastures before ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... misled by worldly-wisemen to take advice of the doctor's boy, but go direct to Jesus; he is ready—he is willing to cure and save to the uttermost. His medicine may be sharp, but merely so as to effect the cure 'where bad humours are tough and churlish.' 'It revives where life is, and gives life where it is not. Take man from this river, and nothing can make him live: let him have this water and nothing can make him die.' The river of water ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a tough time of year," said Sedgwick. "The Red Sea and the ocean beyond will be like furnaces ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... a clever, cultured man—that Martin kept seeing himself down all his past. He saw himself when he had been quite the hoodlum, wearing a "stiff-rim" Stetson hat and a square-cut, double-breasted coat, with a certain swagger to the shoulders and possessing the ideal of being as tough as the police permitted. He did not disguise it to himself, nor attempt to palliate it. At one time in his life he had been just a common hoodlum, the leader of a gang that worried the police and terrorized honest, working-class ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... having made his point, smiled indulgently, and, as he was deeply involved in a mouthful of tough goose, the smile, blended with the act of mastication, made him look more than ever like a fox, a fox in a trap, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... it was the very fox we had been talking about come to find shelter with me—and, if he stole a meal out of our hen-roost, I gave it him before he asked it, with all the will in the world. I hope he chose a good fat hen, and not one of your tough old capons that sometimes come ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... wrenched off his helmet. 'Eya!' The vizard broke and remained in his hand and Miyonoya still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in terror, 'How terrible, how heavy your arm!' And Kagekiyo called at him, 'How tough the shaft of your neck is!' And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... remarkable men. If so, the opportunity was good, as they stopped within a few feet of his chair. One of them was elderly, as old as, if not older than, the man watching him; but he was of that famous Scotch stock whose members are tough and hale at eighty. This toughness he showed not only in his figure, which was both upright and graceful, but in the glance of his calm, cold eye, which fell upon everybody and everything unmoved, while that of his young, but equally ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... moment, when escape was almost within his grasp, dreaded sounds came to his ears,—the opening of the door and the shuffle of running feet. Teeny-bits was in a hopeless position to make any resistance; the folds of tough cloth which had been wound about his body, pinioning his arms, had been pulled upward with the sweater until the whole mass was bunched across the top of his bare shoulders, and though he was able to move his arms slightly, he was still so tangled that he ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... an obstacle to greater productivity and growth. Portugal has been increasingly overshadowed by lower-cost producers in Central Europe and Asia as a target for foreign direct investment. The government faces tough choices in its attempts to boost Portugal's economic competitiveness while keeping the budget deficit within ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... which as well as their clothing and their weapons, had a worn and dingy aspect, as if they had seen hard service of late. At the rear of the party was an old man, who, as he came up, stopped his horse to speak to us. He rode a little tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing screams of merriment to cast her loose again. But soon we drew out of the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of deformed, green, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... a young mustang is excellent, but that of an old broken-down horse is quite another affair. It was as tough as India-rubber, and the more a piece of it was masticated, the larger it became in the mouth. A man never knows what he can eat, until driven to desperation by a week's starving, and the jolly parson, who had pledged himself never to eat even calf's meat, fiercely attacked the leathery ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the side of the axe-head represent string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that metal took the place of the stone axe-head, and being tough the new substance needed no support. The mightiest man in the prehistoric days was he who had the best weapon, and knew how to wield it with the greatest effect; when the prehistoric hero of many fights and victories passed to his rest, his own or a similar weapon was buried ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... of it, at Paul's, and in the Convocation House Yard did there see the body of Robert Braybrooke, Bishop of London, that died 1404: He fell down in his tomb out of the great church into St. Fayth's this late fire, and is here seen his skeleton with the flesh on; but all tough and dry like a spongy dry leather, or touchwood all upon his bones. His head turned aside. A great man in his time, and Lord Chancellor; and his skeletons now exposed to be handled and derided by some, though admired for its duration by others. Many ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working in Cincinnati, left his position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg, which was a cattle town at that time and very tough. I remember seeing him off on the train, never expecting to see him again. Six months afterward, while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 A.M., there was flung into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. It made a report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... thing is to be specially noted as one of the chief and indispensable causes of his success. He had no vices. He never drank to excess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grapple with adverse fortune. What he once wrote of himself in the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... found the second time what they The first time thought quite terrible enough To fly from, malgre all which people say Of Glory, and all that immortal stuff Which fills a regiment (besides their pay, That daily shilling which makes warriors tough)— They found on their return the self-same welcome, Which made some think, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... believe so," replied another. "I've never seen him before and I know most of the reporters in New York. None of the editors would send a new man to interview Sullivan. He's too tough a bird for a greenhorn to tackle. I guess he's a messenger from some broker's ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... were manned amidship, with two sturdy fellows to tug at each; and the quiet evening air led through the soft rehearsal of the water to its banks the creak of tough ash thole-pins, and the groan of gunwale, and the splash of oars, and even a sound of human staple, such as is accepted by the civilized world ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... transport he found himself staring incredulously at the envelope on the dresser. He snatched it up, tore it open and removed three pieces of white paper. Two of them were crisp and tough and engraved on one side with jet-black ink. The ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... disturbance, defies the law, and discharges fire-arms at random is spoken of as a cowboy, although in a majority of instances he has never done a day's work to justify the name. The tough man from the East who goes West to play the bad cowboy, is liable to find that he has been borrowing trouble. He finds out that an altercation is likely to bring him up facing the muzzle of a pistol in the hands of a man much more ready to pull ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... long enough to-day, good my lords, to make a hearty charge on your suppers; a long journey and a tough battle, commend me to them for helps to the appetite," said the Scottish baron, joyously inviting them by his own example to eat on and ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... monkeys, a coati, and a jacu, the new man possessing a rifle of his own, for which I had bought 200 cartridges from our friend Pedro Nunes. We had, therefore, that day, a good meal of meat; but what terrible pain we felt when we devoured the tough pieces of those animals, which we had broiled over a big flame! Notwithstanding the pain, however, we had an irresistible and insatiable ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... you were for a moment," responded Nick. "But I suppose you can do as you're told at a pinch. This filthy thing has got jammed. It's too tough a job for a single-handed pigmy like me." He glanced quizzically up at Muriel with the last remark, but she quickly averted her eyes, bending to speak to Olga ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Burton has described himself as the guest of Mrs Gordon at Abergeldie, who, as he said, made a request that when he came to visit her he would if possible arrive before midnight. Invercauld, Glenkindie, Tough, and many other country-houses, were visited in the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... lancinating pain in her side with every expansion of the lungs; but, instead, a dull pain, attended by a cough and tightness of the chest. The cough was, at first, dry, unsatisfactory, and attended with anxiety. Then came a tough mucus, a little streaked with blood. The expectoration soon became freer, and assumed a brownish hue. A low fever accompanied ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... united in such a careful manner that he was able to handle it with as much ease and facility as if composed of a single sheet of paper of the tough texture of which our national issues are made. He seemed quite proud of his novel garment, so unique of its kind, and strode forward with the pompous tread of an Indian chief until he was within a few feet of where Ned sat, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... true... some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true... only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that—monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fraulein? Tough leathery monkey.... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... he saw: remembrance of it, alone, made the flesh about her lips blue, unsteadied her brain; the well-accented face grew vacant, dreary; neither nerves nor will of this woman were tough. Her family were not the stuff out of which voluntary heroes are made. He saw, too, she was thrusting it back,—out of thought: it was her temperament ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... gnawed the oak-tree down, When that tough foe was at his feet— Found in the stump no angel-cake Nor buttered bread, nor cheese, nor meat— The forest-roof let in the sky. "This light is worth the work," said he. "I'll make this ancient swamp more light," And started on ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... and brown richly, being careful not to burn the mixture. Then pour on slowly while stirring constantly, three cups of stock (in which the neck, pinions and giblets were cooked). Bring it to the boiling point, and season to taste. Chop the giblets very fine, first removing the tough parts of the gizzard; then reheat them ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... bass. Why? Because bass is the wood generally used for carving. The tree is the same as the linden and the lime. It is found in northern Asia, Europe, and North America, and grows to an immense height. The wood is soft, light, close-veined, pliable, tough, durable, and free from knots, and does not split easily; all of which qualities favor ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... stones sang through his curls, and struck a chip from the face of the cliff. Up he clambered a few feet, drew up the loose end after him, unslung his belt, held on with knee and with elbow while he spliced the long, tough leathern belt to the end of the cord: then lowering himself as far as he could go, he swung backwards and forwards until his hand reached the crack, when he left the rope and clung to the face of the cliff. Another stone struck him on the side, and he heard ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for your color, Mother. Besides, think of church. You must admit that church here has gone a bit tough. I really couldn't stand it except sandwiched between two slices ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... nothing, but he presented her with a red plush photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first reckless expenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and Sweetwater counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot in the tough and weather-tanned hide of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... out; ay, here it dies, Which whiles it lasted gave King Henry light. O Lancaster! I fear thy overthrow More than my body's parting with my soul! My love and fear glued many friends to thee; And, now I fall, thy tough commixtures melt, Impairing Henry, strengthening mis-proud York. The common people swarm like summer flies; And whither fly the gnats but to the sun? And who shines now but Henry's enemies? O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds, Thy burning car never ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Directory of Worship. The business of a Confession of Faith thus lying over till it could be resumed at leisure, the Assembly had, for more than a year, been occupied with the Church-government question and the Directory. What tough and tedious work they had had with the Church-government question we have seen. Still, even in this question they had made progress. Beating the Congregationalists by vote on proposition after proposition, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... now is that the advance is proving a very tough proposition. The casualty list is of colossal dimensions. All the signs point to a ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... picked up a hoe that was lying near by. He placed the tough ash handle across his knee, and with a movement of his powerful hands, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... so, Adrien. I don't fancy you need worry over Annette. The accident probably is serious but not dangerous. Tony is a tough fellow." ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient tradition speaks much of his learning, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... you shall have," says I, and coming without the cave I cut twigs sufficient to my purpose, and divers lengths of vine, very strong and tough, and therewith bound my twigs about a stick I had trimmed for a handle; whiles she, sitting upon a great stone that lay hard by, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... me of a place in these gold fields where you won't find a tough gang? I was in Forest City the other day. I took the trail over the mountains through Alleghany. Both of those places are live towns with cemeteries,—well settled places, you know. But a tougher lot of citizens you ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... noticed something unusual about the dressing-room. You waited for me to move it back here, I suppose? It's rather a tough job ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough cafe she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... litters, just chairs with poles, like those in use in England on the 5th of November; and a fat Englishman, who was of the party, was hoisted into a third, borne by eight men. I was accommodated with a tough stick, and we began to plough our way up. The ascent was as steep as this line /—very nearly perpendicular. We were all tumbling at every stop; and looking up and seeing the people in advance tumbling over one's very head, and looking ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... path. Some of it is of the more insidious kind, which may co-exist with a delightful persuasion that the way is absolutely clear, and Browning's "obscurity" an invention of the invertebrate. The problems presented by his writing are merely tough, and will always yield to intelligent and patient scrutiny. But the problems presented by his mind are elusive, and it would be hard to resist the cogency of his interpreters, if it were not for their number. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... of supremest purposes Is steeper to the angel than the child. Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, And disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, And break a pathway to those unknown realms That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled; 239 Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... nations. This is a truism of history. All history teaches us that the welfare and very life of a nation is determined by moral causes; and that it is the pure races that respect their women and guard them jealously from defilement that are the tough, prolific, ascendant races, the noblest in type and the most fruitful in propagating themselves. You will never find a permanently progressive race where the position of women is low, the men libertine, and the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... a man dressed like a tough," said the city editor; "for as this fellow is to all appearances a gentleman, he will try to look as little ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... he left the laboratory and struck out through the underbrush in the direction Carlos had taken the day before. Fighting his way through the tangled shrubbery, he kept his eyes constantly on the needle of the magnetic compass he had wrenched from the direction finder. It was tough going through the thicket, and just as bad across a swampy clearing where he was mired to the knees before he got across. Up the hill and into the woods he forged, keeping doggedly to the direction he had ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... were at first; for they will begin to despise and persecute the Word of God when corrected by it. Yea, even those who gladly hear the Word of God, who highly prize it and aim to follow it, have daily need of admonition and encouragement, so strong and tough is that old hide of our sinful flesh. And so powerful and wily is our old evil foe that wherever he can gain enough of an opening to insert one of his claws, he thrusts in his whole self and will not desist until he has again sunk man into his former condemnable unbelief and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... families were reared to vigorous manhood on it. Even to-day the French Canadian has not by any means lost his liking for this nourishing and palatable food. Beans, too, were a favourite vegetable in the old days; not the tender haricots of the modern menu, but the feves or large, tough-fibred beans that grew in Normandy and were brought by its people to the New World. There were potatoes, of course, and they were patates, not pommes de terre. Cucumbers were plentiful, indeed they were being grown by the Indians ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... "Constance told me she'd stop on her way down for you if you changed your mind about going late," she said briskly. "She wants you to see her dress, anyway, before anything happens to it. She says she's sure to wreck it. She's so used to good tough stuff that she'll walk right through ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... and sliding down again as if for a wager. I did not give him a moment for rest, and he was soon panting terribly and beginning to stumble; but with almost superhuman nerve he kept up the chase. He was an unusually tough burglar. ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... tough luck!" murmured Tom, as he and his chum turned away. "Just as we were getting ready to go back into the game, too! Had it all fixed up for Harry to fly with us in a sort of a triangle scheme to down the Boches, and they have to go and plump him off the map. Well, ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... often meddle in other folks' business, do I? When a tough old fellow like me sets out to warn a body, you may know its because he sees sore need of it. Just takin' drinks for good fellowship? Yes, I know all 'bout that. Been there myself. Sit down on the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard |
