"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He thus attempted to wrest from the senate the control of the public land and, with the aid of the Latini and the plebeians, to put an end to the system of occupation.[4] The lands which he proposed to divide were solely those which the state had acquired through conquest since the general assignment ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... America, and strove with energetic swords and rapacious wallets to wrest blood and gold and fame ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... they were more especially apprehensive of danger, because there was a provocation for seeking vengeance. They knew he had every means to involve them in a more signal overthrow than that which awaited himself. The only alternatives were, either to wrest the weapons of destruction from his hands, or render the possessor incapable of wielding them. They were driven almost to desperation, when they reflected on their deeds of wickedness reaching through many years, the record of which was in the hands ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... after a time, a new source of income in the factory industries, that were more and more profitably absorbing capital and labor. So that although pioneer conditions gradually passed away, and it became less easy to wrest a living from plain or mountain or mine, the idea of finding out what was wrong, improving methods of agriculture, conserving the forest wealth by continual replanting or working the less rich mines at a profit through ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step, your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.* You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... straight to the heart. She told the tale of her husband's death painfully and vividly, painted truthfully the mad terror that had seized upon her and struck her down at that frightful time, raised her hands to her brow with the gesture of despair, as though she would wrest the madness from her brain—and a shudder of pity and awe passed through the assembled crowd. It is a fact that at this moment, if her words were false, her anguish was both sincere and terrible. An angel soiled by crime, she lied ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "robbing," and of "manstealing," we could have borne with him well; and, as we have hitherto done, continued to pass by his labors with silent contempt. But we have deemed it important to show in what manner, and to what extent, the spirit of abolitionism can wrest the pure word of God to its ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... border State, with an interest in slavery, public opinion was divided, and it was uncertain to which side it would incline. The Confederates understood the value of the prize, and they had taken measures, which promised to be successful, to wrest it from the Union. The task had been committed to Gen. Humphrey Marshall, who had invaded Eastern Kentucky from the Virginia border, and had already advanced as ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... employ them would hesitate to entrust them with the transport of a ton of treasure from the sea of Biscay to Madrid, knowing well that it would not be their fault were it not delivered safe and undiminished even of a grain, and that bold must be the thieves who would seek to wrest it from the far-feared Maragatos, who would cling to it whilst they could stand, and would cover it with their bodies when they fell in the act of loading ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street. The guard very properly refused to let him pass. In his drunken fury he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which, being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley, and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Senor Pizarro, a man of high ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... nothing, staring at the thin slip of paper as if he were trying to wrest from it ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the slope it stood still for what seemed an age. They saw the two in bow and stern struggle desperately again and again to wrest their craft from the clutch of the current. Then, almost with a leap, freed from the fierce resistance of the rapids, the canoe slid over the brink of the incline, into the deeper part of the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... proof that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, God our aid! A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band, South, East, and on to the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Egyptian annals was brought about by his influence. It was forgotten, however, that of all things chronology is the least suited to be an object of inspiration; and that, though men may be wholly indifferent to truth for its own sake, and consider it not improper to wrest it unscrupulously to what they may suppose to be a just purpose, yet that it will vindicate itself at last. It is impossible to succeed completely in perverting the history of a nation which has left numerous enduring records. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the day she attempted to wrest a promise from Beatrice that she would hold no further communication with the prohibited lover. But Beatrice would give ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... good lives never can secure Men from bad livers. Worst men will have best 40 As ill as they, or heaven to hell they'll wrest. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... sudden affright. He had intended to wrest the child from her grasp, and mount and ride away; he was roused from his reverie by the thrusting upon him of his opportunity, facilitated a hundredfold. Evelina had evidently forgotten something. She hesitated for a moment; then put the baby down upon a ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... at sight of it, that on the night when the iceberg was overturned and the Halbrane was carried away, I had dreamed of a fabulous animal of this kind, seated at the pole of the world, and from whom Edgar Poe could only wrest its secrets. ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... either to punish the kidnapers or wrest the slaves from the hands of their present owners. Our plan will be simply this: Take the consul with us to identify us, go to these owners, explain the facts, and offer to repurchase the negroes at once. They will, no doubt, gladly come to terms, rather ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and all the investigations he instituted, when he found that the boy who was with me had been set on shore again. I have given him full scope and licence to act as he chose; but I have come at length, to wrest from him that which is not his, and to strip him of a rank to which he has no claim.—Have you anything to say, Harry Sherbrooke?" he continued, fixing his eye upon him. "Have you anything to say against that which ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... rainbow. arder to burn. ardiente ardent. ardor m. ardor, heat. arena sand. arenal m. sandy ground. argentino silvery. argumento argument. arma arm, weapon. armar to arm, to dub (a knight). armonia harmony. arnes m. harness, trapping. arcancar to pull up, wrest, force out. arranque m. pulling up, impulse, vehemence. arrastrar to drag. arrebatar to snatch, carry off, fling. arrepentir vr. to repent. arriba up, above. arriero muleteer. arrimar to draw near. arrodillar vr. to kneel. arrojar to ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... he can do; for since 'tis vain To will what can't be compassed, to abstain From idle wishing is philosophy. Lo, all our happiness and grief imply Knowledge or not of will's ability: They therefore can, who will what ought to be. Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry. Nor what a man can, should he always will: Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so; And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear. Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst still Be helpful ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the bells for mass, which he said, half an hour later, especially ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... re-discover the spring that moved me then. Yet, though I can not feel it again, I know dimly what it was, that high, strange, noble, ludicrous ideal of my office which so laid hold on me as to scatter passion's forces and wrest me from the arms of her I loved. I can not now so think of my kingship, so magnify its claim, or conceive that it matters so greatly to the world how I hold it or what manner of man I show myself. I come to the conclusion ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... latter opinion. Therefore he wrote in his "Manifesto": "The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State—i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the Right Wing, in a letter published in "The Call," April 9, 1919, bitterly complained against the tactics of the Left Wingers—in trying to wrest control of the Socialist Party from the "Old Guard" of Berger and Hillquit, which had acquired the habit ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... bitterly, "change them for the worse, if he can. He will try to wrest the power from Jethro Bass. I don't defend him. I don't defend myself. But I like Jethro Bass. I won't deny it. He's human, and I like him, and whatever they say about him I know that he's been a true friend to me. And I tell you as I hope for happiness here and hereafter, that if Worthington ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Now I need not rehearse the matter; what I have said may suffice. Behold, the scriptures are before you; if ye will wrest them it shall be to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... single chance to wrest from Mack Murray the prize for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan Ross, the cool and experienced champion of many a hard-fought fight. Again Black Duncan took the hammer. It was his last throw. He had still fifteen feet to go to reach his own ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... intrigue with Madame de Verneuil; and if I pardoned him upon that occasion, it was not on his own account, but from respect for the relationship which exists between us. Neither, Madame, has it escaped my memory that the House of Guise endeavoured to wrest from me the crown of France; and, in short, finding myself so ill-requited for my indulgence, I am weary of exercising a lenity which has degenerated into weakness. Your son is at perfect liberty to marry my mistress, since he has seen fit ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... nitrogen, is hardly less injurious and will actually lessen the yield of fruit though it may increase the size of the vine. Not only must the food be in right proportions but in such condition as to be readily available. Tomato roots have little power to wrest plant food from the soil. The use of coarse, unfermented manure is even more unsatisfactory with this than with other crops. The enormous yields sometimes obtained by English gardeners from plants grown under glass result from a supply of food of the right proportions ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... Immediately wrest of Daliao are three villages whose people are known as Eto or Ata. Aside from a slightly greater percentage of individuals showing negroid features, these people do not differ in any respect from the Bagobo. It does not seem that they should be classed with the people later ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... put to flight, and expelled from Spain four generals and four armies of the Carthaginians; did you, I say, who were only eight thousand men, all of course of less worth than Albius and Atrius, to whom you subjected yourselves, hope to wrest the province of Spain out of the hands of the Roman people? I lay no stress upon my own name, I put it out of the question. Let it be supposed that I have not been injured by you in any respect beyond the ready credence of my death. What! if I were dead, was ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... my sorrow to an end, Or justice give me back my buried friend? But if some Milton vainly now implore, And Powell prosper as he did before, Yet 'twere too much that, making no ado, Thy saints be slaughtered and be slandered too. So, Lord, make Knight his weapon keep in sheath, Or do Thou wrest it from between ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... their legs contracted. "If dead muscles contract, it must mean that some external force has penetrated them." This was the simple argument of the "genius," the "great discoverer." And seeking this force, Volta, by means of his piles, was able to wrest from the earth electricity, which is, literally as well as figuratively, the "gleam" of an immense progress. Laying due weight upon a little fact, such as that of a dead being having moved, considering it soberly without any fanciful additions, and fixing the mind upon the resulting problem: Why ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... indictment of Oliver ever penned, "took armes against two hundred thousand pounds a year, and raised them himself to above two millions." It is true. Cromwell spent the money honestly and efficiently, and chiefly on a navy that enabled him to wrest the command of the sea from the Dutch, to secure the carrying trade, and to challenge the world for supremacy in the Indies, both East and West. In doing this, he had the instinct of the whole nation behind him. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... itself, with much greater provocation, had at its commencement been less violent. The Treasurer was instantly driven from office, impeached, sent to the Tower. Sharp and vehement votes were passed on the subject of the Popish Plot. The Commons were prepared to go much further, to wrest from the King his prerogative of mercy in cases of high political crimes, and to alter the succession to the Crown. Charles was thoroughly perplexed and dismayed. Temple saw him almost daily and thought him impressed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great charm—an uninterrupted view of the sky; a place virtually unknown before he planted there the rude buildings that house his wonderful inventions; yet now a place known to scientific men all over the world; the Mecca of many a mind seeking to wrest from Nature ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... that, did Boev, the man next in order behind Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great difficulty, while amid the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... succeeded, now stood over the body of the Georgian, with uplifted hand, about to complete the deed already begun. There was not a moment for delay, and the youth sprung forward in time to seize and wrest the weapon from his grasp. With a feeling of undisguised indignation, he exclaimed, as the outlaw turned furiously ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... virtue, we may impress it for that service; and good it were to rescue so worthy a faculty from so vile abuse. It is the right of reason and piety to command that and all other endowments; folly and impiety do only usurp them. Just and fit therefore it is to wrest them out of so bad hands, to revoke them to their right use ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... spirit that made Holland the lenient host to political and religious refugees from every land in that restive age characterized her colony and laid the foundations of the great city of today. England had to wrest from the Dutch their ascendancy in New Netherland, where they split in twain the great English colonies of New England and of the South and controlled the magnificent harbor at the mouth of the Hudson, which has since become the water gate of ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... bold fellows will carry off the maid to the safe keeping of Maelgon, and once let her be his prisoner, there is no fear of her escaping from his hands. Edward himself and all his forces at his back will scarce wrest away the prize, and the whole country will be united and in arms ere it suffer the tyrant to ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of food for Moonbeams has to be drawn over this ninety miles of desert by waggons or mule carts, and every drop of water comes in six miles from the camp. What splendid pluck and daring to wrest gold from the earth under such circumstances! What general would fight an enemy so ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... drive on the Somme has only bent the lines. The Germans may shorten their lines because of a lack of men, but I firmly believe that neither their line nor the Allies' line will ever be broken. What will be the end if the Allies cannot wrest from Germany, Belgium and that part of northern France she is holding for ransom—to obtain good terms at the peace congress? Is Germany slowly, very slowly going under, or are we going to witness complete European exhaustion? ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... tenderness in her voice seemed to restore Cardo to life. He crossed the velvet path, and, laying hold of her hands, which she in vain tried to wrest ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... driving sheets, blotting out all but the nearest cars or vehicles, while the wind seemed to lie in wait at every corner ready to spring forth and wrest umbrellas out of the hands of pedestrians at the most ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... operated by tenants. As for Fred, he knew little about agriculture. On the Mexican plantation which his father and Uncle William had controlled, he had learned nothing that was likely to prove of the slightest value in his attempt to wrest a living from these neglected Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a dogged determination to succeed and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... appeals may hereafter be taken, but interdicts its jurisdiction on appeals which have already been made to that high judicial body. If, therefore, it should become a law, it will by its retroactive operation wrest from the citizen a remedy which he enjoyed at the time of his appeal. It will thus operate most harshly upon those who believe that justice has been denied them in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer; Thy inner lair became The haunt of guilty shame; Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side, Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due. Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide, A harvest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... converts him at point of sword, and receives from him the offer of his beautiful daughter. The marriage is about to be celebrated, William and the Saracen princess are actually at the altar, when a messenger from Louis arrives claiming the champion's help against the traitors who already wish to wrest the sceptre from his hand. William asks the Pope what he is to do, and the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the surveyors to carry the instrument, with a view to its protection against all assailants; but one day an equally powerful fellow, a St. Helen's collier, cock of the walk in his neighbourhood, made up to the theodolite bearer to wrest it from him by sheer force. A battle took place, the collier was soundly pummelled, but the natives poured in volleys of stones upon the surveyors and their instruments, and the theodolite was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a type of peace thou seemest now, Yielding thy ridges to the rustic plough, With corn-fields at thy feet, and many a grove Whose songs are but of love; But different was the aspect of that hour, Which brought, of eld, the Norsemen o'er the deep, To wrest yon castle's walls from Scotland's power, And leave her brave to bleed, her fair to weep; When Husbac fierce, and Olave, Mona's king,[5] Confederate chiefs, with shout and triumphing, Bade o'er its towers the Scaldic raven fly, And mock each storm-tost sea-king ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Babain, the surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and countermarches in the flats and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. His conduct was seconded by the courage of his troops, and on the eve of action a Mamaluke [42] exclaimed, "If we cannot wrest Egypt from the Christian dogs, why do we not renounce the honors and rewards of the sultan, and retire to labor with the peasants, or to spin with the females of the harem?" Yet, after all his efforts ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... land. When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king fell, says ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Dungeness-like, right ahead, and we call to mind that this was the scene of one of England's great naval victories. These rocks, so still and peaceful now, have resounded to the din of deadly strife, when, in the year 1797, a Spanish fleet, of twenty-seven sail, tried to wrest the dominion of the seas from its lawful holders, the English fleet, under Sir John Jervis, numbering only half ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now. You shall not hold me back. You don't understand. The man I love is up there, perhaps surrounded by savages. Let me go, I tell you! If he is dying I shall die by his side. Let me go! Would you have me strike you?" She turned on him like an angry goddess, and strove to wrest herself from his grip. At that instant Tollemache and Frascuelo, the only survivors of the deadly struggle forward, were driven back by a rush of Indians. They caught sight of others leaping ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... speak familiarly with the mighty hippopotami. The serpent should teach me his traditions, and the multitude of mollusks should develop the mysteries of their sluggish vitality; nay, the plurality of worlds should be demonstrated, and with the combined intelligences of all the systems, we should wrest the mysteries of life, matter, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... The hideous conception of existence which regards each individual as fighting for his own hand, striving for dear life against every other individual, was ingrained in their minds by the inveterate bitterness of their own experience; when Emily had become a woman, and was gone forth to wrest from the adverse world her own subsistence, her right to what she earned was indefeasible, and affection itself protested against her being mulcted for their advantage. As for the slight additional ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... tender tones, instantly thereafter growling in his speech, gnashing his teeth, glaring fiercely, waving one hand at the surrounding hills and shaking the other, clenched, at the unoffending sea—he was obviously stating his grievances, namely, that the white men had come there to wrest from him his native hills and glaciers, and rob him of his wife and children, and that he defied them to come on and do their worst, seeing that, in regard to the whole assembled white world in arms he did not care a button—or ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... that you have called me the most modern of modern poets, and have thus thought of me in the sharpest contrast to everything that is styled antique. I should thus have reason to be doubly pleased if I could wrest from you the admission that I have been able to make even this strange ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Minor; much less did they seek to uncover the buried capitals of Assyria and Babylonia. Scholarship was devoted to books, to old manuscripts in convent libraries, to recovering what the wise men of Greece and Rome had written, and trying to wrest new facts out of their blundering old compilations of ancient history. It did not occur to them that a hundred kings and ten thousand merchants and priests might have left the stories of their conquests or contracts or liturgies, unrotted in the wet soil, imperishably ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... inventions of grammarians following on the trail of genius—so it behoves the Aristotle who would discover the laws of the rhythm of prose to study the masters of the art, masters by instinct and a faultless ear and the grace of God, and endeavour by patient induction to wrest from their sentences the secrets of their harmonies. Who will ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... others he received upon his Flemish shield, which was proof against the Damascus blade. The blood streamed from numerous wounds received by either warrior. The Moor, seeing his antagonist exhausted, availed himself of his superior force, and, grappling, endeavored to wrest him from his saddle. They both fell to earth; the Moor placed his knee upon the breast of his victim, and, brandishing his dagger, aimed a blow at his throat. A cry of despair was uttered by the Christian ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years' time he had tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him. The unfortunate Robert came to him at Northampton, almost alone, forced himself into his presence, and told him he would submit everything to him, if he would only leave him the state and honor due to his birth. Henry turned his back on him, muttering some answer ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... substance. Besides, whatever colour they might pretend to give their usurpations, they sufficiently saw that these usurpations were in the main founded upon false and precarious titles, and that what they had acquired by mere force, others could again by mere force wrest out of their hands, without leaving them the least room to complain of such a proceeding. Even those, who owed all their riches to their own industry, could scarce ground their acquisitions upon a better title. It availed them nothing to say, 'Twas I built this wall; I acquired this ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Mandricardo, son of Agrican, the Tartar king, whom Orlando treacherously slew. I say treacherously, for in fair fight he could not have done it. It is in search of him that I have come to France, to take vengeance for my father, and to wrest from him Durindana, that famous sword, which belongs to me, and not to him." When the knights demanded to know by what right he claimed Durindana, Mandricardo ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... The defeat of the feudalists and their Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's honour required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou from Louis VIII., and to strengthen the English hold over Gascony. Besides national obligations, clergy and laity alike were still called upon to contribute towards the cost of crusading enterprises, and in 1226 the papal nuncio, Otto, demanded that ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... as unmistakably as he had felt her presence. But the pang of her going was shot through with elation that at last his waking brain had knowledge of her—a knowledge that no man could wrest from him, even if she never so came again. He had done her bidding. He had kept his manhood pure and the windows of his soul clear—and, behold, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... in the large, luminous eyes. They seemed to look right through me. They seemed to read my thoughts and wrest my secrets ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... ye, with honest rage, devoted pour Your inmost bosom's gore!— Yet give one hour to thought, And ye shall own, how little he can hold Another's glory dear, who sets his own at nought O Latin blood of old! Arise, and wrest from obloquy thy fame, Nor bow before a name Of hollow sound, whose power no laws enforce! For if barbarians rude Have higher minds subdued, Ours! ours the crime!—not ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... will at any rate give us two broad and well-marked classifications. The first is simple and well known, depending on whether the political object of the war is positive or negative. If it be positive—that is, if our aim is to wrest something from the enemy—then our war in its main lines will be offensive. If, on the other hand, our aim be negative, and we simply seek to prevent the enemy wresting some advantage to our detriment, then the war in its general ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... up on every side; the proud "Queen of the Adriatic" was compelled to shrink within her walls, and wait till time dissolved the league. This was not long. The Pope, Julius II., had no wish to hand Northern Italy over to France; he had joined in the shameless league of Cambrai because he wanted to wrest the Romagna cities from Venice, and because he hoped to entirely destroy the ancient friendship between Venice and France. Successful in both aims, he now withdrew from the league, made peace with the Venetians, and stood forward as the head of a new Italian ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... sense, reason, patience, ingenuity. What are they for? To be hidden in a napkin till some crushing calamity comes and shakes us out of our indifference enough to make us exercise them? No! They are given us to prevent calamity, to wrest from earth, air, and sea what is needed for our comfort. He gave man dominion. That does not mean just sitting back and bearing with resignation. It means using every faculty to reduce contending forces to our requirements. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... {1622.} To wrest the Palatinate from the hands of the emperor and the duke of Bavaria, must always have been regarded as a difficult task for the power of England, conducted by so unwarlike a prince as James: it was plainly impossible, while the breach subsisted between him and the commons. The king's negotiations, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... I aware that at such time Harald did indeed conquer the Western Isles — ay, even to Bute and Arran" — returned Earl Hamish. "But methinks, my lord of Colonsay, that my own ancestor the great king Somerled (God rest him!) did at least wrest the isles of Bute, Arran, and Gigha from the power of Norway. Those three island kingdoms do to this day owe truage to no overlord saving only the King of Scots, and to Alexander alone will ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... my enemy, to wrest some spoil from his unwilling hands would be an exquisite pleasure, to my thinking. But of all sweet favours the sweetest to my notion is the free-will offering of a man's beloved. For instance, ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... with the loss of his own dominions in the event of Napoleon's victory, concluded an alliance with the Czar. In return for the co-operation of a Swedish army, Alexander undertook, with an indifference to national right worthy of Napoleon himself, to wrest Norway from Denmark, and to annex it to the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the feelings," says a modern writer, "in such circumstances of the brothers, drifting they knew not whither, in intolerable silence and loneliness on the bosom of a river which had caused the death of so many men who had endeavoured to wrest from it its secret." Two days later a large village appeared, and suddenly a cry rang through the air: "Holloa, you Englishmen! You come here!" It came from a "little squinting fellow" dressed in an English soldier's jacket, a messenger from the Chief of Bonney on the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... ever by the Atlantic gales, a mere sand-bank, with scant surface soil to support vegetation, this island soon proved to its settlers its unfitness to maintain an agricultural people. There is a legend that an islander, weary perhaps with the effort of trying to wrest a livelihood from the unwilling soil, looked from a hilltop at the whales tumbling and spouting in the ocean. "There," he said, "is a green pasture where our children's grandchildren will go for bread." Whether the prophecy was made or not, the event occurred, for before the Revolution the American ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... anger the King.[88] Many of the old charges were renewed, and Connecticut was no longer regarded as a "dutiful" colony, but rather as one altogether too independent, from whom it might be wise to wrest her charter, subjecting her to a royal governor. As early as 1715, her colonial agent had been advised to procure a peaceable surrender of the charter. To this proposal, Governor Saltonstall had returned a courteous and dignified refusal. But the danger was always cropping up. Governor ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the voice in the box answered. "As it seems to me, they are trying to wrest the scepter from him and the old monarch says that they are not yet worthy ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... of American adventurers, then called filibusters, had gone into Texas, in the endeavor to wrest that immense and beautiful territory, larger than the whole Empire of France, from feeble, distracted, miserable Mexico, to which it belonged. These filibusters were generally the most worthless and desperate vagabonds to be found ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... the defensive, may fight ever so bravely, but he must give way when properly attacked. It is not so, however, with a general who indeed waits to receive his enemy, but with the determination to fall upon him offensively at the proper moment, to wrest from him and transfer to his own troops the moral effect always produced by an onward movement when coupled with the certainty of throwing the main strength into the action at the most important point,—a thing altogether impossible when keeping strictly on the defensive. In fact, a general ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... assume the burden of a war which it knew to be crushing and merciless, a war which each of those who called for it knew to be a war which he himself must wage, with his own hands, with his own body, a war which would wrest him from the pleasant ways of peace, from his labours and his comforts, which would weigh terribly upon all those whom he loved, which would expose him for weeks, perhaps for months, to incredible sufferings and which ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... empty by-play, you accuse me of vain trifling. You are wrong, Senor Americano! And soon you will know you are wrong. There is no woman throughout the wide sweep of my country or yours who has the work to do that I have to do; the destiny to fulfil; or the power to wrest from the gods that which she would have. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... kingdom in great alarm; carrying devastation far and wide through some of its fairest provinces; and at one period of the struggle, by the succour of Henry's foreign and domestic enemies, with whom the Welsh made common cause, threatening to wrest the sceptre itself from the hands of that monarch. The part which his son Henry of Monmouth was destined to take personally in resisting the progress of this rebellion, and the evidence which the indisputable facts recorded of that ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... professor, and illumine him with electric lamps, and make his ignorance memorable." Then Edison went away to begin a series of experiments that drove sleep from his eyes and slumber from his eyelids through five successive days and nights, until love and enthusiasm helped reason to wrest victory from defeat. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... intelligible example—what noble-minded man does not wish and aspire to repeat his own life in better wise in his children and, again, in their children, and still to continue to live upon this earth, ennobled and perfected in their lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit, the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, as his best legacy to posterity, in the spirits of his survivors, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... oppression below the level of the brute, spoiled of his humanity, plundered of his rights, and often hurried to a premature grave, the miserable victim of avarice and heedless tyranny! Men have presumptuously dared to wrest from their fellows the most precious of their rights—to intercept as far as they may the bounty and grace of the Almighty—to close the door to their intellectual progress—to shut every avenue to their moral and religious improvement, to stand between them and their Maker! ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... tribes, messages in knotted signs flew through the country, and the roads were full of armed men; but the Inca kings dreamed of no serious danger. For several hundred years their power had passed from father to son, and no neighbour was strong enough to wrest the sceptre from the Inca king's hand. Not a whisper of such names as Chimborazo and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... thousand majority. Mr. Parker was an able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's, standing close to the conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type. These conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the Democratic party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They hailed Judge Parker's victory as a godsend. The Judge at once loomed up as a Presidential possibility, and was carefully groomed for the position ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... historical and the personal is the key to Strauss' work. The church, when it continued faithful, had always looked to the Gospels as the Holy Sepulchre of its faith, and was ever ready to make a crusade against the power which would wrest it from her grasp. But, amid the conflicts occasioned by the growth of the destructive criticism, the Gospels had received at its hands a treatment no less severe than had been inflicted upon the history of the Old Testament. Many theories had already ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the attitude taken up by the citizens of London at important crises in the nation's history. He will there see how, in the contest between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, the City of London held as it were the balance; how it helped to overthrow the tyranny of Longchamp, and to wrest from the reluctant John the Great Charter of our liberties; how it was with men and money supplied by the City that Edward III and Henry V were enabled to conquer France, and how in after years the London trained bands raised the siege of Gloucester ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Dorothy met her importunate lover, was the seat of Anthony Grey, Earl of Kent. There is said to be a picture there of Sir William Temple,—a copy of Lely's picture. Wrest Park is only a few miles ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... turn casting his bleared eye up the street. Presently, Nicholas is seen, his hands pinioned, and a heavy chain about his neck, approaching between two officials. A crowd follows; among it are several patriotic persons who evince an inclination to wrest him from the officials, that they may, according to Judge Lynch's much-used privileges, wreak their vengeance in a summary manner. "The boy Nicholas is to be tried to- day!" has rung through the city: curious lookers-on begin to assemble round ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... methinks that Rome, too, will run the course of other nations, and that some day, far distant maybe, she will sink beneath the weight of her power and her luxury, and that some younger and more vigorous people will, bit by bit, wrest her dominions from her ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... sharp pull at my coat. Quick as thought, I brought my hand down, and caught his firmly as he was trying to tear the ribbon from my breast. In my agitated state of mind I had not been aware I was wearing a coat that had it on. 'You may shoot me, Captain,' I said, 'but you shall not wrest that ribbon from me.' 'Where did you get it?' 'The prince president of the Republic, Louis Napoleon, gave it me.' 'When?' 'On September 23, 1853.' 'How is it, then, that you were arrested? Was it on a barricade?' 'No, Captain, in my own apartment. It is not likely ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... expect an army of 45,000 to wrest decisive victory from one of 90,000 well-armed enemies would be to demand an impossibility. The defence, when two armies are equally matched, is physically stronger than the attack, although we have Napoleon's word ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... future these modern "argonauts" will be seeking the golden fleeces of the sea in wrecks, in golden sands like the beaches of Nome, and that these amphibious boats will be ready along all the dangerous coasts to rush to the rescue of noble ships and wrest them from the clutches of the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... to him and to his company to plan and initiate,—he declines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal, irrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of science, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it into the mere tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... habit of making distinctions, a disposition to apply to political questions and moral questions principles which are sound only when applied to commercial questions. These people, not content with having forced the Government to surrender a province wrongfully usurped, now wish to wrest from the Government a domain held by a right which was never before questioned, and which cannot be questioned with the smallest show of reason. "If," they say, "free competition is a good thing in trade, it must surely be a good thing in education. The ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... taken place. Briefly, the position was that for the past two and a half centuries the Albanians had been steadily re-occupying the lands of their Illyrian ancestors and pressing back the small remaining Serb population, and since the time of the Treaty of Berlin had been struggling to wrest autonomy from the Turks and obtain recognition as a nation. The whole of this district had been included in the autonomous Albanian state proposed and mapped out by Lord Goschen and Lord Fitzmaurice in 1880. Ipek, Jakova and Prizren were centres of the Albanian League. The British Government report ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... returning. They too had walked eighty-five miles in forty-eight hours, and had had but one fowl between them. They had in fact got out of the village almost immediately after Charles, but closely beset with natives armed with bows and poisoned arrows. Some tried to wrest Mr. Procter's gun from him, and even got him down, when he defended himself with his heels, until Mr. Scudamore, who was a little in advance, fired on his assailants, when they gave back; but an arrow aimed at him penetrated the stock of his gun so deeply that the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures "served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else." He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... for having countersigned commissions directed to gentlemen who were not good Protestants. They impeached the Lord Treasurer of high treason. Nay, they so far forgot the doctrine which, while the memory of the civil war was still recent, they had loudly professed, that they even attempted to wrest the command of the militia out of the King's hands. To such a temper had eighteen years of misgovernment brought the most loyal Parliament that had ever met ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is expended, the purses of their employers must answer for the bill, or the voyage must be delayed. Neither was it possible, at that time, to remedy the matter at Mackinaw. In that amphibious community there was always a propensity to wrest the laws in favor of riotous or mutinous boatmen. It was necessary, also, to keep the recruits in good humor, seeing the novelty and danger of the service into which they were entering, and the ease with which they might at anytime escape ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... are not as theirs Let them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn, Yet when did I make laws for them? Please yourselves, say I, and they Need only look the other way. But no, they will not; they must still Wrest their neighbour to their will, And make me dance as they desire With jail and gallows and hell-fire. And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... part of the provocation Ormond did not state, but merely said he was thrown into a passion by some observation of Moriarty's; and first he lifted his whip to give the fellow a horsewhipping. Moriarty seized hold of the whip, and struggled to wrest it from his hand; Ormond then snatched a pistol from his holster, telling Moriarty he would shoot him, if he did not let the whip go. Moriarty, who was in a passion himself, struggled, still holding the whip. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... State of Mississippi in 1875 was claimed to be in the interest of good administration and honest government; it was an attempt to wrest the State from the control of dishonest men,—negroes, carpet baggers, and scalawags,—and place it in control of intelligent, pure, and honest white men. With that end in view, Geo. M. Buchanan, a brave and gallant ex-Confederate soldier, was, through questionable and ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... coast of the AEgean, whence he intended to proceed to Asia and seek refuge at the court of the king of Persia. From Pydna he sailed in a merchant ship to the coast of Asia Minor. At Ephesus he received such part of his property as his friends had been able to wrest from the hands of his enemies at Athens, together with that which he had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... reconstruction and dreaded it; and there were no ties of blood to hold him in the States. Italy itself was in turmoil. Il Re Galantuomo, that Piedmontese hunter, Vittorio Emanuele, wished to liberate Venice from the grasp of Austria, to wrest temporal power from the Vatican, and to send the French troops back to France. Well, he accomplished all these things, and both my father and the prince were with him up to the time he entered the Quirinal. After victory, peace. My father invested ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... round him with a shiver. Very shortly, when the little flour and pork was gone and their few cartridges had been expended, he would be reduced to the condition of primitive man. Cut off from all other resources, he must then wrest what means of subsistence he could from the snowy wilderness by brute strength and cunning and such instruments as he could make with his unassisted hands, except that an ax of Pennsylvania steel was better than a stone one. Civilization has its compensations, and Carroll longed for ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... fallen comrade's pike (there was luckily but one among them), advanced upon me. I had just light to see the thrust and parry it. Another second, and we had closed in the midst of that strange atmosphere, striking and sneezing at each other across the pike shaft, as we each strove to wrest it to himself. My antagonist was a lusty fellow, and tugged me stoutly, while I kept him between me and the main fight, now raging through the water and the fire: this I could just distinguish among the vapour and smoke, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the pistol the long line of young athletes surged forward, amid loud cries from the crowd that had gathered to witness the start. Many eyed Fred hopefully; for the word had gone around that upon him Riverport must depend to wrest victory from the grasp of that tall runner, Boggs, who was said to be a tremendous "stayer," and as ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... incautious look—to chronicle every heedless word—to draw dark deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend—to lie in wait—to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of familiar intercourse—to extort anger from gentleness itself, that you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given his noble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her to the deck of the nearest flier. All about them the green warriors surged in an attempt to wrest ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... friends a friend, Still may my voice the weak defend: Ne'er may my prostituted tongue Protect the oppressor in his wrong; Nor wrest the spirit of the laws, To ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... wealth, it gives us a fine example of what perseverance combined with intelligence, courage and honesty can accomplish in the face of great difficulties; for it was a union of all these qualities which enabled Sir William Phips to wrest fortune and honors from ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... divines, to mold and bend the sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together, or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron. Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar, he draws from it an argument ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... other men, so I myself do muse, Why in this sort I wrest invention so; And why these giddy metaphors I use, Leaving the path the greater part do go; I will resolve you: I ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... merry evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly admonish each other to keep watch over the gleaming treasure, which their father, the Rhinegod, has intrusted to their keeping, warning them that just such a dark and misshapen creature as the dwarf would try to wrest ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... decorated house, she came to give the newly married pair her felicitations, she was well pleased to see Stuart quite himself again, smiling at her with the proud look of the bridegroom from whom no human being can wrest the prize he has just secured. And as she noted Jeannette's equally evident happy content with the man she had married, Georgiana took courage for their future. Surely—surely—they could go from these scenes ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... latter desired a revision of the laws, and such modifications of the power and discretion of the magistrates as would be in sympathy with the spirit of personal liberty that pervaded the minds of the colonists. But while the people sought to wrest an arbitrary power from the unwilling hands of their judges, they found no pity in their hearts for the poor Negroes in their midst, who, having served as slaves because of their numerical weakness and the passive silence of justice, were now to become the legal and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... been known as troublesome people who had to be reckoned with, but that they should prove strong enough to wrest what had been considered one of the safest seats in the kingdom out of the hands of the Unionists came upon the party as a revelation of the most unpleasant order. For Stephen Strong's dying cry, of which the truth was universally acknowledged, "The A.V.'s have done it. Bravo ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... Telemachus! meantime Thou hast unquestionable right to keep Thy own, and to command in thy own house. 510 May never that man on her shores arrive, While an inhabitant shall yet be left In Ithaca, who shall by violence wrest Thine from thee. But permit me, noble Sir! To ask thee of thy guest. Whence came the man? What country claims him? Where are to be found His kindred and his patrimonial fields? Brings he glad tidings of thy Sire's approach Homeward? or came he to receive a debt ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... playfully drawn from his finger and put upon her own by the Countess of Senlis, who, seeing that it restored her vanished youth, would fain have kept it always. She therefore sent thirty champions to wrest it from Ogier, who, however, defeated them all, and triumphantly retained his ring. The king having died, Ogier next married the widowed queen, and would thus have become King of France had not Morgana the fay, jealous of his affections, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... shoulders, but did not commit himself by acknowledging that he had, more than once, regretted his omission to claim the property while legally in his hands, and defy Jasper to wrest it from him. ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... unwelcome to the other party. An expression which was then reported in Brussels shewed how lively the hatred was, and how widely and how far into the future political combinations extended. It was said that this marriage was designed to wrest the Imperial throne from the house of Austria; but it was added, with haughty reliance on the strength of Catholic Europe, that this ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, the power is not knowledge. The [Greek: nomos], the [Greek: Zeus pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... his aimless, desultory fashion, was inveighing against the vanity of the life led by certain classes in the great Babylon out of which he had just haled his rather unwilling friend; and describing their mad and frantic efforts to wrest themselves free of the demon ennui; and their ceaseless, eager clamor for hurry and excitement, lest, in some unguarded moment of ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... smiled at words which seemed so meaningless. He did not smile when later in the night Makrisi brought Mahi de Vernoil, disguised as a mendicant friar. This outlaw pleaded with Sire Raimbaut to head the tatters of Lovain's army, and showed Raimbaut how easy it would be to wrest Venaissin from Prince Guillaume. "We cannot save Lovain," de Vemoil said, "for Guillaume has him fast. But Venaissin is very proud of you, my tres beau sire. Ho, maker of world-famous songs! stout champion of the faith! my men and I will now make you Prince ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 1710, a disappointed man, about the same time as Newcomen. Thomas Newcomen, ironmonger and blacksmith, of Dartmouth, England, had first succeeded in getting his engine to work. The hard fight to wrest from nature a manageable motive power and to harness fire for industrial use was continued by this clever blacksmith, and he succeeded when the more profound but less constructively skillful ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... her ancestors was daringly wrested from the hands of the Protector's troops, by an aged kinsman of her own, and a handful of armed men. The gallant deed fired her zeal more keenly, and strengthened her resolution to wrest Fast Castle from the hands of the invaders. She had been detained at Home until the day on which Florence Wilson was to assemble the stout-hearted and trust-worthy in the copse above Houndwood. Her kindred would have detained ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... said he, as she attempted to wrest it from his grasp. "Why does that girl stand glowering ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... wife's stick approaching him, his talk would break off at once into the garden and its prospects, for she was still haunted by the fear that he would some day go back to the ring, and she never missed the old man for an hour without being convinced that he had hobbled off to wrest the belt from the latest upstart champion. It was at his own very earnest request that they inscribed "He fought the good fight" upon his tombstone, and though I cannot doubt that he had Black Bank and Crab Wilson in his mind when he asked it, yet ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the tenth century we find in the chronicles of the time an account of a certain ambitious count of Troyes, Robert by name, who died in 923 while trying to wrest the crown of France from Charles the Simple. His county passed to his son-in-law, who already held, among other possessions, the counties of Chteau-Thierry and Meaux. His son, in turn, inherited all three counties and increased his dominions by judicious ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... descended Kelly shot up his hand and caught it. He twisted on the oar to wrest it from Denny's grasp, and the two suddenly went to the floor, ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... walls and bridgeless streams marooned the people of the Blue Ridge for centuries, shut them off from the outside world so that they lost step with the onward march of civilization. A forgotten people until yesterday, unlettered, content to wrest a meager living from the grudging soil, they built for themselves a nation within a nation. By their very isolation, they have preserved much of the best that is America. They have held safe and unchanged the simple beauty of the song of their fathers, the unsullied speech, the simple ideals and ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... summers," said France, "I have waited and watched for a chance To wrest Alsace-Lorraine From the Germans again, And now is ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... fled by so happy, till once again those plans began to take form and shape that had so long laid dormant after the arrival of Jeanette. The voice of my manhood urged me insistently to throw off the fetters that bound me and advance bravely into the seething world of men and from it wrest the so well-earned fruit of my endeavor—for I was ambitious and rebelled at being shut within four walls, where each detail of my life was arranged for me as if I had still been ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... his life in sharp fulgurations; the farm (cleared of debt through Bassett's generosity, to be sure!) where his father and brothers struggled to wrest a livelihood from reluctant soil, and their pride and hope in him; he saw his teachers at college, men who had pointed the way to useful and honorable lives; and more than all, Sumner rose before him—Sumner who had impressed him more than any other man he had ever known. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... just as keen and eager to win as he, and every one of them accustomed to dog-driving for years. Victors are some of them in previous contests, and not one of them is disposed to see a white lad from across the sea come and wrest their honour from them. Whips are flying now in earnest, and the dogs of other trains are waking up to realise that there is fire in their masters' eyes and strength in their arms and a burning sting at the end of ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... at each other in increased wonderment. What manner of chap was this same Obed, to be able to wrest a living from a bounteous Nature in the clever way he did? Steve in particular was loud ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was also turned much to Spain through envy of that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy, anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... They might torment themselves to death; they might institute and celebrate every possible service—they would accomplish nothing. Is it not better to cling to the Word and maintain this treasure whereby you attain salvation and divine sonship than to permit the world to wrest you from it through persecution, passion or moral filth the source of its own ruin ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... first of wood, and became, by degrees, of wood and iron; in the present day the iron very much preponderating. It will be at once evident that the object of the framing is to keep the ends of the strings apart. The near ends are wound round the wrest-pins, which are inserted in the wooden bed, called the wrest-plank, the strength and efficiency of which are most important for the tone and durability of the instrument. It is composed of layers of wainscot oak and beech, the direction of the grain being alternately ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... seemed to curve and curve until it well-nigh met his chin, gave to his mobile countenance an aspect as strange as it was terrifying. Withal he uttered for a time no word, though I saw his hand, grip the riding-whip he held in a convulsive grasp, as though his thought were ''Tis mine! Mine! Wrest it ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... behind courage, and fear, and love, behind animal hatred, and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. He had keenly enjoyed life, and he could breast its turbulent torrent as few men could; he was a practical man, who knew how to wrest personal success from adverse forces, among money-makers, politicians, and desperadoes alike; yet, down at bottom, what seemed to interest him most was the philosophy of life itself, of our understanding of it, and of the limitations set to that understanding. But he ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... only be rivalled by the brilliancy of the eye which the bonnet shaded. It was the only striking feature in his countenance; but when once noticed, it ever made a strong impression on the spectator. About his neck there hung in a scarf of sky-blue silk a WREST as it was called—that is, the key with which a harp is tuned, and which was of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of the sceptic may be neutralized by opposing to it the hypothesis of the theist. But we are not satisfied to stop at this point. We intend, not merely to neutralize, but to explode, the theory of the sceptic. We intend to wrest from it the element of its strength, and grind it to atoms. We intend to lay our finger precisely upon the fallacy which lies so deeply concealed in its bosom, and from which it derives all its apparent force and conclusiveness. We shall drag this false ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... murderous fire from the crests and sides of the mountains. Under this galling fire, the First division of the corps formed in line of battle, and advanced toward the frowning heights. It was an undertaking requiring more than ordinary valor, to attempt to wrest from an enemy strong in numbers, a position so formidable for defense; but the men approaching those rugged mountain sides had become accustomed to overcome obstacles, and to regard all things as possible which they were commanded to ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... for a parley, when some of the men from each side approached the line of demarcation. Joe McKay was the interpreter, and while he was speaking, an Indian, named Little Chief, grabbed at his revolver and tried to wrest it from him. A struggle ensued in which the Indian was worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ringing through the hollow and over the hills. With perfect regularity his force spread ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... us where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the first Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred sepulchre they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the hands of the infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of these renowned crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were gone —destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... distinct crisis was thus gradually created, coming to a head when Prussia, under Bismarck's guiding hand, dragging Austria in with her, thrust the Federal Diet of the Confederation to one side, and assumed command of the movement to wrest Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... answer for myself and thousands more. You are too young a man to have known the cause of the insurrection, or, rather, opposition, to the unfortunate King Charles. He attempted to make himself absolute, and to wrest the liberties from the people of England: that his warmest adherents will admit. When I joined the party which opposed him, I little thought that matters would have been carried so far as they have been; I always ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... subject, it remains to be said that Germany has trained her whole population into the best working team in the world. Without the natural advantages of either England or America she has become the rival of both. Her superior mental training has enabled her to wrest wealth from by-products, and she saves and grows rich on what America wastes. Whether Germany has succeeded in giving the ply of character to her youth, as she folds them in her educational factories, I sometimes doubt. That she has not made them independent ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
