"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 design should ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... owed to his moral life,—to his own manliness. He promised his mediation to better her eventful and mysterious life, to be a friend to her; and nobly did he keep his promise. On the following day he took measures for her rescue, and though several attempts were made to wrest her from him, and the mendacity of slave-dealers summoned to effect it, he had the satisfaction of seeing her restored to her ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half-an-hour, all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for hours ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... expedition into the wilds of Virginia. His great-grandfather had accompanied Boone when that hunter first penetrated the "Dark and Bloody Ground," had gone back to Virginia and come again with a surveyor's chain and compass to help wrest it from the red men, among whom there had been an immemorial conflict for possession and a never-recognized claim of ownership. That compass and that chain his grandfather had fallen heir to and with ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... IV., who became of age in 1808, was a bitter opponent of Napoleon, whom he considered to be the beast of the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1). After the Peace of Tilsit, he made war on Russia, and on Denmark, from which he sought to wrest Norway. The nobles and the army rose against him, and obliged him to abdicate (1809). His uncle, Charles XIII., became king. Finland was surrendered to Russia. The king having no children, Bernadotte (1764-1844), a French ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Costan and Florea," 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
... not at all averse to fighting, if a good excuse were offered. So his first move was not to look up, but to wrest him self out of that grip, haul away ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... that will be nought else than casting me into shame and torment and death. And I deem thou canst not do it. Nay, she said, staying the words that were coming from his mouth, I wot that thou canst do it if thine heart can suffer it; for thou art stronger than I, and thou mayst break my bow, and wrest this knife out of mine hand; and thou canst bind me and make me fast to the saddle, and so lead my helpless body into thraldom and death. But thou hast said that thou lovest me, and I believe thee herein. Therefore I know that thou canst not will ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... genealogical searches to prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,[659] constraining the king, as it were, to make use of his left arm to cut off his right, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... 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 usurpations. This process of gradual aggrandizement ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... impulse, like despair, Makes me these inner foldings tear! With desperate effort bids me wrest The yearning secret from my breast! Far be the thought that any blame Can fix on thy beloved name! The hapless Minstrel may not feign; But thou, I know, canst all explain— Yet let me from this place depart, To nurse my fainting, sicken'd heart! Yet let ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... made by him, the most important of which was the invention, in 1845, of the circular scale for square pianos, which is now in general use in this country and in Europe. "This consists in giving to the row of tuning pins and wrest-planks—previously straight in these instruments—a curved disposition, answering nearly to an arc of a circle, the advantage being that the strings become less crowded, larger hammers, and a more direct blow can be ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... trust thee with a secret. There are spirits This hour at work.—But as thou art a man, Whom I have pick'd and chosen from the world, Swear that thou wilt be true to what I utter; And when I've told thee that which only gods, And men like gods, are privy to, then swear No chance or change shall wrest it from thy bosom. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... assertion that he had nothing upon which to base it; that he was talking vaguely and at random; but he also knew the intense desire that had arisen in him to reverse conditions upon the man who had waited until the father died to wrest that father's pride from the son; and in some way he felt coming strength. In Biff's present frame of conviction Bobby was pleased enough to drop him in front of Kid Mills' obscure abode, and turn with a sudden hungry impulse in the direction of Agnes. At the Ellistons', when the chauffeur was about ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... of a house of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had to fight when the King was his ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... frames. Yet, practically, none of this is inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or for the very welfare and existence of ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... dreadful blow quite through his target drove, And bored through his breastplate strong and thick, The tender skin it in his bosom rove, The purple-blood out-streamed from the quick; To wrest it out the wounded Pagan strove And little leisure gave it there to stick; At Godfrey's head the lance again he cast, And said, "Lo, there again ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... matter for Monte to wrest the revolver from Hamilton's weak fingers, even with one arm hanging limp; but it was quite a different proposition to quiet Madame Courcy and Marie, who were screaming hysterically in the hall. Marjory, to be sure, was splendid; but even she could do little with madame, who ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... 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
... too, had come, sought out a place in which to die. Upon a hill between two lofty trees, where was a marble terrace, he placed himself with his head towards the enemy's country; and there a Saracen, who had feigned death to escape it, tried to wrest from ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Shall I say that you, like the South, repudiated? No! that is a slander of our adversaries. But the parallel holds good in that we found ourselves abandoned by the world. Nations abroad gave us no sympathy; our neighbors at home laughed at our affliction. They would wrest from us that bulwark of our ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their system was worthless and throw it away. They would be content with whatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the 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 ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... under the necessity of using the cast-steel, if they would retain their trade in cutlery against France; and Huntsman's home trade rapidly increased. And then began the efforts of the Sheffield men to wrest his secret from him. For Huntsman had not taken out any patent for his invention, his only protection being in preserving his process as much a mystery as possible. All the workmen employed by him were pledged to inviolable secrecy; strangers were carefully excluded from the works; and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... who has just been indulging in a fit of severe self-depreciation, exceedingly confident and full of faith in himself. And why not? Let that man despair who has lost confidence in his own ability to wrest favors from the fingers of Fate or Fortune. Despair ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a light more tyrannous ever? 20 Thou from a mother's arms canst wrest her daughter asunder, Wrest from a mother's arms her daughter woefully clinging, Then to the burning youth his virgin beauty deliver. Foes in a new-sack'd town, when wrought ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... hast encompassed the dominion of the heaven and the earth and the firmament by the might of thy own arms, but even thus how could Vritra (of old) wrest from thee the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... near getting his skull broken by the stones, and animated by an old grudge he bore the Happars, he was among the first to dash at them. As he broke his way through the underbush, trying, as he did so, to wrest a spear from a young chief, the shouts of battle all of a sudden ceased, and the wood was as still as death. The next moment, the party who had left them so mysteriously rushed out from behind every bush and tree, and united with the rest in long and ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... painters in the nineteenth century, feeling how very second-hand and far removed from nature painting had become, started a movement to discard studio traditions and study nature with a single eye, taking their pictures out of doors, and endeavouring to wrest nature's secrets from her on the spot. The Pre-Raphaelite movement in England and the Impressionist movement in France were the results of this impulse. And it is interesting, by the way, to contrast the different manner in which this desire for more truth to nature ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... "The fools will make him king if we do not act and act quickly. Get into the city, Pan-sat—let your feet fly and raise the cry that Ja-don has killed the king and is seeking to wrest the throne from O-lo-a. Spread the word as you know best how to spread it that Ja-don has threatened to destroy the priests and hurl the altars of the temple into Jad-ben-lul. Rouse the warriors of the city and urge them to ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... same general principle is applicable to the interpretation of all passages containing "things hard to be understood." The "unlearned and unstable" wrest them, by taking them out of their connection and in contradiction to the general tenor of God's word. But the candid student of Scripture never uses that which is difficult in revelation to obscure that which is plain. He seeks, on the contrary, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... mingling of these doubts and fears grew a feeling of resentment against Dic—a conviction before the fact. She wished him to know her regard for him, but she did not want him to learn it from any act of hers. She desired him to wrest it from her by main force, and as little awkwardness as a man may use. Had Dic by the smallest word or act shown a disposition to profit by what Rita feared had been excessive frankness in her letter, or had he, in any degree, assumed the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... however the stubborn energy of Massena enabled his soldiers to hold their ground against the combined attack of Russian and Austrian forces; and the attempt of a united force of Russians and English to wrest Holland from its French masters was successfully repulsed. Twelve of the thirty thousand men who formed this army consisted of English troops; and Sir Ralph Abercromby succeeded in landing at their head, in seizing what remained of the Dutch fleet at the Texel, and in holding ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... your will, And then you sware you well know how, Though now you swerve, I know how ill. But thus this world his course doth pass, The priest forgets a clerk he was, And you that have cried justice still, And now have justice at your will, Wrest justice wrong against ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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
... 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 ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the colonies. And we have heard the mob at Alton, drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights,—met to resist the laws. Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... take all away. Whence can England be supplied with these essential articles but from the Canadas? Bonaparte, it is known, has expressed a strong desire to be in possession of the colonies formerly belonging to France, and now that they are become so valuable to England, his anxiety to wrest them from us will naturally increase. A small French force, 4 or 5,000 men, with plenty of muskets, would most assuredly conquer this province. The Canadians would join them almost to a man—at least, the exceptions would be so few as to be of little avail. It may appear surprising that men, petted ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... influence, to save the monarchy. His mission was in vain. General Marmont, to spare the useless shedding of blood, entered into a truce—some said a capitulation—with the revolutionary forces. The Duke d'Angouleme, in his rage, called the venerable marshal to his face a traitor. In endeavoring to wrest from him his sword, the duke severely wounded his own hand. General Marmont was put under arrest; but soon, by the ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... blankets around the evening camp-fires. As is ever the case when a man is young, handsome, rich, and holds proudly the gold medal which proclaims him the champion of the whole State—the golden disk which many a young vaquero longed to wrest from him in a fair test of skill—there were those who would rather like to see Jose humbled. True, they would never choose an alien to do the humbling, and the possibility was discussed with ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... emptiness 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, the Light ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... I count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, that Thou shouldst ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with devotion, self-abnegation, greatness of soul, tenderness; and fine words. Her pliant nature almost rejoiced in this new attitude. She pondered almost till evening what she should do, wondering how she should manage to wrest ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... thee the Latin!" exclaimed he. "I forbid thee to read or learn the same, for I well know thou wouldst wrest it ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... and kneaded, is under an obligation to his brother, and cannot say he owes him nothing in return. The poorest of us has received from society much more than his own single strength would have permitted him to wrest from nature. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reached America, and strove with energetic swords and rapacious wallets to wrest blood and gold and fame from whatsoever ...
— 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
... India has been charged with pursuing a suicidal policy in safeguarding the natives against plague and smallpox and in preventing human sacrifice. Their numbers will increase, food supplies will give out, or, worst of all, they may become so powerful as to wrest the supremacy from the European. Charity, however, demands that these measures shall be taken, and the terrors of the future are at best hypothetical. This is but another case in which consideration for the unknown future is apt to hinder us in the discharge of our known duties ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... it rose to a veritable frenzy as soon as they learned that, by Letters Patent, the entire defunct squadron had been posthumously ennobled. And this is only one of many occasions on which this ruler, by his intimate knowledge of human nature and the arts of government, was enabled to wrest good from evil, and thereby consolidate ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... tell you," he cried, starting to wrest himself loose from the officer's grasp, and then suddenly remaining passive as he reflected that ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... now discover, that they are not yet lords of the continent; and that Britain has other armies ready to force, once more, the passes of Schellembourg, or break down the intrenchments of Blenheim; to wrest from them the sceptre of universal monarchy, and confine them ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... father suspects our love, it must be sanctified before the altar of God. Our faith once plighted there, no hand of mortal can wrest thee from my side. Art ready to speak the irrevocable words that bind us together as ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... gardener, whom he lends 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 ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... 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 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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 ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... he asked him for his gun but the only part of the answer which he could understand was pah kee which he knew to be the name by which they called their enimies. watching his opportunity when the fellow was off his guard he suddonly rode along side of him seized his gun and wrest her out of his hands. the fellow finding Drewyer too strong for him and discovering that he must yeald the gun had pesents of mind to open the pan and cast the priming before he let the gun escape from his hands; now finding himself devested of the gun he turned his horse about ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... come! I was about to put my will, strength and courage to the proof. I was about to wrest from study the secrets of talent. I was about to reclaim from labor the fortune I had given away, and which I owed to chance. Until that deed I had only been the son of my father, the heir of my ancestors; now I was to become ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with a defiant courage which perhaps was only understood by the minority of his compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to wrest it from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable Pope, although regarded as an idiot in that terrible period, was possibly an earnest and high-minded man. Scarcely had Peter Damian knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to Gregory VI on his elevation, rejoicing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... then and now! The year he left us, The People in full Parliament could wrest The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King; And now, he'll find in an obscure small room A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men That take up ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in and taking their seats, and turning their glasses on the audience. As soon as the last person had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained every nerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel; and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it—(for the orchestra was skilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a long time)—and then Goujart took his arm and, in the middle ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... to exist according to the needs of their psychic development they were often obliged to snatch from us the things which seemed necessary to them for the purpose. They had to move contrary to our laws, or sometimes to struggle with other children to wrest from them the objects ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... Lord Castlereagh an arrangement relative to the Peninsula, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and in other respects offered to negotiate on the basis, that each of the two powers should keep all that war could not wrest from it. But Castlereagh replied, that the engagements of good faith would not permit England to treat without making the recognition of Ferdinand VII. as king of Spain a preliminary of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Province up to the date at which we find him at Port Colborne. He was, however, surprised to learn that men so high in power, and that had been so high in power, really knew so little of the great impending movement which overshadowed the Provinces and bid fair to wrest them from the hands of England. But few papers in Upper Canada appeared to know anything of what was really going on in this relation, besides the Globe, of Toronto. Nearly all the others, like the leader of the government and his satellites, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... friendship. The quick ear of the savage caught the click of the lock; in a twinkling he grasped the barrel, forced the muzzle downward, and the contents were discharged into the earth at his feet. His next movement was to wrest the weapon from the hand of Bridger and fell him with it to the earth. He might have found this no easy task had not the unfortunate leader received two arrows in ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... houres before day, and that is ended by day light. At nine of the clocke they goe to Masse: that ended, to dinner: and after that to seruice againe: and then to supper. You shall vnderstand that at euery dinner and supper they haue declared the exposition of the Gospel of that day: but howe they wrest and twine the Scripture and that together by report it is wonderfull. As for whoredome and drunkennesse there be none such liuing: and for extortion, they be the most abhominable under the sunne. Nowe iudge of their holinesse. They haue twise as much land as the Duke himselfe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... city. It's the only ancient city purely Christian in its origin, having been built by the first Christian Emperor in honour of the Blessed Virgin. Which brings us to the noblest idea of all. In their fight to wrest this city from the Turk, the three great divisions of the Church are united once more. The great Roman branch is represented by the soldiers and ships of France: the great Eastern Orthodox branch by the Russians, who are behind the fight: the great ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the negro per se who distracts and threatens to destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed, And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall drop their blood in ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe for effective class action. All through the Manifesto ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... answered Bertram, "Gladstone's remarks in the Fortnightly Review, his almost prediction (unless we bestir ourselves): That England's daughter, the Great United States of America, may yet in the near future wrest from us our position in manufacturing of Head servant to the household of the world. Many of we British want a rough ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... are still my wife, and who knows whether you will not always remain mine? Who knows whether you will not soon be my widow? I am about to enter into another war, and it will be a desperate, obstinate struggle, in which old Austria will try to wrest the palm of victory from young France. Victory will perch on my banners. I have no doubt of that, but who knows whether I shall not have to pay for it with my blood! for I must not spare myself—I shall always be at the head of my troops, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... 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 statutory vassals—for ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... arose. 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, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and made at the Jew to wrest the instrument from his hands. But Benoni was agile, and eluded him, still playing vigorously the one chord, till Nino cried aloud, and sank in a chair, entirely overcome by the torture, that seemed boring its way into his brain like ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the range. Sundown became doubly conspicuous as the story of his experience with the hold-ups and his rescue of Chance became known. If he strutted, it was pardonable, for he strutted among men difficult to wrest approval from, and he had won ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... On the other hand, if success attended his efforts, it was more than probable that Cartagena would remain quiet, as long as her itching palm was brightened with the yellow metal which he hoped to wrest from the sands of Guamoco. "It is only a chance, Padre," Rosendo said dubiously. "In the days of the Spaniards the river sands of Guamoco produced from two to ten reales a day to each slave. But the rivers ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... game into the enemy's camp and then, if necessary, arbitrate. Wiley had fought many duels with the fair sex, but never a financial one before, and the prospect was not without an element of sport. She had outwitted him at the start and borne off the spoils, but he would wrest them from her, and tame her into ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... The official announcement of the elevation of the Prince of Pontecorvo was already on its way to Paris. "I was little prepared for this news," replied Napoleon to the letter of King Charles XIII. He wished to wrest from Bernadotte a pledge never to bear arms against France. The marshal formally refused. For a long time in secret hostility to the emperor, he severely judged the errors of his ambition, and the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... empty, and he was just about to enter the House, when through the west door came a figure, breathing hard and bent apparently on the same errand. Thomas prepared for battle, determined that no straggler of the enemy should now wrest from him victory, but, as the figure came into the faint glow at the doorway, he recognized it as Heritage. And at the same moment he heard something which made his tense nerves relax. Away on the right came sounds, a thud of galloping horses on grass and the jingle of bridle ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... uninvited guest, And lurks beneath the banquet chair, Unseen from the pale bride to wrest Her little silken ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... The fault is mine. Myself did wrest it from you. The horror which came o'er me interrupted Your tale at its commencement. May it please you, 10 Continue ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and that Dyson, who was jealous of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson, seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary. He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had been hired for a paltry sum to come into court ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... first. Armed therefore with the strong and choice support of all the Councils, why should I not enter into this arena with calmness and presence of mind, watchful to keep an eye on my adversary and see on what point he will show himself? I will produce testimonies most evident that he cannot wrest aside. Possibly he will take to scolding, and endeavour to talk against time, but he will not elude the eyes and ears of men who will watch him hard, as you will do, if you are the men I take you for. But if there shall be any one found so stark mad as to set his single self up as a match ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... of the vulture and resembling snakes of virulent poison, that would be shot from the Gandiva. And, O Bharata, there is not a warrior, nor an elephant, nor a horse, that is able to bear the impetus of my mace when I am angry in battle. Why, O son of Kunti, should we not wrest our kingdom from the foe, fighting with the aid of the Srinjayas and Kaikeyas, and the bull of the Vrishni race? Why, O king, should we not succeed in wresting the (sovereignty of the) earth that is now in the hands ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... of raising him up, will cast him down to the lowest depth; not even an honourable burial is to be bestowed upon him. No one weeps or laments over him; like a trodden down carcass, he lies outside the gates of Jerusalem, the city of the great King, which he attempted to wrest from him, and make his own. Then follows a parenthetical digression, vers. 20-23. Apostate Judah is addressed. The judgment upon her kings is not one with which she has nothing to do, as little as their guilt belongs to them as individuals ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... consisting, not in what he says or does himself, but in what another man says or does. His honor is thus at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the tip of his tongue; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone for ever,—unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest it back again by a process which I shall mention presently, a process which involves danger to his life, health, freedom, property and peace of mind. A man's whole conduct may be in accordance with the most righteous and noble principles, his spirit may ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a pity," Ida replied with one of her reckless laughs, "for it so often happens that she cannot keep it, and those who wrest it from her do not care to keep it, and so it comes to be what the geographies used to call one of the 'waste places of the earth.' As the world goes, I think I had better retain my kingdom, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... American male had descended on him. He wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in spite of his own tastes being so simple that his income of L5000—it was his, not his mother's, but it didn't feel as if it were—would have been more than sufficient for him. Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that might comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether beyond the line of thinking his mother ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... also that on the completion of the Panama Canal we might be exposed to much international friction, and unless we were ready to defend the Canal and its approaches, a Foreign Power might easily do it great damage or wrest it from us, at least for a time. Here, too, was another motive for facing the possibility of war. We were growing up in almost childish trust in a world filled with warlike nations, which regarded war not only as the obvious way in which to settle disputes, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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
... water-washed roots, sure that the support would hold his head above the surface. The chill of the stream struck at his hands and head, but the protection of the alien clothing was still effective, and the rest of his body was not cold. He was simply too tired to wrest himself free and trust again to the haphazard chance of making shore through the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... opening to them the American arsenals of arms and ammunition; it was the same party that, in conspiracy with the Tyrant of France and the enemy of human freedom, declared war against Great Britain in 1812, in order to wrest Canada from her possession, and make it an appendage of France ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... written, it remains proved, not by the Portuguese, but by the Spaniards themselves, and not by camp-followers but by his chief men, that his grace is not here through necessity, but with a very definite aim, awaiting more men and a fleet, in order forcibly to wrest Maluco, China, and Japan, from the king our sovereign. This is clearly shown by the words of the foremost men of his company, and by the many questions they put to us concerning our knowledge of these regions; as well as by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... old mut, what are you doing to my sister?" he cried, at the same time trying to wrest the stick from ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... down the room. "I have brought worse tempers than hers into subjection; still I never dreamed the little minx would dare openly defy me in that manner. I shall keep her in the belfry-room, under lock and key, until she asks my pardon on her bended knees; and what is more, I shall wrest the secret from her—the secret she has defied me ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... the Amautas ultimately developed great ability. In the face of tremendous natural obstacles they utilized their ancient craft to wrest a living from the soil. Hemmed in between the savages of the Amazon jungles below and their enemies on the plateau above, they must have carried on border warfare for generations. Aided by the temperate climate in which they lived, and the ability to secure a wide variety ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... and took her hand in his. She glanced about wildly. She was in a whirl of terror of everything under heaven. Too dignified to wrest herself away and run, she gave him a swift glance of appeal, then bent her head. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... two of these animals,—one of them large and strong, the other much smaller,—came together to a well. The smaller elephant carried by his trunk a bucket, which the larger, not having one, stole from him. The smaller animal knew that he could not wrest it from the other, but he eyed him, watching for an opportunity of avenging himself. The larger elephant now approached the edge of the well, when the smaller one, rushing forward with all his might, pushed him ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... wrong she takes her seat, In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet. There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: So rue the nations when their kings offend— When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will. Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear! Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear, That the foul record may no more be seen— Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... shall not in vain appeal to me. To wrest excellent persons from the grip of M. Rodin, is not only a duty but a pleasure: for it is at once a righteous and a dangerous enterprise; and dearly do I love to brave powerful oppressors!" Adrienne ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of strong drink! Where shall we begin, where end, or how, in the clear and truthful sentences that wrest conviction from doubt, make plain the allegations we shall bring against an enemy that is sowing disease, poverty, crime and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... grateful sense of the kindness received from his African subjects, and an honest desire to aid the wholesome development of the Portuguese colonies. It refutes, by anticipation, calumnies afterward circulated to the effect that Livingstone's real design was to wrest the Portuguese settlements in Africa from Portugal, and to annex them to the British Crown. He refers most gratefully to the great kindness and substantial aid he had received from His Majesty's subjects, and is emboldened thereby to address him on ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... you suppose I should get it? I have no proof that my father ever left me a dollar. Sir William has every paper in his own possession. I have not a scrap even that would enable me to wrest so much as a pound from ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... adventurer was sailing in a treacherous channel, full of dangerous reefs. Would he, in the homage paid to him, an unmatured youth, by scholars, artists, wealth, beauty, and rank, forgot in mere self-love and vanity his high obligations to his art and the sincere devotion which alone could wrest from art its richest guerdon? This problem seems to have troubled his father, for he determined to take his young Franz away from the palace of Circe. The boy had already made an attempt at composition in the shape of an operetta, in ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom that has been given unto him has written, as he also in all his letters speaks thereof, in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they also do other Scriptures, to their own destruction. There St. Peter bears testimony for the Apostle Paul in respect to his doctrine, which shows plainly enough that this Epistle was written long after St. Paul's ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... a something more entered into the national spirit. French fur-traders, wood-runners, voyageurs had drifted North and West, men of infinite resources, as much at home with a frying-pan over a camp-fire as over a domestic hearth, who could wrest a living from life anywhere. English adventurers of similar caliber had drifted in from Hudson Bay. These little lords in a wilderness of savages had scattered west as far as the Rockies, south to California. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which strove to take possession of her heart and to wrest her away from him forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels of ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... of the Order was obvious to Europe throughout the eighteenth century, and the value of such a fortress as Malta to a Mediterranean Power apparent to all, yet there is little definite proof of any desire to wrest the island from the Knights. Of all the nations round the Mediterranean, France alone could be said not to be in a state of decay; Venice, Genoa, and Turkey were becoming more and more feeble at sea, and there was little fear of an attack on Malta from any of them; and though ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... await his opportunities. If destiny smiled, he succeeded; if destiny frowned, he did not. However, Mallory was optimistic about his forthcoming bid for the Grail, for if it wasn't in the books for him to wrest the Cup from Sir Launcelot, the chances were he wouldn't have gotten as far ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... wrest the body of his victim from the feeding lion was the first question to be solved. At last Tarzan hit upon a plan. To anyone but Tarzan of the Apes it might have seemed rather a risky plan, and perhaps it did even to him; but Tarzan rather liked ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Standish, Barbara! Thou 'rt more Standish than I, for thou hast the eyes of those old portraits my poor father vainly tried to wrest from his cousin Alexander. Let me look at those ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... on the contrary, the first "step" in Socialism was the conquest of complete political power by the Socialists. "The proletariat," he wrote in the Communist Manifesto "will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the capitalists, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organized as the ruling class." (My italics.) Here is the antithesis both of "reformist" Socialism within the movement and of "State ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... chapter of Job, all except that verse about the death of his sons and daughters. God shield us from that! I do not mind the rest. "While he was yet speaking, another came in and said, 'Thy brethren and kinsmen gathered together to wrest thine abode from the hand of the Philistines which pressed sore upon thee; when lo! the Philistines sallied forth with fire and sword, and laid thine habitation waste and desolate, and I only am escaped to tell thee.'" Yes! the ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... which causes have produced effects so rapidly, and in which, in every case, the effects have been directly opposite to what short-sighted mortals had anticipated. It was in 1756, scarcely forty years ago, that the French, being in possession of the provinces, attempted to wrest from us those portions of America which we occupied. What was the result? After a war which, for cruelty and atrocity, is perhaps unequaled in history, both parties employing savages, by whom the French and English were alternately tortured and burned to death, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... nowhere states that God is without passions or emotions, we must evidently infer that Moses held this doctrine himself, or at any rate, that he wished to teach it, nor must we refrain because such a belief seems contrary to reason: for as we have shown, we cannot wrest the meaning of texts to suit the dictates of our reason, or our preconceived opinions. The whole knowledge of the Bible must ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... to study this speech closely and to wrest from it its innermost secrets of power and effectiveness. The greatest underlying quality of this speech is its rare simplicity—simplicity of thought, simplicity of language, simplicity of purpose, and shining through it all, the simplicity of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... here she looked at the old woman, who started bowing again harder than ever. It was the same at all the other houses. Passing from one to another she commandeered room after room, even managing to wrest a bed from the father of six; and I verily believe that the inhabitants would have burned their dwellings to warm us had the little lady ordered it. All the while she maintained the fiction that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... shores of Africa, homeless and friendless; in cold and hunger he sought shelter amidst the ruins of Carthage. Carthage, whose fallen towers lay in crumbling masses around him, was once the rival city of imperial Rome herself, and, under the able leadership of Hannibal, threatened to wrest from the queen of the Seven Hills the rule of the world. Now its streets are covered with grass; the wild scream of the bird of solitude and the moanings of the night-owl mingle with the sobs of a fallen demigod who once made the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... means to do? That is, and has been, a great question for all the world; especially for Noailles and the French,—not to say, for the Pragmatic itself! 'Get into Lorraine?' think the French: 'Get into Alsace, and wrest it from us, for behoof of her Hungarian Majesty,'—plundered goods, which indeed belong to the Reich and her, in a sense! ELS-SASS (Alsace, OUTER-seat), with its ROAD-Fortress (STRASburg) plundered from the Holy Romish Reich by Louis XIV., in a way no one can forget; actually plundered, as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... relatives. Also, it may be remarked, there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies. Since they had to be carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to bestow it on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could not long have stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the dynastic possession of Church property. Luckily for the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... whirling upon Kenkenes, "dreamest thou I fear this bloody God of Israel, or all the gibbering, incense-sniffing, pedestal-cumbering gods of earth? I will show thee, thou ranting rabble spawn! See which of us hath the yellow-haired wanton when I return. For I go to wrest spoil and fighting men from Israel. Then, by all the demons of Amenti! then, I say! look to thy ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Allah from the Giaour The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest; And the Serai's impenetrable tower Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;[35.B.] Or Wahab's[182] rebel brood who dared divest The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,[36.B.] May wind their path of blood along the West; But ne'er will Freedom seek this fated soil, But slave succeed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... accession of Charles V (or from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth), Spain was flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths. Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their roots deep down in ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... 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
... she could not help thinking of how different it might all have been if she had not met Kathleen. The busy, endless streets terrified her and the more she saw of the great metropolis the less confidence she felt in her own power to wrest a living from it, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... were now fastened upon this single remnant of the white fellowship in arms, who, to wrest victory from defeat, became obliged to overcome each in turn of the trio of reds, a formidable task for one who had already been successful in three stubborn matches. It was a hero-making opportunity, but, alas! for the last of the little white company. Like ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose, there is a fascination about the book which ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Lee was always cordial, and it brought out Davis's character in its best light. Nevertheless, so rooted was Davis's faith in his own abilities that he was capable of saying, at a moment of acutest anxiety, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from those people." And yet, his military experience embraced only the minor actions of a young officer on the Indian frontier and the gallant conduct of a subordinate in the Mexican War. He had never executed a great military design. His desire for the military life was, after all, his ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... did I believe that his son, Michael Gorman, would have accepted Mrs. Ascher's account of his position. He would have winked, humourously appreciative of an excellent joke, if any one had told him that he was a crusader, out to wrest the sacred sepulchre of art from the keeping of the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... "you'll eat your fingers off after the government, so sweet a thing is it to command and be obeyed. Depend upon it when your master comes to be emperor (as he will beyond a doubt from the course his affairs are taking), it will be no easy matter to wrest the dignity from him, and he will be sore and sorry at heart to have been so long without ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the word in all simplicity, Which some already may in malice wrest. Ferrau replied, "Assured I first must be Which of us two is schooled in warfare best, If what has chanced to many, falls on me, Hither, when I return, shall be addrest, To mend my fault, that gentle cavalier, With whom you so ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... were materialists, and such they are even when they will not admit it. Dear girl, believe me, I have lived over in my mind and suffered in my heart the long toil and agony which the human race has undergone in its effort to wrest some assurance of spiritual joy and peace from these clouds of illusion about us; I have read and felt what the Hindu ascetic has written of lonely conflict in the wilderness; I have heard the Greek philosophers reason their way to ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... remarkable in it; but Utica at once revived the scenes at school long past and half-forgotten, and carried me with full speed back again to Italy, and from thence to Africa. I crossed the Rubicon with Caesar; fought at Pharsalia; saw poor Pompey into Larissa, and tried to wrest the fatal sword from Cato's hand in Utica. When I perceived he was no more, I mourned over the noble-minded man who took that part which he thought would most benefit his country. There is something magnificent in the idea of a man taking ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... surmise; I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, Incapable of base compliances, No prodigal in his nature, but affecting This show of bravery for ambitious ends. He drinks, for 'tis the humor of the court, And drink may one day wrest the secret from him, And pluck you from your hiding-place ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Clarissa had been nearly a week in Brussels—a very quiet week, in which she had had nothing to do but worship her baby, and tremblingly await any attempt that might be made to wrest him from her. She lived in hourly fear of discovery, and was startled by every step on the staircase and fluttered by every sudden opening of a door, expecting to see ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... by two great oceans. It is composed of men the descendants of pioneers, or, in a sense, pioneers themselves; of men winnowed out from among the nations of the Old World by the energy, boldness, and love of adventure found in their own eager hearts. Such a Nation, so placed, will surely wrest success from fortune. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... undaunted by the uncertainty of escape, heedless of the gloom of the deep, of the tumult and rush and chill of the icy waters, the engineer boldly advanced to the attack of this abysmal stronghold of Primeval Nature, his square jaw set in grim determination to wrest from these hitherto inviolate depths that which he sought to learn. Whatever might follow, he must and would unlock the secret of the hidden waters. Afterwards might come death by slow starvation or the quick ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... is one of the strongest cities in the Netherlands, and my ancestors, who were its lords, little thought that they were fortifying and strengthening it in order that it might be a thorn in the side of their country. I would give much, indeed, to be able to wrest it from the enemy; but I fear it will be long before we can even hope for that. It could withstand a regular siege by a well provided army for months; and as to surprise, it is out of the question, for I hear that the utmost vigilance ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... such extremely courteous terms, that sometimes civility almost borders on servility. Notwithstanding this, however, it is quite plain that it was always thoroughly understood who was master in Italy, and that any attempt on the part of the Senate to wrest any portion of real power from Theodoric would have been ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... is meant by God to serve to His honour, and to the good of His creatures. We must accept them all gratefully as the results of the intelligence which He has been pleased to bestow upon us. At the same time the experience of every age teaches us that the weakness and perversity of many wrest to evil purposes these gifts, which in the Divine intention should serve only for good. It is against the perverted use of two of God's gifts that we would very earnestly ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... commonness, thy high birth is impaired by the estate of thy husband! But thou, if any pith be in thee, if valour reign in thy soul at all, if thou deem thyself fit husband for a king's daughter, wrest the sceptre from her father, retrieve thy lineage by thy valour, balance with courage thy lack of ancestry, requite by bravery thy detriment of blood. Power won by daring is more prosperous than that won by inheritance. Boldness climbs to the top better ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... kind, unless it be—what to Edison indeed is a 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look, fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her being. She wished to live, now that her reason had returned to her, to live to wrest from the Prince a word of pardon. It could not be possible that her existence was to end with the malediction of this man. It seemed to her, that, if she should ever see him face to face, she would find words of desperate supplication which would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... added offense to both him and Absalom. They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... against German ambitions[1170]. A 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 ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... other countries; that is, duplicate her rival's fortification plans, her total military and naval strength; and so forth, and so on. The United States is not an enemy, but there are possibilities of her becoming so. Some day she must wrest Cuba from Spain, and then she may become a ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... made 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 ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... all these things lies the distrust of Democracy which was inspired during the days when the "Kuklux," the "White Brotherhood," the Universal Empire, and the "Stonewall Guard" spread terror and desolation over the State in order to wrest it from Republicanism to Democracy. The memory of those dark days and bloody deeds, the prejudice which still forbids white ladies to teach colored schools, and denies "even-handed" justice in the courts, and the usurpations which place ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... it be confirmed by probable reasons." Buchanan may have thought that nine years of his stern rule had eradicated some of James's ill conditions; the petulance which made him kill the Master of Mar's sparrow, in trying to wrest it out of his hand; the carelessness with which—if the story told by Chytraeus, on the authority of Buchanan's nephew, be true—James signed away his crown to Buchanan for fifteen days, and only discovered his mistake ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... in amazement. Never before had he seen such a cold, steely determination in her eye—such a cruel look of indifference. She seemed a thorough master of her mood—thoroughly confident and determined to wrest all control from him. He felt that all his resources could not defend ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser |
