"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nineteenth century into the minds of rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... me, delve a tomb, And lay me there the earth beneath; After a year, come see my bones, And make them dice to play therewith. But when you're tired of that game, Then throw those dice into the flame; But when you're tired of gaming free, Then ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the position of the Florentine Republic at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor Charles V and Francis I of ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... with that narrow, one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... is sweet, And soon 'twill be complete! Then to my den I'll haste for gold to delve. I'll bring it at the black, bleak hour ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... forehead wears A hundred leaves—a hundred years I never knew the words: "You must!" And shall my wreath return to dust? Freemen! The door is yet ajar; From northern star to southern star, O ye who count and ye who delve, Come in—before my ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... hopefully of a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve into the future. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... observed Claudius evolved this idea years ago. Alfred had no idea of who Claudius was, or how long ago he lived. However, when he located him four hundred years back, the old professor said "Huh, four hundred years ago? H-ll! Four thousand years." Alfred did not delve into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... that there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into motives. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the modern politico-social reality is itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... of Country Life.—So the two friends had sat them down to delve in delightful profundities; but following the bridle path, the little brook and its groves end for us all too soon. We are in the open country around Athens, and the fierce rays of Helios beat strongly on our heads. We are outside the city, but by no means far from ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its manners and customs. Such is a brief summary of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the plain the city moans with a human cry, And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die; But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay, For God still keeps one playground where He and ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... Highnesses had been fatal—Lansing now perceived it—to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... sprawling gigantic figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which seem to wonder how they ever got there, and however they were to keep themselves from falling. London is hopeless! We can but delve its soil when opportunities occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces, exchanges have vanished, or are quickly vanishing, and we cast off the dust of London streets from our feet and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... let Reb Sender examine both of us. Let him select a passage and see who of us can delve deeper into it, you or I? ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... conquering race, but every-whither there is a cry in the heart to delve into the mystery of these ancient forerunners. This type of colour holds the eye, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... important question is, where and how to hit the ball. If it is lying fairly well, it is only necessary to skim the top of the turf and take it cleanly. There is no necessity in such a case, as is too often imagined by inexperienced players, to delve down into the turf so that the ball may be lifted up. If the stroke is played naturally, in the way I have indicated, the loft on the face of the brassy is quite sufficient to give the necessary amount of rise to the ball as it leaves the club. But if, as so often happens, the ball is just ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the cleft earth, to thick wide-waving fields Of corn full-grown, they lead their helpless young: But when autumnal torrents, and fierce rains Deluge the vale, in the dry crumbling bank Their forms they delve, and cautiously avoid ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... red berries, and their color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One may delve in the earth so long as to lose all dread at the thought of sleeping in it at last; and the luscious fruits and bright-hued flowers that come out of it, in a way no one can find out, may teach our own resurrection more effectually ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... we are, you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here and ought ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... He is not even expected to impart much knowledge; but to put his pupil through a course of mental calisthenics, miscalled education. But even this is by no means to be despised. With mind strengthened by exercise, even in a desert, and lungs developed by football, the youth may be able to delve the harder for knowledge when happily released from the "gerund-grinder," to pray the more lustily to the immortal gods for understanding, which transmutes what were else base metal into ingots of fine gold. There was a time when more ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of it," asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... each one when we come into the world," answered the gray-haired woman earnestly. "But many of us are content enough with the glitter of the fool's gold which is found a-plenty in every life; and we don't delve for the real gold. We slip along in a don't-care way, neglecting the opportunities that come to us to better humanity; seeking the easiest tasks, satisfied with that kind of existence. The miner who digs in the bowels of the earth for his gold has to work and struggle and strive. ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... we delve the mine, Sustaining each his neighbor; And who can hold a right divine To rob us of our labor? We rush to battle—bear our lot In every ill and danger— And who shall make the peaceful cot To ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... beginning of Prudence's golden summer. She was not given to self-analysis. She did what seemed good to her always,—she did not delve down below the surface for reasons why and wherefore. She hadn't the time. She took things as they came. She could not bear the thought of sharing with the parsonage family even the least ardent and most prosaic of Jerrold's letters. But she never asked herself the reason. It seemed a ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's picture. It was rejected. When ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... He lov'd to delve the darksome dell Where never pierc'd a ray, There to the wailing night-bird tell, 'How ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... special vocation—a vocation identical with that of the great artist—the "loving of the unlovely into lovableness." Thus does it participate according to its measure in the work of Divine incarnation. This does not mean a maudlin optimism, or any other kind of sentimentality; for as we delve more deeply into life, we always leave sentimentality behind. But it does mean a love which is based on a deep understanding of man's slow struggles and of the unequal movements of life, and is expressed in both arduous and highly skillful actions. It means taking the grimy, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... English song—she who had left her lord and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so deep that it is necessary to delve back to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real significance of it, and of the things she ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct in temper and sentiment as in face ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... of new life in the world, crying, "If the contact of Life and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life." To be sure, behind this thought lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,—the making of brown men to delve when the temptation of beads ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... not study eternally. The change from a toiling body and idle mind to an idle body and toiling mind requires time to make the latter condition unirksome. Happily there was small need to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and sinking back on his haunches keen-eyed for more; so mentally ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... a bundle of letters, which Tom took, and then the giant continued to delve for more. One of the papers, rolled in a wrapper, stuck on ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... most precious of all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless riches just beneath their feet. And rubies and ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... the morn, What time the ruddy sun Smiles on the pleasant corn Thy singing is begun, Heartfelt and cheering over labourers' toil, Who chop in coppice wild and delve the russet soil. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... to them," said Zell, almost fiercely. "I tell you there is no place for you here, unless you wish to go to perdition. Go home, where you are known. Scrub, delve, do anything rather than stay here. Your big brother can and will take care of you, though ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself—"I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep." I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... public schools without knowing anything about "sex hygiene." That married women had babies and that somehow these were due to the presence of men in the household was the limit of her sex knowledge. Beyond that it was not "nice" for a girl to delve, and Milly was very scrupulous about being "nice." Nice girls did not discuss such things. Once when she was fifteen a woman she knew had "gone to the bad" and Milly had been very curious about it, as she ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... gives freely, because it knows that it has received freely; which communicates knowledge without hope of reward, without jealousy and rivalry, to fellow- students and to the world; which is content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by the practical use of some stray talisman ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... shoe; Three, four, shut the door; Five, six, pick up sticks; Seven, eight, lay them straight; Nine, ten, a good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain; Fifteen, sixteen, the maid's in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, she's a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, my plate's empty; Please, mamma, give ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... poor-house's aid All smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, And to favour that bond ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... promise once more dead In the pernicious lowlihead Of not aspiring to be fair. And what am I, that I should dare Dispute with God, who moulds one clay To honour and shame, and wills to pay With equal wages them that delve About His ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel and the microscope can show? A something nameless, invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent, retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper they delve: namely, the life which shapes and makes; that which the old schoolmen called "forma formativa," which they call vital force and what not—metaphors all, or rather counters to mark an unknown quantity, as if they should call it x or y. One says—It is all vibrations: but his reason, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... it be practicable, should have a small plot of ground to cultivate, that he may dig and delve in, and make dirt-pies if he choose. Children now-a-days, unfortunately, are not allowed to soil their hands and their fine clothes. For my own part, I dislike such model children; let a child be natural—let him, as far as is possible, choose ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... date of, and should delve into the details of the accident; special note being made of the occurrence of laryngeal spasm, wheezing respiration heard by the patient or others (asthmatoid wheeze), fever, cough, pain, dyspnea, dysphagia, odynphagia, regurgitation, etc. The amount, character ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... straunge And base attire, that none might them bewray, To Maridunum, that is now by chaunge Of name Caer-Merdin called, they took their way: There the wise Merlin whylome wont (they say) To make his wonne, low underneath the ground In a deep delve, far from the view of day, That of no living wight he mote be found, Whenso he counselled with his ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair "I have builded my tomb," ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... forlorn! Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt, Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life, in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or grunt with ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... 'Soundser' is. Then I will tell you. In the coastwise part of the State of New Jersey in which I live, numerous sounds and creeks everywhere divide and intersect the low, sea-skirting lands, wherein certain people are wont to cruise and delve for the sake of securing their products, and hence come to be known in our homely style as Soundsers. The fruitage afforded by these sounds is both manifold and of price. Throughout all the pleasant weather, they yield, with but little intermission, that gastronomic ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Free to delve in the allurement and fascination of science, emancipated man goes on subduing Nature, as his Maker said he should, and turning her giant forces to his service in his constant struggle to rise and become more like Him who gave ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... infinitudes of Space and Time! I never take up a book of Geology or Astronomy but this strikes me. And when we think that Man must go on to discover in the same plodding way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold his hands, or turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon the march of discovery will distance all his imaginations, [and] dissolve the language in which they are uttered. Martial, as you say, lives now, after two thousand years; a space ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why do I call this wild child the great anomaly of the human race? I will ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... what thousands feel without the moral courage to utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable wall, against which they batter mentally in vain. They have ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... a writer, for in a writer there are many men,—an author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know everything though he does not tell it, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... this same lawyer- poet's agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve in libraries: ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... brain, the wish that this case might seem as simple to him as it apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the smile passed, and Muller raised ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... Withersteen and thought of the complications of the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. Under the shadow of the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... The White Horse guided by his favourite theory that to realise history we should not delve into the details of research but try only to see the big things—for it is those ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Bess!" groaned Amelia, "the term hasn't really opened yet. Don't make us delve into the past for the roots of our language. It's ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... summer winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one; for a communion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart. The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, though independent of language, gives to it life and light. The mystic spirit stirs ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... itself, Him, that husband, whose love in so mighty a whirlpool of passion Whelmed thee absorbed and plunged deep in its gulfy abyss, E'en as the Grecians tell hard by Pheneus of Cyllene Drained was the marish and dried, forming the fattest of soils, 110 Whenas in days long done to delve through marrow of mountains Dared, falsing his sire, Amphtryoniades; What time sure of his shafts he smote Stymphalian monsters Slaying their host at the hest dealt by a lord of less worth, So might the gateway of Heaven be trodden by more of the godheads, 115 Nor ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... and Silas, ought to have heard that, for they thought their mother did not care to see them do anything but delve. ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... from every direction radiating about the building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in their quest. No, there is no lightness, even in their happiest moments. To be light, an intelligent swiftness of brain is needed. And these derelicts have little of such. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... clean, glittering; the neatness of the Rue Lord Byron, and the magnificent slanting splendour of the Champs Elysees. Paris had always seemed beautiful to her; but the life of Paris had not seemed beautiful to her. Yet now it did seem beautiful. She could delve down into the earlier years of her ownership of the Pension, and see a regular, placid beauty in her daily life there. Her life there, even so late as a fortnight ago, seemed beautiful; sad, but beautiful. It had passed into history. She sighed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... physician, gold, or sorcery: Away forthwith, and to the fields repair; Begin to delve, to cultivate the ground; Thy senses and thyself confine Within the very narrowest round; Support thyself upon the simplest fare; Live like a very brute the brutes among; Neither esteem it robbery The acre thou dost reap, thyself to dung. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... highest spirits, and they made it a kind of race as to who should get there first. They thought they had nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very little gold, their spirits fell. They were not used to dig; and it happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they digged for eight days without finding ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... angle on the stump of a jack-pine, formed his easel. Perched upon another box, he was soon busily engaged upon the outline of what was to be his masterpiece. Forgotten was everything else as he sat there, devoting all the energy of heart, mind, and hand to the work before him. The miners might delve for gold; Curly and his companions might gamble to their hearts' content; such things were nothing to him. He had struck a vein of wealth, the true gold of love, by the side of which all the treasures of earth were ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... trial and Inshallah—God willing—return to me rejoicing; yet sore I fear lest thou come back to me and say, 'Sooth thou hast spoken in thy speech, O my mother!" However Zayn al-Asnam took up a pickaxe and, descending to that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge souterrain all pillar'd ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... appeal to their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that lay beneath either ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the poet says, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Rembrandt. Having read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Emile Michel, Member of the Institute of France—that mine of learning about Rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt, decrit et commente, par M. Charles Blanc, de l'Academie Francaise. This sumptuous ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... evening hour, Calls the maidens round; Shoes to throw behind the door, Delve the snowy ground. Peep behind the window there, Burning wax to pour; And the corn for chanticleer, Reckon three times o'er. In the water-fountain fling Solemnly the golden ring Earrings, too, of gold; Kerchief white must cover ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... possible for the would-be student. Knowledge, which is after all but a string of facts, is being arranged, sorted, distilled, and set down in compact form, ready for rapid assimilation. There is little fear that the student who may wish in the future to become master of any subject will have to delve into the original sources in his search after facts ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... my shoe; Three, four, Shut the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids a-kissing; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, My ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... attempted solution. If to make a gentleman one must begin with his grandfather, surely to make a poet one must begin with the race, and in poems even of such bulk as the Prelude one does not find a complete analysis of the singer's forbears. In only one case do we delve far into a poet's heredity. He who will, may perchance hear Sordello's story told, even from his remote ancestry, but to the untutored reader the only clear point regarding heredity is the fusion in Sordello of the restless energy and acumen of his father, Taurello, with the refinement and ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... that she was foreordained to be his wife was not more unbelievable than the consciousness that he, her undeclared lover, her predestined mate and protector, was listlessly permitting her to delve further into the black heart of a land out of which he had promised to convey her with all possible speed, for the salvation of her body and soul.... Yet what could he do, save be passive for the time, and wait upon the turn of events? He could not, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... DELVE having had the honour to be commanded to make the necessary arrangements for the obsequies of the late Mr. PITT WELLINGTON, beg to say (on this memorandum) that they have not been fortunate enough to carry out the transaction to their entire satisfaction. Messrs. D. AND D. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for anybody's or everybody's benefit. He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read, with a row of tin letter-files ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... I apprehend, that we Should oft restrain our thoughts and sight, Nor delve too far, nor try to see, With deeper, but more ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... peradventure be conceded thee, to thy shame who hast so ill known to put a servant of thine and a man of worth in good case; yet poverty bereaveth not any of gentilesse; nay, rather, wealth it is that doth this. Many kings, many great princes were once poor and many who delve and tend sheep were ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... centre; and thus did they set off from the place of bondage to seek freedom. In vain did the tyrant-whose name democracy has enshrined with its glories-pursue them, and exhaust persuasion to procure their return. For three days did they wander the woods, delve morasses, and swim rivers, ere they reached the haven of St. Augustine, where, being provided with provisions, their case was tried, and, albeit, though Turnbull interposed all the perfidy wealth could purchase, their fredeom established. But alas! not so well was it with those fair daughters whom ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... measurement, to which everything has to be cut down. He is blissfully sure of his standards, and does not need to bother his mind over any possibilities in the way of new artistic developments. Only after he begins to delve into the history of criticism upon his own account does he wake up to the fact that 'the genius is the thing,' and that the slings and arrows of outrageous critics have been powerless to crush ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... scholar to delve into the complexities of the Stanwix treaties, Professor Peter Marshall, says that there was no prolonged and close discussion about the running of the treaty line in Pennsylvania (the Tiadaghton question), no discussion in any way comparable to that which ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... round Paris: on the slopes of Montmartre men dig and shovel; though even the simple suspect this to be desperate. They dig; Tricolour sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-ye. Nay finally 'twelve Members of the Legislative go daily,' not to encourage only, but to bear a hand, and delve: it was decreed with acclamation. Arms shall either be provided; or else the ingenuity of man crack itself, and become fatuity. Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... adequate for that. Electricity and subways and motor cars do not restore the soul; and to know that there are millions upon millions of solar systems, like our own, scattered through space does not restore the soul; and to delve in the sea or to fly in the air or to fling our words through the ether does not restore the soul. The need of religion is perennial and would be though our scientific control over life were extended infinitely beyond our present hope, for the innermost ministry of religion to ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives, to delve alone is uphill work. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... sleet and mist; who has swung the sickle under the summer sun—this is the man for the trenches. This is the man whom neither the snows of the North nor the sun of the South can vanquish; who will dig and delve, and carry traverse and covered way forward in the face of the fortress, who will lie on the bare ground in the night. For they who go up to battle must fight the hard earth and the tempest, as well as face bayonet ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... river and was so held under by logs that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save without warning, strangely leading us to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... thinking over your life, and a woman's lot seems hard. To love so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal, to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still he has discovered how to melt the harder and more useful iron. We say roughly, therefore, that man passed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... least boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism as the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the precaution to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake was only required as a sign that he was ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Gettysburg and Pericles at Athens, storm the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was right: "The true university ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... with using the capital on hand? There sits our 'admiral,' with money enough in that basket to start the whole business. Set Wolfgang to manage, and the rest of us to dig and delve. More'n one here has tried mining for a yellower metal than this"—holding up the bit of copper—"'twould do us proud to give the first pick to Sobrante's fortune! Lads, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... it is rather like a tree, shooting out branches which adapt themselves to the new aspects of the sky towards which they climb, and roots which contort themselves among the strange strata of the earth into which they delve. To us who breathe only the spirit of our own age, and know only the characteristics of contemporary thought, it is as impossible to predict the general tone of the science of the future as it is to anticipate the particular discoveries which it ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... it was the result of some mental irritation, compared for the purpose of fixing the point to a festering sore and which, if removed, would permanently eliminate the liability of such seizures. The patient and her husband were informed that the physician intended to delve to the bottom of this trouble and, by deferring investigation as to its exact nature until the symptoms had practically disappeared, a way was cleared to obtain their complete confidence, and at the same time to overcome any unwillingness to accept a psychical explanation ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... personnel would for the most part Regard an ideal as a symptom of sickness; To show sweetness and beauty and color To those whose knowledge of tints is confined To the rouge and the lip stick on dressers; To pioneer in playwrighting, to delve deep into mind, When all that the first-nighters ask is plain entertainment. How much of the great, wholesome public, hard-working and normal, To whom the final appeal must be made Frequents our first nights ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... Reeves. There was no time to delve into Mr. Crymble's motives just then. There was just time to act. The blank wall of the ell shut off Mrs. Crymble's view of the scene. Constable Nute was still well down the road. There was only the basilisk Mr. Reeves on the woodpile. Cap'n Sproul grabbed up a quilt spread to air ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... other good deeds must be counted the fostering of the musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and is remarkably at home in their management, and he strives rather for color-masses ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if—if ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... choose to feede on carefulnesse, To ditche, to delve, and labour for my bread, Nay rather choose to begge from doore to doore, Then condiscend to offer violence To young Pertillo in his innocence. I know you speake, to sound what mightie share Pertillo hath in ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... wad hae scorned to do the like," she would exclaim, adding, with a mysterious shake of the head, "but gin the young laird had a' that belanged to him, he wad na need to dicker and delve like ane ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... from June to January, before ony body will say, 'Hae, puir man, there's a kirk.' And if no kirk casts up—which is more nor likely—what can a young probationer turn his hand to? He has learned no trade, so he can neither work nor want. He daurna dig nor delve, even though he were able, or he would be hauled by the cuff of the neck before his betters in the General Assembly, for having the impudence to go for to be so bold as dishonour the cloth; and though he may get his bit orra half-a-guinea ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... us delve deep wherever we have reason to suspect that guilt lies buried. Let us take short cuts to arrive at the truth, but let us be sure that it is the truth that we shall meet at the end of our road, and not a mongrel thing wearing some of the garments of truth, but some others, too, belonging to that ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life—to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries are dreaming sentimental nonsense! But, after all, does ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... French peasant of his day marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... dressed at last, although obliged to switch on the lights before this was accomplished. The reflection of himself in the pier glass quite met his deliberate approval, and he glanced inquiringly at his watch, rather eager to delve deeper into this adventure. It was a few moments of seven, and she would undoubtedly be waiting for him in the hall below. He descended the broad stairs, conscious of a thrill of expectancy; nor was ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... among many historical efforts, principally concerning England in different periods, his History of the Anglo-Saxons stands out prominently as a great work. He was an eccentric scholar, and an antiquarian, and he found just the place to delve in when he undertook that history. The style is not good—too epigrammatic and broken; but his research is great, his speculations bold, and his information concerning the numbers, manners, arts, learning, and other characters of the Anglo-Saxons, immense. The student of English ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... done for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags in ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in the water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket. The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a decline, and early next fall the old man—for he was an old man now—had to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flamme stanche; And so to speke upon this branche, Which proud Envie hath mad to springe, Of Scisme, causeth forto bringe This newe Secte of Lollardie, And also many an heresie 350 Among the clerkes in hemselve. It were betre dike and delve And stonde upon the ryhte feith, Than knowe al that the bible seith And erre as somme clerkes do. Upon the hond to were a Schoo And sette upon the fot a Glove Acordeth noght to the behove Of resonable mannes ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... It can fail. All we actually know of the abilities of this postulated neo-human race is what I have learned from the composition of its defensive screen. The probability approaches unity that the Masters continued to delve and to learn for millions of cycles while you Stretts, reasonlessly certain of your supremacy, concentrated upon your evolution from the material to a non-material form of life and performed only limited research into armaments of greater and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... Road is a dark road— No bird by the wayside sings, No sun shines into the canons deep, No children's laughter rings. They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks For the pittance their labor brings. Their bread is bitter who toil for their own, But they ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... when she finds she must prove to a busy, driven world that she is worth its attention; she must do more than simply knock for admission and declare her fealty to its ideals. She realizes sooner or later that she is an outsider and must delve her way in. No sapper works harder to make his trench than most young women do to make stable places for themselves ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. When Ponce's order to distribute them ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... chairmen with infinite approbation of the audience." The snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... systems of necessity lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I know what you meant," said Abe quietly. "All the same, Mrs. Crawford, I don't always mean to delve ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah |
