"Drag on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they do not love you better than I!" she wailed as she clung passionately to him; "no—not though they die for you, and I am only a drag on you. For I love you! I love you—and I too would die ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... to obtain any sort of hold. A little more, and he would have knocked my legs from under me, but it was as if my grim determination were by itself of a saving nature. He submitted to being hauled up the beach, passively, like a sack. It was a heavy drag on the sand; I felt him bump behind me on the edge of the harder ground, and a deluge fell uninterruptedly from above. He lay prone on his face, like a corpse, between Seraphina and myself. We could ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... continued to drag on an existence, which, when contrasted with the tenour of years gone by, scarcely deserves to be accounted other than vegetation. In 1720, he added several codicils to his will, and 'put his house in order;' and in November, 1721, he made his appearance in the house of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... place. Mr. Hazelton was unable to leave Montreal, and Mrs. Grandison was not disposed to accompany her husband, even if he could have afforded to take her, in fact, the poor woman, feeling that she was a burden and drag on her husband, had taken to drinking, and had gradually removed herself still further from the pale of fashionable society. Her house (which was situated in a back street in Montreal) was not only untidy, but positively dirty, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Camping out was not to be thought of, so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades—from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags—and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track. We were settled to it—to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks till we came to somewhere—when, just before darkness settled down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... a bore it is to lose the one bit of quicksilver in the house!' said he, yawning. 'I shall only drag on my existence ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at a moment's pressure the machine obeyed and the yarn flew on its way obedient. Now she cleared a snarl, or catch, where a spindle appeared to have run amuck or created hopeless confusion; now she readjusted the weights that kept a drag on the humming bobbins. Her twinkling hands touched and calmed and fed the monster. She knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to her insensate machine the complement of brain that made it trustworthy. And when the bobbins were ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... it was fashioned in this or that way according to the materials on hand; a beginning was made by examining these materials, and trying to estimate their rigidity, weight, and strength.—All this is reactionary; the age of Reason has come and the Assembly is too enlightened to drag on in a rut. In conformity with the fashion of the time it works by deduction, after the method of Rousseau, according to an abstract notion of right, of the State and of the social compact.[2126] According to this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, they shall have the perfect vessel and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Ottilie alone stood contemplating the slumberer, whose features still retained their gentle sweet expression, with a kind of envy. The life of her soul was killed; why should the bodily life any longer drag on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... winds will sigh and moan; the dreary, dreary rain Will drench thy lowly pillow, sweet, with tears like mine in vain; And weary, weary months drag on, and long years stretch before, Whilst thou to me, my ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... of such a woman is enough, and is fatal—"Amour Dure," as her device says. I shall die also. But why not? Would it be possible to live in order to love another woman? Nay, would it be possible to drag on a life like this one after the happiness of tomorrow? Impossible; the others died, and I must die. I always felt that I should not live long; a gipsy in Poland told me once that I had in my hand the cut-line which signifies a violent death. I might have ended in a duel ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... horns deep into the horse's side and lifts man and beast right off the ground; they fall with a heavy thud, and as the raging brute is drawn off, blood spurts from the horse's flank. The chulos try to get it up; they drag on the reins with shouts and curses, and beat it with sticks. But the wretched creature, wounded to the death, helplessly lifts its head. They see it is useless and quickly remove saddle and bridle, a ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... which nature has provided to repair the exhausted constitution, and restore the vital energy. Without its refreshing aid, our worn out habits would scarcely be able to drag on a few days, or at most, a few weeks, before the vital spring would be quite run down: how properly therefore has our great poet called sleep "the chief nourisher ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... depends largely upon the evidence the other side submits. It is possible that the case may drag on for years." ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... it seemed to her, if he chose to put out his strength;—the looks of a king, a warm heart, a sympathetic charm, felt quite as much by men as by women, and ability which would have distinguished him in any career, if his wealth had not put the drag on industry. But at the moment he was not idle. He was more creditably and fully employed then she had ever known him. His hospital and his pride in it were in fact Nelly Sarratt's best safeguard. Whatever he wished, he could not possibly spend all his ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speculating as to why she walked. There was no spring or elasticity in her step as if she were doing so for the enjoyment of the exercise. Her feet, in boots with heels slightly rounded on the outside, seemed to drag on that hot pavement. Possibly the 'bus fare was an item of consideration, even though she looked as if she had spent all the morning on her feet in the shop. With thick, dark hair and good eyes, it would have taken very little aid in ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... archbishop, cardinal, or even pope!" 9. Pastors were granted the right to appeal from the decision of their synod to the General Synod. "Accordingly the case of a pastor, be he ever so bad, may drag on for years; and if, owing to extreme distances or other circumstances, the witnesses are not able to attend, he may finally even win it. This provision renders the matter similar to a temporal government, where appeals are commonly made from a lower to a higher court." ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... without delay. Mulrady saw clearly that he would be a great drag on them, and he begged to be allowed to remain, and even to remain alone, till assistance could be ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Phoebus and Hera herself, under whose especial care ye have come hither, help me, save an ill-fated man from misery, and depart not uncaring and leaving me thus as ye see. For not only has the Fury set her foot on my eyes and I drag on to the end a weary old age; but besides my other woes a woe hangs over me the bitterest of all. The Harpies, swooping down from some unseen den of destruction, ever snatch the food from my mouth. And I have no device to aid me. But it were easier, when ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... is that she had only used all her opportunities, and that, although it was no fault of hers that the routine of her life was in every way repulsive, she did struggle to accommodate herself to it, and failed. When she found it impossible to drag on at home, she became an inmate of a refined and cultivated household in the village, where she had opportunity to follow her own fancies and to associate with educated and attractive persons. But ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... call rapes and murders, treason and robbery, the acts of heaven; because heaven suffers them to be committed. Is it heaven's pleasure therefore, heaven's decree? A trick, a wise device of priests, no more——to make the nauseated, tired-out pair drag on the careful business of life, drudge for the dull-got family with greater satisfaction, because they are taught to think marriage was made in heaven; a mighty comfort that, when all the joys of life ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... you shall not chuck it," he said with smiling decision. "I've never believed in the older generation being a drag on the wheel. And now it's my turn, I must play up. What's life worth without a spice of risk? I took my own—a big one—family ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the 2d of July we have left Albion one year—oblitus meorum obliviscendus et illis. I was sick of my own country, and not much prepossessed in favour of any other; but I "drag on my chain" without "lengthening it at each remove." [5] I am like the Jolly Miller, caring for nobody, and not cared for. [6] All countries are much the same in my eyes. I smoke, and stare at mountains, and twirl my mustachios very independently. I miss no comforts, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... is a nice little thing,—an awful drag on him, you know. They haven't a dollar, and she is going to have a baby; she is ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... that he could hear her saying: "But, darling, it would ruin you!" For he himself had experienced to the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on the man she loves. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... salvation, or damnation—as the case is—in the bush, with no one to help us, except a mate, perhaps. The Army can't help us, but a fellow-sinner can, sometimes, who has been through it all himself. The Army is only a drag on the progress of Democracy, because it attracts many who would otherwise be aggressive Democrats—and for ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... later Ren lit a cigarette and took a long drag on it, his eyes looking longingly into Martha's. He exhaled the smoke in a long white plume. ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... already said to her father, when he asked her to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor, which search he feared might drag on forever without any results: "Oh! I shall be sure to find him at Bellagio!" And she made up her mind that there he was to be sought and found at any price. Hotel life offered her opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... is. But she'd be furious if she guessed I'd said such a thing. I only do it because it's for her good as much as yours. Things oughtn't to drag on, you know; it isn't fair to ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... no sign of the wanted stores on the Date, and June 16 finds the unit still in the same blinking hole, wherever that may be. The days drag on, and Date the second is ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... too, to cultivate the habit of prompt obedience. It is usually reluctance which puts the drag on. Slow obedience is often the germ of incipient disobedience. In matters of prudence and of intellect, second thoughts are better than first, and third thoughts, which often come back to first ones, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the dawn, or rather before it, but sixty men would put the Arabs to flight just before dawn, while one thousand would not accomplish in daylight. The reason is that the strength of the Arabs is in their horsemen, who do not dare to act in the dark. I do hope that you will not drag on the artillery, it will only cause delay and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... the poor were of the same mind, but, from the way they drag on us who have something to give, I think the rule is usually the other way. Very well, that will answer; since you have asked papa to let you continue to do Pat's duties, you had better be about them, though it is not so late as you think;" and she turned to her sketching in such a way as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... block down the street Lily's parade raiment slipped. Her hobbles tripped her. The galloping Wildcat felt an added drag on the leading string. He glanced backward ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush at her gate—the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now covered the path entirely—she overheard David explaining to Janetta how he and his brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually existed still, though in very ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... first with its point forwards, then, on arriving opposite the edge of the pupil, which it is intended to enlarge or replace, with its point turned backwards, so as to hook over the edge of the iris and thus drag on it. Once the hook has fairly got hold, it must again be rotated forwards, and withdrawn in the same direction as it was put in. The iris thus pulled out of the wound is to be cut off with a pair of fine scissors, so as to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... was a drag on her soul before it began to wear partially away. Drouet called again, but now he was not even seen by her. His ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... cloud, I hope and trust, looks less black and lowering. But I think it very unwise in Guizot not to have at once disavowed D'Aubigny for what you yourself call an "outrage,"[25] instead of letting it drag on for four weeks and letting our people get excited. The Tangiers Affair[26] is unfortunate, and I hope that in future poor Joinville will not be exposed to such disagreeable affairs. What can be done will be, to get him justified in the eyes of the public here, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the line was off the reel, and the piece of seaweed seemed to be a drag on the fish. He slowed up. The line was tight, the rod bent. Suddenly the tip sprang back. We ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Cobden and Bright and Peel, took possession of the English mind. Trade monopolies, it now was held, hampered more than they helped, even if costless. But when maintained at heavy expense, at cost of fortification and diplomatic struggle and war, they became worse than useless, a drag on the development of both colony and mother country. So the fetters which impeded trade and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... way she contrived, just, as she called it, to drag on life; and wondered how so fine a woman as Harriot could have so long buried herself in that place, scarcely more lively ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... what could not be unsaid. And then, poor, little Kitty, it would be hard both for you and for me. No, I won't go. Stay in Italy and get married, Kitty: that is the best thing for us both. You will have forgotten your old friend by the time you come back to London; and I shall drag on at the old round, with the same weary, clanking chain at my heels which nobody suspects. Good God!" cried Rupert, with a sudden burst of passion which would have startled the friends who had seen in him nothing but the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shifting of the current, they experience no little difficulty in adjusting their lines, the current being occasionally so strong as to raise them to an angle of forty degrees. Thus, if the lines were too long, and the current not very strong, they would drag on the bottom; if too short, and the current strong, they would be driven up upon the ice. The approach of a storm is indicated, not by any heaving of the ice, but by the strength of the current, and the roaring of the waves under the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... bones, and rotten posts and rails, and attempts at grass. Here are old barrel-hoops, and patches of old sails, and dead bushes and dead dogs, and old saucepans, and little plots of ground where cabbages and pumpkins drag on a pining existence. And then there is the river Charles, no longer clear and bright, as when trees and hills and flowers were mirrored on its surface, but foul, turbid, and polluted, with ship-yards and steam-engines ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in pain than we. I have said something to her; but we need not yet despair. We know nothing of any certainty. Sometimes such schemes are abandoned at the last moment because too costly or too unremunerative. Sometimes they drag on for half a lifetime; and at the end ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... round. Barth was moving quickly, and she had no desire to burden him with a drag on the rope. When she was in the center of the narrow causeway, a snow cornice in the lip of the crevasse detached itself under the growing heat of the sun and shivered down into the green darkness. The ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... I have done a highly improper and wicked act, for which, fool that I am, I have fallen into such distress. Therefore, will I perish by starving, life having become insupportable to me. Relieved from distress by the foe, what man of spirit is there who can drag on his existence? Proud as I am, shorn of manliness, the foe hath laughed at me, for the Pandavas possessed of prowess have looked at ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... invectives on her own. "Ah, my dear madam," says she, "I know the present state of your mind, by what I have myself often felt formerly. I am no stranger to the melancholy tone of a midnight clock. It was my misfortune to drag on a heavy chain above fifteen years with a sottish yoke-fellow. But how can I wonder at my fate, since I see even your superior charms cannot confine a husband from the bewitching pleasures of a bottle?" "Indeed, madam," says Amelia," I have no reason to complain; Mr. Booth is ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... more guarded alliance with France, held the ambition of Spain in check almost as effectually as war. The peace in fact set England free to provide against dangers which threatened to become greater than those from Spanish aggression in the Netherlands. Wearily as war in that quarter might drag on, it was clear that the Dutchmen could hold their own, and that all that Spain and Catholicism could hope for was to save the rest of the Low Countries from their grasp. But no sooner was danger from the Spanish branch of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... step to which he led her. Her mind, naturally noble, though now in this wild state, refused to admit his love as an excuse. "Had he loved me," she said, "he would have wished to teach me to love him, before securing me as his property. He is as selfish as he is dull and uninteresting. No! I will drag on my miserable years here alone, but I will not pretend to love him nor gratify him by ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... able to adapt herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it the possibility of growth, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... of hostilities by the Armistice was not in the legal sense the "end of the war," it brought it within sight. No one in January 1919 dreamt that the process of making peace and ratifying the necessary treaties would drag on for a seemingly interminable length of time, and it was realised, with grave misgiving in Ulster, that the Home Rule Act of 1914 would necessarily come into force as soon as peace was finally declared, while as yet nothing had been done to redeem the promise of an Amending ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... fancy that they were talking about him; and he tried to smile, but failed in the attempt. It was with difficulty, too, he could drag on ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... a continual drag on his wife. Most of his time and few earnings were wasted in Colombe's "Assommoir." And Nana, between her mother's toil and her father's shiftlessness, ran wild about ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... is so dirty. There are so many foul diseases in peace times. They drag on over so many years, too. No, war's clean! I'd rather see a man die in prime of life, in war time, than see him doddering along in peace time, broken hearted, broken spirited, life broken, and very weary, having suffered many things,—to die at last, at a good, ripe age! How they have suffered, those ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... pursued passionately—"ah, God! the very word from me to you sounds insult; and yet there is not one thought in me that does not honor you—if you loved me, could you stand there and bid me drag on this life forever; nameless, friendless, hopeless; having all the bitterness, but none of the torpor of death; wearing out the doom of a galley slave, though guiltless ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... executing this work, he suffered many interruptions from illness and from other misfortunes, such as happen every day to all who live in this world; besides which, it is said that the men of the Company also ran short of money. And so long did this business drag on, that in the year 1527 there came upon them the ruin of Rome, when that city was given over to sack, many craftsmen were killed, and many works destroyed or carried away. Whereupon Perino, caught in that turmoil, and having a wife and a baby girl, ran from place to place in ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... knows a old man what died, and after his death he would come to our house where he always cut wood, and at night we could hear a chain bein' drug along in the yard, jest as if a big log-chain wuz bein' pulled by somebody. It would drag on up to the woodpile and stop, then we could hear the thump-thump of the ax on the wood. The woodpile was near the chimney and it would chop-chop on, then stop and we could hear the chain bein' drug back the way it come. This went on fur several nights until my ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Ellen; I speak bitterly, but it is not against her that I am bitter. I would give all I possess at this moment that I could set her free, and send her out into life once more, unshackled by hateful ties, and at liberty to choose another destiny. But the die is cast; and she and I must drag on existence together through the dreary ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... was struck, had been wrought by a triad of agents. A man who had passed his life in indolent seclusion, who had plunged into a tangled labyrinth of abstruse books, not in search of valuable knowledge, but to lose in its mazes the recollection of valueless hours; who had allowed his days to drag on in aimless monotony; who had fallen into melancholy because he lacked a healthy stimulus to rouse his faculties out of their life-deadening torpidity; who had allowed his nervous diffidence to gain such complete mastery over him that it tied his tongue, and clouded his vision, and confused ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... keeps open the old wound, Rome irritates the old sores. Rome holds the two nations apart. We in Germany see all this quite plainly. We have no interests at stake, and then, you know, lookers-on see better than players. Rome keeps Ireland in hand as a drag on the most influential disseminator of Protestantism in the world. Ireland suits her purpose as a backward nation. We have quite snuffed out the Pope in Germany. Education is fatal to the political power ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... unexpected sight; but as soon as she came within speaking distance, she said to him, "I know how sad you are at losing your Princess and being kept a prisoner by the Fairy of the Desert; if you like I will help you to escape from this fatal place, where you may otherwise have to drag on a weary existence ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... one at a time, being careful not to let corners drag on the floor, and put to air. Turn the mattress over from end to end one day, and from side to side next day. If the patient does not have to return to bed at once leave to air for at least ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... the spot. He made very little mystery either of the crime or of its motives—alleging that there was sufficient against him to deprive him of Leicester's confidence, and to destroy all his towering plans of ambition. "I was not born," he said, "to drag on the remainder of life a degraded outcast; nor will I so die that my fate shall make a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... triumphant confidence in its favorable reception? Who does not know that first terrible glimmer of doubt when the story seems not to be making the expected impression? Who has not endured the dull dogged despair in which the story, damned by the stony faces of the auditors, has yet to drag on a hated weary life ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... hunting or shooting. The Riviera is thronged with roues and invalids and adventurers, and we don't want any of them. Dear me, what sacrifices a grown-up daughter does entail. This coming season shall be your last, Sybil. I won't drag on round again. I'm really getting ashamed ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... maintenance, and none is coming in; a nervous time, as the ring of the telephone which may mean a call is wished for or dreaded, perhaps both; an anxious time, as no one knows how long she may have to wait; a dreary time, as the days drag on and still no call comes. It is a trying time, but much can be done in these days of waiting that is delightful in the doing, and that will prove a source of pleasure to all future patients, and no little profit ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, it is necessary that Great Britain should take instant mediatory action, and that the military measures undertaken by Austria against Serbia should be immediately suspended. Otherwise mediation will only serve as an excuse to make the question drag on, and will meanwhile make it possible for Austria to crush Serbia completely and to acquire a dominant position ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... often, in draining the lagoons, shells have been found measuring twelve feet in length. The planters of Upper Western Louisiana have often fished to procure them for scientific acquaintances, but, although they take hundreds of the smaller ones, they could never succeed to drag on shore any of the large ones after they have been hooked, as these monsters bury their claws, head, and tail so deep in the mud, that no power short of steam can make them relinquish ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... exaggeration to say that ninety per cent. of the books bound in leather during the last thirty years will need rebinding during the next thirty. The immense expense involved must be a very serious drag on the usefulness of libraries; and as rebinding is always to some extent damaging to the leaves of a book, it is not only on account of the expense that the necessity for it is ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... howitzers to Russia. But one's point of view underwent a transformation subsequent to the dire events of March in Petrograd. So far from pushing the claims of the revolutionary government for war material, it then seemed expedient to act as a drag on the wheel, and to take the side of the C.I.G.S. and General Furse when Lord Milner from time to time pressed the question of sending out armament. The War Office deprecated depriving our own troops of munitions ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... from inanition. The twelfth of August was drawing nigh, and the coming-of-age of grouse, that most important of annual events in the orthodox British social calendar, would soon set free Lord Exmoor and his brother hereditary legislators from their arduous duty of acting as constitutional drag on the general advance of a great, tolerant, and easy-going nation. Soon the family would be off again to Dunbude, or away to its other moors in Scotland; and among the rocks and the heather Ernest felt he could endure Lord Exmoor and Lord Lynmouth a little more resignedly than among ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... and war, and looked quite as if they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position. But it was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this; and, as he could not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he made use of Nicomedes for that purpose. The latter, who was under ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... economic development include the CAR's landlocked position, a poor transportation system, a largely unskilled work force, and a legacy of misdirected macroeconomic policies. Factional fighting between the government and its opponents remains a drag on economic revitalization. Distribution of income is extraordinarily unequal. Grants from France and the international community can only partially ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... she said, indicating with a slight revealing gesture the swarming, dowdy, listless occupants of the crowded trench. "How patient they are, how resigned to the dreadful life they drag on here from day to day, full of the horror and the pain and the suffering that you say is inevitable. Why should it be inevitable? Did these women who are the chief victims of it and the greatest losers ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... about the paper," Weiss said. "She'll get suspicious at once if you do. Try and make friends with her. This thing may drag on for ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then reluctantly rolled a smoke. He held the cigarette while the spaceman took a long, gasping drag on it. He smoked the remainder himself, letting the harsh tobacco burn against his lungs and sicken his empty stomach. Then he shrugged and threaded his way through the ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag on fast enough. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... put a drag on his steps as they tried to hurry after her, through the main street of Upper Radstowe, through another darker one where there were fewer people and he had to exercise more care, and so past the big square where tall old houses looked at each other across an enclosure of trees, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Travers was dead—MURDERED. Murder! That thought again! It was their own weapon! Murder! Would one kill a venomous reptile in whose fangs was death? What right had this man to life, whose life was forfeit even under the law—for murder? Was she to drag on an intolerable existence among the dregs and the scum of the underworld, she, in her refinement and her purity, to exist among the vile and dissolute, in daily, hourly peril of her life, because the weapons that these inhuman vultures had used to rob her, to destroy those ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... quite right," the old man said heartily. "You have done more than enough fighting, and there is no saying how long this war may drag on. I told you, when I first heard of your engagement to the young countess, that I was glad indeed that you were not always to remain a soldier of fortune; and I am sure that the king will consider that you have more than done your duty, by remaining in his service for a year, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... when he had no idea of it; he thought it would certainly be put in Commission, and evidently looked forward to filling the office again in a few months. He said that he had long foreseen this catastrophe, and it was far better to be out than to drag on as they did; that he had over and over again said to the Duke, and remonstrated with him on the impossibility of carrying on such a Government, but that he would never listen to anything. Sir John Leach, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... drag on his reel, letting the ray fight against the braking action. The fish didn't give up easily. It had the primitive nervous system and great vitality of its relatives, the sharks, and it fought long after an edible fish, like a rockfish, would ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the thinkers in revolt against the religion of their people. Curiously enough, even in Homer himself, it is plain that the heroes, the men, are on a higher moral plane than the gods; and all through Greek history the gods are a drag on morality. What a weakness in religion! The sense of wrong and right is innate in man; it may be undeveloped, or it may be deadened, but it is instinctive; and a religion which does not know it, or which finds the difference between right and wrong to lie in matters of taboo or ceremonial ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... after a horrible moment or two had passed a half-seen arm and shoulder rose out of the flood, and the sudden drag on the bridle that slipped from her fingers was very reassuring. The horse plunged and floundered, and once more Hetty felt her dragging skirt was clear ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... here he was at thirty, a failure. It was better to acknowledge it now: to admit that the fault was his; to go on into some mining camp and lose himself than to drag on making a fool of himself at the Sun Plant. He would rest a little longer, then start on ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... to know what is befalling us, how the children are growing up, and how your mother is, and how I live, yet never be able to satisfy this longing; how you will have to give us up, and never dare to make a sign; how you will drag on your life from year to year, a poor man among poor, ignorant, stupid men; how I may die, and you not know it, or you may die, and I not know it; I wonder how we could have done what we did ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... cried Amelie, clasping and wringing her hands, "and I am always imploring you to be constantly on the alert.—Good heavens! it is not a man, but a barrow-load of stones that I have to drag on!—Why, Camusot, your public prosecutor was waiting for you.—He must have given ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... skin must be brought to tie the poles into two bundles. The little girl must help hold these bundles in place, while Bent Horn's best pack horses were brought up and the bundles fastened against the sides of their bodies, and at the same time allowed to drag on the ground behind. ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... fat, shining man, as they moved away down the street, greasy with river-mist.—"Hang it all! where in the world are we to get a taxi?—Commonplace little thing; a bit of a drag on him, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... did the long hours drag on as he paced up and down the room, or sat by the flickering logs, which threw out but a moderate degree of heat. His frugal meals were soon despatched, and at last evening came. He had tried the bars of ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... Helena Vail! Now isn't that a perfectly lovely name for a novel! And she'll be so good to the dear old chap too—washing and ironing and cooking for him—and stealing out into the woodshed for a drag on her cigarette—not. No, my dear, not ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... the poorer classes are garbed in a short petticoat, usually red or blue, and a loose shirt. A long cloth, not unlike a chudder, is thrown over the head, and is kept tight round the forehead by a band. It is fashionable to let it drag on the ground behind. Women generally go about barefooted. Better class ladies wear similar clothes but of better material, and often richly embroidered. Occasionally they put on large trousers like Persian women. The hair is either left to flow loose at the sides of the head, or ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... one thing," this friend had assured him, emphatically; "collecting the premiums is another matter... If your fire-insurance premiums aren't paid up inside of two months, the policies are canceled. But they let the others drag on until the cows come home. There's nothing so intangible in this world as insurance. And people ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... respect of their rapiers, which were so exactly similar that they might have been made for a duelling pair. Each had a beautifully chiselled and polished bell-guard, with the Italian cross-bar for the middle finger; each was sheathed in a good brown leather sheath, with a chiselled steel shoe to drag on the pavement, and each weapon hung from the wearer's shoulder-belt by two short chains of well-furbished steel. The weapons looked serviceable, though they made little pretence to beauty, in an age when most things ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... say; "now of his ancestry They have begun to boast: from time to time Joad shows him to the factious, holds him up, As if another Moses, to the Jews, And lying oracles support his speech." These words did cause the blood to mount her brow: Ne'er lucky fable had such prompt effect. "Must I drag on in this uncertainty? Let us escape," said she, "this restlessness. To Josabet declare you this resolve— 'The fires are kindling, and the sword prepared, Nothing can save your temple from destruction, If hostage for your faith that ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... The great prosperity, the honor of the house, everything was foundering in a moment. Even her daughter might escape from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of his faults—perhaps because of his very faults—and might drag on a weary existence in a strange land, which would ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... gaff; but my birkie, near han' spent though he was, had a canny bit dodge up the sleeve o' him. He made a bit whamlin' run, an' deil tak' me gin he didna jam himself intil a neuk atween twa rocks, an' there the dour beggar bade an' sulkit. Weel, her leddyship keepit aye a steady drag on him, an' she gied him the butt wi' power; but she cudna get the beast tae budge—no, nae sae muckle as the breadth o' my thoomb-nail. Deil a word said Leddy Carline tae me for a gey while, as she vrought an' vrought tae gar the saumon quit his neuk. But she cam nae speed wi' him; ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... against the interpretation put upon it. All this has been of enormous advantage for the Christian Church. But on the other hand the infallibility ascribed to the Bible has been an easy weapon for obscurantism, and a drag on intellectual progress. It has prevented the Church from adopting the discoveries of science and {72} criticism in such a way as to make them applicable to religious life. Bible Christianity[12] in some of its more recent forms has become a serious ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... no drag on this carriage; and when I'd once given Neddy his head he couldn't stop himself, no more could I. But he's a plucky, sure-footed little beast; and I shall walk up this hill out of ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to action. The language was plain and manly, the subject serious and moral. For they consisted chiefly of the praises of heroes that had died for Sparta, or else of expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the glorious opportunity, and rather chose to drag on life in misery and contempt. Nor did they forget to express an ambition for glory suitable to their respective ages. Of this it may not be amiss to give an instance. There were three choirs on their ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... as slowly as though they were strung on the chain of ages, as slowly as they drag on for those who have ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... he certainly did not imagine that the whole of this work would be written in England, that his exile would drag on month after month till winter would come and spring return, followed once more by summer. In those days we used to say: 'It will all be over in a fortnight, or three weeks, or a month at the latest;' and again and again did our hopes alternately collapse ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... had congealed, freezing his limbs to the ice, whence they could not easily be loosened. The pain, sharp as it was, did him good, however, for it aroused his benumbed energies and enabled him to drag on the goat-skin cord with all his strength, while Otter tugged at that which was ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... inflicted upon students for quarrelling among themselves was light and limited to a small fine. Kierson's was an aggravated offence, however. The dignity of the Governor's son had suffered, and as there was no precedent the case was allowed to drag on indefinitely. Loris used his influence with the authorities ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... six days, possibly, if we are fortunate enough to find water," answered Hendricks; "but I fear that the cattle will become so weak, they will scarcely be able to drag on the waggon. If we don't discover any to-morrow, we must set off to search for it in different directions. I propose letting Denis and you explore to the north-west, while I ride ahead with Lionel, and Umgolo, with Crawford, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... give up, he will not confess his mistake. Whenever he meets Death he still furiously defies him—but Death patiently waits. He, the healer of sorrows, is man's best friend: the recognition of this will come. As the years drag on, and on, and on, the friends of the Master's youth grow old; and one by one they totter to the grave: he goes on with his proud fight, and will not yield. At length he is wholly alone in the world; all his friends ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unhappy, badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it weren't for spending the summer at the Levins', I don't know how we should be managing to live. Of course Kostya and Kitty have so much tact that we don't feel it; but it can't go on. They'll have children, they won't be able to keep us; it's a drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that I can't even bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... thundering and singing and shouting amid the silence of the night with voices of fiddles and bass-viols "U-ha! U-ha!" Then the Ulans knock out fire with their horseshoes, and it is wearisome for him there on his horse. The hours drag on slowly; at last the lights are quenched; now as far as the eye reaches there is mist, and mist impenetrable; now the fog rises, evidently from the fields, and embraces the whole world with a whitish cloud. You would say, a complete ocean. But that is fields; soon the land-rail will be heard in the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... Jean. "You hurt me when you speak like that. Do you think I would let you burden yourself with all my family? I would never be anything but a drag on you. You must go away, Richard Plantagenet, and take your proper place in the world, and forget all about Priorsford and Penny-plain, and marry someone who will help you with your career and be a fit mistress for your great ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... install the old type Edison machines for that very reason. You can't break 'em with a trip hammer. They're so simple a kid can run 'em. There's nothin' about 'em to git out of repair onct they're up. If you aim to work that ground with scrapers, I'll tell you now it's goin' to be a big drag on the motors. Of course they're a little bit heavier than ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... drag on heavily, her thoughts gradually shaping themselves into a resolve, while she watches by the bedside and waits the return of Mrs. Lamotte. At last, she comes, and there is an added shade of sorrow in her dark eyes; Evan is very ill, she fears for his ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... still more work to do. Surely there are still disputed places in the world, where justice lies on both sides, where only 'face-saving' prevents a settlement. And surely it is better to resort to this coin than to force and war and bitter arguments that drag on year ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... a fleetin' show—I wouldn't, if I was in your place. Merriage is a drag on a man's ambitions. I set out to own a schooner, but I can't never do it now, on account of bein' merried. I had a good start towards it—I had a little store all to myself, what was worth three or four hundred dollars, in a sunny ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this doctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cigarette out of his livery and appropriated Rand's lighter. "If we hear her coming, you can grab this." He brushed a couple of Paterson Colts to one side and sat down on the edge of the desk, taking a deep drag on the cigarette. "What's the regular law doing, now ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... for many of them have open communication with the angels of heaven. Those in their societies who begin to think wrongly, and consequently to will what is evil, are dissociated and left to themselves alone, in consequence of which they drag on a most wretched life, out of society, among rocks or other places, for the rest no longer trouble about them. Some societies try by various methods to compel such persons to repent; but when this ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... considerably, and travelling so much quicker, he found it required all his dexterity to steer past the islands and clear the banks upon which he was drifting. Once or twice he grazed the willows that overhung the water, and heard the keel of the canoe drag on the bottom. As much as possible he bore away from the mainland, steering south-east, thinking to find deeper water, and to be free of the islets. He succeeded in the first, but the islets were now so numerous that he could not tell where the open Lake was. The farther the afternoon ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... do drag on slowly, for after all I am never quite happy, never at peace even, never for a moment, except when I am with you. I am sorry I feel so, for it seems ungrateful in the face of all the kindness and care that is being ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... But he knew also that if France were victorious in her turn she would be no more moderate in the hour of victory than Germany had been, and that yet another link would be added to the chain of the crimes of the nations. So the tragic conflict would drag on for ever, in which the best elements of European civilization were ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... likely to be a heavy drag on the association; he was constantly tumbling into trouble, and needing to be pulled out again by those who had ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... express her thoughts in concise language was insignificant. She had long known that the issue of the suit she had brought was doubtful, and that as it was one which could be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, it might drag on for a long time; so that the possibility of a compromise was very welcome, and she at once remembered that half a loaf is better than no bread, especially when the loaf is of hearty dimensions and easily divided. What she could ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... England, I should leave a loved but empty land—Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... year did the ill-fated animal drag on his wearisome existence, living on the charity—the scanty charity—of Caneville. Deprived of sight, no longer able to acquire a livelihood by his labour, weary, and full of remorse, he daily took ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... as a "divining oracle," knowing the Past and prophesying the Future. It is a power which exempts the blessed organization which it illumes, from the bearing of the heavy burden of technicalities, with which the merely scientific drag on toward that mystic region of inner life, which the gifted attain with a single bound. It is a faculty which springs less from an acquaintance with the sciences, than from a familiarity ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... conceivable, that what is unified form to the author, or composer, may of necessity be formless to his audience. A home-run will cause more unity in the grand stand than in the season's batting average. If a composer once starts to compromise, his work will begin to drag on HIM. Before the end is reached, his inspiration has all gone up in sounds pleasing to his audience, ugly to him—sacrificed for the first acoustic—an opaque clarity, a picture painted for its hanging. Easy unity, like easy virtue, is easier to describe, when judged ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... than hunt and fight. Owing to the scarcity of timber on the western prairies the Indians transport their lodge poles from camp to camp. This is done by attaching them to the sides of the pack animals while the free ends drag on the ground, and in time of war this constitutes one of the signs of the trail by which to follow ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... where began the change; and what's my crime? The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned, Chafes at his sentence. Shall I, unsustained, Drag on Love's nerveless body thro' all time? I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not, like hard life, of laws. In Love's deep woods, I dreamt of loyal Life:- ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... others. We may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." We may form the habit of observing the things about us and enjoying the beautiful in our environment, or of failing to observe or to enjoy. We may form the habit of obeying the voice of conscience or of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... the House of Lords were held during the winter months, but the crowning excitement followed a daring Bill introduced by the Liberal party for the abolishment of the Unionists in toto, on the ground that, being neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring, they acted but as a drag on the wheels of progress. The benches were crowded to their fullest capacity on the occasion of this historic debate; even the Dons themselves came in to listen, and the whips flew round the corridors, giving no quarter to the few skulkers discovered at work in ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
