"Grit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a sensible alternative—he read and re-read the old page. He tried to understand it line by line. He was humbled; filled with shame at his meaningless attitude of the past, and acknowledged that the grit in him, that he had hoped was sand, was, after all, the dirt that could easily defile. He must begin anew and rebuild. He must take nothing for granted in himself. Having arrived at that conclusion, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... and came prancing back, and ran his head into the beggar's stomach, and that doubled him up, and so we all got away. But," concluded the speaker, turning towards his wounded comrade, "I never thought old Mug had so much grit in him before; he stuck to it like ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Lick, and Patoka. Surface, hilly and broken,—limestone rock,—springs of water, of which Half-moon and French Lick are curiosities. On the alluvial bottoms, the soil is loamy,—on the hills, calcareous, and inclined to clay. Excellent stones for grit, equal to the Turkey oil stones, are found in ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... it all is that the one who has indulged and spoiled the baby usually does not possess the requisite nerve, grit, and will power to carry out the necessary program for baby's cure. And the pity of it all is that overindulgence in babyhood so often means wrecked nerves and shattered happiness in later life. So, fond, indulgent parents, do your offspring the very great kindness to fight it out with ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... like I do; I ain't been in service all these years for nothin'. I tell yer, if there wasn't no danger they'd a sent one o' them blessed blacks to interprit instead o' you. They knows you've got the grit, so they sends you, and it's odds yer don't come back with ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... artistic, impressionable temperament, easily disheartened, with little self-reliant courage or grit. But he seems to have felt a little ashamed of his plaint, for at midnight of the same day he wrote a second letter, half apologetic and much more hopeful, just because one or two people had been a little kind and he had been taken out to ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... glanced at her, and nodded to himself. "She'll do!" he said in his beard. "Montfort grit's good grit, and she's got it. This would be ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... the shed-room thar, chile, an' if you hear anybody a-hollerin' an' a-squallin', thes shet your eyeleds an' grit your teeth, bekaze hit'll be your pore ole granny a-tryin' to git even with some er ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... passed in some accordance with his nature. His sins were always sins in his own sight; he could then only sin when he did some act against his clear conviction; the light that he walked by was obscure, but it was single. Now, when two people of any grit and spirit put their fortunes into one, there succeeds to this comparative certainty a huge welter of competing jurisdictions. It no longer matters so much how life appears to one; one must consult another: one, who may be strong, must not offend the other, who is weak. The only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not laugh; nor did he grit his teeth in anger. The effect produced upon him was one of great sadness. In the crash of his whole world, with love on the pinnacle, the crash of magazinedom and the dear public was a small crash indeed. Brissenden had been wholly right in his judgment of the magazines, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Grit is the grain of character. It may generally be described as heroism materialized,—spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... in the trenches. It has shown what stuff British folk are made of. And you get such surprises. Often a boy whom you've known, and always thought weak and selfish and silly, will turn out to have any amount of grit in him. There's one in particular—a friend of ours. He cared for nothing before except amusing himself—the kind of boy who's always getting into debt and doing foolish things. Well, he's utterly changed; he's not like the same fellow. I think the war ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Yankees captured New Orleans. And he died in 1867 from a lingering illness contracted during his imprisonment. His son, Rene St. Jean, came home from war to find himself ruined. His father's shipping business existed on paper only. Having the grit and determination of his grandfather, he struggled along for almost ten years trying to get back on his feet. But those were dark ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... But each was so sincerely anxious to present an unblemished soul to the other's view, that they could not arrive at an understanding on the point; each desired to appear more disinterested than he was; and so, after coming together to a certain extent—both were fine natures—the presence of grit in the machinery made itself gradually felt, and the friendship melted away. It was a case of each desiring the unalloyed pleasure of an admiring friendship, without accepting the responsibility of discovering that the other was not perfection, and bearing that ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is!—Then, an alarm! A cat that mews strangely. Then comes that little hissing sound I begin to know. Hiss—hiss! Oh, what a horrid feeling! I guess that the window is opening wider. You heard, as I did, Fandor, the revolting scales grit on the boards. But you didn't know what it was, whereas I did know it was the snake! I swear to you it needed all my pluck not to flinch, for I wanted at any cost to see it through to the end, and know whether, behind this reptile, Fantomas was ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... the French Hill Benches, the Big Skookum, and Monte Cristo, and then it was Surprise Lake or bust. And here I am. My wife knew I'd strike it. I've got faith enough, but hers knocks mine galleywest. She's a corker, a crackerjack—dead game, grit to her finger-ends, never-say-die, a fighter from the drop of the hat, the one woman for me, true blue and all the rest. Take a ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... prisoners of state, and in 1864 advocated the election of Lincoln. There was no dough about Pierrepont. He had shown himself an embodied influence, speaking with force, and usually with success. He possessed the grit and the breadth of his ancestors, one of whom was a chief founder of Yale College, and his presence in the State convention, although he had not been at Philadelphia, encouraged the hope that it would concentrate the conservative sentiment and strength of New York, and restore Democracy to popular ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Rossville lent additional force to the belief that the enemy had been badly injured, and further impressed me with the conviction that we might have held on. Indeed, the battle of Chickamauga was somewhat like that of Stone River, victory resting with the side that had the grit to defer longest its ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... calculated to dishearten and shake off the pursuit in the first five minutes. Yet always, peering back through the little peephole, he saw Calendar's cab pelting doggedly in their rear—a hundred yards behind, no more, no less, hanging on with indomitable grit and determination. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... extort from Edie the nature of his confidential and secret interview with Lord Glenallan. But Edie had been in his time accustomed to cross-examination, and easily evaded those of his quondam comrade. "The secrets of grit folk," said Ochiltree within himself, "are just like the wild beasts that are shut up in cages. Keep them hard and fast sneaked up, and it's a' very weel or betterbut ance let them out, they will turn and rend you. I mind how ill Dugald ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Wilmshurst was not particularly keen on his brother's chum. Why, he could hardly explain. It might have had something to do with MacGregor's conduct when the lioness charged. But since then the Rhodesian had shown considerable pluck and grit, and his voluntary offer to plunge into the bush on a pitch dark night was a great factor in his ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... this, but I could see as he wasn't real grit, and he went off to the waggons. There was considerable talk when he got there, but as the Mormons must have known as I had been a scout, and had brought a lot of meat into the camp on the way, and as the chap that came across must have seen my rifle lying handy beside ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... width of the cave, without reaching to the roof. The floor of the house was scarcely two yards broad, but the building widened out very much, following the shape of the cave. The materials used in the construction were stone and mud or, rather, reddish grit; and smaller stones had been put between larger ones in an irregular way. The walls were only five or six inches thick and were plastered with mud. An upright pole supported the ceiling, which was rather pretty, consisting of reeds resting on the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... unloaded supplies in the late fall that were loaded at St. Louis in the early spring. And these had come all the way without the stroke of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the woman for her eternal grit. She won't give up for a minute. She is going to run her house just so if she has to train up a million girls and lose them all. Half the time she has to do her own work, but I'll bet that when she has the luncheon ready she puts her ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... George, you could!" exclaimed McLean. "I don't know as the size of a man would be half so important as his grit and faithfulness, come to think of it. Sit on that log there and we will talk it over. What ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... resemblance to a Gothic ruin; the rude openings formed to admit light into the several cells, and the ruggedly fashioned doorway aiding, at first sight, the appearance of an artificial pile of grey antiquity. The rock is found principally to consist of rough grit-stone, and of a congeries of sand and pebbles. The Trent, which now flows at a short distance, formerly ran close under the rock, as is indicated by a dead pool of water situate near its foot, and communicating with ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... your honour; but there is a bit memorandum note of the very coins, for, God help me! I had to borrow out of twenty purses; and I am sure that ilka man there set down will take his grit oath for what ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... picture, and then she sank down on her knees beside him as he lay, bleeding and insensible, perhaps dead. For a moment she was ready to cast herself down on the snow in helplessness and in terror at the horrors of the situation; but the grit of stout Puritan ancestors was in her fibres, the moral endurance which finds in the sense of a duty to be done an inspiration that lifts above all difficulties. Her work was before her; to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... from the one to the other. The Liberal party was soon to find that a crushing {138} victory at the polls and a puny opposition in the House were not unmixed blessings. It began to fall apart by its own sheer weight. A Radical wing, both English and French, soon developed. The 'Clear Grit' party in Upper Canada was moving straight towards republicanism, and so was Papineau's Parti Rouge, with its organ L'Avenir openly preaching Annexation. Canadian eyes were still dazzled by the marvellously rapid growth ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... is a fair and unprejudiced estimate of Froude as he appeared to a trained observer who took neither side in the dispute. Many Irishmen shook hands with him, and thanked him for his plain speaking. Bret Harte told him that even those who dissented most widely from his opinions admired his "grit." But politicians had to think of the Irish vote, and the proprietors of newspapers could not ignore their Catholic subscribers. The priests worked against him with such effect that Mr. Peabody's servants in Boston, who were Irish Catholics, threatened to leave their places if Froude ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... accurately, but so as to make it appear as if he were longer upon the road than he was. As he spoke, the blood darkened in his cheek, and his eye looked ominous and angry, as if he were enraged with the person to whom he was speaking; yet he had not real grit, for he had never said a word of his grievances to those concerned. "I mean to tell them of it by and by. I won't bear it more than three or four ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... about the matter. Oh-Pshaw was certainly humble and unassuming enough, always kind and sweet and obliging, always willing to take any part in anything that was assigned her, but did she have the grit and backbone, the force of character which Nyoda considered necessary qualifications for a Torch Bearer? As ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the peddling pessimistic brood Whose "nimini-pimimi" mouths, too small by half To stretch themselves to a Homeric laugh, Mince, in a mirror, to the "Paphian Mimp!" MOMUS is dead, and e'en that tricksy imp Preposterous Puck hath too much native grit To take the taste of OSRICK turned a wit. Humour baccilophil, microbic merriment, Might suit him better. He will try the experiment. His mirth's a smirk and not a paroxysm; "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism" Do not disturb the "plie" of his prim lips, Neither do cynic quirks and querulous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... and trials and poverty of the real people. He called himself a Conservative, it is true, while I called myself a Radical; but, except in name, I could not see much difference between our democratic tendencies. Runciman appeared to me a most earnest and able thinker, full of North-country grit, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, wistful, half-appealing glance flashed from the Irishman's eyes towards the subaltern, and then, with evident effort at composure, but with ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Roet; "it flourishes because it gives a mark of distinction. It is a delicious moment for Mrs. Johnson when she is able to say to Mrs. Thompson, 'My dear, I am quite worn-out; we dined out every day last week, and have four more dinners in the next five days.' These good people show their British grit by the persistency with which they go on with their penitential hospitality, and their lack of ideas in never attempting to modify it so as to make it a pleasure instead of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... on cutting sandwiches. She said they were not helpless children. She said if she and Dick at forty-two hadn't grit enough to run a six-roomed cottage it was time ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... protested, awkwardly patting the heavy braids of hair swung over her shoulder; "I wouldn't have told you if I'd thought you'd take it so. I thought you had so much grit that you'd stand by me and back me up if Aunt Eunice objected. We're not going to be separated for ever. From what the man told me of the business, I'm sure that I can make enough in a year or so to send for you. Then you can come and keep house for ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Conservative too," said Anne decidedly. "I'm glad because Gil—because some of the boys in school are Grits. I guess Mr. Phillips is a Grit too because Prissy Andrews's father is one, and Ruby Gillis says that when a man is courting he always has to agree with the girl's mother in religion and her father in ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... playing into the hands of Pacificists and Pro-Boches, is all the more to be deplored in a public servant who has crowned a long, disinterested and distinguished career by an act of grievous disservice to his country. British grit will win, declares Sir William Robertson; but our elderly statesmen must refrain from dropping theirs into the machinery. Happily the Government are determined to give no more publicity to the letter than they can ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... and accomplishes the success of which we have spoken. His first beau ideal was to own the best horse in Baalbek; and to be able to ride to the camp of the Arabs and be mistaken for one of them, was his first great ambition. Which he realises sooner than he thought he would. For thrift, grit and perseverance, are a few of the rough grains in his character. But no sooner he is possessed of his ideal than he begins to loosen his hold upon it. He sold his mare to the tourist, and was glad ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... a mind to help the young master in his love affair, there's such an unexpected supply of good luck come to hand—mixed with bad, though—that the public torturers will have a regular festival at our expense every day. Libanus, now we need grit and guile. I've just now come upon such a deed for us to do, that we two will be called the worthiest men alive—to be where ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... finding Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest grit! Wheerfur—Theer!—I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!" And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all the way to his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... and fortune, which are the only two real powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to grow weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown very weary indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he brought back more grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita Valdes presented him ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Robert drew very close together in their lives; for John was rough, he smelt of the windy brae; and Robert was gentle, and smacked of the garden in the hollow. Perhaps it is to my shame that I liked John the better of the two; he had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old Adam that pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood; and he was a way-farer besides, and took my gipsy fancy. But however that may be, and however Robert's profile may be blurred in the boyish sketch that follows, he was a man of a most quaint ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... written by a man who was refusing a proffer of money for his writings (then in print) and it should not be read as inspiring one to avarice. The vice of avarice is more honest than envy, but is not the less unpleasant and reprehensible. Let us suppose you are fortunate enough to have some grit and spunk about you. At the earliest point practicable you get something to do. Perhaps at a Fourth of July celebration your Sunday school teacher trusts you in a booth to deal out lemonade and handle money. It is a ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... then paused for ideas. Writing to Uncle Joseph she found was a very different matter from talking to Dick Harding. She was picturing Mr. Fletcher in her mind as a cross between a minister and a tame bear. But Jane had a bulldog grit that carried her over hard places, and ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... himself leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung to it. It was securely locked and fastened with a padlock, and it took a good many blows with the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parson Jones himself lifted the lid. Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down into the open box. He would not have been surprised to have seen ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... "shredding" room the rags are conveyed to the "cutter," where they are cut and chopped by revolving knives, leaving them in small pieces and much freer from dust and grit. Various ingenious devices are employed for removing metal and other hard and injurious matter, magnetic brushes serving this purpose in some mills. When the "cutter" has finished its work, the still very ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... room with a tumbler and spoon in her hand. "See here, children!" she said bracingly, "you've been crying for the last twelve hours without stopping, and I don't blame you a mite. If I was the crying kind I'd do the same thing. Now do you think you've got grit enough—all three of you—to bear up for your mother's sake, when she first comes in? I've mixed you each a good dose of aromatic spirits of ammonia, and it's splendid for the nerves. Your mother ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... war-path again, ef so be he's called to do it. He's the pluckiest Injun ever I see, and I've trailed, fust and last, most of the kinds there is. Ef he warn't, I wouldn't be fussin' over him now, for his tribe is mostly pizen. But true grit's true grit, whether you find it in white or red, and a man what values hisself as a man, is bound to appreciate it ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to vanishing point, and they had early learnt the stern lesson of "doing without things". Adversity may be a hard task-mistress, but she is an excellent teacher in the school of life, and their Spartan upbringing had given the Gascoynes a certain resourcefulness and grit of character that they might possibly have lacked in more affluent surroundings. They were not a perfect family by any means, and had their squabbles and their cross moods like many another; but on the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... seeing he had a man of the pure grit to deal with, shook slightly in his boots, and did not put on so much "style," and was about to explain something, when the General interrupted him with a quick order to leave forthwith, or he would have a dozen bayonets in his ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... it the truth? Dad's no grit. He gits drunk whenever he has a chance. Marm's a good, hard-workin' woman. She'd git along well ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... expect the cavalry even more than we do. They possibly have had signal fires from the reservation warning them that the cavalry have already left the Verde. I hope and pray they have. Now, keep up your grit, Jim; don't let anything phaze you. If you want help, or see anything, whistle, and ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... Twice she put her left hand up and brushed tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very helplessly against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour before. And he had been crushed saving her! But that was not why the tears came—not at all. She was unstrung. "And he's got grit," she kept muttering to herself; "he has ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... independence. They were rough, strong, outspoken, and fearless. Theirs was not the nimble brain, for that was to come with another people (the Normans), though a people originally of the same race. The mission of the Saxons was to lay the foundation; or, in other words, to furnish the muscle, grit, and endurance, without which the nimble brain is of little ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... principle of all good commanders to show the greater confidence as they feel it the less. He returned to the Battalion Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar of a shell-wrecked house behind the support trenches, and partook of a belated dinner of tinned food flavoured with grit and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... walked that distance early in the morning to his work, returning home late in the evening. One of the old residents at Black Callerton, who remembered him at that time, described him to the author as "a grit growing lad, with bare legs an' feet;" adding that he was "very quick-witted and full of fun and tricks: indeed, there was nothing under the sun but he tried to imitate." He was usually foremost also in the sports and pastimes ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the night through at the poker table with Peters Brown? Brown offered some restoration compromise to the widow but she refused—you know the struggle that she made and that it killed her. We both know the grit it took for Andrew to chisel himself into what he is. The first afternoon he met the girl in here, right by this table, for an instant I was frightened—only she didn't know, thank God! The Almighty gardens His women-things well and fends off influences that shrivel; it behooves ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... found, I'd say Will Henderson was hit a smashin' blow by something heavy, which must sure 'a' knocked him senseless, an' then the lousy skunk did the rest of his work with a knife. Gents, I allow this murder was the work of a dirty, cowardly, mean-spirited skunk who hadn't the grit to face his enemy decently with a gun, and who doesn't need a heap of mercy when we get him. That's how I read the case. All of you have seen the body, so I need say no more ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... start. Well, one day I kissed her cheek; Gee, but I felt cheap an' weak, 'Cause at first she kinder flared, 'N', gracious goodness! I was scared. But I need n't been, fer la! Why, she never told her ma. That's what I call grit, don't you? Sich a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... yesterday. Some of the men in spring went off into the woods to 'flawing,' i.e. to barking the oak which is thrown in May—the bark is often used now for decoration, like the Spanish cork bark. Some were talking already of the 'grit' work and looking forward to it, that is, to mowing and haymaking, which mean better wages. The farmers were grumbling that their oats were cuckoo oats, not sown till the cuckoo cried, and not likely to come to much. So, indeed, it fell out, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... "You've got grit, Lucy," added Frank, jumping up and coming to help her. "Most girls would have boo-hooed ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... 'with a weight heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' It is easy to do things with a spurt, but it is the keeping on at the monotonous, trivial, and sometimes unintelligible duties that is the test of a man's grit, and of his goodness too. So, although it is a very, very threadbare lesson —one that you may think it was not worth while for me to bring you all here to receive—I am sure that there are few things needed more by us all, and especially by those of us who are on the wrong side of middle ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... crooked draws; and now that the road had dropped into the Southwestern Basin it was sickening mesa work, with the fine dust running like water ahead of his wheels or whirling up in fantastic, dancing pillars of grit that drove spitefully into his slack, parched mouth and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... position held against counter-attack is better than a position captured by assault, for it is a position that does not require to be assaulted. It is often impossible to predict the value of resistance at a particular point, and the fate of a nation may depend upon a platoon commander's grit in holding on at all costs. In the campaign of 1814, Brigadier-General Moreau was sent to the Fortress of Soissons, with instructions to hold the town. His garrison consisted of about 1,200 all arms, with 20 guns. At 10.30 a.m. on March 2, the fortress was bombarded by Winzingerode's ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... once a year and all the time keep a sharp lookout for weeds. If the soil is heavy, top-dress with grit in the fall. Grit is good for rock plants. Stone chips placed around a plant will prevent too much dampness lodging about the collar in winter. Watch out for weak spots after ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... to take a short cut to atheism.' He also confided to me that 'a church which could permit such a falling from the faith was in a diseased condition.' I don't believe that opinion has reached Ward, however. It would take more grit than Dean possesses to dare to find fault with John Ward's ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Tom say this I sot still an' began to consider. Bein' second mate, Tom was, by rights, in command of this craft. But it was easy enough to see that if he commanded there'd never be nothin' fur Andy an' me to do. All the grit he had in him he'd used up in holdin' on durin' that typhoon. What he wanted to do now was to make himself comfortable till the time come for him to go to Davy Jones's locker—an' thinkin', most likely, that Davy couldn't ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... atmosphere as if he had been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it, even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom everyone would ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... talks about sending a new preacher here, I hope they will send a strong healthy consecrated white man. A sickly man has no business here. Common sense and grit are needed more than learning. It will be no easy task for a white preacher to manage these black Presbyterians. I suspect it will require more tact and will power to manage this set, than ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... shoes. Foot-ball muscle and grit went into the job of putting a superior shoe on an inferior foot, if necessary—at least on some foot. He got a chance to try his powers in the home branch of a manufacturing house, and made good. When he came to fill a position where ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he slipped quietly off—in one pocket a copy ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... to go to the fight, and I never got a wink of sleep for three days and three nights. The engagement was so long and with us so hot that it did not appear possible for us to hold our ground. We lacked sadly in numbers and artillery, but with good judgment and good grit we made it win. My officers were very brave. Little Captain Taylor would stand and clap his hands as the balls grew thick. Captain Burton was as cool as a cucumber, and liked to have bled to death; then the men, as they crawled back wounded, would ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... told his men. "Those girls have the grit many a boy might well boast of, and when I saw her drop from that pier I did not have to hold my breath. I knew she'd ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... and when they grew tired and hungry, they sat down to eat the sweets they had brought with them. Now when Prince Half-a-son put his into his half-a-mouth, lo and behold! though they were sweet enough outside, there was nothing but ashes and grit inside. He was a simple-hearted young prince, and imagining it must be a mistake, he went to his brothers and asked for some of theirs; but they jeered ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... my feet were a little shaky on the ladders. The violet moonlight had deepened to mauve, and gusty winds spun tendrils of grit across my face. The Spaceforce men shepherded me, one on either side, to ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Pacific Railroad was one of the great works of man. Its promoters were men of small means and little or no financial backing outside of the aid granted them by the Government. It took nerve and good Yankee grit to undertake and carry out the project. How it was done it is hoped the ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... had consumed his glass of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts that precious effort of his Muse. Durdles unfeelingly takes out his two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, alloying them with stone-grit. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... in England through which one rushes on one's way to the north. Just here and there, sweetly almost as the pink blossoms of the wild oleander, which I have seen from Sicilian seas lifting their heads from the crevices of sea rocks, the amber and rosy sands of Nubia smiled down over grit, stone, and granite. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... to save your good temper. There, she is looking back again—not at poor me, though. What a lovely girl she is!—and a real lady—l'air noble—the real genuine grit, as Sam Slick says, and no mistake. By Jove, what a face! what hands! what feet! what a figure—in spite of crinolines and all abominations! And didn't she know it? And didn't she know that you knew it too?" And he ran on descanting ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... he began again, thoughtfully, "that breaks the Jew in the long run, if there's only grit enough behind it. I used to watch those Jews' hands, a year ago, when I was dining and wining them. They're all thin and wiry and full of veins. Their fingers are never still; they twist round ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... twenty-two thousand, Duplay would have had a hand in a good bargain. He thought the Sloyds would yield. "Be strong about it," Iver had said. "These young fellows have plenty of enterprise, plenty of shrewdness, but they haven't got the grit to take big chances. They'll catch at a certainty." Sloyd's manner had gone far to bear ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... two wild and lonely, though beautiful, islands. This has been a work calling for solid rather than brilliant qualities—for a people morally and physically sound and wholesome, and gifted with "grit" and concentration. There is such a thing as collective ability. The men who will carve statues, paint pictures, and write books will come, no doubt, in good time. The business of the pioneer generations has been to turn a bloodstained ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the man I want to see. I'm a widder. I wus born in Old Kentuck, and am a Union, and allers wus a Union, and will be a Union to the eend, clear grit." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... He will face any odds with perfect composure. I have seen a coon upon the ground, beset by four men and two dogs, and never for a moment losing his presence of mind, or showing a sign of fear. The raccoon is clear grit. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... gazing after him. "Grit clean through," said the ranchman, through his set teeth, for a light was dawning on him, as he pondered over Blakely's words. "May the Lord grant I don't have to deliver these!" Then he looked at the superscriptions. One letter was addressed ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... did not greatly depress the fine fellows who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... haw!" laughed Martin, "haw, haw, haw! The little one was scared, see? She was scared, d' you understand? But did you see the grit she went at it with? Just took the bit in her teeth and got away. Haw, haw, haw! Now, that 's what I like. If all you girls had that spirit, we could do something in two weeks. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the most severe winter weather will work but slowly. Beneath this, or even in it, all burrowing roots, animals and insects are safe from freezing. Where the ground is packed hard, the flinty combination of ice and grit goes deepest, though even in exposed situations only to a depth of three feet or so. The woodchucks asleep in their burrows, the snakes, torpid in their holes, are as safe from frost-bite as if they had migrated to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The rootlets of small, perennial herbs may be encased ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Cussy-les-Forges. Rouvray. Maison-neuve. Vitieaux. La Chaleure. Pont de Panis. Dijon. The hills are higher, and more abrupt. The soil a good red loam and sand, mixed with more or less grit, small stone, and sometimes rock. All in corn. Some forest wood here and there, broom, whins, and holly, and a few enclosures of quick-hedge. Now and then a flock ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... expanses of brown table-land that form themselves into long parallel lines in the distance, and give a sense of wild desolation in some ways more striking than the peaks of Scotland or Wales. The thick formations of millstone grit and limestone that rest upon the shale have generally avoided crumpling or distortion, and thus give the mountain views the appearance of having had all the upper surfaces rolled flat when they were in a plastic condition. Denudation and the action of ice in the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... winter's cold is followed by the overwhelming heat of summer. From the few observations I personally made, the interior of Spain forms a vast plain, elevated three hundred toises (five hundred and eighty-four metres) above the level of the ocean, is covered with secondary formations, grit-stone, gypsum, sal-gem, and the calcareous stone of Jura. The climate of the Castiles is much colder than that of Toulon and Genoa; its mean temperature scarcely rises to 15 degrees ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... one among the five that had the first grain of hope. Kenton was leading and I was at his heels; all I could see was his tall figure, covered from head to foot with snow, as he plodded along with the grit he always showed. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... law!" said the ruffian, now recovering himself. "That's a good one. Why, ever'thin' I've done for twenty years has been against the law. I cracked up the law for chicken-grit years ago." ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Ashmore, Senior. He began his missionary work in Bangkok, Siam, but was transferred by our Missionary Union to Swatow, with the view of opening China to our missionary efforts. He had Irish blood in his veins. He was witty and eloquent, fervid and passionate. But he was also a man of grit, and a hero of the faith. He wanted a quiet base of supplies from which he could send out expeditions into the heart of China. He had no means of any account. But he saw the possibilities in these steep and barren hillsides opposite Swatow, and for six hundred dollars ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... ATHOLL celebrated his jubilee as head of the house of STEWART-MURRAY last week. In these days to have remained a Duke for so long as fifty years shows no little grit. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... true grit though; she came of mountain stock, and taught us children to steal by the time we could think! Whatever we stole, she hid, and dared my father to touch us. I remember the first thing of account was when I was ten years old. A Dutch ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... unconscious demonstration of nerve and grit and it proved beyond all question the capacity of American artillerymen to stand by ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... no place like Devon, in all the earth, and no spot like Chagford in Devon. I'm too hard grit to wink an eyelid at sight of the old scenes again myself; but Martin, when he caught first sight of great rolling Cosdon crowning the land—why, his eyes were ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... read of Spanish women serving their own cause than of Cuban women who betrayed their country, and the Spanish dames have often shown as much grit and pride as the dons. Pauline Macias is alleged to have led the soldiers back to their guns in San Juan de Puerto Rico after they had run from Sampson's shells. She seized a sword from an officer, beat the runaways with it, roused them by pleas and commands, and kept them at ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... above, there is a large mass of grit-stone, from nine to ten feet high, standing in a field on the north side of the road leading from Bream to St. Briavel's, named "the Long Stone." Another, called by the same name, and of similar character, occurs on the north-east side of the Staunton and Coleford road; but nothing remarkable is ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... found the eighth wonder of Monarchical Creation, in finding Yew and Yewer fixins, solid and liquid, in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a nip and frizzle to the innermost grit! Wheerfore—Theer!—I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!" A calotype, or rather, literally, a speaking likeness, so true to the life as that, would be a trifle, we take it, beyond the mimetic powers and the keenly observant ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Dominic's, even the best of them, are very human—neither angels nor monstrosities, but, for the most part, ardent, impulsive, out-and-out, work-a-day lads; with the faults and failings of inexperience and impetuosity, no doubt, but also with that moral grit and downright honesty of purpose that are still, we believe, the distinguishing mark of the true British public-school boy. Hence one is impelled to take from the outset a most genuine interest in them and their affairs, and to feel quite as though one had known ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... man who will help me across the street, lend me money, and be a splendid comrade, stops short when he comes to the field of self-support. He will say sympathetically, 'I don't see how you can do it,' or 'I admire your grit, old man, and I'd like to see you do it,' and then begin scheming around to direct my interests, aspirations, and efforts into some other channel from where I want them, as though, out of his own great wisdom, he knew much better than I what ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... appointed nail, hung the gourd dipper that the master always used. The floor had been swept, except, of course, in the corners and underneath things; there were evidences, in streaky scrolls of fine grit particles upon various flat surfaces, that a dusting brush had been more or less sparingly employed. A spray of trumpet flowers, plucked from the vine that grew outside the window, had been draped over the framed steel engraving of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... like as though luck had helped you much when I found you, Walt," remarked the captain, dryly. "It sorter looked to me like only hard work an' an amazin' lot of pluck an' grit had brought ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... group. Here he remained some months, until taken off by a Sydney whaler, short-handed, and glad to catch him. At this point of his adventures he commences Omoo. The title is borrowed from the dialect of the Marquesas, and signifies a rover: the book is excellent, quite first-rate, the "clear grit," as Mr Melville's countrymen would say. Its chief fault, almost its only one, interferes little with the pleasure of reading it, will escape many, and is hardly worth insisting upon. Omoo is of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... for any time against any force of current or of wind, not only without complaining, but without being compelled to give in until the set task was accomplished, though it should involve some miles of hard pulling. These facts indicate the amount of "grit" that lay under the outward appearance of weakness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... legs off at the knee, and he just gripped the table hard and never winked an eyelash. I told him it would kill him, but he said he'd be hanged if he didn't take his chance—and he took it and died. Talk to me about nerve, that fellow had the cleanest grit I ever saw." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... might be, and only for your partner's grit the teams wouldn't have been saved. When we saw the whole blame ravine tumbling in the only thing that struck us was to light out quick, and we did it in a hurry, not stopping to think. Something else struck your partner, too, a devastatin' ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... go in the shed-room thar, chile, an' if you hear anybody a-hollerin' an' a-squallin', thes shet your eyeleds an' grit your teeth, bekaze hit'll be your pore ole granny a-tryin' to git even with some er ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... or whistled past our parson's head; but here some of the more orderly of the inhabitants interfered in favour of peace and order, aided curiously enough by the afore-mentioned Maule and Phillips, who warmly espoused the cause of the little Scripture reader. "The little cus has got grit in him," the latter explained, rearing his bulky red-shirted form between the crowd and the object of its anger. "His ways ain't our ways, and we're all welcome to our opinions, and to sling them round from barrels or otherwise if so minded. What I says and Bill says is, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was grassless, a flooring of grit and loose stone, on which no impression could well be made by human foot. But Copplestone, carefully prospecting around and going a little way up the bank which lay between the tower and the moorland road, suddenly saw something in the black, peat-like earth which ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... addressed, a man of his own age, though his spare form and smooth-shaven cheek and chin made him look ten years younger—"I think it is that Graham has been tried in all manner of ways and has proved equal to every occasion. They say he's sheer grit." ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... uncovered—the white wasted face of a lovely woman, a woman still living; an utterly delicate face, telling the story of one who had never met a rough impact from the world. It was as if there had always been a strong hand between her and the grit and the grind of world-affairs—first her father's and then the lover's. In the great silence, the eyelids opened. It seemed that night and chill had suddenly come in. The lips moved. The most mournful and hopeless voice spoke straight into ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... cliff, where only the jackdaw and sea-birds can find a footing; and many another plant may be seen there too. The cliffs are full of cracks, some tiny and some wide. In these places there is always a certain amount of dirt and grit. You could hardly call it "soil," and most plants would starve if you planted ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... in Scotland, and although Eliphalet's father was the younger son of a younger son, yet he always remembered, and always bade his only son to remember, that this ancestry was noble. His mother left him her full share of Yankee grit and a little old house in Salem which had belonged to her family for more than two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough |
