"Pluck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once more into a heap of incoherent fragments. The last trial of the virtues of the Patent Redintegrator by the Special Committee of the Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as all attempts to buy peace at too dear a rate must end. Peace is an excellent thing, but principle and pluck are better; and the man who sacrifices them to gain it finds at last that he has crouched under the Caudine yoke to purchase only a contemptuous toleration, that leaves him at war with his own self-respect and the invincible forces ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and shown no want of pluck, my lad," said the surgeon as a parting word of encouragement and cheer. "Lie still and you'll be able to see your friends by and by. I believe you'll do famously, and we'll see whether a substitute cannot be found for ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... blooming out now, and nightly as I wend homeward I pluck a handful of it, gathering along with its life the tranquil sunshine, the autumnal notes of the cardinal passing to better lands, and all the healthful influences of the fields. I shall make me a tribute of it to the memory ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... grand scene, and I began to think there was some real pluck in Bisgaum after all, although there was a total want of discipline; but just as I felt inclined to applaud, the victorious elephant was seized with a sudden panic, and turning tail, he rushed along the bottom of the watercourse at the rate of 20 miles an ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... conquering the city, either by force or fraud, but at the same time, he felt comparatively relieved by the inactivity of Boisot's fleet, which still lay stranded at North Aa. "As well," shouted the Spaniards, derisively, to the citizens, "as well can the Prince of Orange pluck the stars from the sky as bring the ocean to the walls ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... snow-drops, saying, he could not see why that barren stump should be kept, which did not produce a single green leaf. He thought it spoiled and disfigured the garden, and therefore begged his father would permit him to fetch the gardener to pluck it up. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... girl; but, Alice, I'm determined to turn over a new leaf with Dame Van Winkle; the next time I see her, I'll pluck up [my] courage ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... cornfield. If you pluck up one of the innumerable wheat plants which are fixed in the soil of the field, about harvest time, you will find that it consists of a stem which ends in a root at one end and an ear at the other, and that blades or leaves ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... twenty-eighth to the thirtieth verses, we have a picture of the true sheepfold and of the place where the child of God may rest, held in the hand of God and of his dear son. "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father, which gave them unto me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." What a joy it is to ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... what I call real double lock-stitch pluck! That goes back of everything. You needn't shut up any more. Now let's come ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... introducing that game into the western prairies. Well, I looked on, and by-and-by, I got tired of being merely a spectator. My nose itched, my fingers too. I twisted my five-dollar bill in all senses, till a sharp took me for a flat, and he proposed kindly to pluck me out-and-out. I plucked him in less than no time, winning eighty dollars at a sitting; and when we left off for tea, I felt that I had acquired consequence, and even merit, for money gives both. During the night ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the Honourable George, Mr Nearthewinde, and Frank endeavoured again to bring him to the charge. He was like a beaten prize-fighter, whose pluck has been cowed out of him, and who, if he stands up, only stands up to fall. Mr Moffat got sulky also, and when he was pressed, said that Barchester and the people in it might be d——. "With all my heart," said Mr Nearthewinde. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... soldiers the Civil War made! How those veterans could fight! What pluck, what coolness, what nerve, what daring they displayed! There was one stormy night beyond the Mississippi, when a band of jayhawkers, believing the two men carried a few hundred dollars, formed a plan for shooting both for the sake of the plunder. There ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... Goeinge forest is transformed into a beautiful garden, to commemorate the hour of our Lord's birth. We who live in the forest have seen this happen every year. And in that garden I have seen flowers so lovely that I dared not lift my hand to pluck them." ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Herbert's interest, who gave a small ticket for sixpence, unlocked the little arched door and admitted the stranger into this temple of nature and art. A board hung on a tree was the first object, warning visitors not to pluck ferns or flowers, the man at the gate having notice to deprive marauding visitors of anything so gathered. There is a winding gravel walk leading up the height almost alongside of the brawling stream that leaps from rock to rock. I did not see any flowers at all, but the common heather bell in ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... "Don't give up Colonel, hang to em;" and many who were too badly wounded to leave the field stuck to their places, sitting on the ground, loading and firing. I have heard of brave acts, but such determined pluck I never before dreamed of. My flag-bearer, after having been wounded so he could not hold up the colors, would not leave them. I had to peremptorily order him off. One time when the enemy charged through my lines the boys drove them back in confusion. ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... heretofore crushed under her disapprobation, now loomed as a terrifying possibility. The girl had proved her mettle by living through the winter on a smaller allowance than Madam paid her cook. She had shown perseverance and pluck, and an amazing ability to get along without the aid of the family. In a few months she would be of age, and with the small legacy left her by her spendthrift father, would be in a position to snap her fingers in the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... a question of grandfathers—" and another laugh rippled out. "But just be thankful you bear his name. It isn't always necessary to have a long line of gentlemen behind you, and if you haven't any, or can't trace them, a man, if he has pluck and grit, can get along without them; but it's very comforting to know they once existed. Now let me sit down and listen to you," added Peter, whose random talk had been inspired by the look of boyish embarrassment on Jack's face. He had purposely struck many notes in order ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hardly a leaf was to be seen. Soon the boat was almost within a stone's cast of the island, and it began to sail round and round until it was well under the bending branches. The scent of the berries was so sweet that it sharpened the prince's hunger, and he longed to pluck them; but, remembering what had happened to him on the enchanted island, he was afraid to touch them. But the boat kept on sailing round and round, and at last a great wind rose from the sea and shook the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... down the valley, never pausing to look back, even when Rufus stopped to pluck a flower ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... to see the thin and headless ghost Of the yet earlier Austrian, here, too, queen, Walking beside the bride, with frail attempts To pluck her by the arm! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... promises of success and alluring baits of immortality, if they could only find the base metals in quantum stiff, to pay the cold-blooded paper-merchant and the vulgar type-setter. Many a poetic pigeon did the Stockdales pluck, no doubt, by these expedients. For in those days, as in these present, a young suckling full of innocence and his mother's nourishment deemed it the highest earthly honor to be admitted to the society of Bohemian bulls and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... misleading. Out of the total of 197 Europeans, no fewer than seventy-five are the highly skilled mechanics who are still absolutely indispensable as supervisors at the steel-smelting furnaces and the rolling-mills. Work of this kind requires a powerful physique, long experience, and plenty of pluck. One has only to look at the muscular, hard-bitten Americans and Englishmen who stand round the furnaces to see that they represent a type of humanity which in India is still extremely rare. The Company have ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... on leaving the Council Room, Sir James Craig was loudly cheered. His manliness, combined with stupidity, and his real honesty of purpose, had its temporary effect upon those who admire pluck as much in a Governor as in a game cock. Not only was His Excellency cheered on leaving the Parliament buildings, addresses poured in upon him from all quarters. Quebec, Montreal, Terrebonne, Three Rivers, Sorel, Warwick, and Orleans, complimented Sir James. A more cunning man would have ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... here don't know what war is. You think it's all glory and pluck, and dashing out and blowing up the enemy's guns, and the British flag flying, and wounded pipers piping all the time and not caring a damn. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... bringing the rope under his tail. Down went the tail tight, and the horse "went into figures," as the cow-puncher phrase of that day was. There was a cut bank about four feet high on the hither side of the river, and over this the horse bucked. We went into the water with a splash. With a "pluck" the calf followed, described a parabola in the air, and landed beside us. Fortunately, this took the rope out from under the horse's tail, but left him thoroughly frightened. He could not do much bucking in the stream, for there were one or two places ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... but which had received great improvements since his arrival in France. She was no less charm'd with his conversation than she had been with his person, and impatient to know who he was, made an offer of shewing him her face on condition he would pluck off his mask at the same time: but this he would by no means agree to, because still hoping to get rid of her, and have some discourse with mademoiselle Charlotta, he did not think proper he should ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... revealed; and in denying religion, you deprive the poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and afflictions; you wrest from the hands of the powerful and rich the only bridle to their injustices and passions, and pluck from the hearts of the guilty the greatest check to their crimes—I mean this remorse of conscience which can never be the result of a handful of organized matter; this interior monitor, which makes us blush in the morning at the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... of other outdoor games we'll have to take up in season," continued Jack, thoughtfully. "Once the spirit of sport has gripped the boys of Chester, and they'll be hungry to go into anything that means a test of endurance, skill or pluck." ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee;— The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... voices, but seem to have lost all heart, and the rest of the party are getting discouraged at the many and serious delays they are causing us. I have used every means to induce them to rally and pluck up heart, but it seems all to be totally lost upon them. It is a very trying situation for me, and I trust God will guide me, and help me to do what is right and just to all I have in my charge. Mulcahy acknowledged riding horses in depot out kangarooing, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... gyring ran, Crusht their wide flanks and gain'd their flying van; Here Arnold charged; the hero storm'd and pour'd A thousand thunders where he turn' No pause, no parley; onward far he fray'd, Dispersed whole squadrons every bound he made, Broke thro their rampart, seized theircampand stores And pluck'd the standard from ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... but had acquired, in the process, certain talents which, as they cost the acquirer dear, so they sometimes repay him, especially if he is not overburdened with principle, and adopts the notion that, the world having plucked him, he has a right to pluck the world. He could play billiards well, but never so well as when backing himself for a heavy stake. He could shoot pigeons well, and his shooting improved under that which makes some marksmen miss—a heavy bet against the gun. He danced to perfection; ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... long, shivering breath as she thought of the magnificent courage of that painful passing up San Juan Hill, wounded, crawling on, with a pluck that the shades of death could not dim. Would ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the result of your measurement of the thickness of the walls turns out at all what I have asserted, would it not be worth while to write a little bit of a paper on the subject of your former note; and "pluck" the bees if they deserve this degradation? Many mathematicians seem to have thought the subject worthy of attention. When the cells are full of honey and hang vertically they have to support a great weight. Can the thicker basal plates be a contrivance to give strength to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... veered the wind to the east again. And west they drave, and long they ran Till they saw a land was white and wan. "Yea," Snbiorn said, "my home it is, Ye bear a man shall have no bliss. Far off beside the Greekish sea The maidens pluck the grapes in glee. Green groweth the wheat in the English land, And the honey-bee flieth on every hand. In Norway by the cheaping town The laden beasts go up and down. In Iceland many a mead they mow And Hallgerd's grave grows green enow. But these are Gunnbiorn's skerries wan, Meet harbour ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... occupied by Clementi's new firm were destroyed by fire, entailing a loss of about forty thousand pounds. But the man's courage was indomitable, and he retrieved his misfortunes with characteristic pluck and cheerfulness. After 1810 he gave up playing in public, and devoted himself to composing and the conduct of his piano-forte business, which became very large and valuable. Himself an inventor and mechanician, he made ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... hounds, to be sure,' continued Benson; 'there is a dead silence, till pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in; then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country; then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of us ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... acquire the knowledge of a single truth! What an inexhaustible power!—what an immeasurable experience it is! We are made absolutely stronger by it; we receive more life with it,—a new and imperishable fibre of being. Fortune cannot pluck it from us, age cannot weaken it, death cannot set limits to it. And now, with the fulness of this one experience as a test, just consider our whole mortal experience as filled up with such revelations of truth. Suppose we improve all our opportunities; into what boundless life does ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... YOUNG PEOPLE, which comes with it. We have splendid boating and fishing. We catch cod-fish, mackerel, cunners, and lobsters. We catch the lobsters in nets. I have two pet pigeons, and two kittens exactly alike. Their names are Spunk and Pluck. Spunk will run up my knee when I hold out a ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... excellent but mountains of coal are in its neighbourhood. The difficulty which has to be contended against is the inundation of these rivers. Former speculators built up levees; but either from want of pluck or purse, they were inefficiently constructed; the Mississippi overflowed them and overwhelmed the speculators. Latterly, however, another company has taken the task in hand, and having sufficient capital, it embraces the coal mines ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... must be retained even when referred only to the victory of Christ, confessing that the tyranny of the devil and hell is destroyed i.e., that all who believe in Christ are liberated from the power of the devil and hell, according to the word: 'No one shall pluck My sheep out of My hands.' And in a certain way the Son of God manifested this victory to the devils, and, no doubt, the devils felt that their power was broken by this Victor, and that the head of the serpent was truly bruised by the Seed of the Woman, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Ruff said, "what chance that poor old lady in Weston had? No, I am not saying you murdered her. You never had the pluck. Your confederate did that, and you handled the booty. What were the initials inside that ring you ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... if you would have a perfect flower you must deny existence to many weeds, you must repress the rank growth, you must pluck off many a leaf and nip many a bud that the one may come to the fullness of its beauty. Through the grain of character goes the wise husbandman, and death is in his hand—the death of the less worthy, the harmful, and the enemy that life may abound yet more and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... Devonshire, worn out and broken down. "Education," he wrote in his last letter to Skelton, "like so much else in these days, has gone mad, and has turned into a large examination mill." He was so much exhausted that he could not go again to Norway with Lord Ducie,* though with characteristic pluck he half thought of paying another visit to Sir George Grey in New Zealand. But it was not to be. During the summer his strength failed, and it became known that the disorder was incurable. With philosophic calmness he awaited the inevitable close, feeling, as he had always felt, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... during his trips, declaring that he has "the pull over fellows who go into the woods for killing," seeing that he can thoroughly enjoy the escape of a game animal if he can only catch a sight of it, and perceive how its pluck or cunning enables it to baffle pursuing man. There are those who call Cyrus a sportsman of the best type. Perhaps they ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... had plenty of pluck, he was not altogether free from apprehensions as he sat on the hunter. Indeed, he more than once asked as he patted it, "Is he quiet?" He looked very well on horseback—almost a grown-up young man, and held himself ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the flower!" said the old woman. "But place yourself here, and when Death comes—I expect him every moment—do not let him pluck the flower up, but threaten him that you will do the same with the others. Then he will be afraid! He is responsible for them to OUR LORD, and no one dares to pluck them ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... my views," he answered: "If the Comte de Vegin as he grows up should continue to show pluck and a taste for things military, as by birth he is bound to do, we will relieve him of the abbey on the eve of his marriage, while he will have profited thereby up to that time. If, on the contrary, my son ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Dr. R.V. PIERCE, the Buffalo (N.Y.) Commercial says: "He came here an unknown man, almost friendless, with no capital except his own manhood, which, however, included plenty of brains and pluck, indomitable perseverance, and inborn uprightness, capital enough for any man in this progressive country, if only he has good health and habits as well. He had all these great natural advantages, and one thing more, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... reason in themselves, fell oddly, and were followed by a silence which was disturbing and made for sudden self-consciousness wholly to be condemned, and to be banished, if possible, directly. Jane, who did not fidget aimlessly with things, began diligently to pluck a long white feather out of her fan, and said in a voice that was deliberately commonplace, 'We ought to go back now, oughtn't we? Let me see who your next partner is, Peter, that I may send you back to dance with her.' She stretched out ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left posterity to pluck out "the heart of his mystery." I will say at once what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the individual; the interest ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was shot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five the trench was stormed and taken, owing to his personal daring and impetus and to the affection and confidence he inspired.... We hear it continually said of our officers and men that 'they're all the same,' and I daresay as far as pluck goes they are. But, if I may say so, we all felt that your son had something that ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... were seen; some time after they took a black bird, having a white spot on its crown and feet like a duck; they killed a small fish, and sailed over large quantities of weeds. From all which tokens the people began to pluck up fresh courage. Next morning, three small land birds settled on the rigging of the admiral, where they continued singing till the sun rose, when they flew away. This strengthened their hopes of land; as, though the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... harsh derision, From discord and defeat, From doubt and lame division, We pluck the fruit and eat; And the mouth finds it bitter, and ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rattles around dizzy heights, below massy cliffs, swinging under the forest arches, the Missouri champion reasons out that Hardin's hands are tied personally as regards a bloody public quarrel, by the coming senatorial fight. To pluck the honors of the Senate at last from a divided State, is a testimony to the lawyer's great abilities. Joe thinks, with a sigh of regret, that some mere animated money-bag may sit under the white dome, and misrepresent the sovereign State of California. "Well, if Hardin ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... me finer lessons in loyalty, in patience, in true courtesy, in unselfishness, in divine forgiveness, in pluck and in abiding good spirits than do all the books I have ever read and all the other ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... I lost my pluck, and didn't think to humble her any more, but just told her how things was, and how I'd stood the blessed day, and never got a bid. She never asked no questions, but I see her eyes twinkle when I spoke of Master Martin and Miss Phemie; and then she turned sharp to the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Collier; 'a few friends that has a crow to pluck with you; walk out, avourneen; or if you'd rather be roasted alive, why you may stay where ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he had brought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over the road to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he held a deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheer pluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawed nerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... Birotteau's shop, with not a penny of capital but their determination to get on, which, in my opinion, is the best capital a man can have. Money may be eaten through, but you don't eat through your determination. Why, what had I? The will to get on, and plenty of pluck. At this day du Tillet is a match for the greatest folks; little Popinot, the richest druggist of the Rue des Lombards, became a deputy, now he is in office.—Well, one of these free lances, as we say on the stock market, of the pen, or of the brush, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... was mate of a merchantman belonging to the port of Hull, but trading sometimes to Plymouth, and frequently to ports up the Straits of Gibraltar. Charley and I had many tastes in common. He was a bold dashing fellow, with plenty of pluck, and what those who disliked him called impudence. One thing no one could deny, that he was just the fellow to stand by a friend at a pinch, and that, blow high or blow low, he was always the same, merry-hearted, open-handed, and kind. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... with thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit. These things hast thou done, and I held my tongue, and thou thoughtest, wickedly, that I am even such a one as thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things which thou hast done. O consider this, ye that forget God: lest I pluck you away, and there be ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... said firmly enough now, as I looked at their faces, which, in spite of the masks they had assumed, looked ghastly; "and I daresay I haven't pluck enough to sit it out. But I don't care for your grins; I'm not ashamed to say that ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... a heavy blow between the intruder's eyes. Blow followed blow; they clenched; went down; rose up; fought on—at one end of the ring the canines, at the other the humans; while the rest looked on, shouting, 'Let 'er rip! Go in, Wade! Hit 'im agin! Smash his mug! Pluck the grizzly! Hurrah fur Smith! Drown his peepers! Never say die! Go in agin!' till the blood flowed, and dogs and men rolled ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... so glossy black, The priest his lips began to smack, Full fain to pluck the fruit; But, woe the while! the trunk was tall, And many a brier and thorn did crawl Around ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... anguish did not end. The pleasant sun scattered the darkness, but could not scatter the blind darkness of Hariswami's madness. His pitiful lamentations increased a hundredfold, when the nightly cries of the birds ended. His relatives tried to comfort him, but he could not pluck up courage while his loved one was lost. He went here and there, sobbing out: "Here she stood. And here she bathed. And here she adorned herself. And here ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... for my fellow-men," said Thoreau, "is not being increased these days. I have noticed the cold-blooded way in which men speak of this event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual pluck, 'the gamest man I ever saw,' the Governor of Virginia said, had been caught and was about to be hung. He was not thinking of his foes when the Governor of Virginia thought he ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... pluck she had! Criminal? No, a thousand times, no! She was claiming her own, her dearest own. The devil must have been in the people who set themselves up as judges to condemn her for fighting so bravely ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... liberal as any man, I am for an established church; as I ought to be, since the dean is my best customer. With regard to yourself I inclose you L10., and you will let me know when it is gone, and I will see what more I can do. You say you are very poorly, which I am sorry to hear; but you must pluck up your spirits, and take in plain work; and I really think you ought to apply to Mr. Robert Beaufort. He bears a high character; and notwithstanding your lawsuit, which I cannot approve of, I dare say he might allow you L40. or ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of pluck that Stevenson particularly admired. He was best when he was at sea, and although Mrs. Stevenson was a poor sailor and often suffered greatly from seasickness, she accompanied him on all his wanderings in the South Seas and on rougher waters, with the greatest spirit. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Maleotti got near to Simone, and after trying unavailingly to catch the attention of his eye, made so bold as to come hard by him and to pluck him by the sleeve of his doublet once or twice. This failing to stir Messer Simone, who was thorough in his cups, Maleotti spurred his resolve a pace further, and first whispered and then shrieked a call into Messer Simone's ear. The whisper Messer Simone passed unheeded, the shriek ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... tulips, arums, orchids—oh, but a perfect riot of wild flowers. In the spring the valleys of Sampaolo are pink with blossoming peach-trees and almond-trees, where they are not scarlet with pomegranates. Basil, rosemary, white heather, you can pluck where you will. And everywhere that they can find a footing, oleanders grow, the big double red ones, great trees of them, such wonder-worlds of colour, such fountains of perfume. The birds of Sampaolo never cease their singing—they sing as joyously ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... how to approach women. We are not blundering and crude. Men want a certain thing from you. It is delicate and easy to kill. Love is the most sensitive thing in the world. It's like an orchid. Men try to pluck orchids ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. The desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us were so great that at times I was minded to turn back. But I pulled my pluck ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plain speaking. Enough of evasion and sneaking! Let fact, logic stout, And sound pluck fight it out. Truth's "at home" to right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... the course of the year to see a ceremony which is denied to most Oxford men. When degrees are given, any tradesman who has been unable to get his due from an undergraduate about to be made a Bachelor of Arts is allowed, by custom, to pluck the Proctor's gown as he passes, and then to make his complaint. This law is more honoured in the breach than in the observance; but, on the occasion of this visit of Mr. Dodgson's to Convocation, the Proctor's gown was actually plucked—on account of an unfortunate man who ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... going on in the school-room, Mr Root was active in the field, endeavouring, with the aid of the men-servants, to pluck as much fuel from the burning pile as possible. The attempt was nearly vain. He singed his clothes, and burnt his hands, lost his hat in the excitement and turmoil, and sadly discomposed his powdered ringlets. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a soul. The gardeners came and went, the servants returned laden with panniers of grass or vegetables; others, standing at the foot of the fig trees, caught in baskets the fruits thrown to them by monkeys trained to pluck them and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... individuals to pluck motes out of their neighbors' eyes and leave beams in their own, in the nation becomes what Herbert Spencer calls the bias of patriotism. According to him patriotism is but an extended self-interest. We love our country because our own interests and our country's interests are one. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... of Blunderhead?" cried he. "Ay, I reckon he would like well to be John the Second. Metrusteth the day that setteth the fair crown of England on that worthless head of his, shall see me safe in Heaven, or it should go hard with me but I would pluck ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... uttered in the face of his own Sigismonda, which is exactly a maudlin w——, tearing off the trinkets that her keeper had given her, to fling at his head. She has her father's picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with the heart, as if she had just bought a sheep's pluck in St. James's Market. As I was going, Hogarth put on a very grave face, and said, "Mr. Walpole, I want to speak to you." I sat down, and said I was ready to receive his commands. For shortness, I will mark this wonderful ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sufficiently to interfere with his studies or amusements. He neither feared the contest nor desired it. He had no wish to quarrel with Saurin, a fellow he did not care for, it is true, but whom he did not think sufficiently about to dislike. He thought rather better of him for having the pluck to attack him, and was a little ashamed of his own bitter words which had goaded the other into doing it. But really the fellow had addressed him in such an overbearing and insolent manner that he could not help replying as he did. After all, if he had to fight someone, he would ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... direction is entitled to be given a chance. In war-time, when labour and materials were so scarce that they could not turn out all the munitions that were necessary, such a restriction was clearly inevitable. Now, when labour and materials are becoming more plentiful, and the scarce commodity is the pluck and enterprise that will take the risks involved by getting to work on a peace basis, it may be argued that any one who will take those risks, whatever be the stuff or services that he proposes to produce, should be encouraged rather than checked. It is again a question of the balance ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... not cry quits. Beads of perspiration glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw she was holding out just to, somehow, have vengeance on the jailer for her being held in unwilling concubinage by him, hoping he would catch it hard for having let the keys hang carelessly in open view, and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of planting guns in the ground. He said they would grow, and the Indians could one day pluck ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... with my son we have not been very communicative lately," he said, with that deliberation which he knew how to assume when he desired to be heard without interruption. "I am therefore almost entirely ignorant of your African affairs, but I imagine Jack owes more to your pluck and promptness than has yet transpired. I gathered as much from one or two conversations I had with Miss Gordon when she was in England. I am one of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... English history could see something poetic and national about the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Archbishop of Canterbury. It is when he does the rational British statesman that they very justifiably get annoyed. Most Anglicans with an eye for pluck and simplicity could admire Dr. Clifford as a Baptist minister. It is when he says that he is simply a citizen that nobody can ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... commando. Finding no shelter in the river bank, exhausted, wounded almost to a man, they ceased firing, whereupon our men left them in peace until the end of the fight, when they were brought over and complimented upon their pluck. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... you give that by way of an apologetical oration for your absence from the advantages of my tuition until this hour? However, non constat Patrici; I'll pluck the crow wid you on my return. If you don't find yourself a well-flogged youth for your 'mitchin,' never say that this right hand can administer condign punishment to that part of your physical theory which constitutes the antithesis to your vacuum ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... that slippery roof kicking his shoes off is a sort of parable to me. If your hand or your foot offend you and you have to cut it off, that's a physical disablement, and bad enough. But when your gloves and your shoes are too much for you, and you have to pluck them off and cast them from you, you find each one is a great big piece of the civilized world, and you hardly know how much you did like it, till you've lost it. And still, it's no use longing, when you know your limitations, and I saw I'd got to keep my world trimmed down to where ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... nowadays to claim success is to obtain it, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of little ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only for the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in swallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... procession of brilliant toilettes was already making its way there. Almost all the ladies of the first class came rustling in. Frederick from his seat observed that many of them had to stop for an instant at the doorway to pluck up their courage. Then, with a charmingly humorous smile, they would conquer their dread of seasickness, particularly threatening in the dining-room, and step ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... would reach the wards. Time would make its demands on the long lists of V.A.D.'s who were unemployed and eager for work. It would not be long before they would all be required. Someone else would step into her humble post when she was promoted. It was merely a case of patience and pluck; the voluntary hospitals were dependent on voluntary ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... "If you give me your hand, dear, I could walk. I think I could even manage without it; but, of course, I should prefer to have your hand at any time." She gave a natural little laugh, which almost deceived me, and again I marvelled at her pluck. I had known Myra since she was four, and I might have expected that she would meet her ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... love, my pride, my hope, my future! Oh, Amelia, why cannot I go this moment into battle, and pluck high honors which will make me ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... ever transmitted at all. If they can be inherited at all, they can be accumulated. If they can be accumulated at all, they can be so, for anything that appears to the contrary, to the extent of the specific and generic differences with which we are surrounded. The only thing to do is to pluck them out root and branch: they are as a cancer which, if the smallest fibre be left unexcised, will grow again, and kill any system on to which it is allowed to fasten. Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if he ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... flight, for the small diminutive males seek their company at this time, descend and enter the ground to lay their eggs for new colonies, or, as Westwood states, they are often seized by the workers and retained in the old colonies. Having no more inclination to fly, they pluck off their wings and may ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... * * Boast we of knowledge, you are more than we, You were the first ventured to pluck the tree; And that more rhetoric in your tongues do lie, Let him dispute against that dares deny Your least commands; and not persuaded be, With Samson's strength and David's piety, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal that she did not know the fairies to be evil beings. She knew it was a perilous thing to say, but it was not in her nature to speak anything but the truth when she spoke at ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... men having the best virile instinct will fight for a lover's cause. Both Kenton and Oncle Jazon were enthusiastic; they wanted nothing better than an opportunity to aid in rescuing any girl who had shown so much patriotism and pluck. But Oncle Jazon was fond of Alice, and Beverley's story affected him peculiarly ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... said. "Helps us to pluck and self-control." But nobody agreed with me, and it was Miss Van Buren's opinion that none save ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... tendency to tremble while speaking which surprised me so much when I first witnessed it, for, under the influence of strong feeling, and a sort of constitutional timidity, linked in him with indomitable pluck, his limbs—indeed often his whole massive frame—so shook that I have felt the platform quiver. The Rev. George Goodson told me in an undertone of an unkind remark made by a distinguished member of the Conference to his neighbour ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... such a dolt! I marvel who would, when asked to spend another man's money, and pluck his fruit, and lie of his best bed! But I tell thee one thing, Tom—I'll pay thee never a stiver of rent for mine house that I hold of thee—the rather since I let it to this new doctor for two pound more, by the year, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... and pluck out my eye, so that the other may be better. I had rather that it were not better. A nice operation indeed, to make me at once one-eyed ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... again—plays. Lifts the cloth, shows you the mango tree in leaf. Covers it again—plays again. Takes away the cloth, and shows you the mango-tree in fruit, real fruit; but they never let you have the fruit for love or money. Rather than let any one have it, they pluck it and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... desiring to slay him. From him indeed he erred, and struck the lofty bank, and drove the ashen spear up to the middle in the bank. Then the son of Peleus, drawing his sharp sword from his thigh, eagerly leaped upon him; but he was not able to pluck out, with his strong hand, the ashen spear of Achilles, from the bank. Thrice, indeed, he shook it, desiring to pluck it out, and thrice he failed in strength. And the fourth time he had determined in his mind, bending, to snap ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... to pluck a twig from the sacred oak-tree and the act of picking the branch is supposed to be the challenge. But, in practice, the King of the Grove watches the sacred oak so carefully, that nobody remembers any challenger ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... been wiser," Desmond reproved her gently. "But I admire the pluck of the whole thing far too much to scold you ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... no section or party—at least he disclaimed any connection with either Whigs or Tories, and as for the Radicals, they were then out in the cold. He stood, as he himself said, on his own responsibility, and as a perfectly independent candidate. It is not too much to affirm that it was his pluck and independence that carried him through. He had little difficulty in forming a committee, including, for the most part, gentlemen of considerable local influence, and that sine qua non having been obtained, the rest was comparatively smooth sailing. Mr. Hastie, his opponent, was a quiet ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Christ Jesus lived a life upon earth that He expects us literally to imitate. We often say that we long to be like Christ. We study the traits of His character, mark His footsteps, and pray for grace to be like Him, and yet, somehow, we succeed but very little. And why? Because we are wanting to pluck the fruit while the root is absent. If we want really to understand what the imitation of Christ means, we must go to that which constituted the very root of His life before God. It was a life of absolute dependence, absolute trust, ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... were such rot. The things I wanted to write about, the things I had seen and was seeing, the—the fellows like Mike and their pluck and all that—well, it was all too big for me to tackle. My jingles sounded, when I read them over, like tunes on a street piano. I couldn't do it. A genius might have been equal to the job, but ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... how she took off her shoes and stockings and dipped her feet in the cool water, and listened to the bees' drowsy hum from the old tree trunk close by, and watched the busy ant stagger home, under the weight of his well earned morsel—and how she made a bridge of stones over a little streamlet to pluck some crimson lobelias, growing on the other side, and some delicate, bell-shaped flowers, fit only for a fairy's bridal wreath,—and how she wandered till sunset came on, and the Lake's pure breast was all a-glow, and then, how she lay under that old tree, listening to the plashing waves, and ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver's call Judge Mott swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team, and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will papa not trust me? [Vernon comes down, R.] Oh, Harry! I wish he would find out what a lot of pluck and common sense there is in this ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... however, but even while he was doing so, I saw by the appearance of the men that they were perishing from thirst; yet such was their pluck and discipline that not one of them uttered a groan, or spoke in ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... reed in my hand, I wrote in the sand, 'My Country, I love thee;' a mad wave came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, I love thee! And I'd like to see any ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... laugh away, and say it be so, grant I am a hen. There clusters to my cluck A crowd of little chickens,—which you want! And I've the hen's high spirit and her pluck, And for my little ones forget myself. You think me dull, I know it. Possibly You pass a harsher judgment yet, decree Me over covetous of worldly pelf. Good, on that head we will not disagree. [Seizes FALK's arm and continues in a low tone but with gathering vehemence. You're right, I'm ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... big, rawboned and serious, is a product of the backwoods and a crack rifle shot. Quick thinking and pluck bring him a scholarship to Clarkville School where he is branded "grind" and "dub" by classmates. How his batting brings them first place in the League and how he secures his appointment to West Point make CRACKER STANTON ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... mysterious cottage was mine to ransack if I could pluck its secrets from it. I lifted the book which had been left upon the table. It was Rousseau's 'Social Contract'—excellent literature, but hardly what one would expect a trader to carry with him whilst awaiting an appointment with smugglers. On the fly-leaf was written 'Lucien Lesage,' and beneath ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I'm not. Not about some things, at any rate. It doesn't take pluck to fight for one's moment, but it takes pluck to go without—a lot. More than I have. I can't help it," she ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;— Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,—but if I could understand What you are, root and all—and all in all, I should know what God and ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... him and occasionally a tongue of flame seemed to reach for him. But Gummy Carringford possessed a good deal of pluck, and he was strong and wary for so young a boy. Shielding his face as best he could from the heat and smoke, he began to cast double handfuls of salt ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long |
