"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... airport," Coburn explained, "I bent a pin around the band of a ring I wear. I could let it lie flat when I shook hands. Or I could make it stand out like a spur. I set it with my thumb. I saw Pangalos' eyes, so I had it stand out, and I made a tear in his plastic skin when I shook hands with him. He didn't feel it, of course." He paused. "Did anybody go to the address ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect—as in the scene where he kills Polonius; and, again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... little farther on a large crowd indicates further thrills. Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. Once while we were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked the road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the mine, taken by Tommy and his chum crossed a network of tracks, led up to the weigh-house and so on into the breaker. As they came to a line of empty cars standing on a spur they heard a movement in one of the empties ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell, To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well. Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be "Rider" to your troop, And branded with a blasted worsted spur, When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly Who blacks your boots and ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... of our English strength, Never so needful on the earth of France, Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot, Who now is girdled with a waist of iron, And hemm'd about with grim destruction. To Bordeaux, warlike Duke! to Bordeaux, York! Else, farewell, Talbot, France, ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... the Jordan, in the tribe of Reuben. Although its precise site has not been discovered, we may infer that it was perched on one of the many rocky heights among the mountains of Abarim,—perhaps a spur of the great mount Nebo, from whose summit Moses was permitted, before death, to get a view of the Land of Promise. The northern portion of the waters of the Dead Sea would be seen from it, and the pastoral mountains of Judah in the distance. From its name, as well as from its being a border town, ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... Arab horse is free and bold, His blood is noble from of old, Through dams, and sires, many a one, Up to the steed of Solomon. He needs no spur to rouse his ire, His limbs of beauty never tire, Then, give the Arab horse the rein, And their dark squares will close in vain. Though loud the death-shot peal, and louder, He will only neigh the prouder; Though nigh ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... skirmishers, and our batteries on the heights overhead were ordered to keep down the fire of the enemy's artillery. Nagle's effort was gallantly made, but it failed, and his men were forced to seek cover behind the spur of the hill from which they had advanced. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 444.] We were constantly hoping to hear something from Rodman's advance by the ford, and would gladly have waited for some more certain knowledge ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... for the thought of Caesar waiting was like a spur even to physical effort, and even so his mind outraced his feet, till it came full tilt against a girl coming directly from its goal and momentarily obliterating ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... that they had reached the frontier of the land of Roum and were now in the enemy's country. So he rode on alone along the valley, till a fourth part of the night was passed, when he grew weary and sleep overcame him, so that he could no longer spur his horse. Now he was used to sleep on horseback; so when drowsiness got the better of him, he fell asleep and the horse paced on with him half the night and entered a forest; but Sherkan awoke not, till the steed smote the earth with his hoof. Then he started from sleep and found himself ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... gloomily that if she had a mind to Hugues she must have Hugues, come what might. Having reached this conclusion, Adhelmar wheeled upon his men, and cursed them for tavern-idlers and laggards and flea-hearted snails, and bade them spur. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... never a wound, although in his broken temples his brain was parting asunder, and the pain was more than he could bear. Once more he winded his feeble horn, and Charles heard it as he came with his army to the relief of the rear guard. "Spare not spur nor steed for Roland's sake. I hear the sighing of his horn and know that he is in a last distress. Sound all our clarions loud ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... groan beneath the carrier's load? How feeble are the two-legged kind! What force is in our nerves combined! Shall, then, our nobler jaws submit To foam and champ the galling bit? Shall haughty men my back bestride? Shall the sharp spur provoke my side? Forbid it, heavens! reject the rein, Your shame, your infamy disdain. Let him the Lion first control, And still the Tiger's famished growl! Let us, like them, our freedom claim; And make ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... mile away there was a long grove of birch trees, the projecting spur of a second growth of forest that covered the distant rising ground. Towards this Trenholme strode, for it was the only covert near in which a human being could travel unseen. It was more by the impulse of energy, however, than by reasonable hope that he ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke, fearing that the indignity might spur ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Riding School, Nos 3,334 to 42 Market st., Philadelphia. This spur possesses advantages over every other spur. Is easily put on, and solid when on. Will last a life-time. Suitable for Ladies or Gentlemen. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... shape and pleasing colours of the shell, it is remarkable because it seems to be actually incorporated with its host. The foot of the mollusc is extended into a peduncle, consisting of fibres and tendons, by which the animal is a fixture to a spur of coral. At the point of union (to facilitate which there is a hiatus in the margins of the peduncle) the sarcode or "flesh" of the coral is denuded, its place being occupied by ligaments, which by minute ramifications adhere so intimately to the coral stock or stem ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... word he mastered was "man," and the second "Mooney"—which Cavor on the spur of the moment seems to have used instead of "Selenite" for the moon race. As soon as Phi-oo was assured of the meaning of a word he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered it infallibly. They mastered over one hundred English nouns ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... "were living in Red Gap before the spur track was ever run out to the canning factory—and I guess you know ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... historians. It will also appear that the professed historians themselves have been, in a great measure, the creatures of English history. The fifteenth century was the period when the revival of letters took place, and a great spur was given to mental activity; but the world, like a child, was again learning rudiments, and finding out what it was, and what it possessed at that present time: it received the new classical culture presented to it at the fall of the lower empire, and was content ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... human affinity with a nature so large and so susceptive. Could but a tithe of the fresh insights he has given us be allowed as an offset against his short-comings, never, from any scholar of sound sensibilities, would a whisper be heard against his name. Under the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... controls, And shapes mad fancies into facts? What trivial things may quicken souls To irrevocable, swift acts? Now who has known, who understood, Wherefore some idle thing May stab with deadlier sting Than well-considered insult could?— May spur the languor of a mood And rouse a tiger ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... at both ends, the forward end being shaped something like a spur or ram. At the after end were two flickering, interlacing circles of a glittering greenish-yellow colour, apparently formed by two intersecting propellers driven at an enormous velocity. Behind these was a vertical fan of triangular shape. The craft appeared ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... and sword, and gilt spur, beautifully enamelled, which once decked the heel of a noble knight, have been found in our fields, and remind us of those battles which were ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... but it is as easie to send Truth backward, as it is to spur Falsities egregiously forward, and might have caus'd any Asse, as knowing as Balaam's, to have rebuk'd such a Poet as will needs prophecy against the sense of Heaven and Men. But I have enough of this Amiell, as well as of his Muse, unless that by his ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... assigned to our town, for the benefit of the men in the shops, one of the picture-shows that Mark Hanna, like a heathen in his blindness, had sent to Kansas, thinking our State, after the war, needed a spur to its patriotism in the election. The crowd in front of the post-office was a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet long, looking at the pictures from the kinetoscope—pictures of men going to work in mills and factories; pictures of the troops unloading ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the Waste of Lymdale when the afternoon is begun, And afar they see the flame-blink on the grey sky under the sun: And they spur and speak no word, and no man to his fellow will turn; But they see the hills draw upward and the earth beginning to burn: And they ride, and the eve is coming, and the sun hangs low o'er the earth, And the red flame roars up to it from the midst of the desert's dearth. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Apennines rise like a screen behind the amphitheatre of soft hills that enclose it—hills soft with olive woods, and dipping down into gardens of lemon and orange, and vineyards dotted with palms. An isolated spur juts out from the centre of the semicircle, and from summit to base of it tumbles the oddest of Italian towns, a strange mass of arches and churches and steep lanes, rushing down like a stone cataract to the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... had mounted drivers and cannoneers before Kincaid could spur near enough to call, "Column, forward!" and turn again toward the General and the uproar beyond. The column had barely stretched out when, looking back on it as he quickened pace, Hilary's cry was, "Battery, trot, march!" So the six guns had come by the general: first ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... that they gushed to the ground, and ripped a third one so badly that although they rushed him to cover and shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with tow and rode him against the bull again, he couldn't make the trip; he tried to gallop, under the spur, but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a heap. For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious and inspiring sight that ever was seen. The bull absolutely cleared it, and stood there alone! monarch of the place. The ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... civil rights leaders was the conviction that the armed forces had set up artificial and self-imposed barriers to a needed social reform. In the end this conviction seemed to spur them on. The American Veterans Committee, for example, demanded that when a community "mistreats American troops, such as in Montgomery, Alabama, or flaunts its Ku Klux Klan membership, as does Selma, Alabama, the entire area should be placed 'off limits' ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... thousand horse—and none to ride! With flowing tail, and flying mane, Wide nostrils—never stretched by pain, Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein, And feet that iron never shod, And flanks unscarred by spur or rod, A thousand horse, the wild, the free, Like waves ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... to England had been taken on the spur of the moment, without reflection; but he held to it, because no other course seemed to offer any better prospects. He knew, perfectly well, that Locke's partner would not want to keep him on, and he shrank from the ordeal of searching for employment again. He had been through ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Canadians in his hire, his enemies had found means to detach them, also, from his interests."—Yet, "under the pressure of all his misfortunes," says a missionary, "I have never remarked the least change in him; no ill news seemed to disturb his usual equanimity: they seemed rather to spur him on to fresh efforts to retrieve his fortunes, and to make greater discoveries ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... town. It used to be a mere commonplace to say that no one should venture into the fishermen's quarter after dark. There is a big change. You snarl at parsons a good deal, I know, but you can't snarl at what we have seen. You are quite right, and I mean to help spur your new hobby as hard as ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Tom; "that is," added he, with as much of a swagger as he could assume on the spur of the moment, "I had been half thinking of just seeing what it was like. Some of our fellows, you ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... she said, persistently unmindful of his admonition. "You need the spur. It doesn't make so much difference what you do—you're ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... dignities. His children were thereby raised to the rank of nobles of the empire, with all the honours appertaining to families with four generations of ancestors. He was also made Knight of the Golden Spur, with the right of entrance to court. This was great return for two portraits of a king, but it shows what a king could do ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... quiet, That calmly go ahead, In spite of wrath and riot, In spite of quick and dead— Warm energy to spur him, Keen enterprise to guide. And conscience to upstir him, And duty by his side, And hope forever singing Assurance of success, And rapid action springing At once to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Forthwith a guard at every gun was placed along the wall; The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgcumbe's lofty hall; Many a light fishing bark put out to pry along the coast; And with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post. With his white hair unbonneted the stout old sheriff comes; Behind him march the halberdiers, before him sound the drums; His yeomen, round the market-cross, make clear an ample space, For there behoves him to set up the standard of her Grace. And haughtily the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... of light had appeared on the loftiest spur, standing out at first like a red star in the darkness, then growing intensely brighter, and burning with a steady, vivid light. The effect was weird and powerful. The mountain beneath it was invisible, and it seemed to ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... himself behind the drawing-room door and watch. Perhaps "Fire" would be bobbery when the Colonel mounted him, would get "what-for" from whip and spur, and be put over the compound wall instead of being allowed to canter down the drive and out ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... go out—and, when I do, always regret it. This might have been a pleasant one;—at least, the hostess is a very superior woman. Lady Lansdowne's [2] to-morrow—Lady Heathcote's [3] Wednesday. Um!—I must spur myself into going to some of them, or it will look like rudeness, and it is better to do as other people ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... man was well blown and stopped, the horse was sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the saddle again, and off for a delusive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... woman who was destined to spur these ambitious desires and to crown them by sending me into the heart of royalty. Too timid to ask any one to dance,—fearing, moreover, to confuse the figures,—I naturally became very awkward, and did not know what to do with my arms and legs. Just as I ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... mustaches, and fine sparkling black eyes, and had apparently just dismounted, for the mud was fresh on his boots and trowsers. The latter were blue, with a broad gold lace down the seam, and fastened by a strap under his boot, from which projected a long fixed spur, which to me was remarkable as an unusual dress for a Dire, the British army being, at the time I write of, still in the age of breeches and gaiters, or tall boots, long cues and pipeclay—that is, those troops which I had seen at home, although I ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Upon a spur Of Sleemish, eastward on its northern slope, Stood Patrick and his brethren, travel-worn, When distant o'er the brown and billowy moor Rose the white smoke, that changed ere long to flame, From site unknown; for by the seaward crest That keep lay hidden. Hands ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... horse with the spur, and cantered gently on, for trotting shook him more than he could bear. Even when he cantered he had to press his hand against his bosom, and often with the motion a bitterer pang than usual came and forced the water from his eyes; and then he smiled. His great love and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... race for life, and they could hear the flames roaring hungrily behind them as they tore along, the horses needing neither whip nor spur to send them at their best pace over the ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Le Rozier, towering high above Peyreleau, its twin village, rises a sharp pyramidal spur of the Causse Noir, its shelving sides running vertically down. That mountain wall, impracticable as it ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... one place, and that was directly looking up the valley. If one went too far to the right or left the head disappeared from view behind jutting crags, and it was impossible to see it from overhead, because the head was almost under a great spur of a mighty mountain. ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... forward like a man who listened into the wind, his broad hat-brim blown back, the smoke of his firing around him. The horse lay still, its rider struggling with one leg pinned under it, the other across the saddle, the spur of that foot tearing the dead creature's flesh in desperate effort to stir in it the life that no ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... there were stones laid on the planks at each end, I could see nothing save a black expanse all round me. Hesitating a moment, I summoned my courage and dug my heels into old Sol's sides. He went forward till his feet touched the first planks. There he stopped and snorted. I gave him the spur. He leaped forward and seemed to strike his feet on planks. But, as was afterwards ascertained, some of them were washed out, and all of them were afloat. At his next spring his legs went down among them. Then ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Wingfield, Sr. had his answer; thus the processes of fate that Dr. Bennington had said were in the younger man had worked out their end. Under the spur of a sudden, powerful resolution, the father withdrew. In the living-room he met Jasper Ewold. The two men paused, facing each other. They were alone with the frank, daring features from Velasquez's brush and with the "I give! I give!" of the Sargent, both reflecting the afterglow of sunset; ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... a platform on the spur of a mountain ridge where the road made a bold curve, commanding one of the finest views, perhaps—nay, we will not have perhaps, but certainly, in the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Colin turned and saw with amazement a tall jet of vapor that had spouted from a whale close by. He looked at Hank expectantly, hoping to hear him spur the crew to a new venture, but the old ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... silent worship of your nature. When I came the last morning to the cottage, it was to tell, and to ask, all. Since then for a moment your image has never been absent from my consciousness; your picture consecrates my hearth and your approval has been the spur of my career. Do not reject my love; it is deep as your nature, and fervent as my own. Banish those prejudices that have embittered your existence, and if persisted in may wither mine. Deign to retain this hand! If I be a noble I have none of the accidents of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse, was trying to extricate himself,—one of his legs being held fast under the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth. He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... beginning. Enthusiasm carried him on to the consummation of a greater work than any he had yet accomplished. Hitherto, every achievement was merely a resting-place up the mountainside, the prospect acting as a spur to him to go yet higher, well knowing what Emerson finely stated, and was putting into practice at this very time, that new gifts will be supplied in proportion as we make use of those we have. Dem Muthigen hilft Gott! said Schiller. Beethoven seemed to have some prevision ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... but breathing to him. Now, Sir Harry Lee, it is thy turn," she laughed as she saw the champion ride forward; "and next 'tis thine, Leicester. Ah, Leicester would have at him now!" she added sharply, as she saw the favourite spur forward before the gallant Lee. "He is full of choler—it becomes him, but it shall not be; bravery is not all. And if he failed "she smiled acidly—"he would get him home to Kenilworth and show himself no more—if he failed, and the White Knight failed not! What think you, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the propagandists on both sides were secular. The French wished to keep the Five Nations neutral in the event of another war; the English wished to spur them to active hostility; but while the former pursued their purpose with energy and skill, the efforts of the latter ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... profaned. Insulted, abused, and beaten, he was no longer worthy, in his own opinion, of the name he bore, or the lineage which he belonged to. Nothing was left to him—nothing but revenge; and as the reflection added a galling spur to every step, he determined it should be as sudden ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... recitation, in reading aloud English and French, and later, German, devoting herself to training us in the soundest, most thorough fashion. No words of mine can tell how much I owe her, not only of knowledge, but of that love of knowledge which has remained with me ever since as a constant spur to study. ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... dream was realized: he bought himself an estate. It was in the province of Moscow, near the hamlet of Melihovo. As an estate it had nothing to recommend it but an old, badly laid out homestead, wastes of land, and a forest that had been felled. It had been bought on the spur of the moment, simply because it had happened to turn up. Chekhov had never been to the place before he bought it, and only visited it when all the formalities had been completed. One could hardly turn round near the house for the mass of hurdles and fences. Moreover ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... no touch from rein or spur. Those right and left of me bore round, and naturally mine went with them. Left incline, and we tore on still in as wild and reckless a race through the darkness as was ever ridden by ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with that vast being; he felt its strength swelling within him; the little finger shares in the strength of the whole body. A blind certainty of irresistibility went out from this mighty gathering, a spur to ride the storm with. His limbs swelled; he became a vast, monstrous being that only needed to go trampling onward in order to conquer everything. His brain was whirling with energy, with illimitable, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all my life, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was in very deed my most conscious and perpetual spur henceforth ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... at him was to stand in the presence of a composite picture of Agamemnon, Charles XII. and John L. Sullivan; but to hear him shout—ah! that voice was the megaphone of Boanerges! It held tones that put a revolving spur on every syllable and gave a dentist-drill feeling as they ploughed their way through space. It was alleged that when he struck his plantation and shouted at the depot as he leaped from the train that he had arrived, all the ranch hands fell down and crossed themselves, thinking ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... proceeded to saddle his horse with a Tcherkess saddle, put a silken bridle into his mouth, and leading him out, mounted, and rode into the open fields. But as soon as he applied the spur, the horse grew restive, reared higher than the waving forests, plunged lower than the flying clouds; mountains and rivers he left behind; small streams he covered with his tail and broad rivers he crossed at a bound, until at length Prince Astrach so ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... day my "poetic career" began. At thirteen I wrote a long poem a la "Lady of the Lake"—1300 lines in six days. At thirteen I wrote a drama of 2000 lines, a full-fledged passionate thing that I began on the spur of the moment, without forethought, just to spite my doctor, who said I was very ill and must not touch a book. My health broke down permanently about this time, and, my regular studies being stopped, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... is not that the pity, You that would carry well a spur or a boot; I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be lasting; I would send you out like a ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... his horse gently with the spur, and dashing down the long avenue of cork-trees, strove to forget the torment of spiritual problems in the fury of physical movement, to leave theology behind with the monasteries and chapels of Porto. He rode with grace and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... seemed to some friends of Mr. Dillon that if he did not speak his attitude might be misunderstood, and that he would be supposed to entertain, as part of a settled policy, what he had really uttered on the spur of the moment and under the influence of intolerable wrong and provocation. But when in the last days of June Mr. Chamberlain made his attack, and Mr. Dillon had listened to it and asked for dates, Mr. Dillon thought that the matter would not be worth further attending ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... not develop at once, for the reason that the Rezu army was crawling up the steep flanks of the spur on either side of the level piece of ground, with a view of encircling us altogether, so as to make a clean sweep of our force. As a matter of fact, considered from our point of view, this was a most fortunate move, since thereby they stopped any attempt at a retreat on the part of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... low esteem by the Kentuckians of his command—hungry, mutinous, and disgusted men, who were counting the days before their enlistments should expire. The commonplace Winchester was no leader to hold them in hand and spur ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... clothes with incredible rapidity and piled them—or flung them—under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated technique of the small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any quiet stretch of river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly up to his waist, and then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs and arms threw themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two he got on his feet and made his way back across ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... had fallen more silent than usual. She no longer wore her sombrero and boy's clothes; hat, habit, collar, scarf—ay, the tiny polished spur on her polished boot—were eloquent of Fifth Avenue; and she rode ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... little trouble to get Punin on to his feet again, to convince him that, even if I did suspect something, still it would not do to act like that, on the spur of the moment, especially both together—that would only spoil all our efforts—that I was ready to do my best, but would not answer for anything. Punin did not oppose me, nor did he indeed hear me; ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to chuck me under the chin just, the dear, bright boy? 'Mary,' he says once, 'when I comes of age I means to marry you right off the reel.' And I took him in my arms and kissed him on what Tim would call the spur o' the moment. Then Jack ups with a glass o' ale—it were in the kitching, miss—and he jumps on to a chair and draws his navy dirk. 'Here's the way,' he cries, 'that they tosses cans in the service. And I'll give you a toast,' he says. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... river is approximately 400 feet above the bottom of the valley, and is very similar in character, as are both slopes of the valley itself, which are broken into numerous rounded spurs and re-entrants. The most prominent of the former are the Chivre spur on the right bank and Sermoise spur on the left. Near the latter place the general plateau, on the south is divided by a subsidiary valley of much the same character, down which the small River Vesle flows to the main stream near Sermoise. The slopes of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... feasting, among whom, Although a solitary stranger, stood Thy father without fear, and challenged forth Their best to cope with him in manly games. Them Tydeus vanquish'd easily, such aid 465 Pallas vouchsafed him. Then the spur-arm'd race Of Cadmus was incensed, and fifty youths In ambush close expected his return. Them, Lycophontes obstinate in fight, Son of Autophonus, and Maeon, son 470 Of Haemon, Chief of godlike stature, led. Those also Tydeus slew; Maeon except, (Whom, warned from heaven, he spared, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... accusation of youthfulness was the spur that drove Patricia to victory. Raising her head with a toss of determination, she ran her hands over the keys first lightly and then with growing certainty of herself, while, unseen by her, Tancredi nodded and smiled to ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... volcanic rocks which are probably pre-Cambrian. Between the eastern and central pre-Cambrian masses carboniferous rocks are found. The carboniferous limestone occupies a broad area S. of Ligwy Bay and Pentraeth, and sends a narrow spur in a south-westerly direction by Llangefni to Malldraeth sands. The limestone is underlain on the N.W. by a red basement conglomerate and yellow sandstone (sometimes considered to be of Old Red Sandstone age). Limestone occurs again on the N. coast about Llanfihangel and Llangoed; and in the S.W. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... to waste idle hours and empty plants while awaiting the end of the recession. We must show the world what a free economy can do—to reduce unemployment, to put unused capacity to work, to spur new productivity, and to foster higher economic growth within a range of sound fiscal policies and relative ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... cognizance of them, had, in fact, enumerated them when proclaiming the impossibility of establishing a durable peace or a solid League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a prey to anarchy. But even with the prizes and penalties before their eyes to entice and spur them, they proved unequal to the task of devising an intelligent policy. Fitful and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus, by degrees, they hardened the great ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... married a year or more when, one afternoon, he was compelled to ride down to Gullettsville under whip and spur for a doctor. There was a good deal of confused activity in the town. Old men and young boys were stirring around with blue cockades in their hats, and the women wore blue rosettes on their bosoms. Three negroes in uniform—a contribution from the nearest railroad town—were parading ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... think that you will do well to leave this young cock alone, since I like not the look of that red spur of his," and he glanced at the sword Wave-Flame. "Though he be weary, he may have a kick or ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... the roar of his motor. The speed-boat shot forward like a horse at the touch of a spur. In a whirl of white water Mascola sped ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... abstruse, the doctrinal. And when the younger mind of the student came to a place that seemed too hard, or met a teacher who was deadening in his dullness, it needed but a little heart-to-heart talk with the strong soul in the robe to brace him up, to spur him on. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... taught me what to do, and I told him to drive me to the Rookery. He rattled away and came within one of being upset by other vehicles, and I yelled at him to be more particular, but on he went, paying no attention to me. After a while he drew up in front of a building as big as a lopped-off spur of a mountain range; and when I got out I found that the vitals of the hurricane had shifted with me, for the roar and the confusion was worse, was gathering new forces. But no one laughed at me, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... the engine, driven by an expert member of the fire company, the pair of horses galloping wildly under the whip, and the spur of such general excitement. Loud cheers greeted the advent of the volunteer department. The men looked very brave and heroic with their red firehats, and rubber coats. They would undoubtedly do good work once they got on the ground; ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... had a hurt in my bridle hand, and evening was approaching, heralded by an icy rain and a cold, searching wind. I felt a sinking of spirits which I could not dispel by rapid riding; for my horse, fatigued by a long day's journey, refused to answer spur and whip with his usual animation. In an hour after, I was convinced that I had mistaken my road, and night surprised me in the forest. I had been in more unpleasant situations; so I adopted my usual expedient of letting the reins fall upon ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... ship, and laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle, between these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post; and this fence was so strong, that neither man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... gray, now play your part! If ye be the steed that wins my dearie, With corn and hay ye'll be fed for aye, And never spur ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... steed for thy time of need, The good grey Carl, but know No spur of steel must grace thy heel, Nor ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... roses came around, I betook myself to a spur of the Hoosac Mountains to see my birds. The evening of my arrival, as the twilight gathered, rose the call of my ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... wages or not. Men are said to be partial judges of themselves. Young men may be; I doubt if old men are. Life seems terribly foreshortened as they look back, and the mountain they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges when, with failing breath, they reach the top. But if I may speak of the objects I have had more or less definitely in view since I began the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: To promote the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... but I saw no other chance to get what I wanted. My young gentleman was far too absorbed in his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask a stranger who had just missed death by an ace and had lost a 1,000-guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur of the moment. But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate oddnesses or to pick and choose ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... erect on his seat, was striving with all his might to hold in the maddened animals. His efforts were all to no purpose. On they went, like the wind, and the carriage, tossed from side to side at their wild springs seemed sometimes to leap into the air. The road before them wound on down a spur of the mountains, with deep ravines on one side—a place full of danger for such a race ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... especially striving at, but still no man can I will not say do two things, especially two most important things, at one time but he cannot even do entire justice to them both in his thoughts. It is our duty rather to spur on and inflame that excellent eagerness of yours, and not to transfer any portion of it to another object of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... words formed just the spur I needed, or because she had a mysterious power over me which made her will mine, I threw off the depression into which I had reacted from my overwhelming excitement and anxiety, and soon had my slowly kindling fire burning furiously, dimly conscious in the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... liberty, however noble it may be by nature, by itself without the good rider does not conduct itself well, even thus this appetite, however noble it may be, must obey Reason, which guides it with the bridle and spur, as the good knight uses the bridle when he hunts. And that bridle is termed Temperance, which marks the limit up to which it is lawful to pursue; he uses the spur in flight to turn the horse away from the place from which he would ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... Azrael, Being first of those to whom the Power was shown, Stood first of all the Host before The Throne, And when the Charges were allotted burst Tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first. Zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed Their own high judgment on their lightest deed. Zeal was their spur that, when relief was given, Urged them unwearied to fresh toil in Heaven; For Honour's sake perfecting every task Beyond what e'en Perfection's ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... as turned his head. It was an act of simple faith in Henchard's words—faith so simple as to be almost sublime. The young sailor who had taken Susan Henchard on the spur of the moment and on the faith of a glance at her face, more than twenty years before, was still living and acting under the form of the grizzled traveller who had taken Henchard's words on trust so absolute as to shame ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... well I know your mother, and pity her, having many a time listened to her fruitless complaints; but until your father, who is the laggard one of this most misappointed pair, shall, either underneath the whip of a castigating conscience, or prompted by the spur of your poor mother's sharp appeals, come up abreast, and fill a certain chasm of omission by an indemnifying deed, which has been by him most selfishly left undone, but whose performance is essential to the full fruition ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... spur to such a righteous work,' said Glastonbury, 'but I cannot conceal from myself the extreme difficulty. Ferdinand is the most impetuous of human beings. His passions are a whirlwind; his volition more violent than becomes ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... on the lowland plains, On the waters of Pohakeo, above Kanehoa, On the dark mountain spur of Mauna-una! O, Lihue, she is gone! Sniff the sweet scent of the grass, The sweet scent of the wild vines That are twisted by Waikoloa, By the winds of Waiopua, My flower! As if a mote were ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... once a fortified house and called a castle, stood on a sloping root or spur that ran from the hill down to the bank of the stream, where it stopped abruptly with a steep scaur, at whose foot lay a dark pool. On the same spur, half-way to the burn, stood a low, stone-built, thatched cottage, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and thereby its speedy downfall, because of the multiplication of churches and the loss of taxes enforced for its support. Experience had taught the authorities that, even when all the people favored one form of religion, compulsory support had to be resorted to as a spur to individual contributious. Moreover, the best governments of which they knew had recourse to a similar system in order to maintain purity of religion and the moral welfare of the state. The authorities could not see, as did the champion of religious liberty, the opportunities of ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... beginning of the Revolution, eight years before. Probably few of those who had risen to the highest station in their country said, and felt more honestly, that they were grateful at being allowed by Fate to retire from office, than did Washington. To be relieved of responsibility, free from the hourly spur, day and night, of planning and carrying out, of trying to find food for starving soldiers, of leading forlorn hopes against the truculent enemy, must have seemed to the weary and war-worn General like a call from the Hesperides. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... difficult book "Concerning Nature" was even then rare, for people had long since satisfied themselves by the quotation of certain brilliant, isolated, oracles only, out of what was at best a taxing kind of lore. But the difficulty of the early Greek prose did but spur the curiosity of Marius; the writer, the superior clearness of whose intellectual view had so sequestered him from other men, who had had so little joy of that superiority, being avowedly exacting as to the amount of devout ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... know why you should spy on the prince," said Osra, "and I do not care to know where the prince is." And she touched her horse with the spur, and cantered fast forward, leaving the little house behind. But Christian persisted, partly in a foolish grudge against any man who should win what was above his reach, partly in an honest anger that she whom his worshipped should be treated lightly by another; and he forced ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... place which the horse can see, but which the rider fails to detect. They are in the midst of a swamp where one false step would mean a horrible death in the quagmire on the verge of which the horse has pulled up. The man uses whip and spur, but the horse refuses to move. Finally the rider leaves the horse to himself to find a way round which ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest achievement, eye a mark Beyond the path with grain on either hand, Help to the steering of our social Ark Over the barbarous waters ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... leaping-bars, hurdles, 'on and offs,' 'ins and outs,' all sorts of fancy leaps scattered about. Having got him fairly in, and the lad having got himself fairly settled in the saddle he gave the horse a touch with the spur as Leather let go his head, and after a desperate plunge or two started ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees |
