Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Delve   Listen
verb
Delve  v. t.  (past & past part. delved; pres. part. delving)  
1.
To dig; to open (the ground) as with a spade. "Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor."
2.
To dig into; to penetrate; to trace out; to fathom. "I can not delve him to the root."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books



... inventor lost little time in beginning his operations. As he had said, the chief need was a fire extinguishing chemical solution or powder. Tom resolved to try the solution first, as it was easier to make. With this end in view he proceeded to delve into old and new chemistry books. He also sought the advice of ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... admit into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from us that ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... delve the port; the broad foundations there They lay for theatres of ample space, And columns, hewn from marble rocks, prepare, Tall ornaments, the future stage to grace. As bees in early summer swarm apace Through flowery fields, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... quick perceptions had caught the flaw in Kenneth's argument. "It isn't that. It's because you're so absorbed in your work that you'd RATHER dig and delve in it, than to go to parties. That's all right, of course, and much to your credit. But you can't blame me for liking a man who is willing to throw over his business ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... senility," as a vigorous Frenchman has put it. True enough in its application is this livid sentiment,—perhaps,—but its jewel-like south portal, like the "gemmed" west front of Tours, forms an attractive enough presentment to please most observers who do not delve too deeply into cause and effect. The north portal is less ornate, but its beautifully carved doors are by the same hand as that which worked the opposite portal. The ornamental stonework here is unusual, suggesting an arrangement which may or may not have ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... alone, but that these merry little companions were with him, lightening his way and guiding his course all the night through. And he thought too of luckless dwarfs whom Odin had condemned to dig and delve all day deep in the ground, and throw fuel on the great central fire of the earth, but who at night, like the fairies, might come above and revisit then old haunts. And even these mischievous little companions helped to cheer the heart of the wayfarer ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... of Jane Withersteen and thought of the complications of the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. Under the shadow of the great ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, closure. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... ignorant mob of the Anabaptists is as much filled with immoderate craving for allegory as are the monks. They love to delve in the more mysterious books, such as the Revelation of John, and that worthless fabrication passing under the title of the second and third books of Esdras. For, there you are at liberty to follow ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... It's only to save you trouble in store that I warn you to look where you stand, and see that you don't lose your heart before you know it. It's an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn't got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a'n't much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman's thought off her troubles, and sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... two, Buckle my shoe; Three, four, Shut the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids a-kissing; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, My ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... have rubbed up my own rusty arithmetic had my interest in this particular accomplishment of Lola's been greater. But—for my own part, I attach greater importance to the psychological side of this question, and would far rather probe and delve within the depths of her dog-soul, exploring the extent of her other abilities, since arithmetic has already some brilliant exponents in, for ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... our flushed cheeks, and we knew that it was spring, sweet spring! that had come again to us. Oh, how delightful it was when, escaped from all watchful eyes, I could throw aside the troublesome sun-bonnet, that so obstructed my sight, and dig and delve at pleasure! Never in all my life have I been so happy as in these delightful spring days, when I roved about the paths with a heart full of happiness, and a sensation of thankfulness for the blessings ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... those among the few claiming to have any insight into the real Hawk Carse who declared that a month went out of his life for every minute he spent in the cell then. The story, of course, came trickling out through various unreliable sources; we who delve in the lore of the great adventurer have to thank for our authorities Sewell, the great historian of that generation—who personally traveled several million miles to get what meager facts the Hawk would divulge concerning his life and career—equally with Friday, who shared ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... her and said with grave intensity, "How, dear, are the great truths of science to be ascertained unless men—men and their wives—are willing to delve lovingly, to sacrifice comforts, and even endure ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... music cannot melt? Ah me! how is that rugged heart forlorn! Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt, Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life, in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or grunt with ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... study eternally. The change from a toiling body and idle mind to an idle body and toiling mind requires time to make the latter condition unirksome. Happily there was small need to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and sinking back on his haunches ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... of it," asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... have happened as the law of triumphs enjoins, about which Dio Cocceianus writes. And if it seems to you an irksome thing to delve into books of ancient writers, at all events I will explain cursorily, as best I may, the entertainments pertaining to the triumph. They cause the celebrator of the triumph to ascend a car, smear his face with earth of Sinope ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... that ever we wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... have. I have yet to encounter the person who protests he has no idea why he doesn't function as he would like to in a certain area. From a practical standpoint, not many have the time nor money required to delve into the unconscious background of the problem. The high cost of treatment is a very real objection and cannot be discounted lightly. People suffering from emotional problems usually suffer financial reverses as well. Who is to help ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... what a 'Soundser' is. Then I will tell you. In the coastwise part of the State of New Jersey in which I live, numerous sounds and creeks everywhere divide and intersect the low, sea-skirting lands, wherein certain people are wont to cruise and delve for the sake of securing their products, and hence come to be known in our homely style as Soundsers. The fruitage afforded by these sounds is both manifold and of price. Throughout all the pleasant weather, they yield, with but little intermission, that gastronomic gem, the terrapin; the succulent, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... note the date of, and should delve into the details of the accident; special note being made of the occurrence of laryngeal spasm, wheezing respiration heard by the patient or others (asthmatoid wheeze), fever, cough, pain, dyspnea, dysphagia, odynphagia, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... one great fact of life must always remain. We might ride in hydroaeroplanes, delve into the very soul by psychanalysis, perhaps even run our machines by the internal forces of radium—even marry according to Galton or Mendel. But there would always be love, deep passionate love of the man for the woman, love which all the discoveries ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Emile Michel, Member of the Institute of France—that mine of learning about Rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt, decrit et commente, par M. Charles Blanc, de l'Academie Francaise. This sumptuous folio he picked ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes

... nearly invisible for dust? No. Much of what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... who delight to delve among pedigrees, genealogies and family connections, may perhaps be a little disappointed to learn that, in spite of the odorous nature of the herbs, there are none whose history reveals a skeleton in the closet. They are all harmless. Now and then, to be sure, there occur records ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... kept, though with handfuls of stones He was pelted to death. War's meed he has, 825 Fame without end. There are in books The wonders he wrought, in writings, made known." Then gan he glad for the tree of glory, Constant in zeal, delve in the earth Beneath the turf, so that at twenty 830 Feet by measure he found far concealed, Down in the depths hidden in the earth 'Neath cover of darkness,—there found he three Of roods together ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... bounty's riches, and fair hidden pride; For where the golden ore doth buried lie, The ground, undecked with nature's tapestry, Seems barren, sere, unfertile, fruitless, dry; And where the upper turf of earth doth boast His pride, perfumes, {239} and particoloured cost, Delve there, and find this issue and their pride To spring from ordure and corruption's side. But, to make up my all too long compare, These ragged walls no testimony are What is within; but, like a cloak, doth hide From weather's waste the under garnished pride. More gracious ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... upon—prudent and good advisers, the nearer to his own age the better, and it may well be that Albert would be like to gain rank and honour more quickly in this way than by doughty deeds in the field. It is good that each man should stick to his last. As for me, I would rather delve as a peasant than mix in the intrigues of a Court. But there must be courtiers as well as fighters, and I say not ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... with steadfast heart, 830 He began to delve for the glorious tree Under its covering of turf, till at twenty feet Below the surface concealed he found Shut out from sight, under the shelving cliff, In the chasm of darkness —three crosses he found, In their gloomy grave ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... I haven't much confidence in that fellow. I think I'll wire the San Francisco office to look him up in Dun's and Bradstreet's. Folks up this way are taking too much for granted on that fellow's mere say— so, but I for one intend to delve for facts—particularly with regard to the N.C.O. bank-roll and Ogilvy's associates. I'd sleep a whole lot more soundly to-night if I knew the answer to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life—to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries are dreaming sentimental nonsense! But, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... none of his affair. But somehow the suspicion had come to him that he had accidentally stumbled upon a more complicated plot than mere blackmail. Mrs. Dupont's intimacy with Molly, and the use she was making of her distant relationship with the Major to further her ends, made him eager to delve deeper into her real purpose. At least these two, apparently ignorant of their guest's true character, should be warned, or, if that was impossible, protected from imposture. Their open friendliness and social endorsement were the woman's stock in trade at Dodge, and whatever the final denouement ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... to delve into the past. The first connecting link seemed years ago,—he was running away from something, her hand within his. The girl—yes, he remembered now, but still very indistinctly. But soon with a great influx of joy he recalled that moment at the door when ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... which she would give to her friend and feed him therewith, whereas the refuse of the flour[FN469] she would make into loaves for her husband so this bread would be ruddy-brown of hue.[FN470] Now every day about dawn-time the Fellah was wont fare to his field either to ear or to delve and tarry there working till noon at which time the wife would send him the bread of bran and refuse flour, whilst to those beside him who wrought as he did would be brought from their homes white bread and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... I do not work up my subject, or outline it, or sketch it in the rough. When I sit down to write upon any theme, like that of my "Cosmopolitan" article last April ("What Life Means to Me," 1906), or of my various papers on animal intelligence, I do not know what I have to say on the subject till I delve into my mind and see what I find there. The writing is like fishing or hunting, or sifting the sand for gold—I am never sure of what I shall find. All I want is a certain feeling, a bit of leaven, which I seem to refer to some place in my chest—not my heart, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... the nineteenth century a cradle or a grave? Are we to continue to dig and delve and peer into matter until God and the soul fade from our view and we become like the things we work in? To put such questions to the multitude were idle. There is here no affair of votes and majorities. Human nature has not changed, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... patiently admitted the man who had dropped into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give a formal dinner to a lot of these bores, and then cut ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... foolish, would not consent to delve into the riches of the ancient city, being too much chagrined over the loss of the idol. It seems he had really promised to give a part of it to Mary Nestor. But he ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... shoal and eddy, bouldered channel and lake-like stretches of pool, rocky walls and timber-clad peaks, begins to charm the stranger and draw him on and on through scenery as attractive as grand toss of mountains and delve of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... away the haughty cares, children here are millionaires, Laughter take for baggage and give your laugh a song; We must sail the seas of grass, round the isles of clover pass, And delve in leagues of ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... that narrow, one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... avenged upon the heirs of those who worked its temporal ruin. For here, while mad thousands delve for the gold of their desire, the tramping feet of uncontrolled hosts are heard at the gates of the Sierras. When the fleets give out their hordes of male and female adventurers, there is no law but that ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... also a mystery, and this fact possibly rendered him all the more interesting to one whose business it had always been to solve mysteries. I do not mean by that that I had ever made any effort to delve into the secrets of Saberevski's past, or to read without his knowledge and consent, any portion of that history which he kept so carefully veiled; but the mere fact that an air of mystery did pervade his presence, ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... foot-prints, all inland leading, none villageward; and strown with traces, as of a flying host. On: over forest—hill, and dale—and lo! the golden region! After the glittering spoil, by strange river-margins, and beneath impending cliffs, thousands delve in quicksands; and, sudden, sink in graves of their own making: with gold dust mingling their own ashes. Still deeper, in more solid ground, other thousands slave; and pile their earth so high, they gasp for air, and die; their comrades mounting on them, and delving ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... blood of victims which stained a ledge of porphyry when it ran down the mountain side in torrents, an awful sacrifice to the ancient idols of lust and ignorance. A kindly warning to you, fellow-prospectors and miners, who delve in the vitals of Mother Earth! Beware Thumb Butte, beware the district of the Sphinx! Have a care, for you know not what you may encounter in this mystic neighborhood! Shun strange gods and set up ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... {56} Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve; All hail to this tenth of October, One thousand eight hundred and twelve! {57} Ha! whom do my peepers remark? 'Tis Hebe with Jupiter's jug; O no, 'tis the pride of the Park, Fair Lady ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.— Mother, good-night.—Indeed, this counsellor Is now most still, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... They delve in mines, and risk accident, disease and death, or suffer an abjectly lingering life of impoverishment. Thousands of coal miners are killed every year, and many thousands more are injured, in order that two boys and others of their class may draw huge profits.[188] ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... expected—this technique is frowned upon. Or one may consult textbooks and published papers. (This, by the way, is known as library research, and is generally conceded to be indicative of the superior student, especially if he points out the fact that he is so interested that he just had to delve into the literature.) By any technique, the expected results are always obtained. Always. And by everyone. The initial confusions—that some honest students perpetuate—are easily brushed aside ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield

... good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities— To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the grave. At times the honest fellow would speak hopefully of a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve into the future. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... comeliness and seemlihead and at the splendour and affluence he saw about him, when she said "Know, O King, that I am the Queen of this land and that all the troops thou hast seen, whether horse or foot, are women, there is no man amongst them; for in this our state the men delve and sow and ear and occupy themselves with the tillage of the earth and the building of towns and other mechanical crafts and useful arts, whilst the women govern and fill the great offices of state and bear arms." At this the youth marvelled with exceeding marvel and, as they were in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... a-horseback and fully armed, the best knight King Hugo hath. I will lift my sword and bring it down upon him in such wise it shall cleave helm and hauberk, saddle and steed, and the blade shall delve ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... my shoe; Three, four, Knock at the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good, fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Dig and delve; Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)

... fusing fireballs scorch the sky, Their mining arts the staunch besiegers ply, Delve from the bank of York, and gallery far, Deep subterranean, to the mount of war; Beneath the ditch, thro rocks and fens they go, Scoop the dark chamber plumb beneath the foe; There lodge their tons of powder and retire, Mure the dread passage, wave the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... this manuscript and all the others, and run off to some profound retreat, and study it all over, and reproduce it again with my own faculties. Oh, that I could read them with you! I almost begin to love the pain with which I delve after the thoughts presented in such ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... broad steaks. They spit them over the blazing fires. They cut out the hump-ribs. They tear off the white fat, and stuff the boudins. They split the brown liver, eating it raw! They break the shanks with their tomahawks, and delve out the savoury marrow; and, through all these operations, they whoop, and chatter, and laugh, and dance over the ground ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... recipe book the Waybroad is prescribed for twenty-two diseases, one after another; and in another of the same date we are taught how to apply it: "If a man ache in half his head . . . delve up Waybroad without iron ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head with Crosswort by a red fillet, soon he will be well." But the Plantain did not long sustain its high reputation, which even in Shakespeare's time had become much diminished. "I find," says Gerard, "in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... stygian darkness, desolation and gloom of dingy, malodorous factories and streets, where ragged, hopeless beggars-for-work delve and curse, to the glorious sunlight and balmy air of the "Land of Flowers." Here we see pretty vine-clad cottages embowered in orange groves, and surrounded by luxuriant harvests of everything to make life worth the living. Here we see the murderous villains ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... into its old position by the exhumation of some 'decision' from the dust of ages, made by some judge away back in the olden times, resurrected by the research of some antiquarian lawyer, who loves to delve among the rubbish of past generations. The learning, the wisdom, the philosophy of the present is discarded, and the spirits of a lower civilization are conjured from the darkness of vanished centuries, to settle rules for the government of commerce, personal ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and opened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next turn ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... as at times we dreamily delve into the past, beloved faces come and go. Forever in the memory of the writer, as his ideal conception of healthy, virile splendid Youth personified, will stand the bronzed, debonair, clean-shaven young face of George Redmond—or "Reddy," as he was more familiarly dubbed by ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... men's minds are impelled away from the purely sentimental moral doctrines insisted upon by sectarianism, which is ecclesiasticism run riot, and the higher the education the deeper we delve into the secret motives of that class of mankind, the deceptive outward appearances of which dominate the pages of history, which is, that the greatest and most glorious systems of government, the wisest and most powerful of rulers, the ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... been thinking over your life, and a woman's lot seems hard. To love so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... might peradventure be conceded thee, to thy shame who hast so ill known to put a servant of thine and a man of worth in good case; yet poverty bereaveth not any of gentilesse; nay, rather, wealth it is that doth this. Many kings, many great princes were once poor and many who delve and tend ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... their boiling blood: when Summer suns Bake the cleft earth, to thick wide-waving fields Of corn full-grown, they lead their helpless young: But when autumnal torrents, and fierce rains Deluge the vale, in the dry crumbling bank Their forms they delve, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... of a pioneer log cabin; and oh, what do you think, Claribel, the two ancestors we are proudest of, the ones we all quote the oftenest, and plume ourselves the most on being their descendants, had to dig and delve for everything they got. Old Mrs. Carter told me so this morning." She pointed to the two portraits that headed the long line. "Now if sister makes any objections to our plans, I'll just refer her to the first of the grandmammas who made our hospitality proverbial, and, ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston

... replied, my lord, what best will grow I think is Tousell; grain of hardy fame; The imp rejoined, I never heard its name; What is it. Tousell, say'st thou?—I agree, If good return, 'twill be the same to me; Work fellow, work; make haste, the ground prepare; To dig and delve should be the rabble's care; Don't think that I will ever lend a hand, Or give the slightest aid to till the land; I've told thee I'm a gentleman by birth, Designed for ease: not doomed to turn the earth. Howe'er I'll now ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... rather choose to feede on carefulnesse, To ditche, to delve, and labour for my bread, Nay rather choose to begge from doore to doore, Then condiscend to offer violence To young Pertillo in his innocence. I know you speake, to sound what mightie share Pertillo ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... moreover, he said his reason for withdrawing it was, the opposition which the House of Lords offered to it. Yes; they would have no reclamation of Irish lands, but they would submit to bear increased taxation in order to send the Celtic race by the million to delve in Canada!—yet, even for that it became the Irish people to be duly grateful, inasmuch as it was a decided improvement upon the older colonization scheme of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... be necessary to go back to New York to delve into that part of it before we get through, but I ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... observed Claudius evolved this idea years ago. Alfred had no idea of who Claudius was, or how long ago he lived. However, when he located him four hundred years back, the old professor said "Huh, four hundred years ago? H-ll! Four thousand years." Alfred did not delve ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... from his birth He was mickle of worth, Lay him in the cold earth, A long grave ye may delve. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... purifying element—what to do with it, I cannot imagine, for evidence of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings, I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they surrounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering exclamations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Considering that they dig, delve, carry burthens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome exercise which astounded them, accustomed as they are to see both men and women of the privileged ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... of all time, Great deeds extolled in prose and rhyme, Delve deep in Clio's treasured store, Exhaust encyclopedic lore— You will not find in one edition A hint ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... Austrian Empire: in fact, it would be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ai!" in ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... life. In their eager search for data they forced every possible passage to yield some personal allusion, till the poems came to be nothing but a symbolic biography of the author. The modern student must delve into this material if only to clear away a little of the allegory that obscures ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... minds of rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What say ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... whose laborers, though poorly paid, either worked under mild conditions in the fields, or followed their trades in their cottages and workshops. The introduction of the steam engine brought with it a demand for fuel which forced thousands of men, women, and children to delve in the mines, and the use of machines and the adoption of the factory system shut up other thousands of both sexes, and all ages, to labor for excessive hours in crowded cities under unsanitary conditions. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... talisman is industry, and out of their rocky soil they conjure riches in the shape of iron,—the best that can be found in all Transylvania. The same men that fill the church every Sunday, in holiday attire, dig and delve under ground the remaining six days of the week. Another secret of their modest wealth is their abstinence from strong drink. There is not a single grog-shop in Toroczko. But I fear ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... to put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... then—in what state of repair I know not—it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six-sevenths of one per cent, on the purchase price of the gaping ruin sold in 1837. There is a certain poetry in notarial records. But we will not delve for it now. Idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty-five years, or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet, for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman he is; ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... we delve into this system of illusory compromises between monopoly and society,—that is, as we have explained in % 1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the patriciate and the proletariat,—the more ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... existence and at least four different public schools without knowing anything about "sex hygiene." That married women had babies and that somehow these were due to the presence of men in the household was the limit of her sex knowledge. Beyond that it was not "nice" for a girl to delve, and Milly was very scrupulous about being "nice." Nice girls did not discuss such things. Once when she was fifteen a woman she knew had "gone to the bad" and Milly had been very curious about it, as she was later about the existence of bad women generally. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the smile passed, and Muller ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... Harry Squires. That urbane gentleman was smoking his reportorial corn-cob in the rear of Lamson's store. Except for Lamson's clerk, who had seized the rare opportunity to delve uninterruptedly into the mysteries of the latest "Nick Carter," the store was empty. The ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... to portray all this from the point of view of the humble private, who got none of the glory, and expected none, but only suffering and toil; whose lot it was to march and countermarch, to delve and sweat in the trenches, to be stifled by the heat and drenched by the rain and frozen by the cold; to wade through seas of blood and anguish, to be wounded and captured and imprisoned, to be lured by victory and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail. A pair of dice is thy delight, Thou liv'st for most part by the spoil: I truly labour day and night To get my living by my toil. Chill therefore sure this issue make: The best deserver draw ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... were, the people feasted upon them all the same, and the office of preparing them was the most honourable. I'm not claiming to be a priest (I leave that to my respected brother); I claim my right in a new country, where Adam has to delve again, to be a butcher and a gentleman." All his words were ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... sweet, And soon 'twill be complete! Then to my den I'll haste for gold to delve. I'll bring it at the black, ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon

... such people as I can be and I'd like to help them all," Grace said. "But it makes me actually ill to go near them. How mother can delve as she does in the very slums—well, I can't do it! Walter is like mother; ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why do I call this wild child the great anomaly of the human race? I will tell you. Alone amongst savage tribes he ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... force, or appeal to their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that lay beneath ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for anybody's or everybody's benefit. He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read, with a row of ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... notice. After I had helped her clean the kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into the sticky mysteries of a new kind ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... World.—But how different is the picture of primitive man suddenly brought face to face with an unknown world. With no knowledge of nature or art, with no theory or practice of social order, he began to dig and to delve for the preservation of life. Suffering the pangs of hunger, he obtained food; naked, he clothed himself; {8} buffeted by storm and wind and scorched by the penetrating rays of the sun, he built himself a shelter. As he gradually became skilled in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... passion Whelmed thee absorbed and plunged deep in its gulfy abyss, E'en as the Grecians tell hard by Pheneus of Cyllene Drained was the marish and dried, forming the fattest of soils, 110 Whenas in days long done to delve through marrow of mountains Dared, falsing his sire, Amphtryoniades; What time sure of his shafts he smote Stymphalian monsters Slaying their host at the hest dealt by a lord of less worth, So might the gateway of Heaven be trodden by more of the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... evergreens, Sturdy and strong! Summer and autumn time Hasten along; Harvest the sunbeams, then, Bind them in sheaves, Range them, and change them To tufts of green leaves. Delve in the mellow mold, Far, far below, And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow, grow! ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein

... came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... of the audience." The snuff-box of Mr. L. has not a less imposing air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15l. and 20l. it is a fearful signal of its reaching an additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and delve into ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives, to delve alone is uphill work. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... single foot from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... liberty, their uncomfortable position could hardly have been endured by these fugitives. William had been compelled to dig and delve, to earn bread and butter, clothing and luxuries, houses and land, education and ease for H.B. Dickinson, of Richmond. William smarted frequently; but what could he do? Complaint from a slave was a crime of the deepest dye. So ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... coming again," said Mrs. Markham, "perhaps you'd better not delve into my personality. It interferes. Understand, I'm really flattered to have a man like you take notice of this work. That's why I ask that your notice shan't be personal. At least ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... fatal—Lansing now perceived it—to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarke never returned to the house after ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... ideals To an audience whose personnel would for the most part Regard an ideal as a symptom of sickness; To show sweetness and beauty and color To those whose knowledge of tints is confined To the rouge and the lip stick on dressers; To pioneer in playwrighting, to delve deep into mind, When all that the first-nighters ask is plain entertainment. How much of the great, wholesome public, hard-working and normal, To whom the final appeal must be made Frequents our first nights on Broadway? Costumers, friends of the author, and ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... dig and delve before the clue is mine, I may chance to put him on his guard, and find nothing. No; I will be patient—I will be very cautious. Success comes to him that can wait. Long Robin is a foe not to be despised or trifled with; I can tell that from his own words ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself—"I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep." I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... chairmen, with infinite satisfaction to the audience. When a high price book is balancing between L15 and L20, it is a fearful sign of its reaching an additional sum if Mr. Leigh should lay down his hammer and delve into this said crumple-horn-shaped snuff-box.' The style of the firm was for many years Leigh, Sotheby and Son. In 1803-4 a removal to 145, Strand, opposite Catherine Street, was made. John Sotheby died in 1807, and the name of Leigh disappeared from the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... If we delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal, to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still he has discovered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... result of some mental irritation, compared for the purpose of fixing the point to a festering sore and which, if removed, would permanently eliminate the liability of such seizures. The patient and her husband were informed that the physician intended to delve to the bottom of this trouble and, by deferring investigation as to its exact nature until the symptoms had practically disappeared, a way was cleared to obtain their complete confidence, and at the same time to overcome any unwillingness to accept ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... taken the precaution to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake was only required as a sign that he was ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a geste of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with Lavengro ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... exhaustive reasons for the impulse which brought Miss Mary Davis to Bainbridge at this particular time would be to delve too deeply into the complex psychology of that lady. But we shall not be far wrong if we sum up the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... the Snake River, at a point that is far from any main station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might have scooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot. Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheel tracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaring ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... really the man to whom mankind is most indebted of all for without his beneficent if execrated service, in vain would the scientist toil in his laboratory, the inventor struggle through poverty to perfect his machine, the Captain of Industry conceive great accomplishment, and the laborer delve and grind at his daily task. The one supremely useful man is he ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... covered up his thoughts quickly. They can delve deeper than the surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson

... hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only denizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from the hounds, and in the soil mud a thousand odorous muskrats delve, with now and then a tremorous otter. But not even the hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here the soldiers prepared to seek for the President's ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... erections built in the modern French style with sprawling gigantic figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which seem to wonder how they ever got there, and however they were to keep themselves from falling. London is hopeless! We can but delve its soil when opportunities occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces, exchanges have vanished, or are quickly vanishing, and we cast off the dust of London streets from our feet and seek more ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... Laverdiere for some years librarian of Laval, is a most creditable example of critical acumen and typographical skill. In the same field there is much yet to be explored by the zealous antiquarian who has the patience to delve among the accumulations of matter that are hidden in Canadian and European archives. This is a work, however, which can be best done by the State; and it is satisfactory to know that something has been ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... and Inshallah—God willing—return to me rejoicing; yet sore I fear lest thou come back to me and say, 'Sooth thou hast spoken in thy speech, O my mother!" However Zayn al-Asnam took up a pickaxe and, descending to that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge souterrain all ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... rich silks from Zazemang, fine fruits from the Iberian shore, and soft furs, and ivory tusks of the sea-beast, from the frozen coasts of the north. Never before was country so richly blessed; for Siegfried taught his people how to till the soil best, and how to delve far down into the earth for hidden treasures, and how to work skilfully in iron and bronze and all other metals, and how to make the winds and the waters, and even the thunderbolt, their thralls and helpful servants. And he was as great in war as in peace; for no other ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... e'er and aye, They delve for phantom shapes that ride Across their minds alone,—and they But mock the folly of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... the student shall delve into the minute details of his art, and master them before he attempts to advance. Only the most superficial students fail to do this in these days. All of the better trained teachers insist upon it, and it is hard for the pupil ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... lethal weapons, are not afraid to bite into clay and gravel. They knead the excavated rubbish into pellets, take up the mass of earth and carry it outside. The rest follows naturally; it is the fangs that dig, delve and extract. How finely-tempered they must be, not to be blunted by this well-sinker's work and to do duty presently in the surgical ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... if you love me, delve a tomb, And lay me there the earth beneath; After a year, come see my bones, And make them dice to play therewith. But when you're tired of that game, Then throw those dice into the flame; But when you're tired of gaming free, Then throw those dice ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... The word in the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most people the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and delve in the interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT be done. Meditation in the proper sense should mean the inward deepening of FEELING and consciousness till the region of the universal self is reached; but THOUGHT should not interfere there. That should be turned ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... seen a good deal of farming and of farmers in Canada. Farming there is by no means a life of pleasure; but, if a young man goes into the Bush with a thorough determination to chop, to log, to plough, to dig, to delve, to make his own candles, kill his own hogs and sheep, attend to his horses and his oxen, and "bring in firing at requiring," and abstains from whiskey, it signifies very little whether he is gentle or simple, an honourable ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... most precious of all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless riches just beneath ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby? - 'Tis all to taverns and ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... dreams vanquished. Nothing changes in the Piazza San Marco, nothing save the tourists and the contents of the bewildering shops; all else remains the same, a little more tarnished by the sea-winds and the march of the decades, perhaps, but still the same. Read your poets and study your romances, but delve into no disillusioning guide-books. Let us put our faith in the gondolier; for his lies are far more picturesque than a world ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... poor-house's aid All smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, And to favour that bond HODGE doubts not your good will. But when others ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... know I don't want to delve into a lot of past history at this time, but I've got to talk to you ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... delve too far into my past or relate what would be mundane and disconnected with my story, I will summarize with brevity what my situation was. I was a military man, an Air force pilot to be exact, and was on active duty patrolling the no-fly zones off the coast of China, it being, at that time, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... mines of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... infinitely content to listen and lie back in a deep straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton



Words linked to "Delve" :   take away, rut, root, rout, furrow, tunnel, rootle, take, spade, cut into, remove, groove, shovel, turn over



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com