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noun
Strait  n.  (pl. straits)  
1.
A narrow pass or passage. "He brought him through a darksome narrow strait To a broad gate all built of beaten gold." "Honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast."
2.
Specifically: (Geog.) A (comparatively) narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water; often in the plural; as, the strait, or straits, of Gibraltar; the straits of Magellan; the strait, or straits, of Mackinaw. "We steered directly through a large outlet which they call a strait, though it be fifteen miles broad."
3.
A neck of land; an isthmus. (R.) "A dark strait of barren land."
4.
Fig.: A condition of narrowness or restriction; doubt; distress; difficulty; poverty; perplexity; sometimes in the plural; as, reduced to great straits. "For I am in a strait betwixt two." "Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever." "Ulysses made use of the pretense of natural infirmity to conceal the straits he was in at that time in his thoughts."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Strait" Quotes from Famous Books



... "of this little house. Strait are the walls of it, and narrow the windows, and from them always the same things to see. I must be free; I must fly, or of what ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards

... incentives to action, and checks the spirit of enterprise. A boy or man who finds himself gradually rising in the world, through his own exertions, experiences a satisfaction unknown to one whose fortune is ready-made. However, in Ben's present strait it is no wonder he regarded with envy the supposed ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... churches. In a small number, reduced to one single village, there is inclosed a nation [37] apart from all the others, and superior to all those discovered in nobility, valor, fidelity, and Catholicism. They are descended from the island of Bool, where they anciently occupied the strait made by that island and the island of Panglao, which remains dry at low tide, but at high tide allows a galliot to pass. Therefore many brazas in the sea stand, even today, certain columns of upright wood, as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... good constitution will not make a weak country strong, but an unsuitable constitution may reduce a strong country to feebleness. A weakling does not become a strong man by putting on armour, but a giant can derive no advantage from his strength if once he be got by fraud or force into a strait waistcoat. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... other, except amongst themselues; which may also be possible in my opinion. For if the deuil may forme what kinde of impressiones he pleases in the aire, as I haue said before, speaking of Magie, why may he not far easilier thicken & obscure so the air, that is next about them by contracting it strait together, that the beames of any other mans eyes, cannot pearce thorow the same, to see them? But the third way of their comming to their conuentions, is, that where in I think them deluded: for some of them sayeth, that being transformed in the likenesse of a little beast ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I

... schools and the bazaars of Mesopotamia and western Asia. The particular paths of conquest and of commerce were either by way of the Khyber Pass and through Kabul, Herat and Khorassan, or by sea through the strait of Ormuz to Basra (Busra) at the head of the Persian Gulf, and thence to Bagdad. As a matter of fact, one form of Arabic numerals, the one now in use by the Arabs, is attributed to the influence of Kabul, while the other, which eventually became our numerals, may very likely have reached ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... in a great strait. Many of the chief prelates appealed to him for protection, which he thought his duty as a Christian man bound him to afford them. But the protection which they implored could only be given by refusal of the royal assent to the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... such as: This Entrance for Brandy-Topers; or Vodka Patients in This Ward; or Inmates Must Not Bite Off the Door-Knobs. It seemed carrying a jest too far when these citizens, most of whom had not even smelt a drink in two years, found themselves billeted into padded cells and confronted by rows of strait-jackets. Moreover, the Home had lain unused for many months: it was dusty, dilapidated, and of a moldy savor. Some of the unwilling visitors, finding that the grounds included a strip of sandy beach, took their ordeal with reasonable philosophy. "Since we are to ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... therefore, that he was a Jew, and could not by his laws become the paramour of a Christian woman. The saintly Bridget stood amazed; she had imprudently let him into some of the most important secrets of her party. A Jew! It was dreadful! But how could a person of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced? She probably entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puritanical party cherished as a virtue; forgetting the lessons of toleration and liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, however, for a certain Jewish Rabbi to converse with the stranger. What was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... could perceive the danger, was entangled among these adverse currents and tempestuous waves; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he escaped through a narrow strait, which appeared so tremendous, that he called it ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... shoulders and arms, especially if she has been accustomed to bleed. Let her also take care of lacing herself too straitly, but give herself more liberty than she used to do; for inclosing her belly in too strait a mould, she hinders the infant from taking its free growth, and often makes ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... invariably meet with a strong westerly current within the tropics, and particularly in the vicinity of the equator. This volume of water is thus forced along the shores of Brazil and Guiana, until it enters the Caribbean Sea, from which it has no outlet excepting through the strait bounded by Cape Catouche in Yucatan, on one side, and Cape St. Antonio, in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... location on Musandam Peninsula adjacent to Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit point ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Sound,' said Davies; 'let's look into it,' and a minute or two later we were drifting through a dainty little strait, with a peep of open water at the end of it. Cottages bordered either side. some overhanging the very water, some connecting with it by a rickety wooden staircase or a miniature landing-stage. Creepers and roses rioted over the walls and tiny porches. For a space on one side, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... and the weakest of his points. Coming in a state of exaltation from a meeting of which he had been the eloquent hero, such light as was within him flashed from his face freely; all the capacity and the vigour which impelled him to strain against the strait bonds of his lot set his body quivering and made music of his utterance. At the same time, his free movements passed easily into swagger, and as he talked on, the false notes were not few. A working man gifted with brains and comeliness ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... many high-flown compliments; and, when we retired, handed her with great ceremony to her chair. The captain, I believe, would have done me the same favour; but my brother seeing him advance, took me under his arm, and wished him good night. The Captain is a pretty man, to be sure; tall and strait, and well made; with light-grey eyes, and a Roman nose; but there is a certain boldness in his look and manner, that puts one out of countenance — But I am afraid I have put you out of all patience with this long unconnected scrawl; which ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... the first of November, there was one Iohn Rawlins, borne in Rochester, and dwelling three and twenty yeere in Plimmoth, imployed to the Strait of Gibraltar, by Master Richard, and Steven Treviles, Merchants of Plimmoth, and fraighted in a Barke, called the Nicholas of Plimmoth, of the burden of forty Tun, which had also in her company another ship of Plimmoth, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... them carrying carbines slung at their backs. A general huzza followed: the two persons who had gone to the rear, each with seven or eight followers, ran severally to the right and left at right angles from the road strait up the steep hills which rose on each side; then making a short circuit they descended like a torrent in the rear of the revenue officers; swarmed with the agility of cats over their waggons, and from these upon the turnpike gate—whence they threw themselves with ease on the horses, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mora, I shall tell you the exact truth, and hold you to your promise that there shall be no violence—now. What I did was through my fault alone, nor did your lady give me the slightest encouragement—she is blameless. It is a sore strait you have placed me in, but this is the lady who has all a soldier's love, and a soldier's respect, which she ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... at tea,[19] and of firing amongst us; but the Lord was our refuge and fortress, and preserved us from danger, which we knew not of. He shot himself in the neck and breast, but is not dead. He has a strait-waistcoat on. I assisted in cutting his clothes off, and in other little offices needed at such a time, and told him of Christ's love in dying for poor sinners. "I know it," he said. He shot himself the first time about three o'clock in the morning, and again about seven. What a scene ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... wanted to protect them all and make them happy. But how could she make them happy if they would tell her nothing? They still treated her as a child but she was a woman now. Her love for Johnny. She had admitted that to herself. She stopped on the path outside the decorous strait-laced houses and put her cool gloved hand ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. The town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret leniencies, its posterns opening ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... as Imama formerly treated Ateca." "And what did Imama to Ateca?" inquired the fisherman. "Ho!" cried the genie, "if you have a mind to be informed, open the vessel: do you think that I can be in a humour to relate stories in so strait a prison? I will tell you as many as you please, when you have let me out." "No," said the fisherman, "I will not let thee out; it is in vain to talk of it; I am just going to throw thee into the bottom of the sea." "Hear me one word more," cried the genie; "I promise to do you ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... which reduced her to such a condition that she did not know how to subsist. She was not capable of taking anything solid, and not rich enough to live upon jellies and nourishing broths. In this strait she determined to take three dishes of chocolate, prepared after the manner of the country, one in the morning, one at noon, and one at night. There chocolate is nothing else but cocoa kernels dissolved ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa

... shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. Oh, I'm a great reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one. I couldn't count the number of people I've led into the right way. It takes some finding, you know. Strait is the gate—damned strait sometimes. A damned tight squeeze...." Argyle was somewhat intoxicated. He spoke with a slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes. The man Levison smiled acquiescent. But Lilly was not listening. His brow was heavy and he seemed abstracted. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... Then, in the strait of her agony, there came to Frances Waldeaux, for the first time in her life, a perception that there was help for her in the world, outside of her own strength. Her poor tortured wits discerned One, more real than her crime, or George, or the woman that she had killed. It was ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... furlongs. It was strong by nature, and fit for such a building. It is a sort of a moderate hill, raised to a further height by the hand of man, till it was of the shape of a woman's breast. It is encompassed with circular towers, and hath a strait ascent up to it, which ascent is composed of steps of polished stones, in number two hundred. Within it are royal and very rich apartments, of a structure that provided both for security and for beauty. About the bottom there are habitations ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... emigrations to more southern zones were part of the great southward trend characterizing all movements on the Pacific side of the continent, probably from an original ethnic port of entry near Bering Strait; and part also of the general southward drift in search of more genial climate, which landed the van of northern Siouan, Algonquin and Iroquoian stocks in the present area of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... Four specimens taken in Hecate Strait, July, 1904. One specimen found dead on beach off Beacon Hill, ...
— Catalogue of British Columbia Birds • Francis Kermode

... made her mother sad—not vaguely but by logical inference. They both were still in that strait-waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times to be delivered for the girl's sake. The woman had long perceived how zealously and constantly the young mind of her companion was struggling for enlargement; and yet now, in her eighteenth year, it still ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... meliosity. But, sirs, mark my cauled countenance, when I begin. But yonder is a fellow[206] that gapes to bite me, or else to eat that which I sing. Why, thou art a fool; canst thou not keep thy mouth strait together? And when it comes, snap at it, as my father's dog would do at a liver. But thou art so greedy, That thou thinkest to eat it before ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... ivied stones of what was once a tower, Now hardly known from rocks—and gathering might In the long reach between Dungallan caves And point of Arderinis ever fair With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait Into another ampler inland sea; Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,— And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,— Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean Insensibly into a solemn calm,— And all along that ancient burial-ground (Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend Its own ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... methods of restraint in use to this day in various institutions, chief among them "mechanical restraint" and so-called "chemical restraint." The former consists in the use of instruments of restraint, namely, strait-jackets or camisoles, muffs, straps, mittens, restraint or strong sheets, etc.—all of them, except on the rarest of occasions, instruments of neglect and torture. Chemical restraint (sometimes called medical restraint) consists ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... thunder and flashes of lightning; which, with the cross and confused swell in the sea, made the passage not only uncomfortably irksome, but also extremely dangerous, on account of the many islands interspersed in almost every part of the strait. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... traces of the morning gloom had gone; and, to the troopers, accustomed so long to the low, barren sand-dunes of Egypt, these high Gallipoli hills and islands, bathed in the glory of an AEgean evening, brought memories of other coast-lines, Cook Strait maybe, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... thus the northern shores of the AEgean Sea, and many of the islands, were already in Xerxes's hands. The Greek dominions lay further south, and Xerxes did not anticipate any opposition from the enemy, until his army, after crossing the strait, should have advanced to the neighborhood of Athens. In fact, all the northern country through which his route would lie was already in his hands, and in passing through it he anticipated no difficulties except such as should arise from the elements themselves, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... shall show you how it is; Commanded I am to go a journey, A long way, hard and dangerous, And give a strait count without delay Before the high judge Adonai.[11] Wherefore I pray you, bear me company, As ye ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... weren't always so dead sure that she is right and everybody else wrong, we'd all think a great deal more of her; but as she is, one feels it a positive duty to snub her sometimes. We are proud of Nora's beauty, but she's the very last one we'd any of us go to for comfort or in a strait,—why, Betty'd be better, for all she's so ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... she added, clasping her hands, "if your words are not those of empty courtesy alone, hear me, for you are great, a Lord of the Earth whom none refuse, and it may be in your power to give me aid. Prince, I am in a sore strait, for that danger from which I prayed to be delivered this night presses me hard. Prince, it is true that Ithobal has been refused my hand, both by myself and by my father, and therefore it was that he strove ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... the oppression that we may have our fill of the glories of Egypt and be glad to turn our backs upon her. He will cure us of idols by showing forth their helplessness when they are cried unto; and when Israel is in its most grievous strait and therefore most prone to attach itself to whosoever helpeth it. He will prove Himself at last by His power. Aye, thou hast said. Israel can suffer little more without perishing. Therefore is redemption ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... or "watchtowers," one visible afar, and dominating from its mamelon the whole land. The return to the main valley descends by another narrow gorge further to the south-east, called Sha'b el-Darak, or "Strait of the Shield:" the tall, perpendicular, and overhanging walls, apparently threatening to fall, would act testudo to an Indian file of warriors. High up the right bank of this gut we saw a tree-trunk propped against a rock ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... off with a grim smile. It was absurd to prate of life or death in such a strait as this. The boy reflected ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... strait their bowes away, They grasped their swords so bright, And now sharp blows, a heavy shower, On shields ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... brother need my aid?" asked he. "If he does, he shall have it to half my fortune for your sake!" Le Gardeur was well aware that the prodigal brother of Angelique was in a strait for money, as was usual with him. He had lately importuned Le Gardeur, and obtained a large ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... often a more solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the deacon himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!), must have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's Strait," or any other that Kane ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... tears, at the angle of a monument to the memory of a certain Sir Wilfred Altham, of the time of James II., in raising the woodwork of a pew occupied by Mr Sparks's family, the rage of Sir Laurence was so excessive as to be almost deserving of a strait-waistcoat. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... small island, to which the name of Wallis Island was given. At six in the afternoon the extremes of the islands in sight bore from north-east by east to west by north; and the entrance between two islands, which formed a passage or strait, bore north by east, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... of my situation now burst upon me. I was in a fearful strait; but I made up my mind at once, to deceive the pirates, by appearing to be contented with my situation, and to take advantage of the first opportunity that presented itself ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... smell. The tyrant who fastened the dead to the living invented an exquisite torment; 'but what is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs, and all those pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so far as to say that if one only of the damned were brought into this world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the devils send forth a better smell; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... maximum of well-being,—if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waist-coat, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... and 'most every thing else." The master then asked him some questions regarding the divisions of land and water, and for a short time he answered with some degree of correctness. At length, while referring to the divisions of water, the master said "can you tell me what is a strait?" This question seemed a "puzzler" to him, and for some moments he looked down as if studying the matter; when the question was repeated in rather a sharp tone, it seemed he thought it wiser to give an answer of some kind than none at all, and he replied: "When a river runs in a straight course, ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... by that sign the reign of Telamon Between the fierce mouths of the encountering brine On the strait reefs of ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... as it struck ten, and thought the policemen cast an unusually sharp eye at me, as they sauntered by, and puzzled my brain to find some means of relief, for I had just received a letter from my wife, Polly, who was in a sad strait at home, which added to the amount of my own misfortunes. And while I was musing in this way, a street beggar appeared, and notwithstanding he was well dressed, demanded alms; and when I told him I had none to give, he set to cursing me right manfully, which was a custom ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Admiral Olivier van Noort and the poor Vice-Admiral Jan Claesz van Ilpendam, who was put ashore in the Strait of Magellan for insubordination. It interested all, and called forth a lively discussion, in which the entire family as well as the guests ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... instant when the Dawn's bow first entered the narrow passage. The width, from rock to rock, speaking only of visible things, might have been thirty fathoms; and this strait narrowed, rather than widened, for several hundred feet, until it was reduced fully one-third. The tide ran like a mill-tail, and it was, perhaps, lucky for us that there was no time for reflection or irresolution; the aspect of things being so serious as might well have thrown the most decided ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... overwhelmingly so—insomuch that Wilford could not help detecting her anxiety that all should be settled this time. Helen, on the contrary, was unusually cool, confirming him in his opinion that she was strong-minded and self-willed, and making him resolve to remove Katy as soon as possible from her strait-laced influence. When talking with his mother he had said that if Katy had told him "yes," he should probably place her at some fashionable school for a year or two; but on the way to Silverton he had ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... of healing, in the Science of Mind, is the most sacred and salutary power which can be wielded. My Christian students, impressed with the true sense of the great work before them, enter this strait and narrow path, and ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... common strait Wakes latencies unknown, Whose impulse may precipitate A life-long leap. The hour was late, And there was the Jersey boat ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... fight 'em!" he declared; "but to sit here idle, knowing that I have been cheated out of my year's work, just as much as if I had been knocked down on the road and the money taken from me, is enough to send me to the asylum with a strait-jacket on!" ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... delight. In an evil moment I told the boys that I had seen it stated, in some paper, that benzole would make paper transparent, and afterwards evaporate and leave the paper uninjured. They drove me raving distracted with questions about it, so that I had to be put in a strait-jacket. The ingenuity and persistence of these questions, asked by each, in separate interviews, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... EAST. No one knew that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing around the southern point of Africa or through what is called the Strait of Magellan. The products of the East were brought to Europe by several routes, two reaching the Mediterranean at Alexandria, in Egypt, a third at Antioch, in Syria, and a fourth on the southeastern shore of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... odd theory, that this Benedictine seclusion saved trouble, as being actually the strait course; but the young maidens were not scholars enough to question it, and Dame Lilias, though she had learnt more from her brother and her friend, would have deemed it presumptuous to dispute with a Reverend Mother. So only Eleanor ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the air, or in the immensity of space, that our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which Saturn moves round the Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five thousand million; and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... more, whereupon the young man related his pitiful case to Frances, and this so well that, while unwilling to grant, she yet durst not refuse what he sought; and he could indeed see that she was in a sore strait. It must, however, be understood that, while thus discoursing, they often, to take away all ground for suspicion, passed and repassed in front of the shelter-place where the worthy dames were seated—talking the while on commonplace and ordinary matters, and at times disporting ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... eagerly the fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... in silence, the trio reached a spot where there was a clear view over the tree-tops, revealing the blue waters of the strait, with the Java shores and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... exploration, the colonists of New South Wales might not have been very anxious just at that time, but when the object of acquiring geographical knowledge could be combined with that of exploring a route towards the nearest part of the Indian Ocean, westward of a dangerous strait, it was easy to awaken the attention of the Australian public to the importance of such an enterprise. A trade in horses required to remount the Indian cavalry had commenced, and the disadvantageous navigation of Torres Straits had been injurious ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... hundred thousand men, with such arms as they can snatch, get over the border as quickly as they can. Let a division enter every Northern border State, destroy railroad connection to prevent concentration of the enemy, and the desperate strait of these States, the body of Lincoln's country, will compel him to a peace—or compel his successor, should Virginia not suffer him to escape from ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... those in more northern latitudes. It would seem that the people who constructed those in British America, in moving southward, (for we strongly suspect that this people originally crossed Behring's Strait from Asia,) improved in their style of building, and, on arriving at the Ohio River, had so far improved as to be able to construct those interesting works at Marietta, Moundville, and other points in that region. It was not till about the time they reached the Ohio Valley ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... have ended the attempt at invasion. He could have kept her in royal captivity, or have demanded the surrender of her claims as the price of her release. Instead of seizing the occasion, as a Henry or a William would certainly have done, he was filled with chivalrous pity for his cousin's strait, and sent her with an escort under Henry of Winchester and Waleran of Meulan to join her brother at Bristol. The writers of the time explain his conduct by his own chivalrous spirit, and by the treasonable persuasions of his brother Henry, who, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... was a passage to the western Pacific Ocean south of Virginia, and that, when he had proved the impossibility of going by the northeast, he had offered his crew the choice either to explore this passage spoken of by Captain John Smith or to seek the northwest passage by going through Davis Strait. Many of the men had been in the East India service, and in the habit of sailing in tropical climates, and were consequently very unwilling to endure the severities of a high northern latitude. It was therefore voted that they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... words our fathers knew, Frugal and cautious of engrafting new, Happy your art, if by a cunning phrase To a new meaning a known word you raise: If 'tis your lot to tell, at some chance time, "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhime," Where you are driv'n perforce to many a word Which the strait-lac'd Cethegi never heard, Take, but with coyness take, the licence wanted, And such a licence shall be freely granted: New, or but recent, words shall have their course, If drawn discreetly from the Graecian source. ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... impossible!" he cried, in a low voice. "They cannot be the same person. That ship out there has not touched land since she left Halifax. Until she hove in sight off Churchill she hasn't been within two hundred miles of a coast this side of Hudson's Strait. Miss Brokaw is as new to this country as you. It is beyond all reason to suppose ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... Leonidas,[16] "and not even so is it sweet, but more bitter than loathed death." "Weeping I was born, and when I have done my weeping I die," another poet wails,[17] "and all my life is among many tears." Aesopus is in a strait betwixt two; if one might but escape from life without the horror of dying! for now it is only the revolt from death that keeps him in the anguish of life.[18] To Palladas of Alexandria the world is but a slaughter- house, and death is its blind ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... wide world is nought beside The wonder of Thy love. And though my state be mean and strait, Give me but heart to work and ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... Donati found the bottom of the Adriatic sea; the bed of testaceous animals there, according to him, is several hundred feet in thickness. The celebrated diver Pescecola, whom the emperor Frederick II. employed to descend the strait of Messina, saw there with horror, enormous polypi attached to the rocks, the arms of which, being several yards long, were more than sufficient to strangle a man. In a great many places, the madrepores form a kind of petrified forest fixed at the bottom of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... a granary which became, after a while, the frequent resort of a Cat. The Mouse was in great fear and did not know what to do. In her strait, she bethought herself of a Rat who lived not far away, and who had said in her hearing a hundred times that he was not afraid of any cat living. She resolved to visit the bold Rat and ask him to drive the Cat away. She found the Rat in his hole and relating her story, besought his help. "Pooh!" ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... allow me to suggest that, if the earth is a sphere, the same laws of adhesion and motion must operate at every point on its surface; and the objection of Don Gomez would be quite as valid against our being able to return from crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... no portion of the world so little known as Africa in general; and perhaps of all Africa there is no corner with which Europeans are so little acquainted as Barbary, which nevertheless is only separated from the continent of Europe by a narrow strait of four leagues across. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... horizon somewhat like a low blue cloud, which gathered distinctness and strength of outline by degrees. It was the land, beyond doubt; the coast of New Holland itself, as the captain informed Eleanor; and going on and passing through Bass's Strait the vessel soon directed her course northward. Little remained then ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... precious woods and fruits. Obidos is blessed with a church, a school, and a weekly newspaper, and is defended by thirty-two guns. This is the Thermopylae of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with tremendous velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the current 2.4 feet per second. As Bates remarks, however, the river valley is not contracted to this breadth, the southern shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... seemed to stoop, and come nearer and nearer to us, till at length it nearly touched my face; and as I lay, I could hardly hold the candle upright. I seemed to myself to be in a coffin rather than in a boat, as I had no room to stir hand or foot till we had passed this frightful strait, and the rock rose again on the other side, where my guide ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... and Missolonghi in quest of information, he resolved, while waiting their return, to employ his time in a journey to Ithaca, which island is separated from that of Cephalonia but by a narrow strait. On his way to Vathi, the chief city of the island, to which place he had been invited, and his journey hospitably facilitated, by the Resident, Captain Knox, he paid a visit to the mountain-cave in which, according ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... immediately to that Being who hates and punishes sin. Though we see nothing but condemnation and displeasure in those holy eyes, we must nevertheless approach them just and simply as we are. We must say with king David in a similar case, when he had incurred the displeasure of God: "I am in a great strait; [yet] let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for very great are his mercies" (1 Chron. xx. 13). We must suffer the intolerable brightness to blind and blast us in our guiltiness, and let there be an actual contact between the sin of our soul and the holiness of our God. If we thus proceed, in accordance ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... small foothold on Musandam Peninsula controlling Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit point ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... finally, to be denied that any messages had ever crossed the Atlantic at all, and Field and his associates were discredited. It was said that the current could not be made to pass through so long a circuit. New routes were spoken of—across Bering's Strait, and overland by way of Siberia—and measures began to be taken to carry this scheme ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... following, were still trying to work the ruin of Roderick. A certain Count Julian, who, on account of his daughter Florinda, had his own wrongs to avenge, accepted the leadership of these rebels. The power of the Visigoths had extended across the narrow strait (cut by the Phenicians) over to the opposite shore, where Morocco seems to be reaching out in vain endeavor to touch the land from which she was long ago severed; and there, at Tangiers, this arch-traitor laid his plans and matured the scheme of revenge and ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; And therefore contented like others to fare, To the shades of Elizium I strait did repair; Where Dryden and other great wits o' the town, To reward all their labours, are damn'd to write on. Here Johnson may boast of his judgment and plot, And Otway of all the applause that he got; Loose Eth'ridge presume on his stile and his wit, And Shadwell of all the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... straits in which the child of life, whom the invisible hand that is extended in a religion has not yet found, must find in the darkness a human hand stretched out to it or sink down in utter terror and perhaps perish. Lady Holme was in such a strait. She knew it. She said to herself quite plainly that if Robin failed to stretch out his hand to her she could not go on living. It was clear to her that her life or death depended upon whether he remained true to what he had said was his ideal, or whether he proved false to it and showed himself ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... the Greeks should return, and lost the advantage of the narrow seas and strait passage, and slip home very one to his own city, considered with himself, and contrived that stratagem which was carried out by Sicinnus. This Sicinnus was a Persian captive, but a great lover of Themistocles, and the attendant ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... rule, based, no doubt, upon the customs of the East, of Egypt or Syria, most strict in the abasement of the selfish will, in penitence, in work, in prayer. "Good is the rule of Bangor," said the ancient sequence, "strait, austere, holy, and just." It was this rule, with the enthusiasm which marked all classes for religion and for knowledge, which inspired S. Columban in his great work. It was a work whose keynote was sacred study and which found its harmony in monastic service. S. Columban was the type, the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... km note: includes Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, Northwest Passage, and other tributary ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... we're alone and unhindered; and if the plan shouldn't happen to work well, (I don't see why it shouldn't, though,) no harm will be done. I've had a deal of hard work in my life, and I've been badgered and bullied so much by your strait-laced professors, that I'm glad to get away from the world for a spell, and talk and do rationally, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... Drusus, "we are not at such a direful strait yet. There is one man at least whom I am convinced is not altogether a knave; and I have determined to throw in my lot with him. Do ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... Boeotians, Locrians, Phocians, and Megarians, who had formed a league against the northern invaders, collected a force of about 26,000 men, who, under the orders of Calippus, advanced to and occupied the strait, whilst 305 Athenian galleys, anchored in the bay of Mulia, were ready to operate upon the flank of the enemy. In his approach to this position, the Brenn had to pass the river Sperchius, to defend which Calippus had detached a small force: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... ledge and watch the river. Pierre Cadotte is at the fort. They came through the rapids at Lachine. It was very exciting. He has been at the trading post up to the strait and tells marvellous stories of hardships and heroism. And the good priest up there has made ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... men? Let your joy be free and full, give it full range and scope, but leave off this trick of the hands, and lift them up in praise; let your voice swell out, not in screams, but in hymns of thanks to God, who has brought you out of so great a strait, for this will add ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... proclamations. It is one thing to proclaim amusements, another to abolish them. The first was undoubtedly done, but we doubt if there was ever any long-continued effort to do the last; and in the latter part of Cromwell's reign the gloom, and the strait-laced regulations that caused it, must ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... settlement of the northwesterly bounds of the Downing Farm in 1681, recorded in Salem town records, gives the line from the extreme northwestern corner by Putnam's land as running "strait on to a ...
— House of John Procter, Witchcraft Martyr, 1692 • William P. Upham

... some places, the way ran so close by the precipice that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many years later, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was just possible to drag his coach. But even that road was so steep and so strait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it against an army; [355] nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a pleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that the weapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... came and passed some of the world's greatest navigators. Torres wandering from far Peru, to unknowingly discover the strait which bears his name; Dampier, the buccancer-adventurer, and, in 1768, the cultured, esthetic Bougainville, who was enraptured by the beauty of the deep forest-fringed fjords of the northeastern coast. Cook, greatest of all geographers, mapped the principal ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... question,' the stranger urged. 'I am in a strait, and can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... passed declaring it a felony to introduce armed Scotchmen into Ireland, or to intermarry with them without a license under the great seal. This statute was directed against those multitudes of Islesmen and Highlanders who annually crossed the narrow strait which separates Antrim from Argyle to harass the English garrisons alongshore, or to enlist as auxiliaries in Irish quarrels. In 1556, under one of their principal leaders, James, son of Conal, they laid siege to Carrickfergus and occupied Lord Sussex some six weeks in the glens of Antrim. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... if it be light as wind, how much easier the freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet d'Orleans or Egalite) flies to and fro across the Strait; importing English Fashions; this he, as hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do. Carriages and saddles; top-boots and redingotes, as we call riding-coats. Nay the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age but will trot a l'Anglaise, rising ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... to its analogy to volcanic action, it appears as if it were the outpourings of a crater, whose basin is now occupied by the lake in which the Hackensack river takes its rise, and whence a great stream of lava has run over the sandstone rock, as far as the strait that separates Staten Island from the main land. The two Newark mountains are ridges of the same description, of even greater extent; other smaller ridges of the same kind are also distinctly visible, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... their being caught in Kamloops Lake. With reference to the run of Pacific salmon, it is interesting to note that large silvery fish have been caught by minnow and spoon in the Shuswap Lake, notably in the narrow strait mentioned above. Mr. Inskip has within the last year or two written some letters to the Field describing the capture of a number of silver fish up to 10lb. weight near Spence's Bridge, at the mouth of the Nicola river, where it joins the Thompson. He believes these fish to ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... where a certain tribe of Indians was to be found, Papa, and he told me they were supposed originally to have come across Behring's Strait, one cold winter." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... arranged in two diagonal rows. Towards the end of the month Madame Pfeiffer gazed upon the sterile cliffs and barren mountains of Patagonia, and next upon the volcanic rocks, wave-worn and wind-beaten, of Fire-Land, or Tierra del Fuego. Through the Strait of Le Main, which separates the latter from Staten Island, the voyagers passed onward to the extreme southern point of the American Continent, the famous promontory of Cape Horn. This is the last spur of the mighty mountain-chain ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... was too liberal for John. He had been brought up in too strait a sect to subscribe to such an ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... society, I could not make use of home influence, as I might have done if I had had any kind sister to assist me in the way that kind sisters sometimes can assist their brothers when they fall victims to the tender passion. Whom should I ask to help me in my strait? I could not go round everywhere, asking everybody after two ladies dressed in half-mourning, could I? Not exactly. People might take me for a maniac at large; and, even should I be one, still, I would naturally wish to keep my mental derangement ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... He spent his time running after girls in the Tuileries, always had several on his hands, and lived and spent his money with their families and friends of the same kidney. He was just fit for a strait-waistcoat, but comical, full of wit and unexpected repartees. A good, humorous fellow, and honest-polite, and not too impertinent on account of his sister's fortune. Yet it was a pleasure to hear him talk of the time of Scarron and the Hotel d'Albret, and of the gallantries and adventures ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... engrossed alone: For them his painful course was run: To bless, to save, his only care; To chill the guilty soul with fear; To point the pathway to the skies, And teach, and urge, and aid, to rise; Where strait, and difficult to keep, It climbs, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the people. Ah, there is some one stirring there! Look—coming out from the door. Ride on and tell him we want rest and refreshment—a chamber, too, for a gentleman who has had a fall from his horse. Denis, boy, we are in a perilous strait. I dare not let the King go further until he has had some hours of ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... best be done. And for that the night approached, it was thought needful to land our forces, which was done in the shutting up of the day; and having quartered ourselves to our most advantage, with sufficient guard upon every strait, we thought to rest ourselves for that night there. The Governor sent us some refreshing, as bread, wine, oil, apples, grapes, marmalade and such like. About midnight the weather began to overcast, insomuch that it was thought meeter to repair aboard, ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs

... Richard, I have a boon to beg. I am in this strait for no better reason than because my kinsman, Sir Clarence Poltwhistle, one of the Secretaries of State, has charged me with sorcery, in order that he may succeed in my estate, which devolves to him ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... eastern parts came to a strait or sound, on the other side of which was a ferryman with his boat. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... together, obeyed the movements of the swell. The next day the man at the masthead signalled a vessel. It was the Valkirien, a Danish corvette, running alongside the Forward, and making for the bank of Newfoundland. The current of the Strait began to make itself felt, and Shandon had to put on sail to go up it. At this moment the commander, the doctor, James Wall, and Johnson were assembled on the poop examining the direction and strength of the current. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... Papa to say that I am going away for a time with a friend, to rest and recruit. You and Aunt Pattie could easily arrange that there should be no talk and no gossip about the matter. I hope and think you will. Of course if we are in any strait or difficulty we shall communicate ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... unknown. On me the most severe was the strain; for myself I cared not, I had so often died in spirit in my direful journeys that actual death was nothing to me. But for vanity, or fame, or honour, or greed, and to seek the bubble reputation, I had brought six other human beings into a dreadful strait, and the hollow eyes and gaunt, appealing glances that were always fixed on me were terrible to bear; but I gathered some support from a proverb of Solomon: "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." Mount Churchman, the place I was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... upright figure, hands at the side, head erect, and eyes straight-of all bad kinds, this kind is the worst. This is often referred to as school declamation, or the speaking of a piece. We have discarded many old ideas of restriction in education. Let us discard the strait-jacket in platform speaking. Nobody else ever speaks as students are often compelled to speak. Let them speak like boys—not like men even—much less like machines. There is of course a good and a bad way of standing and moving, but much is due to youth, to individuality, and to earnest intention, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... the dragon a certain number of sheep or kine from their herds, so that at least the monster might be appeased without the sacrifice of human life. At last all the flocks and the kine were devoured, and the townspeople found themselves reduced to a terrible strait. The dragon besieged the walls of the city, and infected all the air with his poisonous breath, so that many persons died, as though smitten by a pestilence. Then, in order to save the people, lots were cast among all those who had children, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... remember, when I was seaven yeares old, an oake in a ground called Rydens, in Kington St. Michael Parish, was struck with lightning, not in a strait but helical line, scil. once about the tree or once and a half, as a hop twists about the pole; and the stria remains now as if it had been ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... with the US at Dixon Entrance, Beaufort Sea, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and around the disputed Machias Seal Island and North Rock; working toward greater cooperation with US in monitoring people and commodities crossing the border; uncontested sovereignty dispute with Denmark over Hans Island in the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... sleeves falling back, and fringed with deep gold fringe, and should have diamond or pearl buttons. My caftan, of the same stuff with my drawers, is a robe exactly fitted to my shape, and reaching to my feet, with very long strait falling sleeves. Over this is the girdle, of about four fingers broad, which all that can afford have entirely of diamonds or other precious stones; those who will not be at that expense, have it of exquisite embroidery on satin; but it must be ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll; I am the master of my fate, I am the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Harpy's dreadful prophecy that the Trojans would have to eat their tables, Helenus bade AEneas not to be troubled about it, for "the fates would find a way," and Apollo would be present to aid. Then the soothsayer warned his countrymen to shun the strait between Italy and Sicily, where on one side was the frightful monster Scyl'la, with the face of a woman and the tail of a dolphin, and on the other was the dangerous whirlpool Cha-ryb'dis. But more important than all other things, they must offer sacrifices and prayers to ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... which dispersed the ships. The Marigold was no more heard of, while the dispirited crew of the Elizabeth returned to England, being the first who ever passed back to the eastward through Magellan's Strait. Drake's ship was driven southward to the fifty-sixth degree, where he ran in among the islands of the extreme south of America. He fixes the farthest land to be near the fifty-sixth degree of south latitude, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... Pere la Chaise, sold at its concierge. Annexed is a Map of the Great World—but the author has not "attempted to lay down the longitude; the only measurements hitherto made being confined to the west of the meridian of St. James's Strait." Then the author tells us of the atomic hypothesis of the formation of the Great World. "These rules, for the performance of what appears to be an atomic quadrille, are furnished by Sir H. Davy, elected by the Great World, master of the ceremonies for the preservation of order, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various

... Terrible blunder, for which she had only herself to thank! Robbery of her neighbor's house—the dishonest "borrowing," not of these ill-gotten goods only, but also of her neighbor's name—had brought her, by what we call fatality, to this strait. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... by Ptolemy, and according to the navigators sent by Alexander the Great, 40 days of navigation from Asia. This is the land which the describers of maps call the unknown land of the south, whence it is possible to go on settling people as far as the Strait of Magellan to the west of Catigara, and the Javas, New Guinea, and the islands of the archipelago of Nombre de Jesus which I, our Lord permitting, discovered in the South Sea in the year 1568, the unconquered Felipe II reigning as King of Spain and its dependencies ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... land that stretches out to the straits. If the Welsh were once well posted there, the Irish could never hope to find their way to the rich and cultivated south, for it is just below Sypolis that the Lake contracts, and forms a strait in one place but a furlong wide. The two forces thus came into collision, and while they fought and destroyed each other, Sypolis was saved. After which, finding they were evenly matched, the Irish ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done, Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For Honor travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path; For Emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost;— Or, like a gallant horse fallen ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... still the wife of another man, that she would willingly marry Phineas at the foot even of the gallows if she were free. She was free now; but she did not repeat her assertion. It was impossible not to think of Phineas in his present strait, but she abstained from speaking of him as far as she could, and for the present never alluded to her former purpose of visiting ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... and too strait clothing. This is just as I wish it. How often has my heart ached, when I have seen poor babies rolled and swathed, ten or a dozen times round; then blanket upon blanket, mantle upon that; its little neck pinned down to one ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... but few Instructions lackt, Strait by the Moons pale light away he packt, And in a trice, his Curtains open'd wide, He sate him by Achitophels Bed-side. And in this ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... a realm! Indeed, had I not committed some fatal mistake, and left that trusty servant behind, and had not some wizard of the night stepped into his place? A slight splashing in-shore broke the spell and caused me to turn nervously to the oarsman: "Musquash," said he, and kept strait on. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... in his diary: "He [Pitt] wore dirty boots and odd-fashioned, lank leather breeches, but otherwise well dressed and cleanly, his hair powdered, etc. He was very courteous and cordial in words and looks, but his carriage was stiff and strait, perhaps naturally so. His face cold and harsh, rather selfish, but acute and sensible. We took our seats after much reciprocal ceremony." Pitt declined Fingall's request that he should present the Catholic petition, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... Atlantic in June, and afterwards on our way up Davis’s Strait, we threw overboard daily a strong copper cylinder, containing the usual papers, giving an account of our situation. We also took every opportunity afforded by light winds, to try the temperature of the sea at different depths, as compared with that ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... very shy population, who seemed to live inland, having probably been molested by the warlike Gera men. It had been supposed that there was a second islet here, but the 'Southern Cross' boat's crew found that what had been taken for a strait was only the mouth of a large river, where the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the young exactly corresponds to the change in the treatment of the insane. We may look back to the old system of endless catechisms, apophthegms, moral fables, and the rest of the paraphernalia of moral didactics, with the same horror with which we regard the gags, strait-waistcoats, chains, and dark cells, of poor mad people before ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... mode of proceeding, and departure from Port Jackson. Visit Twofold Bay. Natives seen. Passage through Bass Strait and along the South Coast to King George the Third's Sound. Transactions there. Voyage to the North-West Cape, and Survey of the Coast between the North-West Cape and Depuch Island, including the examinations of Exmouth Gulf, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... many volumes which "they that sell" cannot procure, or which could only be bought at enormous rates, his caution (we will not say churlishness) was rather inconvenient for men of letters. But if hard pressed and in a strait, he would make his friend a gift of the book which was necessary to his studies. This course had the effect of preventing people from wishing to borrow. But many of the great collectors have been more generous than Pixerecourt. We forget the name (not ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... to us, mortality to immortality!' Then the pious soul goes joyfully onward to Ahura-Mazdao, to the immortal saints, the golden throne, and Paradise" (Ibid, p. 834). From these notions the writer of the story of Jesus drew his idea of the "narrow way" that led to heaven, and of the "strait gate" through which many would be unable to pass. Cicero (bk. vi. "Commonwealth," quoted by Inman) says: "Be assured that, for all those who have in any way conducted to the preservation, defence, and enlargement of their native country, there is a ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... (bind): (1) district, restrict, strictly, stringent, strain, restrain, constrain; (2) stricture, constriction, boa constrictor, astringent, strait, stress. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Some heretic corsairs from the islands of Olanda and Gelanda went to those of Filipinas, bent on plunder, in the month of October of the year one thousand six hundred; they had robbed a Portuguese vessel in the North Sea, and in the South Sea, having passed the Strait of Magallanes, some fragatas from Piru. These corsairs entered among these islands, committing depredations and threatening even greater excesses. For this purpose their almiranta and their flagship (in which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... professedly all brought on the footing of sisterly equality, we are not to suppose any Utopian degree of perfection among them. The way of pure spirituality was probably, in the convent as well as out, that strait and narrow one which there be few to find. There, as elsewhere, the devotee who sought to progress faster toward heaven than suited the paces of her fellow—travellers was reckoned a troublesome enthusiast, till ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... exaggerated an apprehension of the virtue of obedience, as to render it unfit for its higher ends." The uniform of the Jesuit is not an external garb, but such freedom is insignificant in the light of the "veritable strait-jacket," which is placed upon the inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty, is subjected to "a skillful, energetic and unremitting assault upon personal independence." Every ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... rubies in these depths is astonishing, but none can get down, and if any could they would be devoured by the serpents which abound there. This country is inhabited by pygmies and giants. The giants, who are by far the largest men to be seen in this strait, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... tell you a secret to ask it.—You may have heard that I have been unlucky this year? I did what I have never done before—speculated rashly; and I lost. That's just put me in a strait. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco The passage through the Strait Appearance of the Bay Town of San Francisco The anchor is let go The Author goes on shore His bad luck Sweeting's Hotel The Author and Mr. Malcolm propose visiting the American settlements They become acquainted ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... chance might bring them to the eye of the blameless sufferer—recur in the Letters! Brother and sister were ever on the watch for the symptoms premonitory of the return of this "their sorrow's crown of sorrows." Upon their little holiday excursions, says Talfourd, a strait-waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb herself, was their constant companion. Charles Lloyd relates that he once met them slowly pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, and found on joining them that they were ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... Bridge is another instance of the power of man in applied science. A railway bridge is required to further communication, but Government demands that the navigation of the Strait shall not be impeded. The mind of a great man is called into action, and by applying scientific principles to engineering art, we have that wonder of the world, the great tubular bridge over the Menai Straits. This work required a mind of no ordinary nature, but such a one ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... whose women had ever been distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and daring, and ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... my father tried to raise our spirits by speaking hopefully and prayerfully of our position, but it was hard work to raise the spirits of poor creatures in so perilous a strait, and after a time he became silent, and we all sat wondering, and bending down to feel if the water was ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... he was a lord—a real lord—and, after the first shock of astonishment, could comprehend that wealth and power were in his possession, he, though the most interested person, never thought, as the two women had done, of the desperate strait in which his marriage placed him, but broke out into short peals of laughter, and exclaimed in the intervals, "that it was mighty quare;" and when, after much questioning, any intelligible desire he had could be understood, the first one he clearly ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend, for the simple reason ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... I went, to see if I could find some way or passage, by which I might enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through which I attempted to pass; but the passage being very strait and narrow, I made many efforts to get in, but all in vain, even until I was well nigh quite beat out, by striving to get in; at last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that, by a sidling striving, my shoulders, and my ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan



Words linked to "Strait" :   archaicism, channel, Torres Strait, strait and narrow, Strait of Hormuz, Dardanelles, Hellespont, Korea Strait, desperate straits, Canakkale Bogazi, Korean Strait, Skagerak, Golden Gate, narrow, Skagerrak, strait-laced, Strait of Magellan, Pas de Calais, situation, Solent, Strait of Calais, Menai Strait, Strait of Ormuz, Bering Strait, Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Messina, dire straits, Bosporus



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