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Wrest   Listen
noun
Wrest  n.  
1.
The act of wresting; a wrench; a violent twist; hence, distortion; perversion.
2.
Active or moving power. (Obs.)
3.
A key to tune a stringed instrument of music. "The minstrel... wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp."
4.
A partition in a water wheel, by which the form of the buckets is determined.
Wrest pin (Piano Manuf.), one of the pins around which the ends of the wires are wound in a piano.
Wrest plank (Piano Manuf.), the part in which the wrest pins are inserted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books



... brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, that Thou shouldst send the promised ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... consciousness of love and life Though tombed in pallor, with no epitaph But silence! What mighty spell with power rife Can wake thee into Being's passion strife? Yet if there be such, let it rest unsought; For every boon thou couldst from breath derive I would not wrest from thee that higher lot, The need of deathlessness, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... attack was directed, about noon, upon the suburb of Czyste. This was defended by forty guns, which made havoc in the Russian ranks, while two battalions of the 4th regiment, rushing upon them in their disorder, strove to drive them back and wrest Wola from their hands. The effort was fruitless, strong reinforcements coming ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,[659] constraining the king, as it were, to make use of his left arm to cut off his right, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late Prince of Conde was treated, inasmuch ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... glory in the struggle," he said. "Did not the people, old and young, pour out to the Crusades to wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the infidels? This is a more glorious task. It is to save God's followers from destruction; to succour the oppressed; to fight for women and children as well as for men. It is a holier and nobler object than that for ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... up to fight for Liberty, And called him from Ravenna: never knight Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight! None fell more bravely on ensanguined field, Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield! O Hellas! Hellas! in thine hour of pride, Thy day of might, remember him who died To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain: O Salamis! O lone Plataean plain! O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea! O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylae! He loved you well—ay, not alone in word, Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... apparently, as I have said, an effort of the human soul to wrest itself free from the entanglement of physical lust—which lust, though normal and appropriate and in a way gracious among the animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness become diseased and morbid ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... adjudication by the Supreme Court of cases in which appeals may hereafter be taken, but interdicts its jurisdiction on appeals which have already been made to that high judicial body. If, therefore, it should become a law, it will by its retroactive operation wrest from the citizen a remedy which he enjoyed at the time of his appeal. It will thus operate most harshly upon those who believe that justice has been denied them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... Then conviction of the truth sank into his mind. It was the Lord of Aquila who was the idol of the Babbianians. What, then, more natural than that the conspirators should have sought to place him on the throne they proposed to wrest from Gian Maria? He dubbed himself a fool that he had not guessed ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... the simple words with an intensity that indicated his desire to wrest from their ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... not content with attempting to wrest from us our inherited freedom of religious worship, Charles Stuart and his abettors have pursued the courageous constancy with which we have defended the same, with more animosity than they ever did any crime. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... does not here intend to intimate that all the priests and Levites were cruel, and all Samaritans tender-hearted: to apply them so would be to wrest his words. This teacher grasps his instrument by the extremity, first one extremity and then the other, that his lesson may reach further than if he had grasped it by the middle. The honourable office, and even the generally high character, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... climb on the house-tops and throw stones at them. You needn't laugh, I tell you I should be terrible! I feel as if I could face a whole regiment myself. The spirit—the spirit of my ancestors is in my breast, Arthur Reginald, and woe betide that enemy who tries to wrest from me my native land!" Peggy went off into a shriek of laughter, in which Arthur joined, until the sound of the merry peals reached Mrs Asplin's ears as she lay wearily on her pillow, and brought a smile to her pale face. "Bless the dears! How ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart; If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And, I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority; To do a great right do a little wrong, And curb this cruel ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from his grasp. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... window, but as impotent as ever against that even stream of low confidential talk. But I would not give up. Fate and the fog had brought me here, the one solitary soul perhaps who by the chain of circumstances had both the will and the opportunity to wrest their secret ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... not pretend to comprehend it; only at times I can vaguely feel what the peasant's attitude must have been. All the things of the countryside had an intimate bearing upon his own fate; he was not there to admire them, but to live by them—or, say, to wrest his living from them by familiar knowledge of their properties. From long experience—experience older than his own, and traditional amongst his people—he knew the soil of the fields and its variations almost foot by foot; he understood the springs and streams; hedgerow and ditch explained ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... Oh Hampden, then and now! The year he left us, The People in full Parliament could wrest The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King; And now, he'll find in an obscure small room A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men That take up ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... she attempted to wrest a promise from Beatrice that she would hold no further communication with the prohibited lover. But Beatrice would give ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... spraying, with fine mist, the faces of the girls. Another vivid glare of lightning was followed by a long, loud rattling peal ending in a terrific crash that seemed fairly to rend the heavens, while the wind shook the tents as if giant hands were trying to wrest them from their fastenings. Then from all over the camp arose frightened shrieks and wails and cries, but Annie Pearson now was too terrified to utter a word. The next moment there was a loud, ripping tearing sound, and as fresh cries broke out, Mrs. Royall's voice, ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... the instrument, with a view to its protection against all assailants; but one day an equally powerful fellow, a St. Helen's collier, cock of the walk in his neighbourhood, made up to the theodolite bearer to wrest it from him by sheer force. A battle took place, the collier was soundly pummelled, but the natives poured in volleys of stones upon the surveyors and their instruments, and the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... consequence of several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... which could only be rivalled by the brilliancy of the eye which the bonnet shaded. It was the only striking feature in his countenance; but when once noticed, it ever made a strong impression on the spectator. About his neck there hung in a scarf of sky-blue silk a WREST as it was called—that is, the key with which a harp is tuned, and ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... opening of the tenth century we find in the chronicles of the time an account of a certain ambitious count of Troyes, Robert by name, who died in 923 while trying to wrest the crown of France from Charles the Simple. His county passed to his son-in-law, who already held, among other possessions, the counties of Chteau-Thierry and Meaux. His son, in turn, inherited all ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures "served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else." He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... moment she escapes from the despotism of brute force, and is suffered to unfold and exercise her powers in her own legitimate sphere, shares with man the sceptre of influence; and without presuming to wrest from him a visible authority, by the mere force of her gentle nature silently directs that authority, and so rules the world. She may not debate in the senate or preside at the bar—she may not read philosophy in the university or preach in the sanctuary—she may not direct the national ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... me." O false my friend! False, false, a random charge, a blame undue; Wrest not fair reasoning to a crooked end: False, false, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... was so badly crippled that she could not again peril Austria-Hungary or wrest Poland from the grasp of Germany, the latter country gathered her available resources for a decisive, crushing blow in France. We have several times mentioned Verdun. It is well to study its location on the map, about 130 miles ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... early age of thirteen; and thus the kingdom came under the regency of Raymund II. of Tripoli. Happily for the kingdom whose king was a child and a leper, the attention of Saladin was distracted for several years by an attempt to wrest from the sons of Nureddin the inheritance of their father—an attempt partially successful in 1174, but only finally realized in 1183. The problems of the reign of Baldwin IV. may be said to have been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... republics lay open to their not too scrupulous hands; the wealth of Milan and Naples was squandered on them in retaining-fees and salaries for active service. There was always the further possibility of placing a coronet upon their brows before they died, if haply they should wrest a town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a province from a needy Pope. The neighbours of the Montefeltri in Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of them Condottieri. Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, Vitelli of Citta di Castello, Varani of Camerino, Baglioni of Perugia, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... more. It is useless to insist, Brandon. If you can wrest the story from her, all well and good. You will hate me then, dear love. But it cannot be helped. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... malconformation[obs3]; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion[obs3], want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c. v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric[obs3], awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump[obs3], deformed; harelipped; misshapen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... for some time from the vessel's deck at the strong fortress which has been held securely in the grasp of Great Britain for two hundred years, we thought of the many unsuccessful attempts that have been made during those two centuries to wrest it from British control; most noted of all, the long siege by the French and Spanish forces that continued for four years when Napoleon was supreme in France. What might have been the result, if England's grasp on the rock had been broken ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... long, Paris was divided into two hostile camps, burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On one side stood the democratic republicans, who looked back with longing regret to the days of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving, as they did, that tranquillity and protracted peace must soon wrest the reins of power from their grasp, and therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger, and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the sans-culottes and the loud-mouthed ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... then, that these paths do not lead to happiness; they cannot guide anyone to the promised goal. Now, I will very briefly show what serious evils are involved in following them. Just consider. Is it thy endeavour to heap up money? Why, thou must wrest it from its present possessor! Art thou minded to put on the splendour of official dignity? Thou must beg from those who have the giving of it; thou who covetest to outvie others in honour must lower thyself to the humble posture of petition. Dost thou ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... be poor and work, John," he exclaimed one day. "It gets tiresome having everything laid ready to your hand, with nothing to do but take it. Life must be full of snap when you have to dash your will up against old Dame Fortune and wrest what you want out of ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... upon empty graves! Ay, but he held his own, the monk—more man Than any laurelled cripple of the wars, Charles's spent shafts; for what he willed he willed, As those do that forerun the wheels of fate, Not take their dust—that force the virgin hours, Hew life into the likeness of themselves And wrest the stars from their concurrences. So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul That wears the livery of circumstance And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye. For who rules now? The twilight-flitting ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... finally consented. He saw the shadow of the reconstruction and dreaded it; and there were no ties of blood to hold him in the States. Italy itself was in turmoil. Il Re Galantuomo, that Piedmontese hunter, Vittorio Emanuele, wished to liberate Venice from the grasp of Austria, to wrest temporal power from the Vatican, and to send the French troops back to France. Well, he accomplished all these things, and both my father and the prince were with him up to the time he entered the Quirinal. After victory, peace. My father invested in villas and palaces, added to his fortune through ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... of things is inevitably vitalistic. Ghosts—the primitive protoplasm from which the gods are made—are assumed, and once assumed dominate the savage intelligence. Fear combines with ignorance to resist any conception that will wrest power from the hands of these extra-natural agents, "Nature's haughty lords," rule all, and their dynasty is the hardest of ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... Upper Rhine in 1814, and Flanders and the Lower Rhine in 1815, and concluded that a similar result would have attended a like bold invasion under Marlborough and Eugene. There never was a greater mistake. The great object of the war was to wrest Flanders from France; when the lilied standard floated on Brussels and Antwerp, the United Provinces were constantly in danger of being swallowed up, and there was no security for the independence either of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... despiteful wrong she takes her seat, In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet. There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: So rue the nations when their kings offend— When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will. Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear! Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear, That the foul record may no more be seen— Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... fumbling with the lock, the third man flung himself upon me, determined that I should not escape. With great good fortune, however, I managed to unbolt the door, and after a desperate struggle, in which he endeavoured to wrest the weapon from my hand, I succeeded at last in gripping him by the throat, and after nearly strangling him flung him to the ground and escaped into the street, just as his associates, hearing his cries of distress, dashed ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... Bedfordshire, where Dorothy met her importunate lover, was the seat of Anthony Grey, Earl of Kent. There is said to be a picture there of Sir William Temple,—a copy of Lely's picture. Wrest Park is only a few ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... sailing the Mediterranean,—seven long weeks from Alexandria to Frejus,—the disgust and weariness of France increased. Jourdan and Bernadotte, in a blundering way, attempted to wrest power from the Directors, but proved unequal in prestige and ability to the task;—a more powerful and more subtle political craftsman was needed. Then in the gloom of the public {260} despondence three sudden flashes electrified ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... not the negro per se who distracts and threatens to destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... another kind of lord, a spiritual one; who was to serve as a medium for breaking up the power of the old lords of the civitas, and from whom it would be an easier task for the commune of the future to wrest the power and the sovereignty which was to make it a free and ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... on account of his knowledge that the majority of the stock was safe in his possession, he was able to enjoy his trip to the Pacific Coast regardless of rumors at one time prevalent that a big market operator, who was supposed to retain an ancient grudge against him, was trying to wrest from him the control of the company he had ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... caught her hand. "How low you have rated me—to think I would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... since his death," continued Rotherby. "I was but in time to wrest it from the hands of that spy of the Pretender's, who was in the act of destroying it when I caught him. My devotion to his majesty made my course clear, sir—and I desired Mr. Green to procure a warrant for ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... paintings, said to have been by him, hung on the walls at Earl's Croombe until they were used to patch broken windows there in the last century. Butler went into the service of Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, at Wrest in Bedfordshire, where he had the use of a good library and the friendship of John Selden, then steward of the Countess's estate. It was there and in association with Selden that he began his literary work. Some time ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the first Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred sepulchre they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the hands of the infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of these renowned crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were gone —destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because Godfrey and Baldwin ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... When any Western Gent, or person of accompt, wanteth money to defray his expences at London, he resorteth to one of the Tynne Marchants of his acquaintance, to borrow some: but they shall as soone wrest the Clubbe out of Hercules fist, as one penie out of their fingers, vnlesse they giue bond for euerie twentie pound so taken in lone, to deliuer a thousand pound waight of Tyn at the next Coynage, which shal be within ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... this hold against your will, And then you sware you well know how, Though now you swerve, I know how ill. But thus this world his course doth pass, The priest forgets a clerk he was, And you that have cried justice still, And now have justice at your will, Wrest ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... pirate tried to put down piracy, and he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king fell, says ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... his movements; I have heard of all the inquiries he has set on foot to prove my death, and all the investigations he instituted, when he found that the boy who was with me had been set on shore again. I have given him full scope and licence to act as he chose; but I have come at length, to wrest from him that which is not his, and to strip him of a rank to which he has no claim.—Have you anything to say, Harry Sherbrooke?" he continued, fixing his eye upon him. "Have you anything to say ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... also looks, for a man who has just been indulging in a fit of severe self-depreciation, exceedingly confident and full of faith in himself. And why not? Let that man despair who has lost confidence in his own ability to wrest favors from the fingers of Fate or Fortune. Despair is not for ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... view of the sky; a place virtually unknown before he planted there the rude buildings that house his wonderful inventions; yet now a place known to scientific men all over the world; the Mecca of many a mind seeking to wrest from Nature her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... especially nitrogen, is hardly less injurious and will actually lessen the yield of fruit though it may increase the size of the vine. Not only must the food be in right proportions but in such condition as to be readily available. Tomato roots have little power to wrest plant food from the soil. The use of coarse, unfermented manure is even more unsatisfactory with this than with other crops. The enormous yields sometimes obtained by English gardeners from plants ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... tried to wrest it from his grasp. Finding his strength too great, she straightened swiftly and lifting one foot, brought her riding boot down fiercely with all her strength on Lynch's hand. With a smothered grunt his fingers laxed, and she caught up the weapon and stepped ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... world, talks of an Empire upon which the sun never sets, then the time arrives when we are forced to interfere. Great Britain has possessions which she is not strong enough to hold. Germany is strong enough to wrest them from her, and means to do so. The English fleet must be destroyed. South Africa, then, will come to Germany, India to Russia, Egypt to France. The rest follows as a matter ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... was in vain to attempt to win her sister's confidence, and she was too delicate to seek to wrest her secrets from her; she therefore took no notice of this effusion of love and disappointment, which ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... of Louisiana? No one knew with certitude. The letters of Livingston and Monroe had convinced Jefferson that Louisiana included at least West Florida, and for two years he sought by every diplomatic device to wrest from Spain a confirmation of this shadowy title. That Spain did not intend to cede West Florida and that France had no expectation of receiving it seems clear enough from the instructions to Laussat. What he handed over to ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... undergrowth firmly implanted on their tender frames. Yet, practically, none of this is inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or for the very welfare and ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... rulers of this world—which no creature can give or take away, which her Lord will conserve, even to the overthrow of every system—whether civil or ecclesiastical, that will persevere to dispute them or use means to wrest them from her hands; and thus they give occasion to her members, in virtue of their communion with one another and common obligations to Christ, to testify by oath and otherwise against their pretensions as, rebellion against ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... when the interrogatories were made in the fiscal court in 1512-13, not one of his seamen is brought up to give evidence. A voyage so important in its nature, and so essential to the question in dispute, is not even alluded to, while useless pains are taken to wrest evidence from the voyage of Ojeda, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... that from half past ten A. M. until nine P. M., when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles Summerton was missing. Being naturally of a reticent disposition, he has since resisted, with but one exception, any attempt to wrest from him a statement of his whereabouts during that period. That exception has been myself. He has related to me the following in the ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... his wife's stick approaching him, his talk would break off at once into the garden and its prospects, for she was still haunted by the fear that he would some day go back to the ring, and she never missed the old man for an hour without being convinced that he had hobbled off to wrest the belt from the latest upstart champion. It was at his own very earnest request that they inscribed "He fought the good fight" upon his tombstone, and though I cannot doubt that he had Black Bank ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... loved fun and adventure, though he had early learned to carry upon his broad shoulders a full portion of the responsibilities of the household. In the bleak land where he lived there is no shifting of these responsibilities. Everyman, and every boy, too, must do his share to wrest a living from the sea and rocks, and Bobby had no thought but to do his part. If a boy cannot do one thing in Labrador, he can do another. He can cut wood, hunt small game, attend the fish nets, jig cod—there are a thousand things that he can do, and make sport of as he does them, too, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... Union had met no violent resistance either from insurgents or from the States. In the Virginia convention of 1788 Patrick Henry had said: "I never will give up that darling word 'requisitions;' my country may give it up, the majority may wrest it from me, but I never will give it up till my grave." Nevertheless, when the requisitions on the States were given up, the chief cause of dispute in the Union was removed. Up to this time the only distinctly sectional ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... same, I never can convince myself that he is a mere fortune-hunter. Perhaps the very fact that I didn't make the smallest effort to wrest him from Mademoiselle Croesus when he tried to make me jealous seemed proof to him that he was no more to me than a caprice. So, when we made each other an atrocious scene and I told him to go off to her, he simply took ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... forward into the invisible world is the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried by piling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest the Thunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; and next we read of a few specified criminals, who had been excessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his direct indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... vessel; in his boyhood he had rather feared the great gray ocean, and only later in life did he become so strongly attracted by its power and mystery and by the impression of its eternal struggle against those who must wrest a precarious living from its depths that it provided the background for his most striking and characteristic stories. Three summers in Newfoundland and one on the Labrador Coast resulted in The Way of the Sea, Doctor Luke of the Labrador, and ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... his fellowman hath fed, Then 'spite the law forbidding interest, He thinketh naught but cursed gain to wrest. Who taketh usury methinks hath said: 'O Lord, in beauty has Thy earth been wrought! But why should men for naught enjoy its plains? Ask usance, since 'tis Thou that sendest rains. Have they the trees, their ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... diligence, that through such actual meditation he shall confirm them in such a sure habit of spiritual faithful strength, that all the devils in hell, with all the wrestling that they can make, shall never be able to wrest it out of ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... such a profit that he began to pile up a small bank-account in spite of himself; so he bought an automobile, which served to eat up any monthly profits and guarantee a deficit under the most favorable circumstances. Being thus relieved of financial uncertainty, he laid plans to wrest from Kurtz a full partnership in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... to France the ships of the line with which he had sailed from Toulon in 1778, resolved to go first upon the American coast, off South Carolina or Georgia. Arriving with his whole fleet at the mouth of the Savannah, August 31st, he decided to attempt to wrest the city of Savannah from the British. This would have been of real service to the latter, had it nipped in the bud their ex-centric undertaking; but, after three weeks of opening trenches, an assault upon the place failed. D'Estaing then sailed for Europe with the ships ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... fraud, when it is unjustly accused of sedition and mischief. Lest any one should suppose that these our complaints are unfounded, you yourself, Sire, can bear witness of the false calumnies with which you hear it daily traduced; that its only tendency is to wrest the sceptres of kings out of their hands, to overturn all the tribunals and judicial proceedings, to subvert all order and governments, to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the people, to abrogate all laws, to scatter all properties and possessions, and, in a word, to involve every thing ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... not be trusted to maintain the same position over night, shifting as expediency demanded until most of his colleagues, particularly the irreconcilables, were exasperated beyond endurance. At one of the most critical periods Senator Borah appealed to Senator Knox to wrest the leadership from the Massachusetts Senator, with intimations that he would have the support of the "bitter enders" at the forthcoming convention at Chicago. Mr. Knox does not love Mr. Lodge but he ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... to make the disagreeable confession, when the thoughts of the whole party were suddenly diverted to another channel, by the opening of the door and the entrance of one of those gaunt sons of the forest who were wont to hang on the skirts of civilisation, as it advanced to wrest from ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... saving Wessex it saved England. The spell of terror was broken. The tide of invasion turned. From an attitude of attack the northmen were thrown back on an attitude of defence. The whole reign of AElfred was a preparation for a fresh struggle that was to wrest back from the pirates the land ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which once were theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled in the immemorial infancy of our race. The primeval conditions must be met by primeval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... thing, The aweless soul, within man's breast inhabiting? Who tell, how, passion-fraught and love-distraught The woman's eager, craving thought Doth wed mankind to woe and ruin fell? Yea, how the loveless love that doth possess The woman, even as the lioness, Doth rend and wrest apart, with eager strife, The link ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... tough, hard work of years was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented at the eleventh hour; and there was great joy among the angels of His ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... pity," Ida replied with one of her reckless laughs, "for it so often happens that she cannot keep it, and those who wrest it from her do not care to keep it, and so it comes to be what the geographies used to call one of the 'waste places of the earth.' As the world goes, I think I had better retain my kingdom, small as ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... Pacorus agreed to divide their troops, and to engage simultaneously in two great expeditions. Pacorus undertook to carry the Parthian standard throughout the entire extent of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, while Labienus determined to invade Asia Minor, and to see if he could not wrest some of its more fertile regions from the Romans. Both expeditions were crowned with success. Pacorus reduced all Syria, and all Phoenicia, except the single city of Tyre, which he was unable to capture for want of a naval force. He ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... charitable support, or for the more radical treatment by isolation in institutions; indeed, some who are born to fail in this inheritance are with us no more, even though they were of our generation; they have paid the penalty which their effort to wrest the inheritance from us has cost, and the grave of the murderer, the burglar, the suicide, the red-handed rebel against the law of social inheritance, is now their resting place. Society then is, when taken in the widest sense, made ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... and his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which strove to take possession of her heart and to wrest her away from him forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness was ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... sharing it with him. Confusion, strife and anarchy ensued. Ernest, a very determined and violent man, succeeded in compelling his brother to give him a share of the government, and in the midst of incessant quarrels, which often led to bloody conflicts, each of the two brothers strove to wrest as much as possible from Austria before young Albert should be of age. The nobles availed themselves of this anarchy to renew their expeditions of plunder. Unhappy Austria for several years was a scene of devastation ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... Wind was upon them. Against this terrific onset the Prince held firm, and as the Wind dashed himself upon the Sword, thinking to wrest that from him, also, it leapt to life, a broad and beauteous sheet of scarlet flame, that rose in an ascending barrier high and yet higher at every buffet that it sustained. The more the Wind flung himself upon it in fury, the greater ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... following as an Instance—Cole's Sovereignty of God, Page 41, 2d Edit. "To this also might be added the strict Injunctions that God hath laid upon the subordinate Dispensers of his Law; as namely, to judge the People with just Judgment, not to wrest Judgment, nor respect Persons; yea, he curseth them that pervert Judgment, and will surely reprove them that accept Persons; and shall mortal Man be more just than God? will he, under such Penalties, command Men to do thus, and not ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... sudden driving sheets, blotting out all but the nearest cars or vehicles, while the wind seemed to lie in wait at every corner ready to spring forth and wrest umbrellas out of the hands of pedestrians at the most critical points ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... a group of archeologists set to work to explore the site of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown Island, Va. For the next 22 years the National Park Service strove—with time out for wars and intervals between financial allotments—to wrest from the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise "James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of information has been ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... The fault is mine. Myself did wrest it from you. The horror which came o'er me interrupted Your tale at its commencement. May it please you, 10 Continue it to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... notice a single masquerader unduly excited by liquor: there was not a word or motion from the lighter sex that could have been construed into an impropriety. There was something almost pathetic to me in this attempt to wrest gayety and excitement out of these dull materials; to fight against the blackness of that wintry sky, and the stubborn hardness of the frozen soil, with these painted sticks of wood; to mock the dreariness of their poverty with these flaunting raiments. It did not seem like them, or rather, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... eyes, and to which his ears listened at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead with something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung from the loins of his own. Crudeness he saw, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... looked at each other in increased wonderment. What manner of chap was this same Obed, to be able to wrest a living from a bounteous Nature in the clever way he did? Steve in particular was ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... her turn, back in the festally decorated house, she came to give the newly married pair her felicitations, she was well pleased to see Stuart quite himself again, smiling at her with the proud look of the bridegroom from whom no human being can wrest the prize he has just secured. And as she noted Jeannette's equally evident happy content with the man she had married, Georgiana took courage for their future. Surely—surely—they could go from these scenes of luxury to the plainer life that awaited them, and miss ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... preponderance and continental greatness of France. To renew intestine troubles? The times are no longer the same. To destroy our finances? Finances founded on a flourishing agriculture can never be destroyed. To wrest from France her colonies? The colonies are to France only a secondary object; and does not your Majesty already possess more than you know how to preserve? If your Majesty would but reflect, you must perceive that the war is without an object; or any presumable result to yourself. Alas! ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... first visit to the place, weeks after their return to New York. He had not felt friendly to Droom since the day at the prison; but now he was forgetting his resentment, in the determination to wrest from him the names of Jane's father and mother. He was confident that ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... most part he was successful; but at last he received so numbing a blow across the arm that he quivered with pain and anger as he sprang forward, and, in place of retreating, seized the stick, and tried to wrest it away. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... in the wide world there is no such folly, as that of the over wise! Motive—motive enough have they! While the Patrician senate, and the Patrician Consuls hold with firm hands the government, full well they know, that in vain violence or fraud may strive to wrest it from them. Let but the people hold the reins of empire, and the first smooth-tongued, slippery demagogue, the first bloody, conquering soldier, grasps them, and is the King, Dictator, Emperor, of Rome! Never yet in the history of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,— Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once crimson, hallow many ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of London at important crises in the nation's history. He will there see how, in the contest between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, the City of London held as it were the balance; how it helped to overthrow the tyranny of Longchamp, and to wrest from the reluctant John the Great Charter of our liberties; how it was with men and money supplied by the City that Edward III and Henry V were enabled to conquer France, and how in after years the London trained bands raised the siege of Gloucester ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... has been filled with the fire of genius. There are few men whom life takes hold of as it does me, who sacrifice themselves for their duty as I do, who demand experience—knowledge, power, beauty—as I do. There are very few men who will wrest out of existence as much as I will, or know and have as much of life. I am a boy just now, and only beginning to live; but I have my purpose in hand, and I know that if I am given health and life, there is nothing that men have known that I shall not know, nothing that is done in the world that I ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... heel. The Russian Slav? He challenges the supremacy of Germany and Europe. Hurl your legions at him and massacre him. Britain? She is a constant menace to the predominancy of Germany in the world. Wrest the trident out of her hands. Ah! more than that. The new philosophy of Germany is to destroy Christianity. Sickly sentimentalism about sacrifice for others—poor pap for German digestion. We will have a new diet. We will force it on the world. It will be made in Germany. A diet of blood and iron. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... and he watched their buggy disappearing down the pass, he found himself possessed of a new and inspiring faith in the approachableness of the great world he was about to confront. He had rather expected to deal with it with hammer and pick,—to wrest the gold of experience from the hardest and flintiest bedrock; and all at once he felt as if he had struck a great "placer" with nuggets of the most agreeable description lying about, ready ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... it lend its aid? Some anxious mother watching and praying beside her sick child, or some youthful student plunging with stern delight into the arcana of science, to wrest from the revealing spirits of the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... presume upon the fact. From the mingling of these doubts and fears grew a feeling of resentment against Dic—a conviction before the fact. She wished him to know her regard for him, but she did not want him to learn it from any act of hers. She desired him to wrest it from her by main force, and as little awkwardness as a man may use. Had Dic by the smallest word or act shown a disposition to profit by what Rita feared had been excessive frankness in her letter, or had he, in any degree, assumed the attitude of a confident lover, such word or act would ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... has attempted to wrest his sceptre and kingdom from him, in that he hath endeavoured to thrust himself into his throne, which is the heart and conscience of his people. The heart and conscience is that which Christ claimeth for his own proper and peculiar seat: 'My son, give me thy heart.' 'That Christ may dwell ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... their wrongs and advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen, and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of England, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... the motion, and took her hand in his. She glanced about wildly. She was in a whirl of terror of everything under heaven. Too dignified to wrest herself away and run, she gave him a swift glance of appeal, then bent her head. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... like despair, Makes me these inner foldings tear! With desperate effort bids me wrest The yearning secret from my breast! Far be the thought that any blame Can fix on thy beloved name! The hapless Minstrel may not feign; But thou, I know, canst all explain— Yet let me from this place depart, To nurse my fainting, sicken'd heart! Yet let me in a cloister dwell, The veiled ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... pain, he dropped Jessie's arm and sprang forward, and attempted to wrest the whip from the infuriated ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... the kingdom, and the very names of the provinces; dividing the country anew into eighty-three departments, and coupling with this new arrangement a number of details which were evidently calculated to wrest the whole executive authority of the kingdom from the crown and to vest it in the populace. At another sitting, the whole property of the Church was confiscated. On another night, the Parliaments were abolished; and ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... territory. It was difficult to know how to treat this almost alien people. Governor Claiborne found the militia in the territory entirely inadequate for the purposes of protection, should Spain make an attempt to wrest the land back from the United States. In one of his anxious despatches to headquarters he says plaintively: "With respect to the Mulatto Corps in this city, I am indeed at a loss to know what policy is best to pursue."[58] The corps, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... of the subject. Referring to the above debate in Parliament, and particularly to the speeches of Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel, he dwelt strongly upon the rapacities of England; and congratulated his country that it had secured Texas in spite of her attempts to wrest it from America. The object of the speech of General Cass was clearly to involve the United States in a war with Great Britain; but there were men in the American senate who, conscious of the weakness of their cause, stood in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to prevent our enemies—the strongest and most violently aggressive powers that ever have threatened civilization—from winning decisive victories. But even while we were conducting defensive, delaying actions, we were looking forward to the time when we could wrest the initiative from our enemies and place our superior resources of men and materials into ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt

... as he was trying to tear the ribbon from my breast. In my agitated state of mind I had not been aware I was wearing a coat that had it on. 'You may shoot me, Captain,' I said, 'but you shall not wrest that ribbon from me.' 'Where did you get it?' 'The prince president of the Republic, Louis Napoleon, gave it me.' 'When?' 'On September 23, 1853.' 'How is it, then, that you were arrested? Was it on a barricade?' 'No, Captain, in my own apartment. It is not likely I should ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... is conveyed to her so securely that no quibbles of law can wrest it from her at any future day, for none of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... proof against the Damascus blade. The blood streamed from numerous wounds received by either warrior. The Moor, seeing his antagonist exhausted, availed himself of his superior force, and, grappling, endeavored to wrest him from his saddle. They both fell to earth; the Moor placed his knee upon the breast of his victim, and, brandishing his dagger, aimed a blow at his throat. A cry of despair was uttered by the Christian warriors, when suddenly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... mind the sentiments and hopes which the nation would form of the royal infant. Scarce was he born, when paternal solicitude embraced, as it were, his whole life. Impatient to know his destiny, that solicitude plunged into futurity, determined, if possible, to wrest from time, the secrets of which ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... great detriment at present, and many scandals have arisen, to the great loss of our credit and the welfare of these conversions. This is especially true of that of the kingdoms of Xapon, which the said father commissary-general of Nueva Espana has attempted to wrest from us with great violence, although that is greatly to the disservice of His Divine Majesty, and that of your Majesty. Such also would be the case if our holy order cannot be established in that and other fields of conversion—discalced, poor, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... ourselves that ... we are permitted to stand on the giant's shoulders, and enjoy an outlook that would be quite hidden to us, if we had to trust to our own short legs; or we may resentfully chafe at our bonds and, like Prometheus, vainly strive to wrest ourselves from the rock of the past, in our eagerness to bring relief to ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... Grenadiers, the latter commanded by Prince Amedeo. The fighting continued through the day over very widely distributed ground, but from about nine in the morning the supreme interest was concentrated at and near Custoza, in which the Archduke promptly detected the turning-point of the battle. To wrest Custoza from the hold of the Italians was to the Austrians on the 24th of June 1866, what the taking of the crest of Solferino had been to the French on the 24th of June 1859. La Marmora in person led the Grenadiers into action; they proved worthy of their reputation, but after losing ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... thirteenth century to the sixteenth), Spain was flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths. Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their roots deep down in the hearts of the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall not be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below. He dines commonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as wrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never fears to want any of these. But who can endure to be wedded to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... administration. His fealty to the king consisted merely in an understanding that he was to follow the banner of the sovereign in case of war. But in fact, these feudal lords were more frequently found claiming entire independence, and struggling against their nominal sovereign to wrest from ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... go, And save thy soul from coming woe. Or if thou wilt not set me free, Wroth for this insult done to me. With his brave brother's aid my lord Against thy life will raise his sword. A guilty hope inflames thy breast His wife from Rama's home to wrest. Ah fool, the hope thou hast is vain; Thy dreams of bliss shall end in pain. If torn from all I love by thee My godlike lord no more I see, Soon will I die and end my woes, Nor live the captive of my foes. Ah fool, with blinded eyes to choose The evil and the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... is not a movement to wrest from the Turk the sovereignty of Palestine. Zionism seeks merely to establish in Palestine for such Jews as choose to go and remain there, and for their descendants, a legally secured home, where they may live together and lead a Jewish life; where they may expect ultimately to constitute a majority ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... spirit and matter, between soul and soul? To me it seems hopelessly inscrutable, and all effort to elucidate it, like the language of the Son of Maia, 'by night bringeth darkness before the eyes, and in the daytime nought clearer.' I shall as soon expect to wrest her buried secrets from the Sphinx, or to revive the lost mysteries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... nearly frantic, and made at the Jew to wrest the instrument from his hands. But Benoni was agile, and eluded him, still playing vigorously the one chord, till Nino cried aloud, and sank in a chair, entirely overcome by the torture, that seemed boring its way into ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... dark and dreary, and everything seemed full of gloom. Chester walked on; he took no heed of the way, but turned corner after corner with reckless haste, one hand working in his bosom as if he could thus wrest away the pain that seemed strangling him, and the other grasping his walking-stick upon which he paused and leaned ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... a secret. There are spies This hour at work. But, as thou art a man, Whom I have picked and chosen from the world, Swear that thou wilt be true to what I utter; And when I've told thee that, which only gods, And men like gods, are privy to, then swear, No chance, or change, shall wrest ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... new phases of materiality chiefly by an offensive and defensive alliance he was now able to engineer between himself and the house of Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. Seeing the iron manner in which he had managed to wrest victory out of defeat after the first seriously contested election, these gentlemen had experienced a change of heart and announced that they would now gladly help finance any new enterprise which Cowperwood ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human form, it was given to him and to his company to plan and initiate,—he declines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal, irrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of science, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it into the mere tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... Bismarck was successful. After vainly seeking to buy Venetia from the Austrian Court, Italy agreed to side with Prussia against that Power in order to wrest by force a province which she could not hope to gain peaceably. Russia, too, was friendly to the Court of Berlin, owing to the help which the latter had given her in crushing the formidable revolt of the Poles in 1863. It remained ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... no one could move them from their places! So firmly were they fastened to the floor, that to remove them one would have had to take up the planks of the deck, for which tools were wanting to us. The Captain, moreover, could not be loosened from the mast, nor could we even wrest the sabre from his rigid hand. We passed the day in sorrowful reflection on our condition; and, when night began to draw near, I gave permission to the old Ibrahim to lie down to sleep, while I would watch upon the deck, to look out for means of ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... the warlike Sulus from their neighbors in the south, to care for the needs of the empire of the Indies (for one of the reasons why the Philippines were kept, as contemporary documents prove, was their strategic position between New Spain and the Indies), to wrest from the Dutch their growing colonies of the Moluccas and get rid of some troublesome neighbors, to maintain, in short, the trade of China with New Spain. it was necessary to construct new and large ships which, as we have seen, costly as they were to the country for their equipment and ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... most upon; whence the Ignorantest Persons of these as well as the more knowing, are usually far less conversant in the plain Doctrines of Jesus Christ, than in St. Pauls difficult Epistles; which, as heretofore, many who are unlearn'd wrest to their own Destruction, tho' their needs, I think, no skill but that of Attention to what the Apostle is speaking of, to see that he teaches none of those Doctrines which many are taught to believe he delivers to the prejudice ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... the pistol the long line of young athletes surged forward, amid loud cries from the crowd that had gathered to witness the start. Many eyed Fred hopefully; for the word had gone around that upon him Riverport must depend to wrest victory from the grasp of that tall runner, Boggs, who was said to be a tremendous "stayer," and as speedy ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... collection of compositions by the great German masters and mediators. The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the moon's pale rays, which led, alas! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... also that on the completion of the Panama Canal we might be exposed to much international friction, and unless we were ready to defend the Canal and its approaches, a Foreign Power might easily do it great damage or wrest it from us, at least for a time. Here, too, was another motive for facing the possibility of war. We were growing up in almost childish trust in a world filled with warlike nations, which regarded war not only as the obvious way in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... her mother, who sat all day slowly making beautiful baby linen for one of the big shops, and cemented Henrietta's friendship with the lachrymose Mrs. Banks. To be faced with a mutton bone and a few vegetables, to have to wrest from these poor materials an appetizing meal, was like an exciting game, and she played it with zest and with success. She had the dubious pleasure of hearing Mr. Jenkins smack his lips and seeing him distend his nostrils with anticipation; the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... following on the trail of genius—so it behoves the Aristotle who would discover the laws of the rhythm of prose to study the masters of the art, masters by instinct and a faultless ear and the grace of God, and endeavour by patient induction to wrest from their sentences the secrets of their harmonies. Who will write the prosody ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... overcome him in an unguarded moment, and induced him to avenge an attempt made to dishonor his daughter. The story of the old man touched the Virey, who had a manly heart wrapped up in a forbidding exterior. But it was a delicate undertaking even for a vice-king to attempt to wrest a rich estate out of the clutches of the "Holy Office" without himself being suspected of heresy, or of disloyalty to the Church. Yet Ravillagigedo was never at a loss for expedients when justice was to be done or the oppressed relieved. The best advice, however, that he could give the old man was ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... to wrest from the senate the control of the public land and, with the aid of the Latini and the plebeians, to put an end to the system of occupation.[4] The lands which he proposed to divide were solely those which the state had acquired through conquest since the general assignment by king ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... moment to our present inquiry. But that it was relied upon as an endowment of the most gifted heroes; that it was exercised by them in extremity, as if to subdue nature from whom they had borrowed it, and to wrest the very power of destruction out of her hand; and that such practical conquest was sometimes achieved by them, or is said to have been achieved by them, is just as certain as that Macpherson's translation is before us now. What we refer ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... but in a quarrel the wildest gossip had not fancied. Reeling, feet slipping, knees and hands locking, eyes staring, no word spoken and breathing hard, the two struggled in the middle of the cooped-up room—Hawk striving to free and kill himself; Laramie determined to wrest the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... enough here to blow the whole crew to fragments," he muttered. "And what is more, I'll do it too, in order to wrest ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"

... those of the dead, told a more eloquent tale, mayhap, then than the eyes could do. The chief agent of the Committee of General Security walked deliberately round the table until he stood once more close beside the man from whom he longed with passionate ardour to wrest an all-important secret. With brutal, grimy hand he raised the head that lay, sunken and inert, against the table; with callous eyes he gazed attentively on the face that was then revealed to him, he looked on the waxen flesh, the hollow eyes, the bloodless lips; then he shrugged ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy



Words linked to "Wrest" :   seize



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