"Bestride" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer, but beckoning Hugh, leaped into the saddle and rode away; and a very stalwart, manly horseman he looked, deserving a better charger than it was his fortune to bestride. John stood staring after him, or rather after the grey mare (for he had no eyes for her rider), until man and beast had been out of sight some twenty minutes, when he began to think they were gone, and slowly re-entering the house, fell into a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old German print of the Via Dolorosa; but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Whilst low to earth thy curving haunches bend, Thy sweepy tail involv'd in clouds of sand; Erect in air thou rear'st thy front of pride, And ring'st the plated harness on thy side. But, lo! what creature, goodly to the sight, Dares thus bestride thee, chaffing in thy might? Of portly stature, and determin'd mien? Whose dark eye dwells beneath a brow serene? And forward looks unmov'd to fields of death: And smiling, gently strokes thee in thy wrath? Whose brandish'd ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... mode of progression than the animal's neck. A very slight study of the human anatomy would satisfy the most exacting that nature never intended youths of fifteen or sixteen to strain their muscles after the fashion of acrobats, so as to enable them to bestride an elephant's spine." ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... of self-interest, it requires great skill to bestride the capricious mare called Opportunity, and make her lead to the end in view. Every winner must possess a strong will and a dexterous hand. But Louis did not devote much thought to the matter. Like the foolish ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... in the saddle, if thou rightly understandest what God notes for thee! Look how fell this wild beast has become, through not being corrected by the spurs, since thou didst put thy hand upon the bridle. O German Albert, who abandonest her who has become untamed and savage, and oughtest to bestride her saddle-bows, may a just judgment from the stars fall upon thy blood, and may it be strange and manifest, so that thy successor may have fear of it! [2] For thou and thy father, retained up there by greed, have suffered the garden of the empire to become desert. Come thou to see ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... loneliness, grew into many strange ways. She did outride any man in the county, and she had a blue-roan by the name of Robin Hood; which same, methinks, no man in or out o' th' county would 'a' cared to bestride. She would walk over to Pebworth ('piping Pebworth,' as Master Shakespeare hath dubbed it) and back again, a distance o' some six miles; and afterwards set forth for a gallop on Robin Hood, and be no more a-weary, come eventide, than myself from a trip 'round the gardens. She swam like a ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... because they can more easily distinguish themselves in perilous times, nor can they keep together a great train of henchmen, except by war and the strong hand. For it is from the generosity of their chief that each henchman expects that mighty war-horse which he would bestride, that gory and victorious spear, which he would brandish. Banquets, too, and all the rough but plentiful appliances of the feast are taken as part of the henchman's pay; and the means of supplying all this prodigality must be sought by war and rapine. You would not so easily persuade them ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... could bestride a horse he wondered impatiently what it could be that kept Jim Galloway so long away. And if he was never coming back. But he knew that high up among the cliffs, hidden away in the ancient caves, Jim Galloway's rifles ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... to bestride our mules, which by this time were fagged, and as melancholy as the mountains. When we left the refuge there were no traces of the sun on any of the peaks or glaciers. A more sombre ascent cannot be imagined. Vegetation had absolutely disappeared, and in its place ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Wade and the Honorable Milton Waring it was decided to prefer no charges against Harrington Rives, who pleaded to be allowed to carry out his plan of going to Mexico to look after his interests there. He departed for the south, where he could bestride a burro and lose himself among ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the hero cried, "That e'er to chase or battle more These limbs the sacred steed bestride, That once my Maker's image bore! But not for sale or barter given; Henceforth its Master is the Heaven— My tribute to that King, From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth, Honour, renown, the goods of earth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... leading a goat, scarcely more bearded and shaggy than its owner. Others, still lazier, and wrapped in the rough pelone hanging from their shoulders like an Irishman's frieze coat, bestride diminutive mules, while their wives trudge by the side, carrying burdens of firewood or vegetables on their heads and shoulders. Waggons, drawn by oxen and loaded with wine-casks, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... time. So I propose To embalm in Latin my philosophies. Well seize your hour! But, ere you die, you'll sail A British galleon to the golden courts Of Cleopatra." "Sail it!" Marlowe roared, Mimicking in a fit of thunderous glee The drums and trumpets of his Tamburlaine: "And let her buccaneers bestride the sphinx, And play at bowls with Pharaoh's pyramids, And hale white Egypt with their tarry hands Home to the Mermaid! Lift the good old song That Rob Greene loved. Gods, how the lad would shout it! Stand up and sing, John Davis!" "Up!" called ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... The russet clouds across the 'Lo Fu' lie, so e'en to dreams it's closed. The green petals add grace to a coiffure, when painted candles burn. The simple elf when primed with wine doth the waning rainbow bestride. Does its appearance speak of a colour of ordinary run? Both dark and light fall of their own free will into the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to find that the Myriobiblon, with its Latin translation, forms a folio volume of some 1500 pages. When on an embassy to Assyria, he carried his library—some 300 rolls—with him, presumably on camels. Thus, we suppose, he could bestride his dramatic camel, his poetic camel, or his theological camel as the mood took him. The Myriobiblon was compiled merely as a handbook for his brother Tarasius, that the latter might enjoy a brief synopsis of ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... gold through every landscape flowed, That trees were wont with precious stones to flower, Or that in those far aeons man was born With such gigantic length and lift of limbs As to be able, based upon his feet, Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands To whirl the firmament around his head. For though in earth were many seeds of things In the old time when this telluric world First poured the breeds of animals abroad, Still that is nothing of a sign that then Such hybrid creatures could have been begot ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... and training them up in the way along which they should not go, so that when they were old they were very little likely to depart from it. Such a set of restive, hard-mouthed wretches as Lord Westport and I daily had to bestride, no tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord Westport's, subsequently created Lord Oranmore, distinguished for his horsemanship, and always splendidly mounted from his father's stables at Castle M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with ruined tempers and vicious habits ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... these words, not knowing what was required of her, she turned to Alessandro, the chief executioner, and asked what she was to do; he told her to bestride the plank and lie prone upon it; which she did with great trouble and timidity; but as she was unable, on account of the fullness of her bust, to lay her neck upon the block, this had to be raised by placing a billet of wood underneath it; all this time the ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... des Invalides, where the aged or maimed soldiers, the living monuments of so many battles, were walking or sitting under the elms of its broad esplanade; when we saw the colossal statues of statesmen and warriors frowning from their pedestals on the bridges which bestride the muddy and narrow channel of the Seine; when we came in sight of the gray pinnacles of the Tuilleries, and the Gothic towers of Notre-Dame, and the Roman ones of St. Sulpice, and the dome of the Pantheon, under which lie the remains of ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... dwellings— Ruined shadows of tents and penfolds and shelters, bough from bough rent, and spoiled by wind and by weather. Gone is 'Amir, her ancients gone, all the wisest: none remain but a folk whose war-mares are fillies, Yet they slay them in every breach in our rampart— yea, and they that bestride them, true-hearted helpers, They contemn not their kin when change comes upon them, Nor do we scorn the ties of blood and of succor. —Now on 'Amir be peace, and praises, and blessing, wherever be on ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... keep the feet off the splash-board, the steps, the points of the fastenings of carriage and harness are all silvered and kept bright. Nor does the use of the precious metal stop here; the niggers who bestride the poor horses are put into high jack-boots fitted with plated buckles and huge spurs, both equally brilliant. These niggers have a most comical appearance; they wear a skull-cap, or a handkerchief under a gold-banded hat; some wear a red short-tailed jacket, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Phoebus in a mood to give some other advice, but, as the resolute pungy captain's form seemed to bestride the young man's mind, it rose more and more stalwart, and appeared to lead towards Dover, where so many poor souls, in the joys of intercourse and freedom, were like little birds unconscious of the hawks above them, and no man in the world but Levin Dennis ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... as kindly spread the flowery lawn: 30 Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? Loves of his own, and raptures swell the note. The bounding steed you pompously bestride, Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. Thine the full harvest of the golden year? Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer: 40 The hog, that ploughs not, nor obeys ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... their heads with the carriage of an empress. The stranger's own entrance into Capri was less dignified, for either he had to toil painfully in the blazing sun up that steep picturesque flight of steps and reach the plateau above, perspiring and probably out of temper; or else he was compelled to bestride a miserable ass which a bare-footed damsel steered upward by means of the quadruped's tail. Nowadays, we are spared this original and somewhat humiliating manner of arrival at our journey's end. There are little carrozzelle, drawn by clever black Abruzzi cobs awaiting us, and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... tending the horse Bavieca, so that there were few days in which he did not lead him to water, and bring him back with his own hand. And from the day in which the dead body of the Cid was taken off his back, never man was suffered to bestride that horse, but he was alway led when they took him to water, and when they brought him back. And this good horse lived two years and a half after the death of his master the Cid, and then he died also, having lived full forty years. And Gil Diaz buried him before the ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... long-drawn-out, when spread over four hundred pages. Suppose, for instance, is the writer's mode of argument, a malicious demon let loose, with power to set the earth topsy-turvy, on condition of keeping it still an earth. With what exultation does he bestride the Himalayas to watch the convulsions which he causes! How does he kick his heels against the mountain-flanks, in ecstasy at seeing men bleached and blistered with the chlorine or nauseated with the sulphuretted hydrogen which he has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Nemesis, however, overtook him. In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to northern New Jersey. Here many of the people were Tories. Lee fell into a trap, was captured in bed at a tavern by a hard-riding party of British cavalry, and carried off a prisoner, obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and slippers. Not always does fate appear ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... shouts of laughter made the roof ring again. But if the strong liquor failed to make due impression upon him, the like cannot be said of Jack Roby, who, it will be remembered, took the part of the Fool, and who, having drunk overmuch, mistook the hobby-horse for a real steed, and in an effort to bestride it, fell head-foremost on the floor, and, being found incapable of rising, was carried out to an adjoining room, and laid on a bench. This, however, was the only case of excess; for though the Sherwood foresters emptied their cups often enough to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Then did Andy bestride his hack, and in triumph at his trick on the postmaster, rattled along the road homeward as fast as the beast could carry him. He came into the squire's presence, his face beaming with delight, and an air of self-satisfied superiority ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... proper men to see. Not the veriest tailor would walk on Derby day. He "would mount a mis-teached hippogriff, and risk the chance of a purl, rather than not show at the covert-side." Who, indeed, would not bestride a steed when he might meet the Assassin and the O'Bluster in the ring? But ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... sixteenth, and the Revolutionists in the eighteenth century, have contrived to render their present aspect mutilated and repulsive in the extreme. On entering, I was struck with the two large transverse Norman arches which bestride the area, or square, for the bases of the two towers. It is the boldest and finest piece of masonry in the whole building. The interior disappointed me. It is plain, solid, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... to say it wasn't—but he had done it so long, and was of so sporting a gait and cut, that he felt himself somewhat privileged. Moreover, the majority of horsemen are so satisfied with the animals they bestride, that they cock up their jibs and ride along with a 'find any fault with either me or my horse, if you ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca, ha! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... vulgar costermonger to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour |
