"Challenge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I shall challenge him very sharply about this, and if, as I believe, he has no justification for his statement, my opinion of him will be very ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... On the Genzano side stands the castellated villa of the Cesarini Sforza, looking peacefully across the lake at the rival tower, which in the old baronial days it used to challenge,—and in its garden-pond you may see stately white swans oaring their way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... it seems that you have discovered a comet, which is to run into the earth and destroy all human life, unless you prevent it. I know this because I know of the challenge you gave to the German Emperor in Canterbury. I know also of what you have been doing in Bolton. You are turning a coal pit into a cannon, with which you believe that you can blow this comet into thin air or gas before it meets the earth, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... his travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted; so that, as I once observed to Dr. Johnson, he DISPUTED his passage through Europe. He then came to England, and was employed successively in the capacities of an usher to an academy, a corrector of the press, a reviewer, and a writer for a news-paper. He ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... merely uncouth and lubberly; they grow furtive, suspicious, timid as wild animals, on the watch for a chance to run. Audacious enough at bird's-nesting, sliding, tree-climbing, fighting, and impertinent enough towards people of their own kind, they quail before the first challenge of "superiority." All aplomb goes from them then. It is distressing to see how they look: with an expression of whimpering rebellion, as though the superior person had unhuman qualities, not to be reckoned on—as ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... church livings shall be, like the dioceses, rearranged; and the cures be appointed by the bishop, but not without the approbation of the government. VI. The French government shall make provision for the prelates and clergy, and the Pope renounces for ever all right to challenge the distribution of church property consequent on the events of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... broke up, happier because of the challenge in the song to worthwhile effort, and ready now to begin the preparations of the impending journey to ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay
... stock, which Dolly had thrust into her trunk out of sheer economy. One or two copies, it seems, had remained in her repositories at Inverary, till she chanced to need them in packing a cheese, which, as a very superior production, was sent, in the way of civil challenge, to ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in these small poems, dealing varyingly with various phases of love, that the finest, the rarest, work in the volume is to be found. Such a poem as Imperante Augusto natus est (strong, impressive, effective as it is) cannot but challenge comparison with what is incomparable, the dramatic monologues of Men and Women, and in particular with the Epistle of Karshish. In Beatrice Signorini we have one of the old studies in lovers' casuistries; and it is told with gusto, but is after ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... fire-eater!" sighed Captain Pond. "I knew, when they told me he had founded a hospital, he wouldn't be satisfied till he'd filled it." Yet he could scarcely decline the challenge. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an admirable example how a person who sends a challenge should be treated. When Marc Antony, after the battle of Actium, defied him to single combat, his answer to the messenger who brought it was, "Tell Marc Antony, if he be weary of life, there are other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... came the answering song of the big guns. Though the attack had taken them by surprise, they were not slow in responding. With all that we think of the Boches we must give them credit for being savage, if unfair, fighters. They seldom declined a challenge, at least on ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... that is to say, between what Christ saw going on in the every-day world around Him and the Kingdom of Heaven. If by the Kingdom of Heaven in these parables is meant a place up in the clouds, or merely a state in which people will be after death, then I challenge you to get any kind of meaning out of them whatever. But if by the Kingdom of Heaven is meant (as it is clear from other parts of Christ's teaching is the case) the righteous society to be established upon earth, then they all have a plain and beautiful meaning; a meaning ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... her words were a challenge, and the shining mahogany table, with its delicate lace mats, its silver and its chrysanthemums, became a battle-field for opposing spirits. I saw Miss Mitty stiffen and the corners of her mouth grow rigid under ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... written, and was in danger of doing so on small provocation,—an infliction it must have been hard for his friends to have endured sometimes. Great stories are told of his remarkable memory,—one seldom equalled by any man. He was always willing to accept a friendly challenge to a feat of memory. One day in the board-room of the British Museum he handed to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in parallel columns down each of the four pages. This document, on which the ink was still wet, proved to be a full list ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... not the least formidable was the Russian Count Timascheff. And although the young widow was all unconscious of the share she had in the matter, it was she, and she alone, who was the cause of the challenge just given and accepted ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and assured me that I should charm all beholders in male attire. In short, as my second, if I would furnish her with proper credentials, she swore she would undertake to furnish me with clothes, and pistols, and courage, and every thing I wanted. I sat down to pen my challenge. When I was writing it, my hand did not tremble much—not more than my Lord Delacour's always does. The challenge was very prettily worded: I believe I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... by custome to Challenge a dedication, Justice would not allow, that what either was, or concern'd Sir Henry Wotton, should be appropriated to any other Persons; Not only for that nearnesse of Aliance and Blood (by which you may chalenge a civil right to what was his;) but, by a title of that intirenesse of Affection, ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... the process are the Challenge, the Acceptance and Settlement of Conditions, the Engagement, the Treatment of the vanquished, the Reward of the conqueror, and there are rules touching each of these, enough almost to furnish a ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... at the challenge and relapsed into moody silence. The talk turned on an aunt of Mr. Lippet's, rumored to possess money, and an uncle who was "rolling" in it. He began to feel in the way, and only his native obstinacy prevented ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... spirit of the wind at that moment, and she seemed to feel that some music was needed. She glanced up again at the bobolink, who had ceased his song; she nodded to him once as if for a challenge, and then, still leaning back upon the breeze, and keeping time with the flower in her hand, she broke out into a ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... that she was changing or would change. As a matter of fact, she had made more decisions, gone through more emotions, and become more of a woman in the little time since Francis had carried her off than in all her life before. The Marjorie of a year ago would not have answered the challenge of her husband to prove herself an honorable woman by taking over a long, hard, uncongenial task. She would have picked up her skirts and fled back to New York ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, "My brethren, the real cheap skate is the man who ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, Planting upon the topmost crag The staff of England's battle-flag; And, while from out its heavy fold Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, And weapons brandishing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... cloudy; the moon was set and it was dark, but Ralph knew by the scent that came in on the light wind, and a little stir of blended sounds, that it was hard on dawning; and even therewith he heard the challenge of the warders on the walls and their crying of the hour; and the chimes of the belfry rang clear and loud, and seeming close above him, two hours and a half after midnight. Roger spake not, and Ralph was man-at-arms ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... unbound, Reynolds cast one glance toward Glen, and saw her looking at him with a peculiar expression in her eyes. He seemed to read there a challenge, which could have but one meaning. He turned to Curly, and beholding that sneer of contempt still upon his face, he sprang ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... and stared at Davie in amazement. His voice was sharper now than ever I had heard it and there was a challenge in his ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... nothing; Francois has wounded an old peasant who refused to answer his challenge and who continued to advance in spite of the order to keep off. They are bringing him here, and we shall ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... a boy's game. One standing on a hillock or large boulder, from which he defies the efforts of his companions to dislodge him, exclaims, by way of challenge:— ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... it might account for much of the deviation of the compass during the past two days," I suggested. "Caprona has been luring us upon her deadly rocks. Well, we'll accept her challenge. We'll land upon Caprona. Along that long front there must be a vulnerable spot. We will find it, Bradley, for we must find it. We must find water on Caprona, or ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... astonishingly beautiful, that was the beginning and end of him. But behind this merely physical attractiveness of his guest glowed a lambent intelligence, quick as lightning. There was humorous challenge in those laughing ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... have made him suspect anything, and whether his congratulations were not ironical. Charmian said that her mistake was in not beginning with a cigarette instead of a cigar; she said she was ready to begin with a cigarette then, and she dared Cornelia to try one, too. Cornelia refused the challenge, and then she said, well, she would do ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... accounts. He was an undoubted marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge as Scott, and ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... bows like the proverbial chicken on the road. Then, after a couple of hundred paces at this speed, they stopped and began to graze quite calmly. Once I turned my camel back and the whole herd immediately took up the challenge again, coursed along parallel with me until they had made sufficient distance for their ideas of safety and then once more rushed across the road ahead of me as though it were paved with red hot stones, only to assume their previous calmness ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... follow the matter up. I accepted, and went with him to the challenged. I explained that in such a case a duel was customary, and in fact necessary; if he wished to avoid it, he would be forced to leave the academy. The challenged did not refuse the challenge, but said that as he was of weak constitution, shortsighted and without practice with any kind of weapons, he chose the American duel of ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... knocker of the dore, or cause an Aubade to be plaied under her Chamber Window: Look sharply about you, and behold how these Aubades decline, or whether it be worth your while to give your Rival the Challenge; or to stab, poison, or drown'd your self, to shew, by such an untimely death, the love you had for her; and on your Grave, bear this Epitaph, that through damn'd jealousie you murthered your self. These married Couple, used to do so; but see now what a sad life they live together, because ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... said, "Sir, if priests were now in measurable measure and number; and lived virtuously, and taught busily and truly the Word by the example of CHRIST and of his Apostles, without tithes offerings and other duties that priests now challenge and take: the people would ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... testimony of Swinburne, no one will deny that if ever one man knew another too well to be his biographer, as Mr. Benson says, the author of Aylwin was that man with regard to Rossetti. No one has ever ventured to challenge the assertion in the article on Rossetti in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that there was a time when with the exception of his own family the poet-painter saw scarcely any one save the writer of this book, whom he was never tired of designating his friend of friends. There is no need to ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... only important witnesses to a given act, but under only one condition can they testify. With the consent of their master they may testify UNDER TORTURE. It is a critical moment at this hearing when a litigant who is confident of his case proudly announces, "I challenge my enemy to put my slaves under torture"; or the other, attacking first, cries out, "I demand that my enemy submit his slaves to torture." Theoretically the challenged party might refuse, practically a refusal is highly dangerous. "If his slaves didn't know something bad, why were they kept ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... his window a great flag with a challenge on it "to all the people of Wimbledon assembled, or to any of them singly," and then he would be seen at his front gate waving a great red flag and gnawing a bone like a dog, saying that he loved Force only, and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... entered the lists, and entertained us with single combats. One champion, rising up and stepping forward from one side, challenged those of the other side, by expressive gestures, more than by words, to send one of their body to oppose him. If the challenge was accepted, which was generally the case, the two combatants put themselves in proper attitudes, and then began the engagement, which continued till one or other owned himself conquered, or till their weapons were broken. As soon as each combat was over, the victor squatted himself down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... I flew into a violent passion, I flung down my instrument in a rage, and swore I was not to be taught music at my age. He answered, with as much warmth, nor was he to be instructed by a strolling fiddler. The dispute ended in a challenge to play a prize before judges. This wager was determined in my favor; but the purchase was a dear one, for I lost my friend by it, who now, twitting me with all his kindness, with my former ignominious punishment, ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... greatly to my satisfaction, was engaged in clearing out the offices below ours, so that I was able to ascend without challenge and establish myself at my desk. I had not been there five minutes when another footstep sounded on the stairs and ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in making such bet or wager, upon any event or contingency whatever. Nor shall it be lawful for any person, directly or indirectly, to make a bet or wager with a voter, depending upon the result of any election, with the intent thereby to procure the challenge of such voter, or to prevent him from voting at ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... should say "huntin'," or "rippin'"—"I spent some evnins" he says "at your club." "My gals," he says also. "Capons" are not much eaten now. "Drinking wine" or "having a glass of wine" has gone out, and with it Mr. Tupman's gallant manner of challenge to a fair one, i.e. "touching the enchanting Rachel's wrist with one hand and gently elevating his bottle with the other." "Pope Joan" is little played now, if at all; "Fish" too; how rarely one sees those mother-of-pearl fish! The "Cloth is not drawn" and the table exposed to view, to ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... Our greatest challenge is still the world that lies beyond the Cold War—but the first great obstacle is still our relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. We must never be lulled into believing that either power has yielded its ambitions for world domination—ambitions which they forcefully restated ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... father provincial, Francisco Salgado, [34] and the father rector, Luis Pimentel, [35] were notified of the judicial decision by the archbishop—who, declaring himself to be a competent judge, notwithstanding [our] challenge of his cognizance, although he had approved our licenses and our administration of the sacraments, revoked the said licenses, and decreed that no one of the Society should minister in Mariquina, [36] and that the ministry there should ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Duke, whose authority was now fully established; but it was not long before a war broke out with his powerful neighbor Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, which, however, would scarcely deserve mention, but for the curious terms in which a challenge was sent by the Duke to the Count, who had come to raise ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... absent from Bonaparte than at Malmaison. We sometimes in the evening walked together in the garden of the Tuileries after the gates were closed. In these evening walks he always wore a gray greatcoat, and a round hat. I was directed to answer, "The First Consul," to the sentinel's challenge of, "Who goes there?" These promenades, which were of much benefit to Bonaparte, and me also, as a relaxation from our labours, resembled those which we had at Malmaison. As to our promenades in the city, they ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sort of shrinking away from love itself, even when I'm hungering for it. I can also catch signs of his pater's masterfulness cropping out in him. Small as he is, he disturbs me by that combative stare of his. It's almost a silent challenge I see in his eyes as he coolly studies me, after a proclamation that he will be spanked if he repeats ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... thought his challenge would be taken seriously. But when he saw the eager, joyous look of the boy Carteret—he was not yet nineteen—the flushed pleasure of the beardless face, he would not have retracted it for the world. He was just as good-natured ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... cannot expect to have many adherents among minds altogether unprepared for such views; yet it is certain that even those who most fiercely oppose me will recognise the power of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very novelty will challenge attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have any real insight. At any rate the point to be considered is this, that whether the novel views excite opposition or applause, the one condition of their success is that they be believed in by the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... beat the wind with hands of deathful challenge, while I looked on with that noble interest which the enlightened mind always feels in people about to punch each ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... is my companion," Lady Anne said, with a stiffening of herself for battle and a light in her eye which showed that she had not mistaken Lady Drummond's challenge, and had no objection to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the moment touching elbows with Kimbark on one side and with Merriam on the other, all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd." Their answering challenge of "Sold" was as the voice of one man. They did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance. (That was for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious, as reflex action and almost as rapid, and before ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the bay without a challenge from its stealthy foe, the white-belly. The voices of both are alike in their dissonance though different in quality and tone, and the smaller bird is invariably the aggressor. This is how they fight, or rather ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... gaining World Trade Organization membership. Lithuania was invited to the Helsinki summit in December 1999 and began EU accession talks in early 2000. Privatization of the large, state-owned utilities, particularly in the energy sector, remains a key challenge for 2001. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... thoroughly versed in the game of diplomacy, against whom she would be called upon to employ every manner of weapon at her command. She realized the weight of the foe, and thought she understood his tactics. So she accepted the challenge. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... ambitions that, perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation, that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies." In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... this march harassing and tedious. The scouts moved to within ten miles of Richmond, and Lieutenant Hopkins halting with a portion of them, Lieutenant Cunningham went on three miles further with eight men. He found a picket post of the enemy, where four videttes were stationed. He answered their challenge by declaring himself and party friends, and, advancing to the post, persuaded the Federals that they were an advance party of Woolford's regiment, which they represented to be returning from Tennessee to Kentucky to assist in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... worst, Bertrand. What is man? a beast of prey. An hour ago, and I'd have taken a crust, and gone in peace. But no: they would trick and juggle, curse them; they would wriggle and cheat! Well, I accept the challenge: war to ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... will cross a field although there is a dog inside the fence. Goodness knows that I would rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the creature. Or he will shout and whistle tunes that stir the dogs for miles. He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge. One might think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond the biting limit. Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath—the inner mesh ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... to his feet; his giant form towered over the multitude, and every eye fell before the haughty and scornful glance that swept council and audience like a challenge to battle. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... but his eye returned hate for hate, and so for a moment they stared at each other, while there passed between the two a silent challenge, which both felt was to be ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... other points, on which it was expected to act for the limitation or extermination of slavery, that the hopes of our fathers have not been realized; and that slavery has, at length, become so audacious, as openly to challenge the principles of 1776—to trample on the most precious rights secured to the citizen—to menace the integrity of the Union and the very existence of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I found a letter from the Impresario Mapleson, who proposed that I should go to London with an Italian company, and play at Drury Lane on the off-nights of the opera. I was in doubt for a considerable time whether to challenge the verdict of the British public; but in two weeks after reaching Italy, by dint of telegrams I had got together the force of artists necessary, and I presented myself with arms and baggage in London, in ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... difficulty, Marquis, in making my request; but a fellow has just insulted me, and I earnestly wish, not to be behind-hand with him, that you would at once go and carry him a challenge from me. You know that in a like case I should joyfully repay you ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... commoners, yet the Squire could not forego his own appetite for sport. He turned about to the strollers: "I will give a purse of silver pennies to the one who wins the next bout," said he. "Let any and all be welcome to the ring, and the bout shall be one of three falls. Challenge anyone in Nottingham; I dare swear some lad will be found who shall show you how to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... He declined the challenge of her eyes. After all, she belonged to the Russia whose growing strength was the greatest menace to European peace, and whose attitude towards ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... challenge and, knowing well how it would end, he had had his gunmen barricade the trail. They were picked-up men of that peculiar class found in every Western town, the men who live by their nerve. There were some who had been officers and others outlaws; ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... we rattled across the crispy brown moor, and splattered through bogs with a loose rein, in lunatic enjoyment, until we checked at the edge of a deep "combe." Then—when the old yellow Southerner challenged, and our young host cheered him with "Hark to Reveller, hark!"—to hear the challenge and the cheer re-echoed again from the opposite cliff; and—as the little pack in full cry again took up the running, and scaled the steep ascent—to see our young huntsman, bred in these hills, go rattling down the valleys, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... criticism of this program is contained in the question, "Why doesn't the author try to put his program in practice?" The force of this challenge has been felt, even by one who is imbedded in a different occupation and who has peculiar obligations that would seem to forbid entering a new field of service. This much is certain, were I a minister in any degree successful, I would be unlikely to feel the need of any radical change ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... glance over her shoulder, she saw that he still kept the same distance behind her. She saw also, in that single look, that he was well-known, for several were saluting him at once. What could it mean? It must be the G. B. of the Temple! Should she stop and challenge his pursuit? The obstacle to this was a certain sinking at the heart accounted for by an old memory. She must elude him instead. But she did not know a single person in the place, or one house where she could seek refuge. There was an hotel before her! But, unattended, heated, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Southampton sea For exile, through the silver night I hear Nol! Nol! Through generations down to me Your challenge, builder, comes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... rougher medicine will the end produce." Stephen with grief and anger heard his doom - "Go to the farmer? to the rustic's home? Curse the base threat'ning—" "Nay, child, never curse; Corrupted long, your case is growing worse." "I!" quoth the youth; "I challenge all mankind To find a fault; what fault have you to find? Improve I not in manner, speech, and grace? Inquire—my friends will tell it to your face; Have I been taught to guard his kine and sheep? A man like me has other things to keep; This let him ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... after such a challenge, would be a poor compliment. As for entreating you to take the Priory, I really do not feel ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... arms was, without doubt, to seat yourself and write your 'Lettres Juives,'" said the king; "those inspiring letters in which the knight of the cross mocks at Christianity and casts his glove as a challenge to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Roman literature. In his peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to produce a better teacher than he in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... coasting about in a shabby one-horse concern and casting anchor opposite his patients' doors like a Cape Ann fishing-smack. By the time he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out of his way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of great pieces in the background. I would not have a man marry above his level, so as to become the appendage of a powerful family-connection; but I would not have him marry until he knew his level,—that is, again, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... certain air of being a handsome man—which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man—which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a good deal in the silence. When he came up to her, she offered him her sweet old cheek with a look of pity which touched, and yet affronted, the Perpetual Curate. He thought it was the wisest way to accept the challenge at once. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... expected to be as productive of aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the poet's self-exposition must have interest for all students of Platonic philosophy, inasmuch as Plato's famous challenge was directed only incidentally to critics of poetry; primarily it was to Poetry herself, whom he urged to make just such lyrical defense as we are ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... sweet courtesy that governed at that board, I am sure that such a man could never have felt himself the least honored guest. The poet's heart was open to all the homelessness of the world; and I remember how once when we sat at his table and I spoke of his poem of "The Challenge," then a new poem, and said how I had been touched ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... course, a ready answer to the criticism advanced above. It is that teachers have learned from bitter experience how little history their pupils retain as they pass along the regular route. No teacher of history will deny this. Still it is a standing challenge to existing methods of historical instruction. If the study of history cannot be made truly progressive like the study of mathematics, science, and languages, then the historians assume a grave responsibility in ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a man ill, lonely, threatened with blindness, can easily feel what I may call the spiritual challenge of the ages. He must either be strong and rule; or he must be weak and go down. He must get the dominion over circumstance, or circumstance must get the dominion over him. To be merely knocked about by fate and submit to it, even in the case of seemingly inevitable physical infirmity, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Abercrombies in a duel, that's all. He was really a very fine man! They had a dispute about a horse, and Mr. Abercrombie struck Mr. Dampier's little negro groom over the head with his crop. After that, of course, there was nothing to do but challenge him. You must be thinking of Barton Bailey, Eliza DuFour's grandfather on her mother's side. He was a complete scoundrel. His poor wife (she was a Garrett; very dull, poor thing, like all the Garretts, but at least the Garretts were honest, which is more than even charity can ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... immediate effect of reviving the crew's failing spirits. The ocean was observed with renewed care. Each man wanted one last look with which to sum up his experience. Spyglasses functioned with feverish energy. A supreme challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale, and the latter had no acceptable excuse for ignoring this Summons ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to spend a couple of hours over him without assenting to this claim, even though there may be a weariness in such a panorama of ugliness and an inevitable reaction from it. This anomaly, and the challenge to explain it which appears to proceed from him, render him, to my sense, remarkably interesting. The artist whose idiosyncrasies, whose limitations, if you will, make us question and wonder, in the light ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... They therefore challenge the trial. If they fail to be 'reasonable,' or if they can only be reasonable at the expense of some of the facts—that is to say, if they find no place for some of the authentic facts, and so have to explain them away; or if, on the whole, they make too ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... been able to learn, in all the other colonies where emancipation has taken place. There is certainly nothing in all this that indicates a disposition on the part of the emancipated to throw off the employment of their former masters, but much the reverse. We may safely challenge contradiction to the assertion, that at the expiration of the jubilee there were not a set of free laborers on earth from whom the West India planters could have got more work for the same money. It may be proper in these days, when the maxims of slavery have so fearfully overshadowed the rights ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... been expecting the challenge from the moment they began to move, but so suddenly and unexpectedly did it come at last, that he remained for the moment speechless, gazing at the dimly seen figure framed in the arched way, with the light playing upon the sword extended toward ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... to come over and engage in single combat. The challenge, after some deliberation, was accepted; and that chief, with about twenty of his followers, wading across the stream, formed on the northern bank, where they stood facing our party at about the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... accurate fashion. There was a Congressional committee investigating us at the time, and on my next appearance before them I asked that Mr. Grosvenor be requested to meet me before the committee. Mr. Grosvenor did not take up the challenge for several weeks, until it was announced that I was leaving for my ranch in Dakota; whereupon, deeming it safe, he wrote me a letter expressing his ardent wish that I should appear before the committee to meet him. I promptly canceled my ticket, waited, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... upon Claire again. Yes, she was superb: beyond all challenge glorious. And all the more I felt as one who has betrayed his friend and is angry with fate for sealing ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... felt hat that the Dutchman had worn when he took his long trip over the prairie to invite them. Each family he visited had pinned a ribbon to its rim; and now it swayed back and forth, a gay and varicolored challenge to the hands reached out ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the very eyes of Elise, he washed the Yellow-back's face in the grease of one of the roasted caribou! And the Yellow-back was a man! Yes, a grown man! And it was then that Jacques Dupont shouted out his challenge to all that crowd. He would fight the Yellow-back. He would fight him with his right arm tied behind his back! And before Elise and the Yellow-back, and all that crowd, friends tied his arm so that it was like a piece of wood behind him, and it was his right arm, his fighting arm, the better half ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the first refiners of the English tongue, were both translators out of the Italian. Now for those that count it such a contemptible and trifling matter to translate, I will but say to them as M. Bartholomew Clarke, an excellent learned man and a right good translator, said in a manner of pretty challenge, in his Preface (as I remember) upon the Courtier, which book he translated out of Italian into Latin. 'You,' saith he, 'that think it such a toy, lay aside my book, and take my author in hand, and try a leaf or such a matter, and compare ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... wonderful was it all. At their feet, under the great vault of heaven, a speck in the midst of the white vastness, huddled the golden city—puny and sordid, feebly protesting against immensity, man's challenge to the infinite! ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... having some difficulties with the college administration about this," he told them. "President Whitburn has even gone so far as to challenge my fitness to hold a ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... he sat immovable, whilst the mare, freed from the fret of the crowd, stood stock-still. In his bearing, in the magnificent picture he made under the flaming skies, there seemed a subtle challenge to the two Englishwomen. All his English nature rose in revolt against the barriers that rose between himself and Damaris, daughter of his mother's race; but, curbing his passion with the self-control he had learned in British fields of sport, he remembered that he belonged primarily to his father's ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... rejoined. "Well, if that's the case, it leaves you without a leg to stand on. I challenge you to find any instance where a Greek made any difficulties about accepting a piano from a friend. But seriously—while we are talking about it—you introduced the subject: I didn't—I might as well explain to you that ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... shure of it, thin. All my propensities are gintale. I love horses, and dogs, and fine clothes, and money. Och! that I was but a jintleman! I'd show them what life is intirely, and I'd challenge Masther William, and have my revenge out of him for the blows ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and respect that the Count accepted the challenge," said I to the King; "and here the offending party made the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... James's, and subsequently, in 1828, to the Union Arms, 26 Panton Street, Haymarket. On 24 Jan. 1821 it was decided that Cribb, having held the championship for nearly ten years without receiving a challenge, ought not to be expected to fight any more, and was to be permitted to hold the title of champion for the remainder of his life. On the day of the coronation of George IV, Cribb, dressed as a page, was among the prizefighters engaged to guard the entrance to Westminster ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... founded, was to ignore it. And you will find, if you look back into our records, that our revered fathers in geology plumed themselves a good deal upon the practical sense and wisdom of this proceeding. As a temporary measure, I do not presume to challenge its wisdom; but in all organised bodies temporary changes are apt to produce permanent effects; and as time has slipped by, altering all the conditions which may have made such mortification of the scientific flesh desirable, I think the effect of the stream of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... gorge to the eastward, launched them again in South Bay, and rowed down the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain, and under cover of dark nights would glide with muffled oars beneath the very guns of Ticonderoga, within hearing of the sentries' challenge to each other, and so on to Crown Point, whence they could watch the movements of the enemy, and see their transports passing to and fro with provisions ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his rapid, comprehensive intellect, was not the last to notice this; he was seized with impatience, and, instead of awaiting Bernadotte in the midst of the group where he happened to be, he turned abruptly to the embrasure of a window, as if to challenge the ex-minister of war to follow him. Bernadotte bowed graciously to right and left, and controlling his usually mobile face to an expression of perfect calmness, he walked toward Bonaparte, who awaited him as a wrestler awaits ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... other passing uses this present world, so full of trial and temptation and suffering, may have, this surely is the supreme and final use of it—to be a furnace, a graving-house, a refining place for human character. Literally all things in this life and in this world—I challenge you to point out a single exception—work together for this supreme and only good, the purification, the refining, the testing, and the approval of human character. Not only so, but we are all in the very heat of the furnace, and under the very graving iron and in the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... distant province, a member usually stays there as permanent member, knowing very well that there will be revolutions at home before he can write and receive an answer; and if another member should be sent, he has only to challenge him, and decide the contested election in ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... guarded against the reigning queen, who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal scion in the hive. At this time both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each other, a shrill, fine, trumpet-like note that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two by the abdication of the reigning queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the next younger. When the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... bench in front of the cabin. He grinned impudently. His manner was an exasperating challenge. Evidently he did not ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... by our ancestors in rocks or promontories, we may in no case acknowledge that praise be due vnto vs, nor yet the other of minstrels, and taking of birds and fishes. For we holde it to be part of an honest and ingenuous mind, as to refute false crimes, so not to challenge vndeserued praise vnto himselfe, nor to accept ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... of the close relationship between the individual and society, it is passing strange that while the individual is expected to possess a high standard of character, society itself may indulge in all sorts of questionable practices without so much as a challenge. Many a person winks at the frivolity and immorality of society, while at the same time he expects the most circumspect behavior on the part of his neighbor. The existence of these two standards which ought to coincide but which in reality are far apart is responsible ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... This challenge of Spinoza's had to be met. With some investigators this seemed very literally all there was to be done about the study of man—to show how far the body could explain the activity we call "the mind." The unfortunate feature was that they thought they had to start ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... this challenge, but they tried in vain to catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of triumph as ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... behind him the faster he would run. I have frequently known him to be out by himself all night, and return the next morning blown out with food which he had procured for himself by pulling down a doe single-handed. When he was a young dog, and gave tongue upon a scent, a challenge was offered, but never accepted, that the dog should find, hunt, and pull down two buck elk, single-handed, within a fortnight, assisted only by his master, with no other weapon than a hunting-knife; there is no doubt whatever that he would have performed it easily. He then belonged ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the bitterness of death is past,' then was the time for him to be hewn in pieces (1 Sam 15:32,33). I shall not therefore meddle with the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power; no, though they as to Antichrist's ruin are revealed; because by the Holy Ghost there is a challenge made, notwithstanding the time is set, and by the word related to the man of wisdom, to find it out ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... black shadows of walls and fences, he yet set so swift a gait with his confounded long legs it kept me puffing to follow. But we found clear passage, seeing no one close enough to interfere with our rapid progress, while no challenge sounded, until we crept, silently as possible, around the dilapidated end of the old tobacco shed, and a black figure, scarcely distinguishable in the gloom, suddenly arose, uttering no word, yet with threatening gesture, barring ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... decided the corporal. The odds were more than two to one, but such odds as that was only a challenge to Yankee ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... more conspicuous for its spread than its circumference, stretching not very far from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough-end. I do not think I saw a specimen of the British Quercus robur of such consummate beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt what England has to boast of, and I will not challenge the British oak. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... main harvest was hit by drought. But in 1999, the first full year of peace in 30 years, progress was made on economic reforms and growth resumed at 4%. The long-term development of the economy after decades of war remains a daunting challenge. The population lacks education and productive skills, particularly in the poverty-ridden countryside, which suffers from an almost total lack of basic infrastructure. Recurring political instability and corruption within government ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... languish, but blossomed to new and varied flower. Liszt turned back to the symphony from his new-fangled device for his two greatest works. It has, indeed, been charged that the symphony was accepted by the Romantic masters in the spirit of a challenge. Mendelssohn and even Schumann are not entirely free from such a suspicion. Nevertheless it remains true that all of them confided to the symphony their fairest inspiration. About the middle of the century, at the high point ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... flats seemed almost bare when I neared the shore, where the great gnarled branches of the live-oaks hung far over the muddy bank. Floating on my back for noiselessness, I paddled rapidly in with my hands, expecting momentarily to hear the challenge of the picquet, and the ominous click so likely to follow. I knew that some one should be pacing to and fro, along that beat, but could not tell at what point he might be at that precise moment. Besides, there was a faint possibility that some chatty corporal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error, for we die but once; and therefore it is necessary that our skill be more exact since it cannot be mended by another trial." How wise, then, how far-seeing, how practical, and how urgent is the prophet's challenge and demand. "How wilt thou do in the swelling ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... growling. I infer that their object is to strike terror, because the lion at the same time erects the hair of its mane, and the dog the hair along its back, and thus they make themselves appear as large and terrible as possible. Rival males try to excel and challenge each other by their voices, and this leads to deadly contests. Thus the use of the voice will have become associated with the emotion of anger, however it may be aroused. We have also seen that intense pain, like rage, leads to violent ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... so presumptuous as to take up a challenge which Mr. Speaker has thrown down. He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to mention any country in which manufactures have flourished without the aid of prohibitory laws.... Sir, I am ready to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... satire hit its mark only too exactly; and two days later Sumner was assaulted for it in an assassin-like manner,—struck on the head from behind while writing at his desk, and left senseless on the floor. Sumner was considered too low in the social scale for the customary challenge to a duel, and there was no court in Washington that would ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns |
