"Wrest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relative; and while she was yet there, the castle of her ancestors was daringly wrested from the hands of the Protector's troops, by an aged kinsman of her own, and a handful of armed men. The gallant deed fired her zeal more keenly, and strengthened her resolution to wrest Fast Castle from the hands of the invaders. She had been detained at Home until the day on which Florence Wilson was to assemble the stout-hearted and trust-worthy in the copse above Houndwood. Her kindred would have detained her longer; but she resisted their entreaties, and took leave ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... said Fouquet; "I understand men pretty well; I know you are incapable of forfeiting your word; I do not wish to wrest your secret from you, and so let us ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... inundated and destroyed; and in all these inundations immense loss of life of men and animals. It is plain that miracles of courage, constancy, and industry must have been accomplished by the Hollanders, first in creating and afterwards in preserving such a country. The enemy from which they had to wrest it was triple: the sea, the lakes, the rivers. They drained the lakes, drove back the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... produced effects so rapidly, and in which, in every case, the effects have been directly opposite to what short-sighted mortals had anticipated. It was in 1756, scarcely forty years ago, that the French, being in possession of the provinces, attempted to wrest from us those portions of America which we occupied. What was the result? After a war which, for cruelty and atrocity, is perhaps unequalled in history, both parties employing savages, by whom the French and English were alternately tortured and burnt to death, France, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... became excited while encouraging the young future "Sister" to her noble task. The days when, with the inmates of the convent, she had prayed that the Emperor Rudolph might fulfil the Pope's desire, and in a new crusade again wrest the Holy Land from the infidels, came back to her memory, and Heinz Schorlin, guided by the nuns of St. Clare, seemed the man to bring the fulfilment of this old and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... left of my imperial power? A shadow like myself; yes, scarcely that. Both sank into the grave—and came to naught. 'Twas dearly bought; dear, dear was it attained. For it I sacrificed all peace in life, And waived all claims to peace beyond the grave. And now you come and want to wrest from me With daring hands what little I have left. Are there not paths enough to noble deeds? Why must you choose the one that I have chosen? I gave up everything in life to power; My name—so dreamed I—should forever stand, Not beaming like a star with friendly lustre,— No, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... threatened agency, and was greeted with ringing cheers. That evening the grasp of the Ice King was loosened by the soft touch of the south wind, and Red Dog rode in state to the adjoining camp to claim the alliance of his brother chiefs in his attempt to wrest from the agent the perpetrator of the murder of his tribesman. That the dead Indian was himself a murderer had no bearing on the matter, said Red Dog. He had simply knifed in self-defence a beggarly Brule who quarrelled with him over a girl. The blood of Lone Wolf cried aloud for vengeance, and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... grace must have A soul, a 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, thou ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... 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
... point to seize, Admiral Dupont was diligently fitting out an expedition to be in readiness to attack any that should be determined upon. Up to the last moment it was thought that Fernandina would be selected. But finally, with the advice of Gen. Sherman, it was determined to make the attempt to wrest Port Royal ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... generation, is foreign for the 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 ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... has not lost by his change 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 the longest, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I will now answer for myself and thousands more. You are too young a man to have known the cause of the insurrection, or, rather, opposition, to the unfortunate King Charles. He attempted to make himself absolute, and to wrest the liberties from the people of England: that his warmest adherents will admit. When I joined the party which opposed him, I little thought that matters would have been carried so far as they have been; I always considered it lawful to take up arms in defense of our liberties, but at ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... attitude taken up by the citizens 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 ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Sutherland in keeping his dangerous secret, was he destined to bring disgrace upon him, not only by his testimony before the coroner, but by means of this letter, which, whatever it contained, certainly could not bode good to the man from whom it was designed to wrest two ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... who was still beside me, "there is the one who sent forth the deadly shaft!" I turned my gaze hastily in the direction which the Arab indicated, and saw Denviers struggling with a fierce Dhah from whose hands he was trying to wrest a bow, and who had hidden in the brushwood near him without being observed hitherto! They were seen in a moment by the assembled Dhahs, and, with a wild rush, the latter poured down upon the combatants, seizing them as they still ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... unto us, or, to be more exact, has permitted us to wrest from the Indian and from creeping snake and prowling beast, a goodly land. Here we raise a product that supplies a need of the world that cannot be so acceptably filled up to the present time by any ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... prove their possession of 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 ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... universal salvation wrest the Scriptures to sustain their soul-destroying dogmas, it is needful only to cite their own utterances. At the funeral of an irreligious young man, who had been killed instantly by an accident, a Universalist minister selected as his text ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... crookedness &c. (obliquity) 217; grimace; deformity; malformation, 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, misbegotten; misproportioned[obs3], ill proportioned; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Persia, of Greece, and Carthage; and methinks that Rome, too, will run the course of other nations, and that some day, far distant maybe, she will sink beneath the weight of her power and her luxury, and that some younger and more vigorous people will, bit by bit, wrest her dominions from her and rule ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... with these essential articles but from the Canadas? Bonaparte, it is known, has expressed a strong desire to be in possession of the colonies formerly belonging to France, and now that they are become so valuable to England, his anxiety to wrest them from us will naturally increase. A small French force, 4 or 5,000 men, with plenty of muskets, would most assuredly conquer this province. The Canadians would join them almost to a man—at least, the exceptions would be so few as to be ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... 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 them ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... fell low upon the ground. The night was drawing on 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 heavily ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... could leave his corner, Frank rose up, seized the pile of slates, turned them over, and examined the first intently, while Bert watched him with breathless expectancy, and Cohen, at first too surprised to act, sprang forward to wrest it from his hands. But Frank moved out of his reach, and at the same time, with a triumphant smile, exhibited the face of the slate to the rest of the class, saying, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... terribly, and seizing hold of the tin box, endeavoured to wrest it from the youth who measured so accurately. Carlo held his prize fast, and lifting it above his head, he ran into the midst of the square where the little market was held, exclaiming, "A discovery! a discovery! that concerns all who love sugar-plums. A discovery! a discovery that concerns all ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... in the large, luminous eyes. They seemed to look right through me. They seemed to read my thoughts and wrest my ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... off the grip that was strangling him. The old miner, waiting with every muscle ready and every nerve under tension, flung aside his blanket and hurled himself at the guard. It took him less time than it takes to tell to wrest the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... fallen outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the same Savior, is reduced by cupidity and oppression below the level of the brute, spoiled of his humanity, plundered of his rights, and often hurried to a premature grave, the miserable victim of avarice and heedless tyranny! Men have presumptuously dared to wrest from their fellows the most precious of their rights—to intercept as far as they may the bounty and grace of the Almighty—to close the door to their intellectual progress—to shut every avenue to their moral and religious improvement, to stand between them and their Maker! ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... laying the foundation of the new political party of America which would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the women, the Negroes," The Revolution declared, "are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Francis I. continued his attacks upon the Duchy, and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the Sforza formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That town is the key to the valleys of the Spluegen and Bregaglia. Strongly fortified and well situated for defence, the burghers of the Grisons well knew ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... What destined term may be Within the future hidden For us, Leuconoe. Both thou and I Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... succeeded in evolving a system of Government in any way resembling our own, out of a Feudal System which presents so curious a parallel to that from which our modern institutions have sprung. Would the Great Chiefs have ever combined to wrest a Magna Charta from an unwilling King, and the raayat have succeeded in beating down the tyranny of their Chiefs? No answer can be given; but those who know the Malays best will find reason to doubt whether the energy of the race would ever, under any circumstances, have been sufficient ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... about his ears with a cudgel, that his eyes had almost started from their sockets. His voice was lost within the vizor, and his friend affected not to understand his meaning when he made signs with his gauntlets, and endeavoured to close with him, that he might wrest the cudgel from his hand. At length he desisted, saying, "I'll warrant the helmet sound by its ringing"; and taking it off, found the squire in a cold sweat. He would have achieved his first exploit on the spot, had his strength permitted him ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... I fear this bloody God of Israel, or all the gibbering, incense-sniffing, pedestal-cumbering gods of earth? I will show thee, thou ranting rabble spawn! See which of us hath the yellow-haired wanton when I return. For I go to wrest spoil and fighting men from Israel. Then, by all the demons of Amenti! then, I say! look to thy crown, thou ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... safe, Light-bounding o'er the wave, from shore to shore. Be thou our great protector, gracious youth! 20 And if in future times, some envious prince, Careless of right and guileful, should invade Thy Britain's commerce, or should strive in vain To wrest the balance from thy equal hand; Thy hunter-train, in cheerful green arrayed, (A band undaunted, and inured to toils,) Shall compass thee around, die at thy feet, Or hew thy passage through the embattled foe, And clear thy way to fame; inspired by thee The nobler chase of glory ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... without some alteration, for the whole inscription was thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa; To the unknown and strange Gods." And according to his example do the sons of the prophets, who, forcing out here and there four or five expressions and if need be corrupting the sense, wrest it to their own purpose; though what goes before and follows after make nothing to the matter in hand, nay, be quite against it. Which yet they do with so happy an impudence that oftentimes the civilians envy ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... dawn while History still dozed, here rose the Tower of Twr Brauwen, white-bosomed sister of Bran the Blessed. Also, it came into the possession of Hawis Gadern, a great beauty and heiress, whose uncles tried to wrest it from her, but were defeated and imprisoned in the castle. Anyway, however that may be, Owen Glendower came and conquered, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when he was forging a chain ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... march of the Eroica. People kept coming in and taking their seats, and turning their glasses on the audience. As soon as the last person had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained every nerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel; and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it—(for the orchestra was skilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a long time)—and then Goujart took his arm and, in the middle ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet—oh, how sweet—to be thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its shield!—magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... submarine began furiously to boil under the full-driven offensive beams of the tiny Nevian ship. But escape Costigan could not. He could not cut that tractor beam and the utmost power of his drivers could not wrest the lifeboat from its tenacious clutch. And slowly but inexorably the ship of space was being drawn downward toward the ship of ocean's depths. Downward, in spite of the utmost possible effort of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... where the Crusaders are assembled. Six years have elapsed since they set out from Europe, during which time they have succeeded in taking Nicaea and Antioch, cities now left in charge of influential Crusaders. But Godfrey of Bouillon is pushing on with the bulk of the army, because he is anxious to wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the infidels and restore it to the worship of the true God. While he is camping on this plain, God sends Gabriel to visit him in sleep and inspire him with a desire to assemble a council, where, by a ringing speech, he will rouse the Christians ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... British aid against German ambitions[1170]. A distinct crisis was thus gradually created, coming to a head when Prussia, under Bismarck's guiding hand, dragging Austria in with her, thrust the Federal Diet of the Confederation to one side, and assumed command of the movement to wrest Schleswig-Holstein ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... reached America, and strove with energetic swords and rapacious wallets to wrest blood and gold and fame from whatsoever ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... down the barrel. I hoped that before long, by means of my gun, I might be able to gain the respect of the people. I determined, therefore, not to fire until a favourable opportunity should occur. I in the meantime took great care that no one should wrest the weapon out of my hands. The people as we went along gathered round us, some coming up and touching our clothes, others putting their hands on our faces, evidently unable to understand the light colour of our skins. When the people began to press too closely ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... while the intrigues of Spain and France weakened the feeble 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, old ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Court of Appeals, Alton B. Parker, was elected by sixty or eighty thousand majority. Mr. Parker was an able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's, standing close to the conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type. These conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the Democratic party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They hailed Judge Parker's victory as a godsend. The Judge at once loomed up as a Presidential possibility, and was carefully groomed for the position by the New York Democratic ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... menaced from two quarters: the development of steam navigation on the Mississippi enabled New Orleans to compete for this trade; and the construction of the Erie Canal, with the projected system of tributary canals in Ohio, made it plain to Pennsylvania that New York was about to wrest from her the markets of the west. It had taken thirty days and cost five dollars a hundred pounds to transport goods from Philadelphia to Columbus, Ohio; the same articles could be brought in twenty days from New York, by the Erie Canal, at a cost of two ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... IV. came to the throne at the 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 two—his sister Sibylla and the fiery Raynald of Chatillon, once ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 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
... Poetry, and Sculpture. A winged figure bears the torch of inspiration. The second of the California golds, the Wheat panel, follows, and then "The Birth of Oriental Art." The allegory here is the ancient Ming legend of the forces of earth trying to wrest inspiration from the powers of air. A Chinese warrior mounted on a dragon ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman. Yet foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meagre territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they are driven from particular positions to which their early associations lend a preference. What was it that stirred into a flame, the fierce hostility of Tecumseh but the determination evinced by your Government to wrest, from the hands of his tribe, their last remaining favorite haunts ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... ample Concessions in her Favour. Take the 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 ...
— 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
... the emptiness as unmistakably as he had felt her presence. But the pang of her going was shot through with elation that at last his waking brain had knowledge of her—a knowledge that no man could wrest from him, even if she never so came again. He had done her bidding. He had kept his manhood pure and the windows of his soul clear—and, behold, the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the keys of the door. We are shut up in the building. But I cannot die thus, consumed by poison, without confession, without hope of pardon for my soul! Go up-stairs, signor, call aloud, break open the door, wrest the iron bars from the windows. Collect all your strength, take pity on me and ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicanery, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Myself did wrest it from you. The horror which came o'er me interrupted Your tale at its commencement. May it please you, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... settle these disputed claims should weary, antagonize, or anger the King.[88] Many of the old charges were renewed, and Connecticut was no longer regarded as a "dutiful" colony, but rather as one altogether too independent, from whom it might be wise to wrest her charter, subjecting her to a royal governor. As early as 1715, her colonial agent had been advised to procure a peaceable surrender of the charter. To this proposal, Governor Saltonstall had returned a courteous and dignified refusal. But the danger was always cropping ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the State of Mississippi in 1875 was claimed to be in the interest of good administration and honest government; it was an attempt to wrest the State from the control of dishonest men,—negroes, carpet baggers, and scalawags,—and place it in control of intelligent, pure, and honest white men. With that end in view, Geo. M. Buchanan, a brave and gallant ex-Confederate ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... 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 against ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... for that service; and good it were to rescue so worthy a faculty from so vile abuse. It is the right of reason and piety to command that and all other endowments; folly and impiety do only usurp them. Just and fit therefore it is to wrest them out of so bad hands, to revoke them to their right ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... 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 existence ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... dignity for what they must inevitably lack in taels. By this refined dispensation the literary occupations, which are in general the highroads to the Establishment of Public Support and Uniform Apparel, are held in the highest veneration. Agriculture, from which it is possible to wrest a competency, follows in esteem; while the various branches of commerce, leading as they do to vast possessions and the attendant luxury, are very justly deprived of all the attributes of dignity ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed, And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique,(G) that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And Heaven forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest,[4] or bow your reading,[5] Or nicely charge your understanding soul[6] With opening titles miscreate,[7] whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. For Heaven doth know how many, now in health, Shall ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... country, and, in a sort, a parent of it. The prisoner knew, that though his spirit was broken with guilt, and incapable of language to defend itself, all would be gathered from him which could conduce to his safety; and that his judge would wrest no law to destroy him, nor conceal any that could save him. In his time, there were a nest of pretenders to justice, who happened to be employed to put things in a method for being examined before him at his usual sessions: these animals were to Verus, as monkeys ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... men and duly paid for. No receipts were given, however, and efforts were frequently made to recapture the Negroes by force. The Indian, conscious of his rights, protested earnestly against such attempts and naturally determined to resist all efforts to wrest from him ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... does not wish and aspire to repeat his own life in better wise in his children and, again, in their children, and still to continue to live upon this earth, ennobled and perfected in their lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit, the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, as his best legacy to posterity, in the spirits of his survivors, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... husband, lest she should, afterwards marry another; so detestable was polygamy in the North, while in the East it is one of these rights which they most of all others esteem, and maintain with such inflexible firmness, that it will probably be one of the last of those that it will wrest ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... thee the Latin!" exclaimed he. "I forbid thee to read or learn the same, for I well know thou wouldst wrest it to thine ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... My first impulse was to wrest the cowskin from the negro's hand, and revenge the poor bleeding child as she lay motionless on the ground; but a moment's reflection convinced me that such a step would only have brought down a double weight of punishment on the victims when I was gone; so, catching ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Freshman Full-Back" is that of character. The action has real dramatic quality and is staged with the local color of a college contest. But the great value of the action is ethical, for it shows that one may "wrest victory from defeat" and that it is a shameful thing to be a ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... to be often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had to fight when the King was his ally ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... grimly for their Alma Mater. For six years, the Gold and Green had failed to annex the Championship, and for the past three, the invincible Ballard machine had rushed like a car of Juggernaut over all other State elevens; one team was determined to wrest the banner from its rival's grasp, and the other fully as resolved to retain possession, hence a memorable gridiron contest, to which even the alumni could find none in past history ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... for Allah from the Giaour The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest; And the Serai's impenetrable tower Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;[35.B.] Or Wahab's[182] rebel brood who dared divest The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,[36.B.] May wind their path of blood along the West; But ne'er will ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... policy. Mark, sir, my assumption was that the young lady would, on hearing my representations, exert herself to heal the breach between Captain Beauchamp and his family. You stand in the way. You treat me as you treated the lady who came here formerly to wrest your dupe from your clutches. If I mistake not, she saw the young lady you acknowledge ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pamphleteers, and other apologists of German Kultur wish to impose upon the world a way of thinking and feeling specifically German. They wish to wrest from France that intellectual supremacy which, according to the clearest thinkers, is still her possession. From this source is derived the phraseology of the Pan-Germans and the ideas and adherents of the Kriegsvereine [war leagues], Wehrvereine, and other similar associations too well ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... how sweet the eye's wild gaze divine Sweet to quaff the incense at that shrine! Prouder, bolder, swells the breast. That which once set every sense on fire, That which once could every nerve inspire, Scarce a half-smile now hath power to wrest! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he cried; "I'll say it again—You're a set of great cowards; and as for you," he cried to the fellow whose weapon he had tried to wrest away, "you're the biggest ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... city, but despite her interest in the sights and sounds of New York she could not help thinking of how different it might all have been if she had not met Kathleen. The busy, endless streets terrified her and the more she saw of the great metropolis the less confidence she felt in her own power to wrest a living ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 theodolite was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... to say extort, for you may sooner wrest Hercules's Club out of his Hands than get a Play-day from him; but Time was when Nobody lov'd Play better ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... they had lost in the great gamble. Like thousands of other reckless adventurers attracted to the newly discovered diamond country, they had rushed out there from England, confident that they, too, could wrest from nature that wonderful gem, ever associated with tragedy and romance, mystery and crime, for the possession of which, since history began, men have been ready to give up their lives. Confident of their success, they had risked ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... last of the Hohenstaufen emperors; his heir is Conradin, his infant son. In Germany, William is acknowledged; Pope Innocent IV attempts to wrest the Two Sicilies from the Hohenstaufens; he is defeated by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Peter had not the faintest idea. To him personally the answer was indifferent. From his point of view, the worst had already happened, and no further disgrace could affect him much. But Hilary desperately cared, so he must do his best; he must walk into the fire and wrest out of it ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... horror-struck. Lanjuinais said: "When I arrived in Paris, I shuddered!" Brissot and the Girondins put that feeling of the assembly behind their policy. They adopted an attitude of uncompromising condemnation towards the men of September, and attempted to wrest their influence from {161} them. To accomplish this they had among other things to outbid their rivals for popular support, and so it happened that many of them who were at heart constitutional monarchists adopted a strong republican attitude ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... merciful and benign beings, who dwell above this azure concave, give me my Imogen! Restore her safe and unhurt to these longing, faithful arms! Let not this arbitrary and imperious tyrant, who grasps wide the fairest productions of thy creation with a hundred hands,—let him not wrest from me my solitary lamb,—let him not seize for ever upon that companion, in whom the most expansive and romantic wishes of my heart had learned to ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... amulets, now the tunic which covers her bosom, now her enamelled girdle, her bracelets, and the rings on her ankles: and at length, at the seventh gate, takes from her her last covering. When she at length arrives in the presence of Allat, she throws herself upon her in order to wrest from her in a terrible struggle the life of Dumuzi; but Allat sends for Namtar, her messenger of misfortune, to punish, the rebellious Ishtar. "Strike her eyes with the affliction of the eyes—strike her loins with the affliction of the loins—strike her ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... filled the two partners as they looked on this scene. To wrest from reluctant earth her richest treasures, to add to the wealth of the world, to ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... submission, to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedience. Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren; of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and your forefathers made of your natural advantages for commerce to their avarice; formed a deliberate plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which they had made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a mercenary soldiery ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... fine, but you can not prove one word of it—not one! It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It was your falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all his trouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here at once, and return to your mother at your old home ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... means of the damnation of millions of souls? Not because it is in itself a bad book, but because it is a theological work, prepared only for the priests and ministers of our holy religion. Therefore, it is always a very dangerous book in the hands of women or laymen, who wrest the Scriptures ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... proceeds from their sympathy with the energies of the living system. Could we recover the hand from the Cross, or from the custody of the Black Douglas, I would be pleased to observe this wonderful operation of occult sympathies. But, I fear me, one might as safely go to wrest the joint from the talons of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... surprise or displeasure at the change in Waverley's manner, Major Melville proceeded composedly to put several other queries to him. 'What does it avail me to answer you?' said Edward, sullenly. 'You appear convinced of my guilt, and wrest every reply I have made to support your own preconceived opinion. Enjoy your supposed triumph, then, and torment me no further. If I am capable of the cowardice and treachery your charge burdens me with, I am not worthy to be believed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... sword. Little nations? They hinder the advance of Germany. Trample them in the mire under the German 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 ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the fierce Bull, the gentle tractableness of the fleet Horse; and Man should still have had the ingenuity that is peculiarly his own. Jupiter in heaven laughs to himself, no doubt, he who, in his mighty plan, denied these {qualities} to men, lest our audacity should wrest {from him} the sceptre of the world. Contented, therefore, with the gifts of unconquered Jove, let us pass the years of our time allotted by fate, nor attempt more than ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... mine is now, To keep 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 justice ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign, where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, without regard to difference of price, it will not be our fault if we do not soon have a supply at home equal to our demand, and wrest that weapon of distress from the hand which has so long wantonly wielded it. If it shall be proposed to go beyond our own supply, the question of '85 will then recur, Will our surplus labor be then more ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... these men who constituted the Executive Committee were not those who would lightly do this. He could quite understand their resentment of both his attitude and his words at the last meeting—he had expected them to make an effort to wrest from him, but in such a way as not to jeopardize their own interests, the supreme authority which he had forced from them; yet they all knew him too well even to suggest any transaction on his part so at variance with the standards ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... repeat Tertullian's famous "Credo quia impossible," till, from a wooden recital, it became a triumphant affirmation. I reminded myself that St. Peter had said of the Pauline Epistles that in them were "some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest ... unto their own destruction." I shudderingly recognised that I must be very unlearned and unstable to find discord among the Holy Evangelists, and imposed on myself an extra fast as penance for ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... man who had picked up an iron bar, and managed to wrest it from him, but another struck him violently on the head, and he had a very indistinct idea of what went on during the next minute or two. There was a struggling knot of men pressed against the side of the car, but it broke up when ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... in what another man says or does. His honor is thus at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the tip of his tongue; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone for ever,—unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest it back again by a process which I shall mention presently, a process which involves danger to his life, health, freedom, property and peace of mind. A man's whole conduct may be in accordance with the most righteous and noble principles, his spirit may be the purest that ever breathed, his ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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 were Latin princes, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his body, standing in the swing, was almost horizontal. Should he once pass above the level of the rope's attachment he would be lost; the rope would slacken and he would fall vertically to a point as far below as he had gone above, and then the sudden tension of the rope would wrest it from his hands. All saw the peril—all cried out to him to desist, and gesticulated at him as, indistinct and with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot in flight, he swept past us through the lower ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... resolved to leave city and home, to dwell with the beasts in the caves of the mountains? History relates that but a little band of ten, inclusive of the Asmoneans, by retiring to the fastnesses of the mountains, formed the nucleus of that brotherhood of heroes who were to wrest victory after victory from the hosts of Syria, and win that unsullied fame which belongs only to those who display firm endurance and devoted courage in a righteous and ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the richest dukedom in it?—I have a large family of children, and the prospect of more. I have three sons, who, I see already, have brought into the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves.—Can I look tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from them the birthright of my boys,—the little independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?—No! I will not! should my heart's blood stream around my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... settled by experience, that, equal or not equal in talents, woman, the 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
... truthful. To the rest of the world she lied whenever she thought it necessary, never carelessly or prodigally, for to be fearless was part of her proud self-sufficiency. But as she had learned to fight, to battle her way up, to climb over her enemy, to wrest her chance from opposing forces, she had learned to lie when the occasion demanded. She was only entirely frank and entirely truthful with the one ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... 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 ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... 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 ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... been trying to wrest your scripture to his own purposes, but it is no good. Neither the fourfold nor the fivefold nor the sixfold ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... loitering flush of the long sunken sun, And turn away with tears into the dark. Know, Dear, these are not mine But Wisdom's words, confirmed by divine Doctors and Saints, though fitly seldom heard Save in their own prepense-occulted word, Lest fools be fool'd the further by false hope, And wrest sweet knowledge to their own decline; And (to approve I speak within my scope) The Mistress of that dateless exile gray Is named in surpliced Schools Tristitia. But, O, my Darling, look in thy heart and see How unto me, Secured of ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... 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 three counties and increased his ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... theory of war will at any rate give us two broad and well-marked classifications. The first is simple and well known, depending on whether the political object of the war is positive or negative. If it be positive—that is, if our aim is to wrest something from the enemy—then our war in its main lines will be offensive. If, on the other hand, our aim be negative, and we simply seek to prevent the enemy wresting some advantage to our detriment, then the war in its general ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... intellectual divorced from the spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose, there is a fascination about the book which ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... medium of a flogging to produce that effect on the master. He tried to wrest the key from Catherine's grasp, and for safety she flung it into the hottest part of the fire; whereupon Mr. Edgar was taken with a nervous trembling, and his countenance grew deadly pale. For his life he could not avert that excess of emotion: mingled anguish and humiliation ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... must mean that some external force has penetrated them." This was the simple argument of the "genius," the "great discoverer." And seeking this force, Volta, by means of his piles, was able to wrest from the earth electricity, which is, literally as well as figuratively, the "gleam" of an immense progress. Laying due weight upon a little fact, such as that of a dead being having moved, considering it soberly without any fanciful additions, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... to isolate 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 rowers ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... had heard the saintes lore,* *doctrine, teaching He got him of the tormentores* leave, *torturers And led them to his house withoute more; And with their preaching, ere that it were eve, They gonnen* from the tormentors to reave,** *began **wrest, root out And from Maxim', and from his folk each one, The false faith, to trow* in God ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... red weapon descended Kelly shot up his hand and caught it. He twisted on the oar to wrest it from Denny's grasp, and the two suddenly went to the floor, jarring ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired by the estate of thy husband! But thou, if any pith be in thee, if valour reign in thy soul at all, if thou deem thyself fit husband for a king's daughter, wrest the sceptre from her father, retrieve thy lineage by thy valour, balance with courage thy lack of ancestry, requite by bravery thy detriment of blood. Power won by daring is more prosperous than that won by inheritance. Boldness climbs to the top better ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... prosecuted to no good end. He has conquered large territory, but he has paid for it with the blood of his people. Neither they nor he are the better because of those accessions, and the duke has made enemies who will one day surely wrest them from him. A brave prince should not fear to be called a coward because of an act that will bring peace and happiness to his subjects and save their lives, their liberties, and their estates. That great end ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... 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 ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... he knew of had been tried—and tried, too, with repeated success—and this was the engaging of a superior force to wrest the body from the surgeon's crew, a set of sturdy miscreants with whom to do battle a considerable mob was needed; but, with money grown very scarce and time so short, the thing could not be managed, and Reuben tried to tell Joan of its impossibility ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the Nile to give battle to the Egyptian army, and at the foot of the pyramids the East is defeated by the West. The march is continued eastwards to Syria. Five centuries have passed since the crusaders attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of unbelievers. Now again the weapons of Western lands clash in the valley of the Jordan and at the foot of Mount Tabor, and now the French General obtains a victory ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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; ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... deceiv'd, was his; but twice were mine, No—let the stupid prince, whom Jove deprives Of sense and justice, run where frenzy drives; His gifts are hateful: kings of such a kind Stand but as slaves before a noble mind, Not though he proffer'd all himself possess'd, And all his rapine could from others wrest: Not all the golden tides of wealth that crown The many-peopled Orchomenian town;(209) Not all proud Thebes' unrivall'd walls contain, The world's great empress on the Egyptian plain (That spreads her conquests o'er a thousand states, And pours her heroes through a hundred ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Immediately wrest of Daliao are three villages whose people are known as Eto or Ata. Aside from a slightly greater percentage of individuals showing negroid features, these people do not differ in any respect from the Bagobo. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... and his knights of the Round Table; of Harold and his men of iron on the field of Hastings; of the Crusaders, who marched to the East with the sword in the one hand and the crucifix in the other, to wrest the holy city from the profaning clutch of the hated Moslem. Or, coming down to the more modern times, if we speak of heroism to the Frenchman, he thinks of the first Emperor and the old guard which "dies but ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... territorial divisions of 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; ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... terms of the treaties which brought to an end the World War. Since the time that the principle was proclaimed, it has been the excuse for turbulent political elements in various lands to resist established governmental authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into domestic ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... even I have power to grant thy suit. I have saved, with some hazard, the life of the Queen and her daughter; in doing it I promised to the soldiers, in their place, the best blood of Palmyra, and theirs it is by right. It will not be easy to wrest Gracchus from their hands. It will bring danger to myself, to the Queen, and to the empire. It may breed a fatal revolt. But, Piso, for the noble Portia's sake, the living representative of Cneius Piso my early friend, for thine, and chiefly for the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... precedent, settled by the practice of the Government, and settled by statute." It remained so settled, until, in the strife which followed the rebellion, a two-thirds majority in Congress was induced by apprehension of a grave public danger to attempt to wrest this portion of the executive power from the hands of Andrew Johnson. The statute of March 2, 1867, as construed by nearly two-thirds of the Senate, enacted that officers appointed by the predecessor of President Johnson, who, by the law in force when they were appointed, and by the express ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... only time as far as its native history is concerned, there was some one at the helm who knew how to rule, and who, moreover, did rule. His proceedings were not, it must be owned, invariably regulated upon any very strict rule of equity. He meant to be supreme, and to do so it was necessary to wrest the power from the O'Neills upon the one hand, and from the Danes on the other, and this he proceeded with the shortest possible ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... suppose I should get it? I have no proof that my father ever left me a dollar. Sir William has every paper in his own possession. I have not a scrap even that would enable me to wrest so much as a pound from him ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... casting me into shame and torment and death. And I deem thou canst not do it. Nay, she said, staying the words that were coming from his mouth, I wot that thou canst do it if thine heart can suffer it; for thou art stronger than I, and thou mayst break my bow, and wrest this knife out of mine hand; and thou canst bind me and make me fast to the saddle, and so lead my helpless body into thraldom and death. But thou hast said that thou lovest me, and I believe thee herein. Therefore I know that thou canst ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... barbarous and insipid writers would wrest into meaning that poets were to be thrust out ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... slipped into church for a few minutes, as she dropped a coin into a beggar's tin cup, as she entered into casual conversation with the angry mother of a defiant boy, that this, to her, was life. It was life—to work, to plan, to marry and bear children, to wrest her own home from unfavourable conditions, and help her own man to win. She would live, because she would care—care deeply how Wolf fared in his work, how her house prospered, how her children developed. She would not be Aunt Annie's sort of woman—Chris's ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... of Rome! the modest man! We Frenchmen have a due sense of our own merits; but this sudden victory surprises him as it doth us, Luca; and we shall wrest the prey from Pepin, ere Montreal can come to his help! But Rienzi must die. He is still, I hear, shut up in St. Angelo. The Orsini shall storm him there ere the day be much older. Today we possess the Capitol—annul all the rebel's laws—break up his ridiculous parliament, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 monk, Or I, that took the morning ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... thousand ducats as many times over as he should desire; which Shylock refusing, and still insisting upon having a pound of Antonio's flesh, Bassanio begged the learned young counselor would endeavor to wrest the law a little, to save Antonio's life. But Portia gravely answered, that laws once established must never be altered. Shylock hearing Portia say that the law might not be altered, it seemed to him that she was pleading in his favor, and he said, "A Daniel ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... 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 it from thy bosom. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... it had left its impress upon her life), her ignorance of his whereabouts, and above all, a longing, hidden deep down in her heart, to meet him face to face once more, to tell him that she was free, that no longer behind the broom bushes need she turn away from him, or wrest her hands from his warm clasp. All this weighed upon her mind, and cast a shadow over her path, which ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Records that, in prehistoric days, the last of the chieftains sent by Amaterasu to wrest Japan from its then holders addressed the leaders of the latter in these terms, "The central land of reed plains owned (ushi-haku) by you is the country to be governed (shirasu) by my son." Japanese historiographers attach importance to the different words here used. Ushi-haku signifies "to hold ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... steady as ever, must have carried conviction with it. Certainly Tomba's shuddering had increased, though the little brown man, no match in muscle for the white soldier, made not the least effort to wrest himself away from that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 inmate ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... for the missionary station at Trebizond, or a Japanese tea for the Friendship cemetery fund, and we all sew or bake or lend dishes or sell tickets with the same infinity of zeal. The enterprise in hand absorbs our sense of the ultimate object; as when, after three days of hand-to-hand battle to wrest money for the freedmen from the patrons of a Kirmess at the old roller-skating rink, dear Mis' Amanda, secretary and door-tender, handed over our $64.85 with the ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale |
