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Cling   Listen
verb
Cling  v. t.  (past & past part. clung, obs. clong; pres. part. clinging)  
1.
To cause to adhere to, especially by twining round or embracing. (Obs.) "I clung legs as close to his side as I could."
2.
To make to dry up or wither. (Obs.) "If thou speak'st false, Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cling" Quotes from Famous Books



... asleep, since they will still be lying in their beds. Before these have awakened, apparelled and equipped, themselves, they will have made such slaughter that ever hereafter shall be related the battle of that night. To this plan all the traitors cling from desperation, for they have no confidence as to their lives. Lack of hope as to the outcome emboldens them to the battle, for they see no issue for themselves except through death or prison. Such an issue is no wholesome one, nor need they trouble to flee, nor do they ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... cupful of water over the oysters, look them over carefully, and remove any pieces of shell that may cling to the oysters, making sure that any particles of sand are washed off. Heat this liquid to the boiling point and then strain it through a cloth. Put the milk on the fire to heat, and when hot, add the butter, salt, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... when I wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got to die. There's no help and no hope—she's got to die, and she a mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of things—sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things—and uses them always for some beneficent ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... I believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us all. . . . I am lonely and sick and out of heart. Well, I still hope; I still believe; I still see the good in the inch, and cling to it. It is not much, perhaps, but it ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... the European countries where the metric system has been adopted, the illiterate classes still cling by preference to the old measures ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... was such a little flirt! How she did cling to Walter, make eyes at Ed and defy Jack, giving to each the peculiar attention that ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... this and boiled that, never seems to occur to the vast majority of people in this country, who seem incapable of understanding that these different vegetables are worthy of being served in an infinite number of ways. It will doubtless shock those who cling to this beliefs but the following remarks by Dr. Mitchell, an English physician practising in Paris, directed against his own countrymen be it understood, are forcible enough:—"The plain boiled potato," says ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... hid him away on his birth. Ye will remember how Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, hated Uther for taking Igraine for wife, whom Gorlois had captured and sworn to wed for her beauty and her wealth. And how all the turbulent lords did cling to Gorlois, and how for years King Uther had much ado to keep those rebels from dismembering the kingdom. Gorlois had vowed to slay by poison or treachery any son of Uther's, and so I took young Arthur into safe keeping. None knew of him until King Uther ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... long the custom of giving mourning rings obtained in New England. Some are in existence dated 1812, but were given at the funeral of aged persons who may have left orders to their descendants to cling to the fashion of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... confusion, from the unusual absence of the sky above, and the dashing frantic speed of the angry boiling waters. The rocks on each side have been blasted so as to form a path by which you may walk up to the first fall; but this path was at times very narrow and you have to cling to the chain which is let into the rock. The heavy storm of the day before had swelled the torrent so that it rose nearly a foot above this path; and before I had proceeded far, I found that the flood swept between my legs with a force which would ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... hand, many socialists cling to Marx's earlier insistence upon violence and bloodshed as a means of attaining socialist ends. Members of the latter class are known as militant socialists, as opposed to those who disavow violence and rely chiefly upon political weapons. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... in every mouth was Kiartan's name, And daily now must Gudrun's dull ears bear Tales of the prowess of his youth to hear, While in his cairn forgotten lay her love. For this man, said they, all men's hearts did move, Nor yet might envy cling to such an one, So far beyond all dwellers 'neath the sun; Great was he, yet so fair of face and limb That all folk wondered much, beholding him, How such a man could be; no fear he knew, And all in manly deeds he could outdo; Fleet-foot, ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... was ringing. Saunders stood up, now clasping the hand she held out. He felt her timid fingers cling to his. Her blood and his throbbed in unison. Looking into her eyes, he saw that they were full of tears. He remembered how she had kissed his hand on the night he had prevented her father from going to Atlanta, and as he ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... proceedings. We distinctly charge the dustmen with throwing what they ought to clear away, into the eyes of the public. We accuse scavengers, brickmakers, and gentlemen who devote their energies to the costermongering line, with obtaining money once a-year, under false pretences. We cling with peculiar fondness to the custom of days gone by, and have shut out conviction as long as we could, but it has forced itself upon us; and we now proclaim to a deluded public, that the May-day dancers are not sweeps. The size of them, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... invitation of the Old Parish at Kinnicutt to remain with it as its pastor, because the place itself had become endeared to him for its associations; because, also, it was Faith's home, which she had learned to love and cling to; because she, too, had a work here, in assisting Glory to fulfill the terms of her aunt's bequest; and because, country parish though it was, and a limited sphere, as it might seem, for his means and talents, he saw the way here, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... nor susceptible to sound, but it drew her out of herself. It was like bathing in a sea whose waves overpower one so that, try as one may to cling to the earth, it slips off from beneath one's feet—shamed, beaten. She had a feeling that if it did not stop soon she would die; and would yet die when it did stop. Her heart beat thickly and heavily, her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... perhaps, for some poor homeless wretch who could afford no shelter, and, huddled up in a corner, with his head buried in his breast, was sleeping heavily, like a dead man. The wet mud made Liza's skirts cling about her feet, and the damp would come in and chill her legs and creep up her body, till she shivered, and for warmth pressed herself close against Jim. Sometimes they would go into the third-class waiting-rooms at Waterloo or ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... I have not yet touched upon. Brought up by parents possessed of strong faith in God, she had never known the time, I imagine, when she did not trust Him, and cling to Him, with an all-abiding confidence. She seemed ever to feel the Divine Presence near, and she talked with God "as a man talketh with his friend." Hers was not the religion of a morning and evening prayer at stated times, ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

... allies and associates on the slanderous "society" papers that fatten on the frailties of human beings with money to buy exemption, but too weak to fight the slimy devils whose pens drip this filth from the social sewage pots; he knew not the parasites who cling to the maggoty exudations of every form of social disorder. That is the way I figured it. I want it straight on the record here that my devotion to Jim Hosley at that interview began to tighten like the Damon-and-Pythias ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... exclamation "hugh," each time. The Indians placed him on the grass to die, where the backwoodsman who told me the story, saw him after the lapse of two hours, and life was not then extinct,—with such tenacity does it cling to the body of an Indian. The scalping knife was at length passed across his throat, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... discussion, for Ernest did not like to consider such a possibility. Peter represented his world, for he had no one to cling to except the man whom he ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger

... and industries of India are very old. Their methods have been handed down from generation to generation, because sons are in the habit of following the trades of fathers, and they are inclined to cling to the same old patterns and the same old processes, regardless of labor-saving devices and modern fashions. Many people think this habit should be encouraged; that what may be termed the classic designs of the Hindus cannot be improved upon, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... rearest with celestial aim The future Seraph in my mortal frame, Thrice holy Faith! whatever thorns I meet As on I totter with unpractis'd feet, Still let me stretch my arms and cling to thee, 25 Meek nurse of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... heart beat against hers. The softened colours of wood and plain in the uncertain light, the strenuous roar of the river seemed to sunder them from each other; the surroundings were at war with their mood; but the more closely did they cling together, each supporting ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... ye winter winds, Along the ferny reaches, Nor whirl the yellow leaves which cling Upon the saddened beeches; And gently breathe upon the hills Where spring's first violets perished,— Died like the budding summer hopes Our hearts too ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... single meal, I had not exceeded the prescribed ration. Many a time it cost me an effort to deny myself; and often the half biscuit, which was to serve for another meal, was put aside with most tardy reluctance, and seemed to cling to my fingers, as I placed it on the little shelf. But I congratulated myself that up to this time—with the exception of that day upon which I had eaten the four biscuits at a meal—I had been able to keep my resolve, and contend bravely against the craving ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... with her knowledge of his dominating personality and force of will, and the natural curiosity which had been aroused in her mind by his strange mode of life, with its deliberate isolation, and by the aroma of mystery which seemed to cling about him, deepened. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue—if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus—can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... down hand in hand. But Olga was very quiet for the rest of the evening; and she did not cling to Muriel as usual when ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... such peripatetics in these days of light and science, who still cling to the false and degrading systems of neutrality, because they are honorable for age, or sustained by learned and good men, and who will oppose all improvement, reject without examination, or, what is still worse, refuse to adopt, after being convinced of the truth of it, any system, because it ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... and under the left This over-garment reaches to the feet, so as to conceal the lower portion of the chiton At the top it is folded over, or perhaps rather another piece of cloth is sewed on. This over-fold, if it may be so called, appears as if cut with two or more long points below] which cling to the figure behind and fall in formal folds in front, the elaborately, often impossibly, arranged hair, the gracious countenances, a certain quaintness and refinement and unconsciousness of self—these things exercise over us an ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... time have been deepened and intensified by a sense of ill-usage, which has left a terrible legacy behind—one which may prove to be a peril to generations still unborn. Even where those who emigrated have prospered most, and where they or their sons are now rich men, they cling with unhappy persistency to the memory of that wretched past—a memory which the forty years which have intervened, far from softening, seem, in many cases, to have only lashed into ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... that it must have some religion, some support, some refuge 'when flesh and heart fail.' There is a natural dread of annihilation, a longing after immortality, a starting back from the last leap in the dark. Men, if they have not true religion, will cling to the greatest absurdities as substitutes. Hence the pagan world is full of idols. Tribes and nations seemingly destitute of all moral sense, nevertheless have 'gods many and lords many.' If there are any cold-blooded, incorrigible atheists in the world, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... cling about thee, Where'er thou art, by wayward fancy led. We miss thee, love!—Home is not home without thee— The light and glory of the house have fled: The autumn shiver of the linden-tree Is like the pang that thrills my ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... refers to us as tempted, and, as it were, in the grip of an enemy too strong for us. God alone can extricate us from the mouth of the lion. He will, if we ask Him. The only evil is to sin away our consciousness of sonship and to cling to the sin which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... an aged elm Broods darkly o'er the shadowy realm; There dream-land phantoms rest the wing, Men say, and 'neath its foliage cling, And many monstrous shapes beside. There Centaurs, Scyllas, fish and maid, There Briareus' hundred-handed shade. CONINGTON, AEneid, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... therein she had descended to her husband's level, regarding herself much in the light of a princess whose disguise takes nothing from her rank. She was like those ladies who, having set their seal to the death of their first husbands by marrying again, yet cling to the title they gave them, and continue to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... me still! cling to me ever," interrupted Sir Ulick, "and I will never fail you—no, never," repeated he, grasping Harry's hand, and looking upon him with an emotion of affection, strongly felt, and therefore ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... of an age that becomes romance. When you shall have lived as long as I have done, and seen as much of the world as myself, you will know that it is utterly selfish. It may be true, that some generous spirits are to be found here and there, some fond hearts to cling to, some noble natures which inspire an involuntary homage for their superiority; but you might as well expect to be lighted on your way by a succession of meteors. In the world, you will find that every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... for your husband. And never knowing whether you have failed or won. Always wondering why he finds more attraction in other women less beautiful and less clever. Always wondering, always afraid, trying to cling to what ought to be yours without effort. It isn't funny, Eveley." She turned slowly, to go on down, but Eveley laid a restraining ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... crushed his skull; while the sailors, who in such moments seem possessed by utter recklessness, broke into the spirit-room and drank to excess. For awhile I had some hope that the stanchness of our vessel's hull might enable us to cling to her till daylight, but she speedily bilged ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... high he floated, that he seemed to climb; The bladder blown by chance was burst by time. Falsely-earned fame fools bolstered at the urns; The mob which reared the god the idol burns. To cling one moment nigh to power's crest, Then, earthward flung, sink to oblivion's rest Self-sought, 'midst careless acquiescence, seems Strange fate, e'en for a thing of schemes and dreams; But CAESAR's simulacrum, seen by day, Scarce envious CASCA's self would stoop to slay, And mounting mediocrity, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various

... the maid! They dare not attack you, if you drop your musket! Loose your hold, Mademoiselle." He caught roughly at the slender arms that held about his waist, parrying a knife stroke with his other hand. "They will kill you if you cling to me. Now, Danton! Never mind your arm. I have one in the hand. Fight for the maid and France!" Menard was shouting for sheer lust and frenzy of battle, "What is the matter with the devils? Why don't they shoot? God, Danton, they're ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... "as much as in him is." Somebody has finely said that it does not take much of a man to be a Christian, but it takes all there is of him. An early African Christian, Arnobius, tells us that we must "cling to God with all our senses, so to speak." And Thomas Carlyle gave us a picture of the ideal believer when he wrote of his father that "he was religious with the consent of his whole faculties." It is faith's ability to engross a ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... been slowly adjusted to the conditions of western Europe. That adjustment has gone so far that the Persian type of peach does better on the Pacific coast than in the East. We are breeding a race of these fruits from China, the Chinese cling group, which does well in the eastern part of the United States, and we have from there a peach that is better for the country east of the Rocky Mountains than the ones that have been ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... life! Good God! so mean, that at this moment I can not explain to my own soul why man should cling to it. What do we meet during our short career? Deceit, hypocrisy, and treachery. Ah! death reveals the hollowness ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... Believe that and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith that God 'made you upright,' though you have sought out many inventions; so, you will strive daily to become more what your Maker meant and means you to be, and daily gives you also the power to be—and you will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue that is in you, saying, 'My righteousness I hold fast, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... when I was informed that the residents had wanted to abolish it, but that the servants had protested against it, and begged to be allowed to run beside the carriage rather than sit or stand upon it. They cling to the horse or vehicle, and are thus ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... and though he felt a passionate longing for freedom, he considered in one moment whether there were any one of his fellow prisoners to whom Jasper could be left, or who would be of the least comfort to him, but could find no one, and resolved to cling to him as once to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... tempestuous sea in a frame beyond my uncle's gargoylish head, and the tidied rocking-chair, which I was used to addressing as a belted knight o' the realm, austerely abode in a shadow. I was in some saving way, as often happens in our lives, conscious of these familiar things, to which we return and cling in the accidents befalling us and in the emergencies of feeling we must all survive. The room was as our maid-servant had left it, bright and warm and orderly: there was as yet no disarrangement by ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... savage ferocity, will seize the mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. The Licking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed with their blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire of the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... looking at him through the face of her brother. "You will not resist her pleadings, Le Gardeur,"—Philibert thought it an impossible thing. "No guardian angel ever clung to the skirts of a sinner as Amelie will cling to you," said he; "therefore I have every hope of my dear friend ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... absolute morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, between those of the animals that have to work hard for their food and the sedentary parasites that cling to their bodies and suck their blood and so forth. A large number of suffrages in favour of maternal affection would be obtained, but most species of fish would repudiate it, while among the voices of birds would be ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... been unsatisfied. If you had stopped later, you would have been dissatisfied. It is a criminal contempt of the magnificent possibilities of life not to lay hold of "God's occasions floating by." It is an equally criminal perversion of them to cling tenaciously to what was only the simulacrum of an occasion. A man will toil many days and nights among the mountains to find an ingot of gold, which, found, he bears home with infinite pains and just rejoicing; but he would be a fool who should lade his mules with iron-pyrites to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... element when out of their own village: wherever they go, they keep to their own fashions and abominate those of strangers. Do they meet with a compatriot in Hungary? O the happy chance! They are henceforward inseparable; they cling together, and their whole discourse is to condemn the barbarous manners they see about them. Why barbarous, because they are not French? And those have made the best use of their travels who have observed most to speak against. Most ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... bounds through the woods, leaping from one little jutting point of rock to another and landing securely as if he were on level ground. He climbs with equal ease where man would have to crawl and cling with fingers and toes, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... mortal—nay, my son. Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven Nor yet disproven. Wherefore be thou wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith! She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No,' She sees the best that glimmers through the worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer through the winter ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... shout and ran toward the foot of the ladder, expecting to find Frank laying there, severely injured or killed. He was astounded when he saw the ready-witted youth grasp the grating, swing in, strike the ladder, cling and slide. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)

... herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. She had seen Allan suffer badly before—be apathetic, irritable, despondent, but never in a state where he did not cling to her. ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... now yawning at my feet! But so it is in the Court and the world! I felt then the nothingness of even the most desirable future, by an inward sentiment, which, nevertheless, indicates how we cling to it. Fear on account of the contents of the casket had scarcely any power over me. I was obliged to reflect in order to return to it from time to time. Regret for this incomparable Dauphin pierced my heart, and suspended all the faculties of my soul. For a long time I wished ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... father's duty, hath no claim upon his child; but she, whose untiring devotion, whose faithful love hath watched over me, guarded, blessed from the first hour of my life, instilled within me the principles of life on earth and immortality in heaven—mother! mother! will not thy gentle virtues cling around thy boy, and save him even from a father's curse? Can I do else than devote the life thou gavest, to thee, and render back with my stronger arm, but not less firm soul, the care, protection, love thou hast bestowed on me? ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... is no substance here, One great reality above: Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love: Show me what angels feel. Till then I cling, a mere weak ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... played upon her thin lips, and she thought to herself: "There—that perhaps fell on the king, and my precious son-in-law, who does not deserve such a fate—if we had not fallen into disgrace, and if since the occurrences before Kadesh he did not cling to his indulgent lord as a calf follows ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Boswell that cannot be said. Of this inner wisdom, this quietness of thought, this "folie des grandeurs" of the soul, he had a thousand times as much as Macaulay. He could not cling to it to the end, he could not victoriously live by it and make it himself; but he had seen the vision which Macaulay never saw, and he never altogether forgot it. Every man is partly a lost soul. So far as Boswell was that, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... are expected to retire, Lady Sybil, while the men decide our fate. [SYBIL is ready to obey the law, but MAGGIE remains seated.] Man's the oak, woman's the ivy. Which of us is it that's to cling to you, John? ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... his mind that if Ovid had allowed any of the bank's funds to cling to him when he went away the shortage would be discoverable in the cash reserve, undoubtedly in a lump sum, and not by an examination of the books. It was his judgment that Ovid was not of a caliber to plan the looting of a bank and skillfully to hide his ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... called on Mr. Flack, the local builder,—a most reasonable and respectful man—who agreed that tiles would have made more artistic roof, but pointed out that slates were cheaper. He ventured to differ, however, about the Corinthian columns which were to cling like leeches to the frames of the bow windows, saying that, for his part, he liked to relieve the facade by a bit of decoration. Sir Harry hinted that a column, if possible, should be ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... numerous traditions which cling to the sailors of these good old days of which Mr John Ruskin used to speak so reverently, was one of a London baker, who was known to have amassed fabulous wealth in manufacturing biscuits from ground ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... should have such mastery over us that we are not perfectly free. The pure affection may be an inordinate affection. Our work itself may be a selfish passion. That thing that we began to do because it was God's will, we may cling to and persist in ultimately, because it is our own will. Lord, give us the spirit ever controlled by Thy Spirit and will, and the eye that looks to Thee every moment as the eyes of a servant to the hands of her ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... judge by the absence of any remains. The Church in some truncated and starved form, survived indeed in the West; it was the religion to which an Imperial fragment cut off from all other Roman populations might be expected to cling. Paganism seems to have died out in the West; but the mutilated Catholicism that had taken its place became provincial, ill-instructed, and out of touch with Europe. We may guess, though it is only guesswork, that its chief ailment came from the spiritual ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... to thump his shoulder in reassurance, to cling more abjectly. It was then she had wept, shakingly, in a vast impatience with herself for ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... making him wish for death, and that he had a suicide's courage; you will make of him another Wandering Jew; he shall know no rest any more, no peace of mind, no placid sleep; you shall shadow him, cling to him, persecute him, till you break his heart, as he ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... is meant a continuous motion round and round with a spoon, without lifting it from the mixture, except to scrape occasionally from the sides of the dish any portion of the material that may cling to it. It is not necessary that the stirring should be all in one direction, as many cooks suppose. The object of the stirring is to thoroughly blend the ingredients, and this may be accomplished as well by stirring—in ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... rocks. All night long they struggled together, and he thought he had never met with such a monster for strength. She gripped him so tightly to herself that he could do nothing with either hand but cling to her waist. When at last they reached a rock by the river he swung the monster round and got his right hand loose. Then he quickly seized the short sword which he was wearing, drew it and struck ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... to keep them with us just as before in the days of slavery; but we only partially succeeded. We began to train colored men for the ministry; we built Churches for them; we admitted them to our Diocesan Councils on equal terms; and we strove manfully to cling to the Catholic idea: one Church for all ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange

... enormous strength, and of sufficient length to reach the bottom and give plenty of play, was attached to an anchor of a peculiar kind. It was very large and heavy, made of iron, and shaped something like a cuttlefish, with many arms which would cling to the bottom if any force were exerted to move the anchor. The other end of the chain was attached to the lower part of the buoy, and with powerful cranes the anchor was hoisted on deck, and when everything had been made ready the buoy, which had had the proper date cut upon it, was ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... lends its aid to the delay of peaceful measures in Turin; and I hear it with wonder, considering what has passed within the last two years. But I am afraid that there are some natures far too sanguine—some whom no failure can cure of the most extravagant hopes—who, while they are sinking, cling to the feeblest straw, and derive hope from the slightest change, and who, because things are not just as they were twenty-four hours before, expect that better times are coming, and hope even against ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... Death seemed inevitable; and Hendrik's active mind, susceptible of strong emotions, became painfully anxious at the approach of death. He feared it. Nor did that fear arise from an ignoble cause. It was simply the love of life, and the desire to cling to it. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... himself whether she felt quite as sure that her attachment would last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not even any explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There was nothing but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling quite so closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if he had happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with the beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who would have cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... circus, for he reared up and walked on his hind feet, and pawed the air, and made a spectacle of me that made me so ashamed that I wanted to be killed. I had the brigade colors in one hand, and had only one hand and two feet to cling on the horse by, and I must have looked like a cat climbing the roof of a whitewashed barn. The drum major got scared at my horse walking towards him in that way, and he lost his bear-skin cap off and fell over it, and rolled in the sand, and the horse, thinking that was a part of the ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... "the tree's too weak for you to cling to it with your legs. Swing them to and fro till we catch hold ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... winter in the fort, he would make arrangements to accommodate them. But Alfred at once replied that he was convinced no inducement would persuade his mother or cousins to leave his father; they had shared his prosperity, and they would cling to him in his adversity; that they all were aware of what they would have to risk before they came out, and his father preferred a life of honourable independence attended with danger, to seeking the assistance ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace, you would have had a splendid ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... popularity. We have no doubt that, sooner or later, this reform will be made; and that the historian, writing fifty years hence, will note it in his book as a remarkable circumstance, and a proof of the pertinacity with which men cling to all which habit and custom have rendered familiar—that for three-quarters of a century, if not longer, a piece of attire so repugnant to the eye of taste, and so deficient in any quality which should recommend it to sensible ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... GIRLS. But youth, of course, etc. POOH. I think you ought to recollect You cannot show too much respect Towards the highly titled few; But nobody does, and why should you? That youth at us should have its fling, Is hard on us, Is hard on us; To our prerogative we cling— So pardon us, So pardon us, If we decline to dance and sing. Tra la la, etc. (Dancing.) CHORUS OF GIRLS.. But youth, of course, must have ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... him! Never give that murderous right hand its freedom! In spite of the brutal clutch that is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp—in spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break a bone—cling hard to it! And if, power failing you against its wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... skies; Their bloom wanes; their smell dies; but who is there with them to sympathise? While vagrant gossamer soft doth on fluttering spring-bowers bind its coils, And drooping catkins lightly strike and cling on the embroidered screens, A maiden in the inner rooms, I sore deplore the close of spring. Such ceaseless sorrow fills my breast, that solace nowhere can I find. Past the embroidered screen I issue forth, taking with me a hoe, And on the faded flowers ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... creeping; hush! they're creeping, Up about my rocking-chair: I can feel their loving fingers Clasp my neck and touch my hair. Little shadows, little shadows, Take me captive, hold me tight, As they climb and cling and whisper, 'Mother ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... he knew there was a way. There was one place no one would think to look for him, if he could manage to keep out of range of the viewscreen lenses ... the outer hull of the ship. If he could clamp himself to the hull, somehow, and manage to cling there during blastoff, he could follow Greg and ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... leaps ashore the full Sou'west All heavy-winged with brine, Here lies above the folded crest The Channel's leaden line; And here the sea-fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring Along ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... said earnestly. 'I do wish it, indeed. I am made unhappy when I think you don't care about such serious matters. Without the Church to cling to, what ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... Make the doors very low and the entries narrow. Put a picture of a saint in the principal room of every house, and adorn the walls with a few engravings. Make a garden near each house, and let a few miscellaneous gardens cling to the hillside and strive to climb it. Don't forget to build a church, or you will fail to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... and yet all the guns of the federal army could not drive them away. Many a gray regiment planted its battle-flag on the breastworks and then hugged those sides of death in its efforts to keep it there, as bees cling around the body of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... earth, which it makes use of on every occasion when a little frightened. The Gypaetos is also found here; it feeds principally on carrion. I observed Trichrodroma for the first time here to-day, this bird is by no means a powerful climber; indeed the individual seen to-day could only cling, he was employed about sand banks of the irrigating canals, etc. hopping from one likely spot to another, clinging here and there momentarily, and always aiding himself in his inclined position by a flutter of his wings; holes seemed always to attract him. It is by no means ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... pounds a day, and most of them pull much less. Careless work plays its part, too, for cotton is easily dropped from the boll and soiled or lost altogether. Leaves and twigs as well as the shell of the boll frequently cling to the fiber, and are picked with it, and all these things tend to dirty and discolor it, and lessen its marketability. It requires about three pounds of cotton with the seed in it, as picked, to produce one pound ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous

... cut away the mainmast also. It is our only chance!" And, therewith, we all crawled along the ship's side—escaping being washed off or blown overboard only by a series of miracles, as it seemed to me—until we arrived at the main chains, where we had something to cling to, and where the channel-piece partially sheltered us. Here we at once got to work with all our energy upon the weather main lanyards, and, the man with the axe presently joining us, in a few minutes the mainmast also ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... is said to be part of the actual wall surrounding the Temple built by Solomon. It is Friday afternoon and there is a great concourse of men and women in flowing garments, bending and bowing and kneeling before the wall and wailing out their prayers. Some crouch low, others cling to the giant blocks and kiss the rough surface, others beat their breasts as if in agony. Standing not far from us is a tall man who calls out some words in a long wailing cry, immediately the crowd respond ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... regrets the many sights to be seen for nothing in Paris. The isolation, the darkened days, the suffering that affects the mind and spirits even more than the body, the emptiness of the life,—all these things tend to induce him to cling to the human being who waits on him as a drowned man clings to a plank; and this especially if the bachelor patient's character is as weak as his nature is ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... them—they are entirely superficial: like a shallow fellow, you at once see through, and know all about them. There is no mystery as to the height they reach, how far they are polished, or the description of leg they cling round. Save Count D'Oraay, we never saw a calf in a pair of them—that is, we never saw a leg with a calf. Their general tenants are speculative Jew clothesmen who have bought them "vorth the monish" (at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Canada? As many legends surround the beginnings of empire in the North as cling to the story of ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... over her deck. There was no rest for her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched, she stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she groaned, and we had to hold on while on deck and cling to our bunks when below, in a constant effort of body and ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... the same if her pleading eyes would let me. But she seems to cling to me even when she is most provokingly saucy; and though I cannot see any love in her manner, there is something in it very different from hate; and this it is which holds me. Can a woman be too pretty for her own happiness, and are many lovers a ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... In an instant Wraysford quitted his hold and plunged once more into the rapid. How, he knew not, but he just reached the hapless boy. It was too late to recover the friendly branch. All he could do was to cling to Stephen and trust to reaching calm water safely. Many a bruise the two received in that terrible passage, but the elder boy never once quitted his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... very coldly, to Lucy and Emily. Mr. Darwell spoke kindly. The ladies and gentlemen had a great deal to say to Miss Darwell, but she was become very reserved among so many strangers, and seemed to cling close to Mrs. Colvin. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... these articles on the homologies of Radiates, I have felt the difficulty of divesting my subject of the technicalities which cling to all scientific results, until they are woven into the tissue of our every-day knowledge and assume the familiar garb of our common intellectual property. When the forms of animals are as familiar to children as their A, B, C, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... 71in life we cling still closer to the recollections of our infancy; the cheerful man loves to dwell over the scenes and frolics of his boyish days; and we are stricken to the very heart by the removal or change of these ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... it may be, save These sacred fields of peace From stain of patriot or of hostile blood! Oh, help us Lord! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and trembling quays Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... The cling-cling-clang of the engines has a homelike sound. The fire has spread steadily all day and the upper part of the drift is burning to-night. The fire engine is stationed on the river bank and a line of hose laid far up the track to the coal mine. The flames to-night are ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... ledge below, and from roof to ledge stretched a railing of cylindrical icicles, as if intended to bolt them together. A cloud now for the first time touched the summit of Monte Rosa, and sought to cling to it, but in a minute it dispersed in shattered fragments, as if dashed to pieces for its presumption. The mountain remained for a time clear and triumphant, but the triumph was shortlived; like suitors that will ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... cling to us so? Our time in doing small things quite consumed, And hearts protected like earth worms encased, Always singing childish songs, sol me do, And crawling safe in shady vales below, Like snails advancing, scoff and hurt endured, Dead there upon the rack, no port secured. ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede

... for the garish eye, When moonless brandlings cling; Let the froddering crooner cry, And ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... every country there is, and as human nature is constituted there always will be, two parties representative of two phases of the human mind: the party in a hurry to effect progress because it deems progress desirable, and the party that desires to cling as long as possible to the ancient ways because it knows them and has had experience of them and looks askance at experiments—experiments for which that somewhat hackneyed phrase a "leap in the dark" has long done service. I have no intention, as I said in the Preface, of dealing at all ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... a certain generous feeling of virtue at once prevents you from persisting in the assertion that pain is the chief evil, and when you were driven from such an opinion when disgrace was contrasted with pain, shall philosophy, the preceptress of life, cling to this idea for so many ages? What duty of life, what praise, what reputation would be of such consequence that a man should be desirous of gaining it at the expense of submitting to bodily pain, when he has persuaded himself that pain is the greatest evil? On the other ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... the men did not understand him. Soon the front end of the ship began to go down and down, faster and faster—till the boat looked almost as though it were standing on its head; and the pirates had to cling to the rails and the masts and the ropes and anything to keep from sliding off. Then the sea rushed roaring in and through all the windows and the doors. And at last the ship plunged right down to the bottom of ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... in the period of an ascendancy to which she so tenaciously sought to cling, had not been based only upon the valour of her arms. Our country was already a rich one in comparison with most others in Europe. Other purposes besides that of providing good cheer for a robust generation ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... in basin of water. Impelled by attraction of gravitation, needles will act very curiously; some cling together, others rush to margin and remain. The manner in which one person's needle behaves towards another's causes amusement, and is supposed to be suggestive ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... know you never wanted revenge on me, Guida, but still you have it here. My life is no more now than vraic upon a rock. I cling, I cling, but that is all, and the waves break over me. I am no longer an admiral, I am no more a duke—I am nothing. It is all done. Of no account with men I am going to my judgment with God. But you remain, and you are Princess Philip d'Avranche, and your ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker



Words linked to "Cling" :   bond, meet, touch, cling film, grasp, bind, cling to, attach, adhere, stick, stick to, contact, adjoin



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