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Sail through   /seɪl θru/   Listen
Sail through

verb
1.
Succeed at easily.  Synonyms: ace, breeze through, nail, pass with flying colors, sweep through.  "You will pass with flying colors" , "She nailed her astrophysics course"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sail through" Quotes from Famous Books



... be anger that makes them shine, for they generally do it when they are stirred up or knocked about by oars, or ships' keels, or tumbling waves. But I am not sure that that's the reason either, because, you know, we often sail through them without seeing the light, though of course they must ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... a time when Jolly Robin is only a nestling. Then one day, after he tumbles out of the apple tree and falls squawking and fluttering to the ground, he takes his first lesson in flying. So pleased is Jolly to know that he can actually sail through the air on his wings, that he goes out into the wide, wide world to shift for himself. One day, after advising with Jimmy Rabbit, he decides to become general laugh-maker to the inhabitants of Pleasant Valley, and he becomes ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey

... evil by the method of ignoring. Let a man who, by fortunate health and circumstances, escapes the suffering of any great amount of evil in his own person, also close his eyes to it as it exists in the wider universe outside his private experience, and he will be quit of it altogether, and can sail through life happily on a healthy-minded basis. But we saw in our lectures on melancholy how precarious this attempt necessarily is. Moreover it is but for the individual; and leaves the evil outside of him, unredeemed and unprovided for ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... sail through the air, but I took it to be a big bird. I didn't pay much attention. To tell you the truth I was thinking about Beecher—wondering when he would get here," added Tom quickly as if to forestall any question as to whether or not his thoughts had to do with Beecher in connection with Tom's ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... of ice, lying exactly across our course, and at right angles to the main body of the ice. As this stream extended to the eastward as far as we could see from the "crow's nest," an endeavour was made to push the ships with all sail through the narrowest part. The facility with which this operation, technically called "boring," is performed, depends chiefly on having a fresh and free wind, with which we were not favoured on this occasion; so that, when we had forced the ships about one hundred yards into the ice, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The overpowering deluge seemed to last for ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... reached the yacht, Winifred was dressed for dinner, and Eve and Marie-Louise scurried below to change. They dined on the upper deck by moonlight, and sat late enjoying the still warmth of the night. There was no wind and they seemed to sail through ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... the first impact has a drab air that comes as a shock to those who sail through the sharp, green hills of the Narrows and see the hilly peninsula on which the town is built hanging graciously over the sparkling blue waters of one of the finest and greatest harbours in ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... laughed Mrs. Brown. "She has already confessed to a penchant to seriousness and finds 'beauty in extreme old age'," and pinching Molly's blushing cheek, she went over to join a group of recently made acquaintances who were looking at a distant sail through an overworked spyglass belonging ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... well!" exclaimed Mr. Roscoe, in a high piping voice. "Going to take a sail through the air, was he? You'll have to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... forced with naked feet to climb Sharp slaty ways alive with scorpions, While wolfish hunger strains to catch his throat; One lingers o'er his purple draught and laughs, One shuddering tastes his bitter cup and groans; But there is hope for all. Though not for all To sail through sunny ripples to the end, Chatting of shipwrecks as pathetic tales; All are not born to nurse the dainty pangs That herald love's completion, and behold Their darlings flourish in the tempered air Of comfort ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... must fight till the day of your death with alien, opposite forces, because the blood-vessels of Nancy Elkins, as they sail through the grand canals of the city of your life, so often hang out piratical banners, and bear down on better craft as they near the dangerous places, or put out, like wreckers after a storm, seeking for treasure the owners somehow lost the power ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... and agile Deinosaur, hunted by the carnivores, which relied on its leaping powers for escape. A flapperlike broadening of the fore limbs would help to lengthen the leap, and we must suppose that this membrane increased until the animal could sail through the air, like the flying-fish, and eventually sustain its weight in the air. The wing is, of course, not a feathery frame, as in the bird, but a special skin spreading between the fore limb and the side of the body. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... Oblivion, to sweep away The scattered beams from the car of day: The gems which the evening has lavishly strown Light up the lamps round my ebon throne. Slowly I float through the realms of space, Casting my mantle o'er Nature's face, Weaving the stars in my raven hair, As I sail through the shadowy fields of air. All the wild fancies that thought can bring Lie hid in the folds of my sable wing: Terror is mine with his phrensied crew, Fear with her cheek of marble hue, And sorrow, that shuns the eye of day, Pours out to me her plaintive lay. I am the type of that ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... intention to sail through Lake Nicaragua and down the river San Juan to San Juan del Norte. But accommodation at that port and steamer communication with Colon was so bad and irregular that the trip was regretfully abandoned, and I went on to Panama with my friend. This gentleman possessed a personal letter from President ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... you what that trip will be; you'll have to take that on faith. I can only tell you that we will proceed from here directly to Nome, Alaska. There we will get more oil and provisions. We will then sail through Behring Strait ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell

... along the yard. Mind you, all this time I, only a boy, was working in a gale of wind and driven rain, and was clinging to a yard that was sweeping from side to side in lurching, unsteady flight far above the deck and the angry sea. Hauling the sail through the clew, and letting it fall in the bunt, I drew the weather clew a little abaft the yard, and held it with my knee while I brought in the lee leech in, the same manner. Then, making up my bunt and putting ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... theory, but they all failed to reduce it to practice, and most of these men coupled with their correct notions on the subject, the very erroneous idea that by means of masts, sails, and a rudder, a balloon might be made to sail through the air as a ship sails upon the sea. In this they seem to have confounded two things which are dissimilar, namely, a vessel driven through water, and a ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... Three eggs and a cat sail through the air. Falling short, they drop on to the orchestra. These eggs! This cat! They fall on the conductor and the second trombone. They fall like the gentle dew from Heaven upon the place beneath. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... luxurious sail through the sky, and the buffetings upon sea and land, the hunger, cold, and oftentimes death, suffered by former Arctic explorers," said the Professor. "And, Doctor," he continued, "if we make a successful trip, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... is its superior intelligence. In the menstruum of this man's wit, the past and the present ages, and their religions, politics, and modes of thinking, are dissolved into archetypes and ideas. What new mythologies sail through his head! The Greeks said, that Alexander went as far as Chaos; Goethe went, only the other day, as far; and one step farther he hazarded, and brought himself safe back. There is a heart-cheering freedom in his speculation. The immense horizon which journeys with us ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... I was such a spoiled baby that I couldn't be courteous to a stranger even if she was a detestable little vamp? You're not to bother about it any more. She'll come into my room with me of course. You didn't expect me to sail through life without any sacrifices at all did you, Motherie? Suppose I had gone to Africa as I almost did last year? Don't you fancy there'd have been some things harder than sharing my twin beds with a disagreeable stranger? Besides, remember those angels unaware that ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... no world for pessimists. An amoeba on the beach, blind and helpless, a mere bit of pulp,—that amoeba has grandsons today who read Kant and play symphonies. Will those grandsons in turn have descendants who will sail through the void, discover the foci of forces, the means to control them, and learn how to marshal the planets and grapple with space? Would it after all be any more startling than our rise ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... Hudson's Bay. By a new law, which passed in 1776, both these deficiencies were effectually remedied. It was now enacted,—'That if any ship, belonging to any of his majesty's subjects, or to his majesty, shall find out, and sail through any passage by sea, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; in any direction, or parallel of the northern hemisphere, to the northward of the 52 of northern latitude, the owners of such ships, if belonging to any of his majesty's subject, or the commander, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... returned baffled in their sanguine efforts to sail through the open sea. The ice had returned upon them, setting southwardly in obedience to the same impulse which for a moment had driven it away, and they found themselves imprisoned again near ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... swell-fish comes a young sea-robin, a very interesting fish. He can make a musical grunting noise when he feels good, and will spread his beautiful wings, and sail through the water as proud as a peacock. When he is tired, he likes to bury himself up to his eyes in sand, for which he uses his two curious hooked fingers. He also uses these to dig out the sand-shrimps. Some years ago great ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... ahid; many men have been drowned in thrying to sail through the same; and him as doesn't know how to swim in a whirlpool hasn't ony business to ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... will never be felt as a discord. The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual things. There are families in which one feels that one must make a careful preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion: one does it with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through a channel strewn with mines. There are other families in which one has no hesitation in speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of spiritual actions, as things with which all are familiar in practice, and are as natural as food and drink. In this atmosphere it produces no smile to say, "I am going ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... visit passed in a whirl. She had her promised toboggan-ride at the back of an automobile through a chill January twilight. Swathed in furs she put in a morning tobogganing on the country-club hill; even tried skiing, to sail through the air for a glorious moment and then land in a tangled laughing bundle on a soft snow-drift. She liked all the winter sports, except an afternoon spent snow-shoeing over a glaring plain under pale yellow sunshine, but she soon realized that ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Did not sail through the night as I expected, but were still in Portland when morning came. We had fish for breakfast; found mine frozen beneath the crisp brown outside. After breakfast went up on deck. The sky was blue and bright, the air piercing cold. The town ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... found that George Bass had just come in in his whale-boat with his report. Hunter and the two young men agreed that the existence of the strait was certain, and that the next thing to do was to sail through it. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... fortune, et cetera, chording decently. At least, so those veracious histories say. The heroine, for instance, glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of matrimony;—all the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... I sail through the realms of the long ago, Wafted by fancy and visions frail, On the river Time with its gentle flow, In a silver boat with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed



Words linked to "Sail through" :   pass with flying colors, sweep through, make it, nail, pass



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