"Solid ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mental attitude cannot be brought about till we have laid hold of some fact which is sufficient to afford a reason for the change. We require some solid ground for our belief in this higher law. Ultimately we find this ground in the great Truth of the eternal relation between spirit in the universal and in the particular. When we realise that substantially there is nothing else but spirit, and that we ourselves are reproductions in individuality ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... first time that night, his pulses really quickened. There in the dark he waited, and the moments that sped seemed very long to him, and they were very anxious. He had no good sword wherewith to defend himself were he attacked, no good, solid ground on which to take his stand. If he were discovered, he was helpless, at their mercy, to shoot, or take, or beat to death as best they listed. And so he waited, his pulses throbbing, his breath coming short ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, while outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and turbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness of the winds of Eternity, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... have become of Walter? It took the thoroughly alarmed lad but a moment to reach the wall where his chum had disappeared. He swarmed up it like a monkey and dropped down on the other side. But no solid ground met his descending feet. Instead, he crashed through leafy boughs and landed in a tangled mass of vines. In the second before the vines gave way under his weight, Charley succeeded in grasping a limb and swinging himself in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... many substantial virtues which gave him a firm place in the memory of his parishioners. But the fact that after he resigned his ministry he was recorded as "remarkably blest in private estate," shows some slight foundation for the suggestion, and gives solid ground for ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holding property or exercising function could form a solid ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice for their future establishment in the world. No principles would be early worked into the habits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of his journey, subscriptions poured in to the extent of one thousand; and Mr. C. on his return, after what might be called a triumph, discovered the elasticity of his spirit; smiling at past depressions, and now, on solid ground, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... are on solid ground. He thinks that Fate is with him, and that, in taking risks, he is infallible. But the best system breaks at political roulette sooner or later. You have got to work for something outside yourself, something that is bigger than the game, or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It was clear that its pilot fought to make solid ground before it crashed. Twice it seemed definitely lost. But each time, at the last instant, the motor purred—and popped—and the ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the might of his majesty and importance, rose up and stalked from the stage, and the eleven other members of the committee, headed by Mr. Crayon, followed him in an angry file, accompanied by the derisive shouts of the audience. They quickened their pace somewhat when they reached solid ground, but before they were within the sheltering confines of their private car, Jimmy Grayson was launched upon his great and thrilling tariff speech, in which he invested the driest subject in the world with an interest that absorbed the attention of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... life. The best scholar in her class, she was never called a grind and she was far from being a frump. The wisest woman in the faculty said of Sylvia: "That girl with her head among the stars has her feet planted on solid ground. Her life will count." And the girlhood that Sylvia had partly lost, was recovered and prolonged. It was a fine thing to be an American college girl, Sylvia realized, and the varied intercourse, the day's hundred and one contacts and small excitements, meant more to her than her fellow students ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... They reached solid ground not far from the creek's edge and walked along briskly, following the course of the stream back toward its source. The soil was black and deep and the forest magnificent. Great beeches and hickories were mingled with ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in 1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had become staid ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Besides, the longboat's solidly built, and a few miles with the wind behind us is no big deal. By tomorrow, who knows if this ship won't be 100 leagues out to sea? If circumstances are in our favor, between ten and eleven this evening we'll be landing on some piece of solid ground, or we'll be dead. So we're in God's hands, and I'll see you ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... deeps unknown; He gave the seas their bound; The watery worlds are all his own, And all the solid ground. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... bury their dead very shallow, usually about two feet, and in Persia the grave is often arched over with soft mud bricks; these weaken and dissolve after the rains and snows of winter, and a cemetery becomes a place of exposed remains and of pitfalls, where an unwary step on what appears solid ground may precipitate one into the undesirable company of a skeleton. By the time Semnoon is reached the day has grown warmer, and the sun favors the cold, dismal earth with a few genial rays, so that the blooming orchards of peach and pomegranate that brighten and enliven the environs of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... something like reluctance that he tore himself away from the magic of the sluice-box. Once on the solid ground, however, he again turned his eyes to gaze up at the structure. Then he laughed. It was an audible expression ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... so fragmentary, so embarrassed by dogmatic hypotheses and assertions, and deterring complications, that one must give oneself wholly to it for any chance of getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. Difficulties in them are like difficulties in Greek or Sanscrit: that is all. In the Assyrian, I do not yet know whether to believe at least half of the characters, and many fundamental alleged ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the streets. Formerly the houses stood on elevated piles and were independent of the floods which rose in Lake Tezcuco by the overflowing of other lakes on a higher level. But when the foundations were on solid ground it became necessary to provide against the accumulated volume of water by excavating a tunnel to drain off the flood. This was constructed about one hundred years after the invasion of the Spaniards, and has been described ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... like monsters, rather than men, into the vast ruin of what had once been a great city. They walked carefully, side by side, speaking to each other by radio as though they were in deep space rather than upon solid ground. ...
— Operation Lorelie • William P. Salton
... for herself, in which she was privately congratulatory to as great an extent as her husband would allow her to go, and which ended with a hope that if they lived to be married they would content themselves with doing their explorations on solid ground. She did not want to come back until she had seen the pole, but some of her ideas about that kind of travelling were getting to be a good deal more ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... have all long since passed away, even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there are miles of solid ground between Mount Oeta and the gulf, so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass—nay, than the very battle-field itself—has been the name of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred years have sped since ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... no fear, only an overwhelming contempt. "I mean," she said, "that to save you—to leave you a chance of getting back to solid ground—Donovan and I deceived Burke. He supplied the money, and I put ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... indistinguishable one from the other, balanced precariously on two spindly legs, and with long thin arms like tentacles, waving and coiling. Spiderlike beings ran out over the smooth dark surface of the sea as if it were solid ground. ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... observation. The herd was in full drive directly toward him. Suppose they should come driving down over the hills where he was! They would sweep down into the gully, stampede the horses, and trample all the camp stuff into bits! The boy fairly shook with excitement as the idea struck him. On they came, the solid ground ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... semi-freighter, Candless type. Procyron III was a water-planet with less than ten per cent of land. Which was unfortunate, because its average temperature and orbit made it highly suitable for human occupation. Had the ten per cent of solid ground been in one piece, it would doubtless have been colonized. But the ground was ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... dare stop till he's ready.) Space bows before such a man, and shrivels itself up into a mere nothing. Land and water are alike to such a one. It matters not to him whether the waves roll beneath his possessions, or the solid ground upholds them. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... prenotion; whereof the one is honoured with the inquiry of Aristotle, and the other of Hippocrates. And although they have of later time been used to be coupled with superstitions and fantastical arts, yet being purged and restored to their true state, they have both of them a solid ground in Nature, and a profitable use in life. The first is physiognomy, which discovereth the disposition of the mind by the lineaments of the body. The second is the exposition of natural dreams, which discovereth the state of the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... matter of fact, the great number of the animals had filled the narrow gully, and the last few charged across the bodies of their fallen comrades to solid ground and safety beyond. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... material side of things. What she saw, what she knew, what her body told her, what the recorded experience of the world taught—these were real; all the rest, to her, was phantasy or imagination. She kept her feet upon the solid ground of fact, and left all else to dreamers; or, as she would have expressed it, to the victims of ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... is covered with almost impenetrable forests of pine and evergreen of different varieties. The tundras or marshes are very treacherous, for the traveler marching along on what appears to be a rough strip of solid ground, suddenly may feel the same give way and he is precipitated into a bath of ice cold muddy water. Great areas of these tundras are nothing more than a thickly woven matting of grasses and weeds overgrowing creeks ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... nausea, such as I had never before experienced. The sensations I experienced in the old vault were nothing to it. The air there, as I mentioned, was perfectly pure, besides which I was then upon solid ground; now I felt an unpleasant movement, sometimes a sort of plunging forward, then a rise and fall, and then a rolling from side to side, though being close to the keel I didn't experience this so much as if I had been on deck. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... O.K. Don't make any mistake about that. I'll send this beggar a whopping old basket of fruit tomorrow and a handsome box of flowers. You girls had better part with a little change in the same cause. Anyway, I have pretty solid ground to stand on. Who is going to prove that I didn't sound a horn? It couldn't be heard above the thunder. If I drove fast, I had reason for it. Why should I drive my car at a crawl and be caught in the storm? Was there a cop around to say I was speeding? There was not. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... is that, when for any reason a shade of doubt comes over men's minds that the combination is not working, that the machine is at some point going to give way, that somebody is not playing his part fairly, the solid ground seems to shake under their feet, and we have some of the phenomena resulting from an earthquake, and among others blind terror. But to anyone who understands what this new social force, Credit, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the way sand is soft, unyieldingly. Unlike sand, however, it did not suggest a tightlypacked foundation, but rather the firmness of a good mattress resting on a wellmade spring. It was resilient, like carefully tended turf, yet at the same time one thought, not of the solid ground beneath, but of feathers, or even more of buoyant clouds. My parachute having landed me gently on my feet, I sank naturally to my knees, and then, impelled by some other force than gravity, my body ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... conclusions, that no skull is perfectly symmetrical—every one showing some variation from the ideal type. When the extent of this variation has been absolutely demonstrated to be greater in the case of criminals than among other sections of the community, we shall then be approaching solid ground. At present we must wait for further light before anything can be said with certainty with ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... boys had made ascents, Andy could never remember that his pulses throbbed with one-half the suspense they did now. Not even on that never to be forgotten initial performance, when for the first time they felt the strange sensation of leaving the solid ground in a flying machine, had he been so excited, so nervous, so filled with alternate ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... said; "and yet I should like to see these new-fangled theories about Scriptural inspiration, plenary or otherwise, lifted from the shaking quagmires of conjecture onto the solid ground of demonstration." ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... long recess she tried to go away by herself, in the hope that her heart might quiet down, and rest itself on some of the new and solid ground on which she had so lately learned to tread. But they followed her: several of the teachers, in a gayety of mood, that was half affected to hide the homesickness of their hearts, and therefore infected ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... this river, and, following its turnings for some miles, he conducted them at last to a place where he found more solid ground to land upon. But this ground, though solid, was almost as wild and solitary as the morass. It was a forest of vast extent, which showed no signs of human occupancy, except that the peasants who lived in the surrounding regions had come down to the lowest point accessible, and were ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... woodmen began to probe with the end of a staff among the ivy. For some time he was met by the solid ground, but presently the butt of the staff went through suddenly, pitching him on his head, amidst a suppressed laugh from ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... feet began to sink in the black, oozy bog. Margaret saw the water bubbling up behind her, and cried to her in alarm to come back; and Rita, finding the earth plucking at her feet, turned willingly toward the solid ground; but return was impossible. She tried to lift her feet, but the bog held them fast, and with the effort, she felt herself ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... "are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." Mr. Lincoln and the Union party, struggling faithfully onward, finally reached the solid ground that the American government was founded on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity, and that, for this Nation, "Union and liberty" were indeed "one ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... that a well-arranged ambush might have practically annihilated us before we could have effected a landing through the thick, viscid mud and the almost impenetrable growth of mangroves that divided the waters of the river from the solid ground of the shore. Fortunately for us, the slavers appeared unaccountably to have overlooked the admirable opportunities thus afforded for frustrating an attack; or possibly, as we thought, it was that they had fully relied upon the power of the decoy schooner ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin to inquire into it? It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to the first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from it. He would probably take it as a deadly insult. I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters. And—one should ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was there who could help her? She imagined herself going to a clergyman and saying she was bad and wanted to be good—even crying. He would be kind and would pray and smile—and she would be told to listen to sermons in the right spirit. She could never do that.... There she felt she was on solid ground. Listening to sermons was wrong... people ought to refuse to be preached at by these men. Trying to listen to them made her more furious than anything she could think of, more base in submitting... those men's sermons were worse than women's smiles... just as insincere at any rate... and you ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... but they could make their way around the ends of these, and it was not long before they had scrambled over the rocks at the glacier's edge and once more stood on solid ground. Even Bello seemed to realize that their troubles were now nearly over, for he barked and ran round them in circles and leaped up with his paws on their shoulders to give them dog kisses, and, as for his tail—he nearly wagged it loose in his joy. The goats sprang forward ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... bravely enough. "It's a case of the biters bitten, evidently. We came to spy, and we've been spied on in turn. Well, since you've discovered us in a tree, perhaps you'd better climb up and help a pack of foolish girls back to the solid ground again. I seem to lose my head once ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... and his ears, but who had sufficient faculty left to hate the English, to oppress the people, to be corrupt and venal beyond all conception, and to appoint subordinates as flagitious as himself. 'Bad ministers,' wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah.' The oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the minister, and the minister punished ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... nation, and on that ground not to be trusted, or that he had used this plea of disagreement between him and his Council as a pretence, set up without color or decency, for a gross violation of his own engagements, leaving the princes and states of the country no solid ground on which they can or ought to contract with the Company, to the utter destruction of all public confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candor, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... into the courts of law, where the relations of society and conduct or feelings of individuals were suffered to be under control of fanciful or mystical notions, could have but one effect. When a whole people abandoned the solid ground of common sense, overleaped the boundaries of human knowledge, gave itself up to wild reveries, and let loose its passions without restraint, the result was more destructive to society than a Vesuvius to Pompeii. When John Louder said his gun was bewitched, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... of bare soil, beyond which, at a distance of a short quarter of a mile, the swamp again appeared, stretching away limitlessly toward the south and east. Apparently, the only thing to do was to follow the northerly margin of solid ground, which seemed to trend away in a westerly direction, the direction namely in which Earle wished to travel, and this Dick accordingly did. He followed this course for about half an hour, finding the tongue of firm ground which he was ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... esteem a generous share: Who knew so well the season when Her heritage of sense so rare To use with justice and with care: Who in her discourse, friends enchanted all-around, Could fashion out of playful ware An alloy of enduring wear, Good breeding and with solid ground, A heavenly spirit wise and fair, With truth and intellect profound, Clusine, thanks be to Heaven, her perfect health ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... my waist but her skirts were clear of it. I slipped once and thought we were in trouble, but we safely reached the opening and it was a happy moment when I placed her on solid ground. Not that I was tired of my burden—not at all. I cheerfully would have attempted the task of carrying her the three miles between ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... of Protestantism are much given to glorify the Reformation of the sixteenth century as the emancipation of Reason; but it may be doubted if their contention has any solid ground; while there is a good deal of evidence to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... with an awful light, such as they had not before witnessed there. His eye shot out prophetic meanings. At the close, he said, in a low tone, like the murmur of distant thunder, "what I have told you, is true,—true, as that we stand on this solid ground,—true, as that sky that bends above us. This book says it. It is, therefore, eternal truth. I have it impressed upon my mind, that a judgment, a swift, tremendous judgment, is about to descend upon this people on account of their sins. I cannot shake ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... almost terror-stricken to see him turn and dart to the torrent like an arrow. With a long flying leap, he landed on the rock in the midst of the stream, and then, without a second's hesitation, with the impetus already acquired, sprang for the solid ground where she stood, struck it, wavered, and would have fallen backward into the water had not she, quick as thought, stepped forward ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... appeared very unlikely ever to take place—namely, the junction of inhabited dwellings with the trees of Mahim—seems to be in rapid course of fulfilment; the land has been drained, many portions formerly impassable filled up, and rendered solid ground, while the houses are extending so fast, that the Burruh Bazaar will in no very long period, in all probability, extend to Mahim. Those who attach some faith to the prophecy, yet are unwilling to believe that evil and not good will befal the "rising presidency," are of opinion that some change ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... a shudder as once during the passage he felt that the heel of his boot actually projected over the awful ledge. A dozen times he felt outwards with his foot to ascertain whether the chasm was passed or not, and at last, with an involuntary sigh of ineffable relief he found that there was solid ground beyond him as far as his foot ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... but at once confessing error, and encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations. The more popular method, therefore, at the present day is not to rationalise, but to try to outsceptic the sceptic. We are told that we have no solid ground from reason at all, and that even physical science is as full of contradictions as theology. Such enterprises, conducted with whatever ingenuity, are, as I believe, hopeless; but at least they are fundamentally and radically sceptical. That, under whatever disguises, is the true meaning of ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... make you personally responsible for the success or failure of this business. I have watched you long enough to know that you have the ability to handle it, and I am convinced that once you realize how much money you can make, you will drop all your sentimental nonsense and get your feet on solid ground." ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... man, from sire to mother: the caressing and the fondling, All love's foolish playfulnesses, mirthful cry and shout of rapture, Alternating, deafen me. Naked, without wings, a genius, like a faun, with nothing bestial, On the solid ground he springeth; but the ground, with counter-action, Up to ether sends him flying; with the second, third rebounding Touches he the vaulted roof. Anxiously the mother calleth: Spring amain, and at thy pleasure; But beware, think not of flying, unto thee is flight denied. And so warns the faithful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies; at the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... shall take in recalling my own. I say there has been but one event in my life; it was that which left me an orphan. O girls, we speak of Clara's coming down to the ground; we speak of seeing our way clear, and treading on solid ground; these are expressions of those whose feet only would walk upon the ground, while their hearts and eyes are on a level with those about them, who have never known how hard to the forehead is the ground, when all we ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text, or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat severely, characterized by ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... between his cue-ball and its mark. Consequently they avoided the centres of eruption, paused on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged moving logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The "break" ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... We see what the effect has been, and must be, when the affairs of life, in courts of law and the relations of society, or the conduct or feelings of individuals, are suffered to be under the control of fanciful or mystical notions. When a whole people abandons the solid ground of common sense, overleaps the boundaries of human knowledge, gives itself up to wild reveries, and lets loose its passions without restraint, it presents a spectacle more terrific to behold, and becomes more destructive and disastrous, than any ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... mortal fright, And in deserted caverns lodge by night; Oft from the rocks a dreadful prospect see Of the huge Cyclops, like a walking tree: From far I hear his thund'ring voice resound, And trampling feet that shake the solid ground. Cornels and salvage berries of the wood, And roots and herbs, have been my meager food. While all around my longing eyes I cast, I saw your happy ships appear at last. On those I fix'd my hopes, to these I run; 'T is all I ask, this ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Signor Squire, you don't often study charts, or you wouldn't fall into such a consait. There's twice as much water as solid ground on this 'airth, to begin with; as in reason there ought to be, seeing that an acre of good productive land is worth five or six of oceans; and then you have little knowledge of my character and prospects ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him, Miss Genevieve," said Lord James. "They have no solid ground to build on, and the water above the dam is to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... shot Frank and Lona to fall into the stream. They struck where the water was quite deep, and they were unharmed, although the girl was unconscious when our hero bore her to solid ground. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... solid ground, where the Celt may with legitimate satisfaction point to traces of the gifts and workings of his race, and where the Englishman may find himself induced to sympathise with that satisfaction and to feel an interest in it, is the design of all the considerations ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... cycle, it seems to me, will witness a synthesis of thought and faith, a recognition of the fact that it is impossible for reason to find solid ground that is not consecrated ground; that all philosophy and all science belong to religion; that all truth is a revelation of God; that the truths of written revelation, if not intelligible to reason, are nevertheless consonant with reason; and that divine agency, instead ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... of the enemy by turning aside; for the grappling-irons and other instruments, which, before the engagement, had been greatly derided by the enemy, were fastened upon their ships, and they were compelled to fight as on solid ground. Being victorious, therefore, at Liparae, by sinking and scattering the enemy's fleet, they celebrated their first naval triumph. And how great was the exultation at it! Duilius, the commander, not content with one day's triumph, ordered, during all the rest of his life, when he returned from supper, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... at length, the author was sought for, and none was to be found, it vanished by degrees, every one shifting it off from himself to another, and, at last, was lost in the numberless crowd, as in a vast ocean, and, having no solid ground to support its credit, was, in a short time, not so much as named in the city. Nevertheless, when Domitian marched out with his forces to the war, he met with messengers and letters that gave him a relation of the victory; and the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... blasphemous excitation, each of the bemired beasts seemed to be inspired with a special demon, and so exerted itself to the utmost limit of its powers that in a single minute the load stood high and dry on solid ground. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... taken unawares. Thereafter being subdued by fright and exhaustion, he was assisted to raise himself to the surface by means of hurdles and earth, which he placed underfoot as they were thrown down to him, till he was enabled to step out on solid ground, when the noosers and decoys were in readiness to tie him up to the nearest tree."—See WOLF'S Life and Adventures, p. 152. Shakspeare appears to have been acquainted with the plan of taking elephants in pitfalls: Decius, encouraging the conspirators, reminds them ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Where the solid ground ran up to the tracks Sam sat down under a tree. Peace came over him. "This is the end of things," he thought, and was like a tired child comforted by its mother. He thought of the sweet-faced nurse who had walked with him that other time in the corridor of the hospital ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... be glad now, unreservedly glad, that Tavender had come to London, that things had turned out as they had. In truth, he stood now for the first time on solid ground. When he thought of it, now, the risk he had been running all these months gave him a little sinking of the heart. Upon reflection, the performance of having sold the same property first to Tavender in Mexico and then to the Rubber Consols Company in London might be ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... feels to be on solid ground again," Jack observed, stamping his feet as though he ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... wagons, poor roads and herds. That country was full of sloughs at that time. Often during the night, the wagon would become stuck, and the men would unhitch the horses, we would walk out on the tongue of the wagon to more solid ground, then they would hitch chains to the end of the tongue and pull it out. We reached Winnebago in the morning and found the people had fled in fright like ourselves. There were only a few men left to guard the post office and store. We could not find safety there. We felt more fright. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... or spiritual (the terms are interchangeable) does not have to pass beyond the manasic globe to get on the solid ground of reality. The spiritual world is here in every physical atom and in every aggregation of them; in every planet, sun, and star; for they are seven, each and every one, not four. Behind the illusion of one ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... Confronted with this august company, whose work it was to set things right, Eudoxia Pence felt smaller than ever. What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. Ten to one we shall never see her profile ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... and mighty armies, and powerful fleets, and the whole material of an advanced civilization. But the legends were manifestly largely imaginative—deities and demi-gods, men and fabulous monsters, were mingled in them on the same plane—and it seemed impossible that we should ever get back to the solid ground, if solid ground had ever existed, on which these ancient ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... that the romances of to-day are not told; that a man and woman of to-day keep the romance apart of their life from the world—of all things most sacred. You may discuss this point with eloquence and at length, but you are not on solid ground. A great romance cannot be veiled from the world, because of all properties that the world waits for, this is the most crying need. Great lovers must be first of all great men and women; and lofty love invariably finds expression, since greatness, both acknowledged and intrinsic, comes to be through ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... upon several of these places. The openings were sometimes square and sometimes circular, and had doubtless been covered with square stones. They were dug out of the solid ground. For about six feet the sides of the pit were perpendicular; in some it swelled out like a great vase with a broad shoulder, in others it became a ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... the Gouverneurs, on the north side of the Square. I like Washington Square very much," said Millard, getting on solid ground again. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... centuries the sidereal world embraced no objects, barring an occasional comet or temporary star, that lay beyond the vision of the earliest astronomers. The conceptions of the stellar universe, except those that ignored the solid ground of observation, were limited by the small aperture of the human eye. But the dawn of another ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... the winning" Thomas Campbell Stanzas, "Could love for ever" George Gordon Byron "They Speak o' Wiles" William Thom "Love will Find Out the Way" Unknown A Woman's Shortcomings Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Love hath a Language" Helen Selina Sheridan Song, "O, let the solid ground" Alfred Tennyson Amaturus William Johnson-Cory The Surface and the Depths Lewis Morris A Ballad of Dreamland Algernon Charles Swinburne Endymion Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fate Susan Marr Spalding "Give all to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... new state, that might in course of time develope itself over the realm of Alexander, floated and gleamed in his fancy; but in his practical daily procedure the poet took as his text the motto "festina lente," insisted on solid ground under his feet, and had no notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the Telegrapho, and disparaged Dr. Mayor, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he is one of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... conduct of the Earl of Abingdon, and in their determination to proceed in the hearing of evidence. The latter circumstance indeed was the more favourable, as the resolution, upon which the witnesses were to be examined, had not been renewed by the Commons. These considerations, however, afforded no solid ground for the mind to rest upon. They only broke in upon it, like faint gleams of sunshine, for a moment, and then were gone. In this situation, the committee could only console themselves by the reflection, that they had done their duty. In looking, however, to their ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... availed me nothing, and I confined my attention, at last, to simply noting the manifestations, without attempting to explain them. I began to experience a feeling, not of terror, but of disturbing uncertainty. The solid ground was taken from beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... shot; 'Twas wise of George, a second shot Might have consigned to luckless pot, His marksman's name, and half a shilling, His renown in the art of killing. It was a stirring place of trade Where famous spinning tops were made. And splendid water power was found Where now there's nought but solid ground, Covered with numerous loads of wood, A costly item bad or good. In modern times—of old it stood, Maple at ninety cents a cord, Just four and six-pence, by my word! And Julius Burpee, gone! well, well! He kept the old Rideau Hotel, Where man and beast could get the best ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... twenty minutes, the four castaways were suddenly brought to a standstill by the sight of foaming billows close to their feet. The solid ground ended here. They found themselves at the extremity of a sharp point on which the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... wherever it's safe, Nat," were Uncle Dick's last words. "It's nicer to have the solid ground under you. This is a treat; the sand's like a feather bed; but we shan't often have such a luxurious ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... swamps of the future metropolis had no charms for him compared with the vision he had in mind of the Rock River country. So he crossed Milwaukee River on a ferry at the foot of Wisconsin Street, walked out on a sidewalk quavering on stilts until solid ground was reached at Third Street, and then struck the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Quonab had felt about himself a year ago. "See," said Rolf, "lift your legs so; don't turn your feet out that way. Look at the place before you put it down again; feel with your toe to make sure there is no dead stick, then wriggle it down to the solid ground. Of course, you'd do better in moccasins. Never brush past any branches; lift them aside and don't let them scratch; ease them back to the place; never try to bend a dry branch; go around it," etc. Van had not thought of these things, but now he grasped them quickly, and they made a wonderful ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... boat for candles—which you may remember were part of the "pruel" that Yaspard hid in the chimney; but the impatience of his companions to learn more would not allow them to wait on his return before descending into the chamber. They could see that there was solid ground some seven or eight feet beneath the opening, and Harry swung down, and soon reported himself as standing on a "decently paved floor;" but he was too cautious to explore farther until some light was thrown on the subject. Not so Tom Holtum. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, the Palace Beautiful, the Lions in the way, the Valley of Humiliation, the hard fight with the demon Apollyon, the more terrible Valley of the Shadow, Vanity Fair, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long |
