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Sweep away   /swip əwˈeɪ/   Listen
Sweep away

verb
1.
Eliminate completely and without a trace.  Synonym: wipe out.
2.
Overwhelm emotionally.  Synonym: sweep off.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sweep away" Quotes from Famous Books



... intolerable grievances, and, if necessary, to strip the king of tyrannical powers, for such a thing the English parliament had done; but it was quite another thing for one branch of the States-General to constitute itself the nation, and usurp the powers and functions of the other two branches; to sweep away, almost in a single night, the constitution of the realm; to take away all the powers of the king, imprison him, mock him, insult him, and execute him, and then to cut off the heads of the nobles who supported him, and of all people who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... the same time that it destroyed the harsh dominion which they themselves exercised over their peasantry. Joseph alternated between concession and the extreme of autocratic violence. At one moment he resolved to sweep away every local right that fettered the exercise of his power; then, after throwing the Netherlands into successful revolt, and forcing Hungary to the verge of armed resistance, he revoked his unconstitutional ordinances (January 28, 1790), and restored all the institutions of the Hungarian ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the hills must be ringing with their shouts, round many a lonely tarn, where the men of one parish meet those of the next in friendly conflict north of the Tweed. The exhilarating yell of "soop her up," whereby the curler who wields a broom is abjured to sweep away the snow in front of the advancing stone, will many a time be heard this winter. There is something peculiarly healthy about this sport—in the ring with which the heavy stones clash against each other; in the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... bulwark rail to recover his breath, the splendour and beauty of the Southern night struck him to the heart with a cruel pang. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed up at the Milky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that the dawn would sweep away like ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... that of Massachusetts—and laws enacted in the New-England States and in Pennsylvania, for its gradual abolition. Well might they have anticipated, that Justice and Humanity, now starting forth with fresh vigor, would, in their march, sweep away the whole system; more especially, as freedom of speech and of the press—the legitimate abolisher not only of the acknowledged vice of slavery, but of every other that time should reveal in our institutions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... withdraw to sick-beds, perish there, and cease from among the healthy and happy. This does not happen. They live on; and though they cannot regain youth and gaiety, they may regain strength and serenity. The blossom which the March wind nips, but fails to sweep away, may survive to hang a withered apple on the tree late into autumn: having braved the last frosts of spring, it may also brave the first ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... in Europe one man who might have done much to check this current of unreason which was to sweep away so many thoughtful men on the one hand from scientific knowledge, and so many on the other from Christianity. This was Peter Apian. He was one of the great mathematical and astronomical scholars ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Empire Maker, was not an Empire Ruler. His conceptions were far too vast to allow him to take into consideration the smaller details of everyday life which, in the management of the affairs of the world, obliges one to consider possible ramifications of every great enterprise. Rhodes wanted simply to sweep away all obstacles without giving the slightest thought to the consequences likely to follow on so offhand a manner of getting rid ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... BARINGO. Many a time and oft In this English land men have rated me About my moneys and my usuries. But that is long ago; the times have changed, And feeling in more righteous channel set, Now turns itself in flood to sweep away The wrongs of vanished years. Nay, more than this. But yesterday one of my ancient race, Filled, with his Christian colleagues' heartiest will, The civic throne; and at this very hour A protest from all classes in the land From low and high, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various

... abolition of his normal seats. His wife dexterously availed herself of this state of affairs to obtain his assent to her great project, which, it would appear, might not only amuse him, but, in its unprecedented magnificence and novelty, must sweep away all discontents, and gratify ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... whether he succumb to sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions; fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth would refuse her increase, nay, the very frame of nature itself might be dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put the king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... cushions which ornamented the extreme end of the foot of the fly, in which she counted five joints, might easily possess the sense of touch, and that this also rendered them more useful for motion, and for the toilet; it was like so many intelligent brushes, all ready to perceive and sweep away the least grain of dust. The little beards she also thought might have the power of taste, like the antennae, at the same time that ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen

... light the fire again when she came in and sweep away the ashes that had gathered on the floor and after she had done all that it was time to prepare the meal for the evening. But before her husband came home she took the spinning wheel out of the corner and put it near the ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum

... soul! Look there to find your bad and ugly ideals! Give me your hand, Mr. Cinch. Thus, with our hands clasped, will our spiritual understandings commune. Together we will pursue our investigations into the recesses of your ethereal nature, and with the clean new broom of inspired reason, will we sweep away the dusty cobwebs ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... duel. I have done it, and proved myself a man of metal notwithstanding. To say nothing of the inhumanity, the senselessness of duelling revolts me. 'Tis a folly, so your nobles practise it, and your royal wiseacre sanctions. No blood for me: and yet I tell you that whatever opposes me, I will sweep away. How? With the brain. If we descend to poor brute strength or brutal craft, it is from failing in the brain: we quit the leadership of our forces, and the descent is the beast's confession. Do I say how? Perhaps by your aid.—You do not start and cry: "Mine!" That is well. I have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "ojaladeros," or warriors with much decoration in the shape of polished buttons. Their depot was at Biarritz, an aristocratic watering-place born under the second French Empire, and not ignorant of some of the vices of the Byzantine Empire. There are healthful breezes there, but they do not quite sweep away the scent of frangipani. Warlike, with a proviso, the Scot might have been designated, but he was not to be compared with these ojaladeros; he would fight if he had a lime-lit stage to posture upon; they would not fight at all, but they moved about mysteriously, as if their bosoms were big with ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... slavery that can be at all maintained. The first, based on the property view that slavery is right, conforms to that idea throughout, and demands that we shall do everything for it that we ought to do if it were right. We must sweep away all opposition, for opposition to the right is wrong; we must agree that slavery is right, and we must adopt the idea that property has persuaded the owner to believe that slavery is morally right and socially elevating. This gives a philosophical ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... a crumpled piece of paper which she read over to herself. It was the original certificate of the marriage between Patrick Henry Keogh and Margaret Donohoe; if Ellen had only known it, she held in her hand the evidence to sweep away all her friend's troubles. It so happened, however, that it conveyed nothing to her mind. She had heard much about Considine, but not a word about Keogh, and the name "Margaret Donohoe" did not strike her half-asleep mind as referring ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... the Ober-Amtmann, as if to consult his will. For a moment the Ober-Amtmann passed one hand across his brow, as though to sweep away the dark visions that were hovering about it; and then, waving the other, as if he had come to a resolution which had cost him pain, said with stern solemnity—"Let the workers of the evil deeds of Satan perish, until the earth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... "elucidations" have been accepted, with a few reservations, as final. No other work has gone so far to reverse a traditional estimate. The old current conceptions of the Protector are refuted out of his own mouth; but it was left for his editor to restore life to the half-forgotten records, and sweep away the clouds that obscured their revelations of a great though rugged character. Cromwell has been generally accepted in Scotland as Carlyle's masterpiece—a judgment due to the fact of its being, among the author's mature works, the least apparently opposed ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... easy to pursue the subject farther, but I believe that every thoughtful reader will be perfectly well able to supply farther illustrations, and sweep away the sandy foundations of the opposite theory, unassisted. Let it, however, be observed, that in spite of all custom, an Englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the superiority of the turban to the hat, or of the plaid to the coat, that ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... affectation of being something she is not meets us in woman, like a ghost we cannot lay or a mist we cannot sweep away. In the holiest and the most trivial things alike we find it penetrating everywhere—even in church, and at her prayers, when the pretty penitent, rising from her lengthy orison, lifts her eyes and looks about her furtively to see who has noticed ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... of Judges we see how each time His people disobeyed His command and copied the sins they were called to sweep away, God punished them by letting their merciless neighbours rule over them, till they loathed the bondage and turned once ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... the 'Secularisation of the Clergy Reserves.' Eagerly taken up, as was natural, by the Ultra-radicals, or 'Clear-grits,' the cry was echoed by a considerable section of the old Tory party, from motives which it is less easy to analyse; and so violent was the feeling that it threatened to sweep away at one stroke all the endowments in question, without regard to vested interests, and without even waiting for the repeal of the Imperial Act by which these endowments were guaranteed. More loyal and moderate counsels however prevailed, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... suspecting that you were crossing a river. These houses, built of stone and wood, overhung the edges of the bridge, and afforded their inhabitants an unsafe abode between the sky and the water. At times the river would rise in one of its periodical furies, and sweep away a pier or two with the superincumbent houses; at others the wooden supporters of the structure would catch fire by some untoward event, and the inhabitants had the choice of being fried or drowned, along with their penates and their supellectile property. Such a catastrophe happened ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Pen-Morfa; they are the same that hang over Tre-Madoc, but near Pen-Morfa they sweep away, and are lost in the plain. Every where they are beautiful. The great sharp ledges which would otherwise look hard and cold, are adorned with the brightest-colored moss, and the golden lichen. Close to, you see the scarlet leaves of the crane's-bill, and the tufts of purple heather, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... thought, it is pointed out that the working class must "win the battle of democracy."[14] It must acquire "political supremacy." It must raise itself to "the position of ruling class," in order that it may sweep away "the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... and uttered hoarse cries. Their number was taken, and the tablets handed to the steward of the domain. Long after the oxen, the asses, the goats, and the geese had gone in, a column of dust which the wind could not sweep away still rose ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... both at Hyde and St. Mary to sweep away all the rotten bones that be called relics; which we may not omit, lest it be thought we came more for the treasure than for the avoiding ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath

... his bitterness of spirit he felt a jealousy of that influence of Schleiermacher, which had of late come between him and his brother. He hated the very name, he said, and hid his face with a shudder. He hoped the torrent would sweep away every fragment ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... words have become a canon of the Irish Church - "has to judge no man unjustly; to be the protector of the stranger, of the widow, and the orphan; to repress theft, punish adultery, not to keep buffoons or unchaste persons; not to exalt iniquity, but to sweep away the impious from the land, exterminate parricides and perjurers; to defend the poor, to appoint just men over the affairs of the kingdom, to consult wise and temperate elders, to defend his native land against its ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... he read to Jacqueline was salvation by faith, not of works,—an iconoclastic doctrine, that was to sweep away the great mass of Romish superstition, invalidating Papal power. Image-worship, shrine-frequenting sacrifices, indulgences, were esteemed and proved less than nothing worth in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... before the Indian procession was on its march, when it was seen occupying the great causeway for a long extent. In front came a large body of attendants, whose office seemed to be to sweep away every particle of rubbish from the road. High above the crowd appeared the Inca, borne on the shoulders of his principal nobles, while others of the same rank marched by the sides of his litter, displaying such a dazzling show of ornaments ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... between her duty and her affection. For she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved—by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate—these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... or we sophistically persuade ourselves into the belief that the character is strengthened by exposure to premature evil. The atmosphere of the boarding-school is a very artificial one; its successes are patent, its debris we sweep away into a corner; but whatever view we take of it all, it is a life which, if one cares for virtue at all, however half-heartedly, tries the mental and emotional faculties of the schoolmaster to the uttermost, and every now and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... now well. May the food become abundant; may the chickens, pigs, and rice fruit heads be large. Bring the battle-ax to guard the door. Bring the winnowing tray to serve the food; and bring the wisp of palay straw to sweep away the many ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... live this poor thin life among a few exceptional men, despising those beneath them for an ignorance for which they themselves are responsible, for a brutality that they will not struggle with,—rather than this, I would that the world should indeed sweep away all art for awhile, as I said before I thought it possible she might do; rather than the wheat should rot in the miser's granary, I would that the earth had it, that it might yet have a chance ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... volcano if ever human beings did, in the little sultry respite from the tornado which was called the world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working, at least. How soon before it would break again, the final destructive hurricane, born of nothing but the malignant folly of human hearts, and sweep away all that they now agonized and sweated to keep? What silly weakness to spend the respite in anything but getting as much of what you wanted as you could, before it was all gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow or black ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... the least shew of a fight. Ludolphus puts as great hardships on them, to fight these Condors, as Vossius did, in making them fight Elephants, but not with equal Success; for Vossius's Pygmies made great Slaughters of the Elephants; but Ludolphus his Cranes sweep away the Pygmies, as easily as an Owl would a Mouse, and eat them up into the bargain; now I never heard the Cranes were so cruel and barbarous to their Enemies, tho' there are some Nations in the World that are reported to ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... barbarity where, in conscience, the law might properly interfere, is most probable. The difficulty is to determine where a court may properly begin. Merely in the abstract, it may well be asked which power of the master accords with right. The answer will probably sweep away all of them. But we cannot look at the matter in this light. The truth is we are forbidden to enter on a train of general reasoning on the subject. We cannot allow the right of the master to be brought into discussion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... of these men was to break the foreign yoke, to exterminate the Saxon colony, to sweep away the Protestant Church, and to restore the soil to its ancient proprietors. To obtain these ends they would without the smallest scruple have risen up against James; and to obtain these ends they rose ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "I shall never forget the last night we saw that ill-fated vessel. I was chief officer of the City of Antwerp. On the day we sighted the City of Boston a furious southeast hurricane set in. Both vessels labored hard. The sea seemed determined to sweep away every vestige of life. When day ended the gale did not abate, and everything was lashed for a night of unusual fury. Our good ship was turned to the south to avoid the possibility of icebergs. The City of Boston, however, undoubtedly went to the north. Her boats, life-preservers ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... occurrence, that we might be prepared for it. The river was rising—that was evident—and now flowed down in waves which would have been almost sufficient to swamp our canoes; while torrents of water came rushing down the banks, and threatening every instant to sweep away our hut. Happily we had formed it on a little elevation on the bank, so that the stream turned on either side, and the risk was therefore lessened. Fiercer and fiercer raged the storm. The waters increased rapidly. It seemed as if the ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... full meaning of the responsibilities we had assumed in this tremendous struggle was by no means fully realized. The war was too far away, and life at home was still running in its accustomed grooves. They could not take the European war to themselves, nor realize that it might sweep away their prosperity, their liberties—even their homes. Fear had not yet been aroused; pity for our suffering and hard-pressed allies was still lightly considered; the war had not struck home to the ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... boat swept round with its bow to the east just in time to meet a billow, which, towering high above its fellows, burst completely over the rocks, and appeared to be about to sweep away all before it. For a moment the boat was as if embedded in snow, then it sank once more into the lead among the floating tangle, and the men pulled with might and main in order to escape the next wave. They were just in time. It burst over the same rocks with greater violence than its predecessor, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... conditions, tempered, it must be owned, with an ambition to fill the middle of the stage himself. In his imagination he became a second Byron. He saw, or thought he saw, the mistakes of the system under which he lived; and—without pausing to consider its merits—wished to sweep away the whole foundation into the sea, and to build upon some illusory basis a new heaven and new earth. He had yet to read the essay in which Matthew Arnold says that "Byron shattered, inevitably shattered himself against ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... and fro, blown slightly on its course by a cool September wind,—the coolness of which begins to be tempered by a bright, glittering sun. There is dew on the grass. In front, beyond the lower spread of forest, Saddle Mountain rises, and the valleys and long, swelling hills sweep away. But the impression of this clearing is solitude, as of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... struggle with the races now under the sceptre of Islam, for example—inflated as they are with the pride of wide conquest, and looking contemptuously upon that Christian faith which it was their early mission to sweep away as a form of idolatry! How different is our task in India, which boasts the antiquity of the noble Sanskrit and its sacred literature, and claims, as the true representative of the Aryan race, to have given to western nations their philosophy, their religion, and their civilization! ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... the rest of the ascending column, which would disturb the fine order of the procession by an excess of newcomers; it is also important that we should do away with all the silken paths, both new and old, that can put the cornice into communication with the ground. With a thick hair-pencil I sweep away the surplus climbers; with a big brush, one that leaves no smell behind it—for this might afterwards prove confusing—I carefully rub down the vase and get rid of every thread which the caterpillars have laid on the march. When these preparations ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... of the earth,—such is my majesty. To rise up out of the foundation of heaven, Whose fame shines among the habitation of men,—such is my supremacy. Queen of heaven that on high and below is invoked,—such is my supremacy. The mountain I sweep away altogether,—such is my supremacy. The destroyer of the mountain walls am I, their great foundation ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... was that sickening sweet tenderness which sucked away the soul of Germany like a damp and moldy riverbed. Light! Light! A rough, dry wind which should sweep away the miasmas of the swamp, the misty staleness of the Lieder, Liedchen, Liedlein, as numerous as drops of rain in which inexhaustibly the Germanic Gemuet is poured forth: the countless things like Sehnsucht (Desire), Heimweh (Homesickness), Aufschwung (Soaring), Trage (A question), ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... "Then sweep away the tavern!" I exclaimed. "Banish it. Leave it. Put it out of all thought or consideration. I can wait for you. I can make a place and a position for you. ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... as a hinderer (1 Thess. ii. 18) the obstacles which he puts in our way need not dismay us; God permits them to delay or deter us for the time, only as a test of our patience and faith, and the satanic hinderer will be met by a divine Helper who will sweep away all his obstacles, as with ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... subjects but of itself. "Justice" and "Law" are the specious names it employs to cloak its own arbitrary will; they have no objective validity, no reference to the well-being of all; and it is only the weak and the foolish on whom they impose. Strong and original natures sweep away this tangle of words, assert themselves in defiance of false shame, and claim the right divine that is theirs by nature, to rule at their will by virtue of their strength. "Each government," says Thrasymachus in the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... safe with her that she won't take offence unreasonably. What a picture she made as she pulled the primroses to pieces—it seemed all up with one! And then her smile flashing out—her eagerness to make amends—to sweep away ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... self-respect, and prompts to new efforts. Mere alms-giving is demoralizing for the opposite reason. It blunts the moral feelings, lowers the self-respect, and fosters inactivity and idleness, opening the way for vice to come in and sweep away all the foundations of integrity. Now, true charity to the poor is for us to help them to help themselves. Since you left me a short time ago, I have been thinking, rather hastily, over the matter; and the fact of hearing about the place for an able-bodied man, as ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... his shapeless tomb! But bear thou fearless on;—the God of all, To whom the afflicted kneel, the friendless call, 140 From His high throne of mercy shall approve The holy deeds of Mercy and of Love: For when the vanities of life's brief day Oblivion's hurrying wing shall sweep away, Each act by Charity and Mercy done, 145 High o'er the wrecks of time, shall live alone, Immortal as the heavens, and beauteous bloom To other worlds, and realms ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... the least justify. A Sovereign will always regard the freedom of the citizen as an alienated fief, which he is bound to recover. To the citizen the authority of a sovereign is a torrent, which, by its inundation, threatens to sweep away his rights. The Belgians sought to protect themselves against the ocean by embankments, and against their princes by constitutional enactments. The whole history of the world is a perpetually recurring struggle ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... too suddenly eclipsed; and why should you court such an exposure of popular fickleness, when about to become yourself "the comet of a season," and to go through that brilliant perihelion, in which, reversing the feat of Horace with his lofty head, you will sweep away all other stars with a swinge of your luminous caudality? Yes, Godfrey—spare your own feelings, and treat us to another Great Unknown! I am sure such will be your determination, and so I will simply subjoin the hope ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... The plain people, though they did not meddle in public deliberations, guessed at once that that train was an omen of treason. The report is that the folk has given the name of broom to this comet, and says that it will sweep away a million men." And in reply the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... note is: "We can merely obstruct the enemy's road or divide his army, but not sweep away all his accumulated stores." Water can do useful service, but it lacks the terrible destructive power of fire. This is the reason, Chang Yu concludes, why the former is dismissed in a couple of sentences, whereas the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... years since Mr. Chamberlain, in a celebrated speech at Islington, made the following remarkable declaration:—"I say the time has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle, to sweep away altogether the alien boards of foreign officials and to substitute for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish business." Change of opinions, no one can refuse to admit, in a statesman any more than in other men, and as regards the latter part of the extract which I have ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... Mountain led a young girl, named Charlotte Corday, to assassinate Marat, whom she supposed to be the chief cause of the cruelties that were taking place; but his death only added to the dread of reaction. A Committee of Public Safety was appointed by the Convention, and endeavoured to sweep away every being who either seemed adverse to equality, or who might inherit any claim to rank. The queen was put to death nine months after her husband; and the Girondins, who had begun to try to stem the tide of slaughter, soon fell under the denunciation ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... formed, and there is a constant and powerful indraught through the funnels. By this, particles are drawn in from without, and these are swept round with the sphere, their temperature becoming much raised, and they are then violently shot out through the spikes. It is these jets which occasionally sweep away an atom from the surface of the sphere. These "particles" may be atoms, or they may be bodies from any of the etheric levels; in some cases these bodies break up and form new combinations. In fact lithium seems like a kind of vortex of creative activity, drawing ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... sweep away the outposts (he asked), may not something worse, think you, be the consequence? will not sheer plundering be free to any ruffian who likes?... But may I ask is this judgment the result of personal inspection? have you gone yourself ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... part had swept down into the path that led to the little house, having been stopped by some falling trees and a great boulder. It blocked the only way to escape above, and beneath, the river was creeping up to sweep away the little house. So, there the mother and her children waited (the father was in the farthest north), facing death below and above. The wild duck had carried the tale in its terrible simplicity. The last words were, "There mayn't be any help for me and my sweet chicks, but I am still ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... against it in the sunshine, with the great rose and lilac sere hills opposite, the pale blond valley behind, seemed to clear the soul also of all rank vegetation, of all thoughts and feelings thick and muddy and leaden; to sweep away all that gets between the reality ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... hearts of God's children to the power of the Holy Ghost is inbred sin—that dark, defiant, evil something within that struggles for the mastery of the soul, and will not submit to be meek and lowly, and patient and forbearing and holy, as was Jesus; and when the Holy Spirit comes, His first work is to sweep away that something, that carnal principle, and make free and clean all ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... were not at all sure for those first few miles whether they were traveling as fast as the flood, or not. Suppose the wave should reach and sweep away the bridge before they could cross the river? The thought was in the mind of both Helen and Ruth, whether Tom, on the rear seat, considered it or not. When they finally shot out of the woods and turned toward the toll-bridge, ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson

... to be admitted on all sides that it was largely the fatal influence of the irruption of the barbarous Germans which degraded, when it failed to sweep away, the noble conception of the equality of women with men, and the dignity and freedom of marriage, slowly moulded by the organizing genius of the Roman into a great tradition which still retains a supreme value. The influence of Christianity had at the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... exhausted itself, the violence of the tempest increased. The floods of rain and the blasts of the hurricane at last terminated the affray. The Spaniards, fairly conquered, were compelled to a retreat, lest the rapidly rising river should sweep away the frail and trembling bridge, over which they had passed to their unsuccessful assault. The English and Netherlanders remained masters of the field. The rising flood, too, which was fast converting the meadows into a lake, was as useful ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... ubiquitous, she is forever and forever our antagonist or our friend. "Therefore thus saith the Lord God...your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand...and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-places." Thus said the Lord! We may silence a fort, but we cannot paralyze the truth. Amid all the material convulsions of the day the supremacy of truth remains unshaken. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... winter, when the pale sunset glows beyond the wold among the rifted cloud-banks, it has the wonderful appeal of beauty, a quality which cannot be schemed for or designed, but which a very little mishandling can sweep away. The whole place has grown up out of common use, trees planted for shelter, orchards set for fruit, houses built for convenience. Only in the church and the manor is there any care for seemliness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... shall stain the pages of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the land laws, which in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry. Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has given her back no word even of comfort in her degradation. Turn her barracks into flax mills, encourage a spirit of independence in her citizens, restore to her people the protection of the law, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... overshadow the original text, and by consequence to absorb the greater part of the attention of teachers and students. One object of university reform in all studies at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century was to sweep away this burdensome and often useless material, and to return to the study of the text itself (see p. 48). (5) It illustrates a common mode of interpreting in a figurative sense passages from the Bible ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd, like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with hom, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: Judge when ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring timber, have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a dreary, barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but the natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing grass and plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be erected on spots that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the battle-fields of chilling winds and scorching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... the residual waters escaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Machecoul. He had sobbed in despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder-smitten by grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his soul overflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of prayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, the companion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured out to God, in bursts of adoration, in ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... causes which counteract the increase of salmon fry, and consequently of grown grilse and adult salmon, Mr Scrope considers that the "furious spates" which so frequently occur in Tweed, are the most destructive. These not only put the channel in motion, but often sweep away the spawning beds entirely. Prior to the improvements in agriculture, and the amelioration of the hill pastures by drainage, the floods were much less sudden, because the morasses and swampy grounds gave out water gradually, and thus the river ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... be termed a good man, but he was unquestionably a great king. He did much for France, whose greatness and power he strove to increase; and yet it was in no slight degree owing to his policy that, seventy years later, a tempest was to burst out in France, which was to sweep away the nobility and the crown itself; which was to deluge the soil of France with its best blood, to carry war through Europe, and to end at last by the prostration of France beneath the feet of the nations to whom ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... seemed the more cheering because he was united to an American lady, and from long residence in the colony, had made many friends. But there was a strong under-current at work which threatened to sweep away all the authority which any governor might possess however popular he might be as a man. And this was made more impetuous at this time by the intelligence which arrived concerning the Boston Port Bill. This intelligence was received a few days before General Gage arrived, and although the Bostonians ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley that leads toward the town; they are left behind with the signalman as, shading his eyes with his hand, he watches the long train sweep away into ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... beautiful and highly cultivated part of Spain was henceforth to be comparatively desolate. On all the great section of Andalusia, the most southern part of Spain, the Moors left marks in buildings and in cultivation, that it will take centuries yet to sweep away. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... am glad to get thee back. I am afraid I spoil thee; Mistress Kent insists that I do. But there will be time enough to learn to work. And if this dreadful war should sweep away all our fortunes, we shall have to buckle to, and, maybe, plant our own corn and husk it, and dig our potatoes as our fore-mothers helped to when they lived in the cave houses by the river's edge, before they built the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... it may turn up as you say, and in a light wind, I know you will either sail or sweep away from any one of them; but, to be on the square with you, if it comes on to blow, that same hooker, which I take to be his Britannic Majesty's schooner Gleam, will, from his greater beam, and superior ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, * * sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away: his last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till worn to the stumps like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... crazy with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up backwaters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvet-shorn lawn, only to pour itself—its united self—into an open-mouthed lock, and so on to a saner life in a level stretch beyond. If you want a map giving these vagaries, spill a cup of tea and follow its big and little puddles with their connecting rivulets: ten chances ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance. These two levers were the press and the clubs. The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air. Whilst the air of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... exerted upon Russian Jews. Like Levinsohn, he was a constructive force. In his younger days, he had inveighed against the benighted rabbis and the antiquated garb, but moderation came with discretion. He would not sweep away by force the accumulation of hundreds of years. Judaism needed reforms of some sort, but these could not be brought about by the Russo-German-doctor-rabbis, men who could rede the seven riddles of the world, but whose ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... of Governor Cox, the reign of martial law over Dayton was extended to take in the whole county. The flood did more than sweep away property, for it swept away the city administration, temporarily at least, and brought in what amounted to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... of the earlier performances of the National Assembly of 1789 was to sweep away relentlessly the administrative system of the Old Regime and to substitute therefor an order which was all but entirely new. The communes, to the number of upwards of forty-four thousand, were retained. But the provinces and the generalites were abolished and in their places ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... problem would be comparatively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance, shiftlessness, poverty, and crime? can a self-respecting group hold anything but the least possible fellowship with such persons and survive? and shall we let a mawkish sentiment sweep away the culture of our fathers or the hope of our children? The argument so put is of great strength, but it is not a whit stronger than the argument of thinking Negroes: granted, they reply, that the condition of our masses is bad; there is certainly on the one ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... be disturbed, and comes home in a fume, to hear that the house is turned upside-down by the host of scarlet-breeched and powdered livery-servants, and that they have turned all the maids' heads with sweethearting. But, at length, the day of departure arrives, and all sweep away as suddenly and rapidly as they came; and the old squire sends off for Wagstaff, and blesses his stars that what he calls ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... going to them with an open heart, and trying to win them to a better life. Many so-called followers of Jesus still take that attitude. They gather up their skirts round them daintily, and never think that it would be liker their Lord to sweep away the mud than to pick their steps through it, caring mainly to keep their own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... compares in majesty and menace to these dull-eyed monsters of bygone ages; nothing save the roots of mountains can serve to check them; nothing less than the ceaseless energy of mighty rivers can sweep away ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... convenient to sweep away out of our thoughts all these stray abstractive sets which are covered by event-particles without themselves being members of them. They give us nothing new in the way of intrinsic character. Accordingly we can think of rects and levels as merely loci of event-particles. ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into transitory dust which the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with all surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... excused himself, like all the rest. "Certainly," he said, "I can stop the wind, who can sweep away the cloud, who can cover up the Sun, but there is some one greater than I: it is the rat, who can pass through my body, and can even, if he chooses, reduce me to powder with his teeth. Believe me, you need seek no better son-in-law; greater than the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... of an unreasoning impulse, she went to Medland's house, full of the idea of dissociating herself from what had been done, only dimly conscious of difficulties which, if they existed, she was yet resolute to sweep away. Convention should not stand between, nor cost her a single unkind thought ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... cold critics! 'twill be late and long, Ere time shall sweep away this flood of song! There are who bid this music sound no more, And you can hear them, nor defend—deplore! You, who were born where its first daisies grew, Have fed upon its honey, sipp'd ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... periods in the world's history marked by extraordinary and violent crises, sudden as the breaking forth of a volcano, or the bursting of a storm on the ocean. These crimes sweep away in a moment the landmarks of generations. They call out fresh talent, and give to the old a new direction. It is then that new ideas are born, new theories developed. Such periods demand fresh exponents, and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... way, lad. Lie down," said Dick, seizing a large broom and beginning to sweep away the water and ashes and pieces of charcoal with which the floor was plentifully covered, while Mary picked up the scattered skins and furniture of the cave, and placed them on the ledge of rock, about four feet from the ground, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... speech she managed to sweep away the shadow which had touched Griffith's face, at the unconscious hint at their ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the high officials that used to occur so frequently under a late dispensation. We have had no waste of public treasure and no bloodshed. We are strong in the consciousness of a persistent effort to sweep away anomalies and inequalities, to redress injustice, to open more widely to the masses of the people the good chances in life, and to safeguard them against its evil chances. We also claim that we are strong in the support ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... like these demonstrate to us the necessity for pain, we are still left to face those greater calamities and disasters which sweep away human lives by the hundred and thousand, catastrophes like the Sicilian {115} earthquakes, that are marked by an appalling wantonness of destruction; must not such events as these also be attributed to God, and how are they to be reconciled ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... upheaves, And makes a sudden rustling there, And then they drop their play, Flash up into the sunless air, And like a flight of silver leaves Swirl round and sweep away. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... There are lives sown in out of the way places, and carelessly passed by as weeds, whose blossom angels might stoop to wear in the whiteness of their own pure breasts. Oh, to rid the world of its shams! To sweep away the "Chadbands" with a feather duster, as the new girl removes dust; to open the windows and shoo away the traitors as one drives flies, to hoe out society plats as one hoes garden beds, and thin out the flaunting weeds ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... heard? But that is no wonder. Happily you are a stranger to mercantile anxieties and revolutions. Your fortune does not rest on a basis which an untoward blast may sweep away, or four strokes of a pen may demolish. That hoary dealer in suspicions was persuaded to put his hand to three notes for eight hundred dollars each. The eight was then dexterously prolonged to eighteen; ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... the vehicle sweep away out of sight. Obviously he had angered the man by his silence, but he could answer only by shaking ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... for you! Fig for you! Fig for you! Puff at the whole countryside! Crushing and maiming your toll you extort, Straight in the face of the peasant you snort, Soon all the people of Russia you may Cleaner than any big broom sweep away!" ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... subject were again expressed in May, 1825: "The custom-house officers throughout the Union, in all probability, were opposed to my election. They are all now in my power; and I have been urged very earnestly, and from various quarters, to sweep away my opponents, and provide for my friends with their places. I can justify the refusal to adopt this policy only by the steadiness and consistency of my adhesion to my own. If I depart from this ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... would never do to abandon the cause of the country, especially at the present time. I shall simply make Bimala one with my country. The turbulent west wind which has swept away the country's veil of conscience, will sweep away the veil of the wife from Bimala's face, and in that uncovering there will be no shame. The ship will rock as it bears the crowd across the ocean, flying the pennant of Bande Mataram, and it will serve as the cradle to my power, as well as ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... alone while the ladies took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... living in harmony. And strange as it may seem, the natives of Buzabub, although bountifully supplied with whiskey, powder and priests, were at the lowest point of civilization. And yet, heaven knows, these modern messengers of civilization had done much to sweep away the primitive ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... morning, and, pausing after a run, I let the pack and the "course-men" sweep away, while I sat in a pleasant spot to enjoy the air and scenery. The solemn grandeur of groves and the quiet dignity of woodland glades, barred with rays of solid-seeming sunshine, such as the saint of old hung his cloak on, the brook into which the overhanging chestnuts drop, as if in sport, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... "Catiline," it was but "a cast at dice in Fortune's hand" that it might have been a great defeat, Clive was astonishingly, grotesquely out-numbered. The legendary deeds of chivalrous paladins who at the head of a little body of knights sweep away whole hosts of paynims at Saragossa or Roncesvalles were rivalled by Clive's audacity in opposing his few regiments to the swollen armament of the Nabob. Moreover, Meer Jaffier, whose alliance with the English, whose treason to Surajah Dowlah, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... healthful cities on the globe. Six thousand lepers have been collected and established in a colony on an island. The number of cases of small-pox has been reduced from forty thousand to a few hundred per year. Cholera, which used to sweep away tens of thousands is almost unknown. With a dozen or more great hospitals and more than three hundred boards of health, great things ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... in a groove cut deep into the rock round each side and top and bottom. The heavy iron door, when open, lay up against the roof of the tunnel and was supported by two wooden legs. If the sea should break through, the first rush of the water would sweep away the supporting legs, the iron door would fall with a crash into the flange of the wooden frame, and the greater the pressure the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... perish as he perishes, but new works and new men are rising forever to fill, and more than fill, the vacancies and desolations of the past. Go ahead then, world! Sweep along, Progress! Mow away, Time! Tear down temple and stronghold; sweep away the marble palace and log-house! sweep away infancy and youth, manhood and old age; wipe out old memories, and pass the sponge over cherished recollections. The energy and the ingenuity of man are an over-match even for time. From the ruins of the past, from the desolations of decay, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... female, the breed of Salmon and Trout (to say nothing of other species) would long since have become extinct. Eels, fish, birds, water rats, toads, frogs, and last but not least, the water beetle,[8] prey upon the ova, spawn and young fry; floods also sweep away and leave on banks, or rocks, a considerable quantity of spawn, which of course comes to nothing. Escaping the above perils and causalities, and arrived at maturity, they become the prey and food of the otter and heron, king's fisher, gull, &c., who ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... his fiftieth year, and he boasted that he had already passed judgment on four Governments. He still contemptuously shrugged his shoulders at the thought of Charles X, the priests and nobles and other attendant rabble, whom he had helped to sweep away. Louis Philippe, with his bourgeois following, had been an imbecile, and he could tell how the citizen-king had hoarded his coppers in a woollen stocking. As for the Republic of '48, that had been a mere farce, the working classes had deceived ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... confidant whom he found awaiting him at Basle, Beat Bild of Rheinau, 1485-1547, known then and now as Beatus Rhenanus, one of the choicest spirits of his own or any age. His father was a butcher of Rheinau who left his home because of continued ravages by the Rhine which threatened to sweep away the town. Settling in Schlettstadt, a free city of the Empire near by, he rose to the highest civic offices, and sent his son to the Latin school under first Crato Hofman and then Gebwiler. Beatus was contemporary ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... states may sweep away all that remains of feudalism, include the whole territorial people with the equal rights of all in the state or political people, concede to birth and wealth no political rights, but they will by so doing only establish either imperial centralism, as has ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... Brooklyn in search of his relations, he was astounded at the translation of the Irish laborer into something else. "In my time, when I left Troy, all the work in the streets was done by 'micks,' as they called 'em. Now they're gone—whisked away as ye'd sweep away a swarm of red ants, and here's these black Dagos in their places. Where's the Irishman gone—up or down? That's what's eatin' me. Is he dead or translated to a higher speer? 'Tis a mysterious ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... that from cholera alone in one year there were reported no less than 300,000 deaths; and yet the year was not remarkable for any exceptional outbreak. Still more terrible and regular are the ravages of the various malarial fevers, that sweep away millions yearly to a premature grave, often just in the prime of life, when they are most needed by the country. That a very large percentage of these deaths are directly connected with destitution, and that pestilence frequently ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... divine right, and in his own superiority, decreed even before birth. John noted in the moonlight his air of ownership, his insolent eyes and his heavy, arrogant face. He hoped that the present war would sweep away all such as Auersperg. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... interfere at all with the expenditure of the civil list; others contesting the propriety of alienating the crown-lands; and a still greater number objecting to the abolition of some of the offices which it was proposed to sweep away, such as that of the "third Secretary of State, or Secretary for the Colonies," that of "Treasurer of the Chamber," and others of a similar character. And, as the minister succeeded in defeating him on several, though by no means all, of these points, Burke at last gave up the bill, Fox warning ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... or they will not do it. And if the storm blows strongly enough to do so much, in all likelihood it will blow strongly enough to do much more. If the revolution is powerful enough and eager enough to make an immense number of life peers, probably it will sweep away the hereditary principle in the Upper Chamber entirely. Of course one may fancy it to be otherwise; we may conceive of a political storm just going to a life-peerage limit, and then stopping suddenly. But in politics we must not trouble ourselves with exceedingly ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... acquainted with that which goes on in the scientific world, and which has gone on there for the last thirty years—that there is a kind of sect, or horde, of scientific Goths and Vandals, who think it would be proper and desirable to sweep away all other forms of culture and instruction, except those in physical science, and to make them the universal and exclusive, or, at any rate, the dominant training of the human mind of the future generation. This is not my ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... chief, "if we swept away all the people of Red River, we would sweep away the good Scosh-min, which would be foolish, and we would gain nothing in the end, but would bring worse trouble on our heads. My counsel, therefore, is for peace. I advise that we should let the buffalo ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... that Hoangti had his own fame largely in view in this unprecedented act, as in his preceding wall-building and road-making. He may have proposed to sweep away all earlier records of the empire and make it seem to have sprung into existence full-fledged with his reign. But if he had such a purpose, he did not take fully into account the devotion of men of learning to their cherished manuscripts, nor the powers of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... rise, the winds howl, the hail and the rain 'sweep away the refuge of lies,' and the dwellers in these frail and foundationless houses are hurrying in wild confusion from one peak to another, before the steadily rising tide. But he that builds on that Foundation 'shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... strange cat that had come into the garden, and was cowering in wait for a chaffinch. He scarcely knew enough of business to understand who the creditors were; but he could perceive that if they had even 2,000,000 pounds owing to them, the first calls would far more than sweep away his little property and leave him a beggar. Very well. He looked at the newspapers again; there was nothing in these crumpled sheets that could hurt him. A branch of a tree blown down by the wind on the top of his head could hurt him; or a chimney-pot ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... not sweep away the cobwebs of romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey than ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... favorable. But even should they warn me of misfortune at your side, I could not let you go now. It is too late for that. I should merely take advantage of the warning, and continue with redoubled severity to sweep away every obstacle that threatens our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... seeking expression through denser and more complex human avenues. All the love, all the longing which Seagreave had so sternly suppressed during these days he and Pearl had spent together, rose in his heart and threatened to sweep away in a mighty tide of elemental impulses all of those resolutions of restraint to which ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow



Words linked to "Sweep away" :   strike, destruct, impress, move, affect, destroy



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