strain quotes

The pipe with solemn interposing puff, Makes half a sentence at a time enough; The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain, Then pause, and puffand speak, and pause again.

-William Cowper
  Poems,'Conversation', l.245^8.

So in all humours sportively I range; My muse is rightly of the English strain, That cannot long one fashion entertain.

- Michael Drayton
  Ideas Mirrour,'To the Reader ofThese Sonnets'.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

- George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
  Daniel Deronda, bk.2, ch.15.

Beneath the strain of expectation even the little iced sugar cakes upon the tea-table looked green with worry.

- (ArthurAnnesley) Ronald Firbank
  The Flower Beneath the Foot, ch.3.

O that the spirit could remain tinged but untarnished by its strain!

- RobertTraill Spence,Jr Lowell
  'Waking Early Sunday Morning'.

The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of description and the sentiment, is denied to me.

- Sir Walter Scott
  OnJaneAusten. Journal,14 Mar.