Pluck up

"If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall: […]

Let none associate with the soul-destroying Manicheans, who by decoctions of chaff counterfeit the sad look of fasting, who speak evil of the Creator of meats, and greedily devour the daintiest, who teach that the man who plucks up this or that herb is changed into it. For if he who crops herbs or any vegetable is changed into the same, into how many will husbandmen and the tribe of gardeners be changed?

As rumoured for some time, 18-year-old Ethan Gage was plucked up by English Championship club Reading FC Monday. Gage trained in Vancouver with the MLS club

cæsar [taking the dates] My age! [He shakes his head and bites a date]. Yes, Rufio: I am an old man—worn out now—true, quite true. [He gives way to melancholy contemplation, and eats another date]. Achillas is still in his prime: Ptolemy is a boy. [He eats another date, and plucks up a little]. Well, every dog has his day; and I have had mine: I cannot complain.

Thenne was there but sporynge and pluckynge vp of horses and ryghte so they cam to the fyre. "Then was there but spurring and plucking up of horses, and right so they came to the fire."

[…] But she knew that she must pluck up courage for an important moment, and she collected herself, braced her muscles, as it were, for a fight, and threw her mind into an attitude of contest.

Every ten minutes they consulted together as to who could pluck up the courage to ask some passer-by the time. The passers-by were all back street people.