What is hold close?

Famous quotes containing the words close and/or hold:

    It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    As our boys and men are all expecting to be Presidents, so our girls and women must all hold themselves in readiness to preside in the White House; and in no city in the world can honest industry be more at a discount than in this capital of the government of the people.
    Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)