What is "held dear"

Usage examples of "held dear".

He built gradually to a crying jag, during which he claimed to be deeply touched by the idea of an inhabited planet with an atmosphere that was eager to combine violently with almost everything the inhabitants held dear.

Oh, how I gloated on the ruins of all that is held dear and honourable by her sex-her virtue.

I would never ask Brandy to become completely uprooted from what she has held dear for her entire life.

But it was for Aari himself that she cried hardest, Aari who had suffered as no other Linyaan had ever suffered, and lived, who had been abandoned and who had lost everything he had ever held dear, including a vital part of himself.

Yes, perhaps it was moonshine, which the amateur logicians held in contempt because it threatened so much they held dear -- their timorous certainty which was, when all was weighed up, certain of so very little.

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,--I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.

But neither of us knew how imminent were those events, or how dreadful would be their consequences, not only to the missionaries but to ourselves and those we held dear.

To ignore that possibility would have been to fail in my obligations as a wife and risk the destruction of all I held dear (except, of course, for Ramses).