1.   A generation ago, big ranches still gripped the imagination of Texans.

2.   But fear had kept him from New York, though the city had long gripped his imagination.

3.   Fads that once gripped the imaginations of quant traders, like chaos theory and its hoped-for applicability to modeling the market, have faded.

4.   Momentous though it was, the war that began the United States does not grip the imagination like the war that might have ended it.

5.   Sometimes, even police stories gripped her imagination and she wrote extraordinary and touching articles about them.

6.   Though they have been defeated and subdued militarily, the Zapatistas continue to grip the imaginations of Mexicans and foreigners alike.

7.   The decline in the political life of this country continued apace with the idea of exclusion soon gripping the imagination of the elite.