"Bodkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns Which patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveller returns, puzzles the will: And makes us ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... possessed it; and yet one of them, who styled himself "Lord and God of the Earth," could not tell how to pass his whole day pleasantly, without spending constant two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime more agreeable than to ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... stroke of genius, inspired by the diplomacy inherent in a sex whose chief concern has been the making of matches, she transfixed his imagination as skilfully as she might have impaled a butterfly on a bodkin. While he stared at her she could almost see the iridescent wings of his fancy whirling madly around the idea by which she had arrested their flight. Trifle with Virginia! Trifle with that radiant ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... be a wicked aunt, wedded to Hamlet's father hard upon the murder of her mother, she would have made short work of her vengeance. No fine scruples would have delayed her; she would not have had a moment's question whether she had not better kill herself; she would have out with her bare bodkin and ended the doubt by first passing it through her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... She had covered her white dress with a mantle of brown linen and over her head she wore a wimple of the same material. Her hair had been coiled and secured with a bodkin. When she put her hand under the wimple and drew it across her mouth, only her fair skin and blue eyes distinguished her from any other Egyptian lady dressed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... this country have come from the Swiss mountain villages. No doubt some of our readers have come across the old pin poppets which boys and girls carried with them to the village school half a century or more ago. The girls filled them with pins and needles, bodkin and stiletto, and the boys with pencils and pens. In Fig. 75 two curious old pin boxes are illustrated. The pins shown on the same page are, however, of much older date; they are, in fact, merely thorns; these interesting ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... now, ye lousie b——h, To thresh my back at sic a pitch? Losh, man! hae mercy wi' your natch, Your bodkin's bauld, I didna suffer ha'f ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... our life, Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin[1] Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell, King!" [Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin is a "bodkin."] ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... visiting in the best Dublin society and making many friends, whom she had the tact to retain through life. When articles of dress or ornament are named for one, it is an unfailing sign that they have attained notoriety, if not fame, and the bodkin used for fastening the "back hair" was called "Glorvina" in her honor. Like many attractive women of decided character, she had her full share of faults and foibles. Superficial, conceited, sadly lacking in spirituality and refinement, a cruel enemy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the Company?" He does no such thing. There lies a suspicion in his breast that Mr. Hastings must have taken some money in some irregular way, or he could not have made those payments. Mr. Larkins begins to suspect him. "Where did you lose this bodkin?" said one lady to another, upon a certain occasion. "Pray, Madam, where did you find it?" Mr. Hastings, at the very moment of his life when confidence was required, even when making up his accounts with his accountant, never told him one word of the matter. You see he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... servants throw them down. What a happiness it is when people can send their servants on errands by coaches or railways, instead of being kept on the fidget all day, lest a fifty-pound horse should be the price of a bodkin or a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... taken againe were putt to sundry deathes as by hanginge, shooting and breaking uppon the wheele and others were forced by famine to filch for their bellies, of whom one for steelinge of 2 or 3 pints of oatmeale had a bodkin thrust through his tounge and was tyed with a chain to a tree untill he starved, if a man through his sicknes had not been able to worke, he had noe allowance at all, and soe consequently perished. Many through these extremities, being weary of life, digged holes in the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Thy mate, the Ghoul, Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate! Around the graves the night-winds howl: "Arise!" they cry, "thy feast doth wait!" Dainty fingers thine, and nice, With thy bodkin picking rice!— ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... form of wit among us Sodomites. We love it for its own sake, but more for the pain it gives the other fellow. We like to see him squirm, and we have many a joyous hour over our friends' misfortunes. Turn yourself into a mental bodkin, and you will find favor among us, for it is better to be feared than loved in our ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... a thing it is to cause wealth to be where before was nothing, I cannot understand how I once thought to find my pleasure only in destroying," he said. "Next month, when the barley beer is brewed, we will have a harvest feast plentiful enough to flesh even your bones, you bodkin!" ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... my admiration To view the structure of this little work— A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without; No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut, No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and means of art, And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot, Could make me such another? Fondly then We boast of excellence, whose ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... this dagger," the prince said, taking a small and beautifully tempered weapon from his belt. "It is but a bodkin, but it is of famous steel. It was sent me by Philip of Spain, at a time when he was trying to cajole my mother, and is of the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes; When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To groan and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death (That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne No traveller returns) puzzles the will; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the body has slept securely. A sexton once looked in at the bones, but did not dare to touch them, lest his "quietus" should be made with a bare bodkin. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was fastened to the left shoulder with a large brooch or pin, leaving the right arm uncovered and at full liberty. In wet weather the plaid was thrown loose, covering both shoulders and body. When the use of both arms was required, it was fastened across the breast by a large bodkin or circular brooch. The sporan, a large purse of goat or badger's skin, usually ornamented, was hung before. The bonnet completed the garb. The garters were broad and of rich colors, forming a close texture which was not liable to wrinkle. The ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... again to the leaguer of the city, promising his men that, if it should be taken, he would divide its treasures equally among them. After this, he bethought him of his brother and wept sore; and his tears ceased not to flow, till his body was wasted with grief, as it were a bodkin. But the Vizier Dendan came in to him and said, "Take comfort and be consoled; thy brother died not but because his hour was come, and there is no profit in this mourning. How well ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... gone into the hall to buy a bodkin; she had just broken hers. In giving her change, the peddler took out of his pocket, with some halfpence, the very box which Cecilia had sold to him. Leonora did not in the least suspect the truth, for her mind was above suspicion; ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... The more hurry the less speed. Now I've broken this tape. Has anyone got a bodkin? No, of course not! There never is a bodkin when I want one. You'll have to manage with a hairpin, Pixie, and be sharp about it. I shall be late for tea at this rate!" So on, and so on, and at each summons in rushed an eager little worker, so deft, so willing, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Paper, for of that they have little or none; but on a Talli-pot leaf with an Iron Bodkin, which makes an impression. This leaf thus written on, is not folded, but rolled up like ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... To-night I go to the governor's; such a lark - no dress clothes - twenty-four hours' notice - able-bodied Polish tailor - suit made for a man with the figure of a puncheon - same hastily altered for self with the figure of a bodkin - sight inconceivable. Never mind; dress clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti. Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that tree under which you are sitting, Jacky Bonhomme." Jacques incontinently shifted his position. "He chains him there, with one chain around his neck, one around his waist, and one around his ankles. Then he sticks me a bodkin through his tongue." A groan of admiration from his audience. "Then they dig, before his very eyes, a grave,—shallow enough they make it, too,—and they put into it, uncoffined, with only a long white shroud upon him, the man he murdered. Then they cover the grave. You're ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... once more, or ever his master had done speaking, "Gone!" in his deep, mournful voice, and again swept away crumbs, as it might be, in the air. Hereupon so great a fear fell upon me that meseemed a sharp steel bodkin was being thrust into my heart; but Kubbeling had seen me turn pale, and he turned upon Uhlwurm in high wrath, and to the end that I might take courage he cried: "No, no, I say no. What does the old fool know about it! It is only by reason that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a chatelaine made of finely-fretted silver. The customary thimble, scissors and other useful and feminine trifles dangled there, but there was also added a delicately-chased case that might have been expected to hold a bodkin, but contained indeed a very up-to-date ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... peasants (nine, perhaps, ranged three abreast)—treason to the gallant animal that, tossing its little head, bravely struggles with the cruel load. A priest is stuck in bodkin among his flock—a priest who leers and jests between pinches of snuff, and who, save for his seedy black coat, knee-breeches, worsted stockings, shoe-buckles, clerical hat, and smoothly-shaven chin, is rougher ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... levity, were perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant. But he had ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... from Ministerialists, who rise to their feet, and wildly wave their hats as PREMIER passes to table. Been some effective speaking on this last night of Debate. CHAMBERLAIN, BLAKE, and JOHN MORLEY, each excellent in varied way. Only few Members present to hear BODKIN insert maiden speech in dinner-hour. A remarkable effort, distinguished, among other things, by necessity of SPEAKER twice interposing, second time with ominous threat that BODKIN could not be tolerated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... First my bodkin I must place With my needle in their case; I like to put them by with care And then I always ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... little parcel eagerly. It contained a small shagreen case, which in its turn proved to contain a pair of scissors of antique and curious form, an ivory tablet, yellow with age, a silver bodkin, and a silver fruit-knife, all fitting neatly in their places; the whole case closing with a spring. "It is the prettiest thing I ever saw!" cried Hildegarde. "See, Cousin Wealthy, isn't it delightful to think of that poor ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... whose title was suggested by Peter Pindar, made a hit, more especially in Ireland, and the author woke to find herself famous. She became known to all her friends as 'Glorvina,' the name of the heroine, while the Glorvina ornament, a golden bodkin, and the Glorvina mantle became fashionable in Dublin. The book was bitterly attacked, probably by Croker, in the Freeman's Journal, but the best bit of criticism upon it is contained in a letter from Mr. Edgeworth to Miss Owenson. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... which brought him to his knees. He stumbled and fell at the threshold of the maids' chamber. And, by my sooth, the Lady Ysolinde stooped and poignarded him as featly as though it had been a work of broidering with a bodkin. Too late, Helene wept and besought her to hold her hand. He was, she said, some one's son or lover. It was deucedly unpractical. But, 'twas my Little Playmate. And after all, I suppose, the crack he got from me in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat nigh the cockswain; and, with a familiarity and kindness infinitely condescending, when the difference in their several conditions is considered, he commenced ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... down to breakfast, she found by her plate another present—a pretty scarlet housewife from Cousin Charlotte, containing a little pair of scissors, a silver thimble, a case of needles, a stiletto, a bodkin, and two of the tiniest reels of silk she had ever seen. When the case was closed it looked like ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... at Marlborough Street police court, with Mr. Bingham sitting as Magistrate. Mr. Clarkson conducted the prosecution, and Mr. Bodkin appeared for ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... be verily evil work in the cape, and a witch's bodkin hath pierced these cunning eyelets. It goeth so fast now that erelong every guileless, senseless thing in our houses, down to the tinder-box and the candle-stick, will find hinges and turn into a gate, whereby witchcraft can enter. ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bodkin, as they did on the other substances we have noticed. The stylus was made sharp at one end to write with, and blunt and broad at the other, to efface and correct easily: hence the phrase vertere stylum, to turn the stylus, was used to express blotting out. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... He walked to the cases one by one and sounded them. Their lids were screwed on but the screws were dummies. He found in the side of each a minute hole under the cover of the lid and, taking out his knife, he pressed in the bodkin with which the knife was equipped and with a click the lid flew open. The box was empty. The second one answered the same test and was also empty. The third gave no better result. He flashed his lamp on the bottom of the box, but there was no ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... in the old engravings of Louis Philippe's good queen Amelia,) very resolute, very learned in the boundaries of all Christian and heathen countries, patient to a fault, with a marvellous capacity for pointing out with her bodkin every letter to some wee thing at its first stage of spelling, and yet keeping an eye upon all the school-room; reading a chapter from the Bible, and saying a prayer each morning upon her bended knees,—the little ones all kneeling in concert,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... then step into the coach with the Russell Square party, and be off to the Gardens. There is barely room between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat. Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... word, after a day on Ballylynch Lake (where, with a brown fly and a single hair, I killed fourteen salmon, the smallest twenty-nine pounds weight, the largest somewhere about five stone ten), my young friend Blake Bodkin Lynch Browne (a fine lad who has made his continental tour) and I adjourned, after dinner, to the young gentleman's private room, for the purpose of smoking a certain cigar; which is never more pleasant than ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself, and that having no ties he may do as he pleases with that possession. But it is a possession of which, unfortunately, he cannot rid himself when he finds that there is nothing advantageous to be done with it. Doubtless there is a way of riddance. There is the bare bodkin. Or a man may fall overboard between Holyhead and Kingston in the dark, and may do it in such a cunning fashion that his friends shall think that it was an accident. But against these modes of riddance there is a canon set, which some ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... white satin, a girdle of gold and pearls, crimson stockings, white satin slippers, a lace rebato, and a pearl necklace. Oh, how charming you would look! You would not know yourself. Then I should put a gold bodkin in your hair, and a head-drop of pearls set round a diamond, and bracelets instead of these lawn cuffs, and a fan; and wash your face in distilled waters, and odoriferous oils for ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the women in this drive through some of the northern states of Italy varied at every post; from the velvet cap, commonly a crimson one, worn by the girls in Savoia, to the Piedmontese plait round the bodkin at Turin, and the odd kind of white wrapper used in the exterior provinces of the Genoese dominions. Uniformity of almost any sort gives a certain pleasure to the eye, and it seems an invariable rule in these countries that all the women of every district should ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... instrument, Med. Lat. brocca, cf. the Latin adjective brochus or broccus, projecting, used of teeth), a word, of which the doublet "brooch" (q.v.) has a special meaning, for many forms of pointed instruments, such as a bodkin, a wooden needle used in tapestry-making, a spit for roasting meat, and a tool, also called a "rimer," used with a wrench for enlarging or smoothing holes (see TOOL). From the use of a similar instrument to tap casks, comes "to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... end of Preston, near the junction of Moor-lane and Lancaster-road. It is a small, strong, hard-looking building; seems as if it would stand any amount of rain and never get wet through, any quantity of heat and never have a sunstroke; it is stoical, cold, firm, and very stony; has a bodkin-pointed spire, ornamented with round holes and circular places into which penetration has not yet been effected; and its "tout ensemble" is in no way edifying. It is neither ornate nor colossal. Strength, plainness, and smallness, with a strong ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... not that we may see what were the manners to which a great Roman lady had descended in those days in which the Republic was brought to an end. On the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while Fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. That is the story of Cicero's death as it has been ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and the white troops $13. However, they were not fighting for pay, as "Stonewall" of Company C argued, but for the "freedom of our kin." Nobly did they do this, not only at Wagner, as we have seen, but in the battles on James Island, Honey Hill, Olustee and at Bodkin's Mill. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of a gentle and self-controlled race of New England ministers; but now her young heart carried her away. She stood up; her embroidery, with her scissors and bodkin, slid to the ground, and she came forward with her fair curls dropping around a face pink and smiling openly with love like a child's, and was, seemingly half of her own accord, in Burr Gordon's arms with her lips meeting ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... frantic effort to catch the State assistant's eye. Oh, it was a happy epoch in our lives—an epoch during which vows were registered against being "let in" for such happiness again, or against living it through while a 'bare bodkin' was left unconfiscated. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... blossom with a bodkin; make a syrup with half their weight of sugar; put in the apples, and keep them under the syrup with a spoon, and they will be done in ten minutes over a slow fire. When cold, tie them down with ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... "I am going to hold the bodkin, of which the eye is sufficiently large, to put this thread into it without trouble. If you do put it in, I will take up your case, and will make Monseigneur offer ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... better. Vse euerie [Sidenote: bodkin man, much better,] man after his desart, and who should scape whipping: [Sidenote: shall] vse them after your own Honor and Dignity. The lesse they deserue, the more merit is in your ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Is it that you can have them at the first opportunity restored to our connoisseur in contes—your friend the Chamberlain? It comes to occur to me that the gentleman's wardrobe may be as scanty as my own, and the absence of his coat may be the reason, more than my unfortunate pricking with a bodkin, for his inexplicable absence from—from—the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... disagreed and resolved to exchange shots, they should stand at right angles with the principals and all fire together. A duel of this nature took place near Glinsk, the seat of Sir J. Bourke, between that gentleman and a Mr. Bodkin, when the old family steward and other servants brought out the son, then a child, and held him on men's shoulders to see papa fight! Professed duelists were called "fire-eaters," and the first two questions always asked as to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... shall search the vitals of a whale with a bodkin-who may reach his jackknife through the superposed bubber? Pachyderm, thy name is Woman! All the king's horses and all the king's men shall not bend the bow that can despatch a clothyard shaft through thy pearly hide. The male and female women who nightly ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the abbe picked it up, and observing that all the sediment had remained at the bottom, he gathered together on a silver bodkin all that had coagulated on the sides of the glass and all that had sunk to the bottom, and presenting this ball, which was about the size of a nut, to the marquise, on the end of the bodkin, he said, "Come, madame, you must swallow ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... velvet, with compartments and secretary; carved mother-of-pearl paper-knife, gold seal, gold pencil, case full of fancy writing paper; made in Paris 1 bula work-box, elegant; inlaid 125 with silver and lined with ci-satin, fitted with gold thimble, needle, scissors, pen-knife, gold bodkin, cotton winders; outside to match French piano 1 long knitting-case to match the 40 above, fitted with needles, beads and silk of every description 1 papier-mache work-box, and 5 fitted up 1 morocco ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
