"Clod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a lighted candle—the night was frosty, without a wind—and led Merton out under the black, ivy-clad walls. Merton threw his greatcoat on the snow and knelt on it, peering at the object. He saw a large flat clod of snow and earth. On its surface was the faint impress of a long oval, longer than the human foot; feathery marks running in both directions from the centre could be descried. Looking closer, Merton detected here and there a tiny ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... L——, most outlandishly dressed in what I took to be a reductio ad absurdum of his first pose, as I now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... were three degrees of damnation— auld kirk, playacting, chapel. Chapel was the name always given to the English Church, of which I am too much an Auld Licht myself to care to write even now. To belong to the chapel was, in Thrums, to be a Roman Catholic, and the boy who flung a clod of earth at the English minister- -who called the Sabbath Sunday—or dropped a "divet" down his chimney was held to be in the right way. The only pleasant story Thrums could tell of the chapel was that its steeple once fell. It is surprising that an English church was ever suffered to ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... a clod of earth should rise, And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love, How one would tremble, and in what surprise Gasp: ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... hundred all told; namely thirty-three married couples, twenty-eight unmarried women, forty-two unmarried men, and sixty-four children, of whom one—a sweet, good- tempered baby girl—had been born during the voyage. They, the emigrants, seemed to be a very mixed lot, ranging from clod-hopping, agricultural labourers, whose intelligence seemed insufficient to enable them to appreciate the wonder of a flying-fish or the beauty of a golden, crimson, and purple sunset, to individuals of so refined and intellectual ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... fur of the color of stubble and earth he seemed like a god of the fields. In the midst of the wintry waste he was like a clod of earth of the summer time. He made one think of a road-mender or a rural postman. Tucked up in the windings of his flapping ears he carried with himself the agitation of all sounds. One of the ears, extended toward the ground, listened to the crackling ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... bygone knightly strain Impelled you then, or blood of humble clod Defied the dread adventure to attain The cross of honor or ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... that of the largest Bembex; but it differs from it, at first sight, by a singular feature of which I know no other example. From the side of the shell, which is uniformly smoothed on every side, a rough knob protrudes, a little clod of sand stuck on to the rest. The work of Stizus ruficornis can at once be recognized, among all the other cocoons of a similar nature, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... clod! Thou hast spoiled the work with thy clumsy handling! Why canst not leave alone what thou dost not understand? Who gave permission to change? Body of me! Must I stand over thee every hour in the day and switch thy ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine to which they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis of Milton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it is propelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork." he says near the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist," he calls him at the next kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... die, and go we know not where, To lie in cold obstruction and to rot: This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice, To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... lip of hate, When in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the Apostle's advice formerly to try all things, and to hold fast that which is best. This Platform of Government which I offer is the original Righteousness and Peace in the Earth, though he hath been buried under the clod of Kingly Covetousness, Pride and Oppression a long time. Now he begins to have his Resurrection, despise it not while it is small; though thou understand it not at the first sight, yet open the door and look into the house; ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... 'Mrs. Martins is an old witch, gentlemen, that is what she is, and she charmed me, and I got no sleep for her for three nights, and one night at half-past eleven o'clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went out and found a "walking toad" under a clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I could not rest; she is a bad old woman; she put this toad under there to charm me, and her daughter is just as bad, gentlemen. She would bewitch any one; she charmed me, and I got no rest day or night for ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements; To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... god's own feeling when he gives Such thrill to what turns life from death before. 'Gods many and Lords many,' says the Book: You would have yielded up your soul to me —Not to the false god who has burned its clay In his own image. I had shed my love Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence, Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun that drinks and then disperses. Both of us Blameworthy,—I first meet my punishment— And not so hard to bear. I breathe again! Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy At last I struggle—uncontaminate: Why must I leave you pressing to ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... request in the green shadowy garden on the Hill Caelian, the Pope smiled, and, taking a clod of common earth from the soil, gave it to the Saint, saying, "Then take this with thee," and when the Saint expressed his surprise at so strange a relic, the Servant of the Servants of God took back the earth and crushed it in his hand, and with amazement the Saint saw that blood began to ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... cynical, skeptical, or practical we may think at times we may be, a little quiet clear-cut thought will bring us each time back to the truth that it is the essential force that leads away from the tooth and the claw of the jungle, that lifts life up from and above the clod. Love is the world's balance-wheel; and as the warming and ennobling element of sympathy, care and consideration radiates from it, increasing one's sense of mutuality, which in turn leads to fellowship, cooperation, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... "each fallen leaf, each sprig or spray of undergrowth, the very weeds, each clod." Lit. "what kind of material, what kind of soil does not become manure when thrown ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... to Mr. Tunnygate the remarks with which this story opens, the latter insolently replied in words, form or substance that Mr. Appleboy could go to hell. Moreover, as he went by Mr. Appleboy he took pains to kick over a clod of transplanted sea grass, nurtured by Mrs. Appleboy as the darling of her bosom, and designed to give an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bare and unconvincing surface of sand. Mr. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... for them to return. "One can't accomplish anything with a clod-hopper like that," he said. "I But in the end if you don't come around and pay us up regularly, we will—" He felt for the legal documents in his pocket, realized by their crackling that they were still there, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... thoughts of tenderness; Yet looking on thy young brow it will yearn, And in my bosom's innermost recess, Thoughts that have slumbered long awake and burn With a wild strength which nothing can repress! Be still, worn heart, be still; does not the cold And heavy clay—clod mingle with ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... and poor are fairly pitted, we shall see who can hang or burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings. There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence; what a temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be anything but a clod if he could resist ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... have; zeemed to turn it over and find it under this here clod I'm breaking up with the hoe. Wish I'd looked when we ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... unwontedly sweet and balmy the soft, sudden gust of the sweet south, breathing up from the flowers, and stirring the loose drapery around the couch! How can we part with these without tears? how reflect, without horror, upon the close coffin, the damp clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which we are to be cabined? Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must the wholly conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink the nauseous draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will he seize upon every chimera, whether of his ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... your predicament must have recourse to artificial means. Nitre in broth, for instance,—about three grains to ten (cattle fed upon nitre grow fat); or earthy odors,—such as exist in cucumbers and cabbage. A certain great lord had a clod of fresh earth, laid in a napkin, put under his nose every morning after sleep. Light anointing of the head with oil, mixed with roses and salt, is not bade but, upon the whole, I prescribe the saffron bag ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one wounded became a serviceable clod; rapidly as the dump and cumber of humanity filled the moat the ladders extended their upward reach; while drum-beat, battle-cry, trumpet's blare, and the roar of cannon answering cannon blent into ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... farces, with all their coarse trumperies and comicalities and sensuous extravagances, were in perfect keeping with the genius of an age when, for instance, a transfer of land was not held binding without the delivery of a clod. And so, what Mr. John Stuart Mill describes as "the childlike character of the religious sentiment of a rude people, who know terror, but not awe, and are often on the most intimate terms of familiarity ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a half-cowardice and persevered in ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... prophets representing a sacred nation; we are children, with the rights and gifts of children, and the assurance of a father's confidence and love. All this great promise the humblest Christian claims when he begins to pray the Lord's Prayer. He says, "I am not a brute, I am not a clod, I am a partaker of the Divine nature; I claim the promise of a child. And that sense of kinship summons me to my best. I pray as my Father's son, and as his son I bear a name which must not be stained. Noblesse oblige. There are some things which I cannot degrade myself to do because my position ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... no more Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse To me, and to my offspring, would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die; Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? O thought Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life And sin? The body properly had neither, All of me then ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... "When clod-hoppers and such scum mingle with their betters," he bawled out, "one of us must retire from the foul contamination. But this I tell you, the first of you that budges, or even growls, I'll break every ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... there being no green leaf to moderate the extremes of tint. These were the blossoms of the coltsfoot, that sends up a stalk surrounded with faintly rosy scales. Several such stalks often spring from a single clod: lift the heavy clod, and you have half a dozen flowers, a whole bunch, without a single leaf. Usually the young grasses and the seed-leaves of plants have risen up and supply a general green; but ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Reply of hers to our intelligence! Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares Without a feeling in their silent tears? No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres, Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before Its hour, and merge our soul in the great ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... knowing it, the same charmingly modulated intonation; and her father's voice was instinctively familiar to her. People had often said that it was hard to dislike a man with a voice like Caspar Brooke's; and Lesley was not insensible to its fascination. No, he could not be a mere insensate clod, with that pleasant and cultivated voice, she decided to herself; but he might be something worse—a heartless man of the world, who cared for nothing but himself and his own low ambitions: not a man who was worthy to be the husband of a gentle, loving, highly-organized woman like the daughter ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... rumbled the Cowardly Lion anxiously. A great clod of earth landed on his head, filling his eyes and mouth ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... not seen the stars go out That shed their light o'er Galilee, And mighty kingdoms tossed about And crumbled clod-like in the sea? Dead ashes of dead ages blow And cover me like drifting snow, And time laughs on as 'twere a jest That I have ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... shriek of anguish; flew towards the house, and in a moment, was again on the spot, bearing the priest's torch. He raised his brother's head. One hand was extended over the body, and fell to the earth like a clod of clay as ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of deg. God. deg.29 Who gives, than of His tribes that take, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... longer," continued Kraken. "Formerly everyone fled at my approach. I carried away hens and rabbits in my bag; I drove sheep and pigs, cows, and oxen before me. To-day these clod-hoppers keep a good guard; they sit up at night. Just now I was pursued in the village of Anis by doughty labourers armed with flails and scythes and pitchforks. I had to drop the hens and rabbits, put my tail under ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... grub, unsightly and noisome, unable to roam, Days pass, God's at work, the slow chemistry's going on, Behold! Behold! O brilliant, buoyant life, full winged, all the heaven's thy home! O poor, mean man, stumbling and falling, e'en shamed by a clod. Years pass, God's at work, spiritual awakening has come, Behold! Behold! O regal, royal soul, then image, ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... in a million disguises Never created a crankier clod, More unaccountably made of surprises, More topsy-turvily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... mighty as 'tis small; yet must be fought the unequal fray; A myriad giants here; and there a pinch of dust, a clod of clay. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... in the graveyard, A short and narrow bed; No grass is growing on it, And no marble at its head: Ye may sit and weep beside it Ye may kneel and kiss the sod, But ye'll find no balm for sorrow, In the cold and silent clod. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... ashamed to say I have forgotten—did all the churning of the farm-dairy by imparting his motive power to a wheel. This piece of ingenuity, Farmer informed me, was originally and exclusively an inspiration from the intellect which animated his, Farmer's, proper clod; nor was he greatly exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a "mean cuss," destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... rolled about by the ploughs ever since, and no one has ever seen it; I thought it must go into the ditch at last, but when the men came to hoe one of them knocked it back, and then another kicked it along—it was covered with earth—and then, one day, a rook came and split the clod open with his bill, and pushed the pieces first one side and then the other, and the coin went one way, but I did not see; I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a mole, or some one who knows more about it. It is very thin, so that if the rook's bill had struck it, his strong bill ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... is each ridge of thy cup drinking; Each clod relenteth at thy dressing; groweth soft. Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking, Fair spring sprouts forth, blest with thy blessing. The fertile year is with thy bounty crowned; And where thou go'st, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... you know what you are saying? You to bandy words with me! A clod-brained fool to dare a man of science! Man of science forsooth! Your men of science are to me as brain-benumbed, as brain-bereft, as that ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... slowly, for mine is not a nature that is really shaped for war. A vivid imagination is here a handicap, and it is those who have little or none who make the best soldiers. At last the "finished and finite clod" has come into his own. Stolid, in a danger he hardly realizes, he remains at his post, while the other, perchance shaking in every limb, has double the battle to fight. My pencil wanders on and I hardly seem to know what I write. Confused thoughts and half-formed impressions ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... blessed. They are to feel, even in the event of possible recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable soil. A wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them. And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... right, Mr. Penrose. The loving worm within its clod is diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds. Let us go as ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the bear just as the heavy shadow of the mountain fell across their feet. By the time the last clod of earth had fallen upon the grave, the mountain shadow had found its way a hundred miles across the plains, and a narrow golden rim, like a magic circlet, glimmered on ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... goes through all necessary acts, who is regardless of personal appearance and attire, whose senses are all collected (for devotion to the true objects of life), whose purposes are never left unaccomplished,[914] who bears himself with equal friendliness towards all creatures, who regards a clod of earth and a lump of gold with an equal eye, who is equally disposed towards friend and foe, who is possessed of patience, who takes praise and blame equally,[915] who is free from longing with respect to all objects of desire, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... foam, white as the bitter lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... thee, thou monstrous mass of ignorance, if such an uninformed clod, dull and heavy as that element to which it must trace its origin, can comprehend these very obvious and palpable truths, expressed in the most plain, simple, easy, unscholastic diction.—I repeat again, that you may apprehend me with the greater perspicuity ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... from the core two kernels now I take, This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn, And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne; But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground, A certain token that his love's unsound; While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last; Oh! were his lips to ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... key, he was no doubt ill-prepared, while turning the clod, to receive into his soul the sweet influences of rural life, and by reason of their elevating beauty, to be fortified against those drawbacks and trials with ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits were ascending to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... are considered as concrete; among some Hindus promises are tied up in knots of cloth, and when they are discharged the knots are untied. Mr. S.C. Roy says of the Oraons: "Contracts are even to this day generally not written but acted. Thus a lease of land is made by the lessor handing over a clod of earth (which symbolises land) to the lessee; a contract of sale of cattle is entered into by handing over to the buyer a few blades of grass (which symbolise so many heads of cattle); a contract of payment of bride-price is made by the bridegroom's father or other ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... ye tears! that have long refused to flow, Ye are welcome to my heart—thawing, thawing, like the snow; I feel the hard clod soften, and the early snowdrops spring, And the healing fountains ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of showing her that he was not wholly a stupid clod. "'The Psalm of Life,' 'Excelsior,' an' . . . I ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... who flung the clod at Captain Halliwell. But why did you fling it? I will never tell that you allowed me to be called Mrs. Dishart before witnesses. But is not this a Scotch marriage? Signed, Babbie ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... package for Pliny. A question from his master gave him a chance to tell Marcus's story, which lost nothing in the friendly, rustic narration. A chorus of praise for the boy rose from the eager listeners. Even Quadratilla remarked that he was a decent little clod-hopper, as she demanded a lamp by which to examine her jewel. Pliny and Calpurnia's eyes met in swift response to each other's thoughts. They examined the farmer's seal and questioned Lucius more closely. Calpurnia's eyes filled with tears at his account of the old grandfather—"ruined," ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... dreams I felt those souls In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod, From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls Into the vast ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... their labors at any instant we please. But it is not so with supernatural and gracious influences. God's awakening and renewing power does not operate with the uniformity of those blind natural laws which He has impressed upon the dull clod beneath our feet. God is not one of the forces of nature. He is a Person and a Sovereign. His special and highest action upon the human soul is not uniform. His Spirit, He expressly teaches us, does not always strive with man. It is a ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... right, but news of the man-hunt had run through the country, and when the parson's housekeeper one day saw him hold the wash-bowl for his guest she wanted to know why he was so polite to a common clod. Master Jon told her that it was none of her business, but that night he piloted his friend across the lake to Isala, where Sven Elfsson lived, a gamekeeper who knew the country and could be trusted. The good parson was hardly out of sight on his way back when the sheriff's men came looking ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... their faces matched their coats. An enormous fellow, with a great red face and cropped moustache, occupied my poor father's place; he it was who had replaced our fruitful vineries with his stinking stables; but I am bound to own he looked a genial clod, as he sat in his fat and listened to the young bloods boasting of their prowess, or elaborately explaining their mishaps. And for a minute we listened also, before I remembered my responsibilities, and led Raffles round to the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle, the wonders of the past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and even the history of the future, were at that moment being revealed. Of how many feats of chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... I made no answer, having none upon my tongue. Presently she added: "When once a woman has the folly to plead for herself, in that moment she murders Love; and every tear she sheds thereafter becomes another clod upon his grave. There remains but one thing for ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... destroys at once the chief charm of her youth—the exuberance of her fresh imagination, that gilds not only the future, but throws a rosy light upon all surrounding objects. Her visions, I grant you, are absurd, but the girl without visions is a clod of the valley, for she is without imagination—and without imagination, what is life? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... of such a thing, master,' said the landlord, and was about to trudge onward; when the guest, detaining him, said, in a strong Scottish tone, 'Ya will maybe have nae whey then, nor buttermilk, nor ye couldna exhibit a souter's clod?' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all Old memories of Sussex sod, To you we pile the altar clod And ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... it reduces a gentleman to the level of the clod," was the prompt answer. "A gentleman must have his quarrels, however sweet his disposition, and a means must be afforded him ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... to make this clod understand. His brain was not built with the right cells for understanding me. 'Lord Southminster,' I said, turning upon him and clasping my hands, 'I will not go away while you stop here. But you have some spark enough of a gentleman in your composition, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... fell a-laughing in their sleeves and eyeing each other askance, made a show of exceeding wonderment and praised Calandrino's counsel, but Bruno asked how the stone in question was called. Calandrino, who was a clod-pated fellow, had already forgotten the name, wherefore quoth he, 'What have we to do with the name, since we know the virtue of the stone? Meseemeth we were best go about the quest without more ado.' 'Well, then,' said Bruno, 'how is it fashioned?' 'It is of all ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... not even speak of ill on such a day," said her neighbour. "Look at the sky's blueness and the spring bursting forth in every branch and clod—and the very skylarks singing ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the forests, would be divided among the communes, and that, by some political legerdemain or other, everybody would have free fire-wood, free grazing for his cattle, and over and above that, a piece of gold without working for it. That he should give up a single clod of his own to further the general "partition" had never entered the mind of the peasant communist; and the perception that this was an essential preliminary to "partition" was often a sufficient ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Penelope interpreted it as a sign that news of his father was at hand.[1627] An act performed without ulterior purpose may be taken to symbolize some sort of fortune. When the Calif Omar sent an embassy to the Persian King Yezdegird summoning him to embrace Islam, the angry king commanded that a clod of earth should be brought and that the ambassadors should bear it out of the city, which they accordingly did; and this act was taken both by Arabs and by Persians as a presage of Moslem victory—the invaders had ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... consumption. In the month of January we beheld this amiable and interesting girl in the glow of health and spirits, the delight of her friends, the joy and pride of her family; she is now cold and lifeless as the clod of the valley. So falls the tender flower of spring as it expands its bosom to the chilling blight of the morning frost. Endowed by nature with a mind unusually discriminating, and a docility of temper and disposition admirably ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Holland is the veriest clod! Too lazy to do the honest work for which he is fitted, he roams the hills under ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... another mood he wrote to Murray (June 7, 1819), "I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall' [see The Rivals, act v. sc. 3]. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country." In this half-humorous outburst he deprecates, or pretends to deprecate, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... numbers are incredible; chaffinches are not to be counted; of greenfinches there must be thousands. From the railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the window of a railway carriage, every little clod of which seemed alive with small birds, principally sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must have been thousands in that field alone. In autumn the numbers are even greater, or rather ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... that. I'll have t' tie that dog up, I guess," and he threw a little clod of earth at the now cringing animal, ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... said Meg, stepping up to him with a frown of indignation that made her dark eyes flash like lamps from under her bent brows,—"Fule-body! if I meant ye wrang, couldna I clod [*Hurl.] ye ower that craig [*Steep rock.], and wad man ken how ye cam by your end mair than Frank Kennedy? Hear ye that, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... for we cannot regard it as a real acquisition of science, that man is descended from the ape or from any other animal!" Then evidently no alternative remains but that he is descended from a god, or from a clod! ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... he should go to the fence and look over, or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow can understand, there popped up before him the head and shoulders of a girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that there was now no need for its services, she allowed to fall ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... shape, and features would be the height, shape, and features of the future husband or wife. The taste of the custock, that is, the heart of the stem, was an infallible indication of his or her temper; and a clod of earth adhering to the root signified, in proportion to its size, the amount of property which he or she would bring to the common stock. Then the kail-stock or runt, as it was called in Ayrshire, was placed over the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... An' when the circus come round, I would make friends wi' the men, helpin' of 'em to look after their horses, an' they would sometimes, jest to amuse theirselves, teach me tricks I was glad enough to learn; an' they did say for a clod-hopper I got on very well. But that, you see, sir, set my monkey up, an' I took a hoath to myself I would do what none o' them could do afore I died—an' some thinks, sir," he added modestly, "as ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... and States and Thrones: With reverent hand I'll polish Still, still my Cherrystones! A clod—a piece of orange-peel An end of a cigar - Once trod on by a Princely heel, How beautiful ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... punished for madness, because it was a distemper. Now I will maintain that cowardice is a distemper, as well as madness; for nobody would be afraid, if he could help it." "There is more logic in that remark," resumed the knight, "than I expected from your clod-pate, Crabshaw. But I must explain the difference between cowardice and madness. Cowardice, though sometimes the effect of natural imbecility, is generally a prejudice of education, or bad habit contracted from ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... picking up a clod, jerked it toward a fence-post. The clod happened to hit the post and was flicked into dust. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... back cursing him for a clod; and in the evening Coombe, after folding his flock, came in to give his decision, and said he had thought of it and would take Jane to wife. She was a good deal older than Ellen and not so good-looking, but she belonged to the village ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... even I could imagine that Gargoyle—well—that he saw something like a released principle of life fly happily back to its main source—as if a little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and, disembodied, dart back to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... slink like a craven because I've lost the love of one man? Must I hate Flo Hutter because she will make Glenn happy? Never!... All of this seems better so, because through it I am changed. I might have lived on, a selfish clod!" ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... begin, with the favor and permission of Heaven, where I think the business may rightly be said to begin. The time was a May morning, the morning of May-day, warm and bright with sunlight, one of those mornings which makes a clod seem like a poet and a poet seem like a god. The place was the Piazza Santa Felicita, with the Arno flowing pretty full and freely now between its borders of mud. I can see it all as I write, as I saw it yesterday, that yesterday so many years ago when Lappo Lappi was young and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hopes, his chance of an education, that plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless clod ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... were a set of common clod-hopping wretches, with frize coats and brogues, that no man could get round at all, for they were as cunning as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense, rather better than people with better ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... depressing as usual but he could always get a lift from the comic section. He even had a favorite strip, a fact that he scarcely dared mention to himself. "Rattly Robot," a dull-witted mechanical clod who was continually falling over himself and getting into trouble. It was a repellent caricature, but could still be very funny. Jon was just starting to read it when the ceiling ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... the seed within the pod; The worm within its closed cocoon: The wings within the circling clod, The germ, that gropes through soil and sod To beauty, radiant in the noon: I am all these, behold! and more— I am the love at ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... upon the air like sighs—like the distant tones of a bell tolling a requiem—a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod of earth falling upon ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... motives?" said Courthorne. "The lad had done something which was difficult to forgive him, but I think I would have let him go if he hadn't recognized me. The world is tolerably good to the man who has no scruples, you see, and I took all it offered me, while it did not seem fitting that a clod of a trooper without capacity for enjoyment, or much more sensibility than the beast he rode, should put an end to all my opportunities. Still, it was only when he tried to warn his comrades he threw his last ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... through the brine, and as the succeeding roller came on, she was urging ahead fast. Still, the sea struck her abeam, forcing her bodily to leeward, and heaving the lower yardarms into the ocean. Tons of water fell on her decks, with the dull sound of the clod on the coffin. At this grand moment, old Jack Truck, who was standing in the rigging, dripping with he spray, that had washed over him, with a naked head, and his grey hair glistening, shouted like a Stentor, "Haul in your fore-braces, boys! away with the yard, like a fiddlestick!" ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... holiest priest of his time," he said one day as he watched him. As for Vincent, he was completely won by the gentle serenity of St. Francis and took him as model in his relations with others. "I am by nature a country clod," he would say in after years, "and if I had not met the Bishop of Geneva, I should have remained a bundle ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... same time. You never know how to take her. You are aware she hasn't got a heart, but her lips are red. She is unreal. She holds views in defiance of common sense. Which is the nobler thing to do—to dig potatoes or paint a man digging potatoes? She swears to you that the digger is a clod of earth and the painter a handful of heaven. She is talking rot. You know it. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... clod. She had forgiven Starling. She had walked with him. I answered the usual thing mechanically. "My shoulder,—it is a scratch, madame." I kept my lips on her hand, and with the feeling her touch brought me ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... impurity of word, suggestion, thought. God's lilies are not cleaner. I confess that the knight's love for Dulcinea del Tobosa moves me to tears. I never can smile or jest at him when his heart and lips hold with fealty to an ideal love. His love created her. He found her a clod, but flung her into the sky and made her a star. Is not this love's uniform history? Blinded, not of lust or ambition, but of ideality. Saul met Christ at noon, and was blinded by his vision; and would not all brave men ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... gentle treatment that it expects; whereas the worldly-wise tom-cat, who, in response to friendly advances, scampers away and grins at us suspiciously from the fancied security of an adjacent wall, impels us to accelerate his retreat with a well-directed clod. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... him with nothing but contempt and loathing for the mass of mankind, the aristocrat who in a dozen plays sneers at the greasy caps and foul breaths of the multitude, fell in love with Dogberry, and Bottom, Quickly and Tearsheet, clod and clown, pimp and prostitute, for the laughter they afforded. His humour is rarely sardonic; it is almost purged of contempt; a product not of hate but of love; full of sympathy; ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... death-cold body, dragged from the darkest pool of Corrie, with its hands filled with fine wool, wears the perfect similitude of my own Elphin! I'll tell ye—the spiritual dwellers of the earth, the fairyfolk of our evening tale, have stolen the living body, and fashioned this cold and inanimate clod to mislead your pursuit. In common eyes this seems all that Elphin Irving would be, had he sunk in Corriewater; but so it seems not to me. Ye have sought the living soul, and ye have found only its garment. But oh, if ye had beheld him, as I beheld him to-night, riding ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie stripped to the buff in swinish shame, If I can blaze in the radiant sky out of adoring stars my name. Sober am I nonentitized; drunk am I more than half a god. Well, let the flesh be sacrificed; spirit shall speak and shame the clod. Who would not gladly, gladly give Life to do ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... so, ma'am," rejoined the incensed scribe; "and moreover I say, that the old miserly clod-breaker called me pettifogger—pettifogger, ma'am—and said I came to hunt for a job, ma'am—which I have no more right to have said to me than any other gentleman of my profession, ma'am—especially as I am clerk to the peace, having and holding said office ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... admitted, "I'm afraid that I must conclude that her unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to make a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to hear! and a worse hell on earth! [Aside. What mad profusion on this clod-born birth! Abyss of joys, as if heaven meant to shew What, in base matters, such a hand could do: Or was his virtue spent, and he no more With angels could supply the exhausted store, Of which I swept the sky? And wanting subjects to his haughty will, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... got little encouragement in his labour. Not only that the sparrows noisily criticized his work, and the chestnuts scornfully whisked their tails under his nose, but the harrows also objected, and resisted at every little stone or clod of earth. The tired horses continually stumbled, and when Slimak cried 'Woa, my lads!' and they went on, the harrows again resisted and pulled them back. When the worried harrows moved on for a bit, stones got into the horses' feet or under his own shoes, or choked up, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... second attempt to climb up the bank, and this time reached the top, where he lay for a few moments sprawling, amid the jeers of his tormentors; and Tommy Fry, who was the scapegrace of the village, picked up a clod of earth and threw it at him. The clod, which was full of little stones, struck him full on the cheek and drew blood. The man gave a little whine of pain, and struggled quickly to his feet; but the boys were in the road before him, and, worse than that, the women hearing ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... clod grew the Queen at that word, (The mermaid dances the floor upon) And down she fell senseless before the King's board, Because her will she had ...
— The Mermaid's Prophecy - and Other Songs Relating to Queen Dagmar • Anonymous
... cloud whose dews distil Upon the parching clod, And clothe with verdure vale and hill, That ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... of the world and would be a clod when no longer living—her essence would remain to inspirit some other evil woman—the same malignity in a beautiful shape which appeared in Lais, Messalina, Lucrezia Borgia, the Medici, Ninon, Lecouvreur, Iza, not links of a chain, but the same ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... without any previous knowledge. The hairts o the widow and fairtherless must be stricken, and it's little that a' our consolations and expairiments will prevail ag'in the feelin's o' natur'. Pheeloosophy and religion tall us that the body's no mair than a clod o' the valley when the speerit has fled; but the hairt is unapt to listen to wisdom while the grief is fraish, and of the severity of an unlooked-for sairtainty. I see little good, therefore, in doing mair than just sending in a messenger, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... heaved and bubbled, and out of every clod arose a man. Out of the earth they rose by thousands, each clad from head to foot in steel, and drew their swords and rushed on Jason, where he stood in the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... it is not true that there has been such a marvellous change in her character as is implied in this statement. Where man is a bigot and a barbarian, there, alas! woman is still a harem toy; where man is little more than a human clod, woman is to-day a drudge in the field; where man has hewn the way to governmental and religious freedom, there woman has become a leader of thought. The unity of race progress is strikingly suggested by this fact. The method through which that unity is maintained should unfold itself as ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... of which I have spoken; and may be then caught by laying hooks, which you are to fasten to the bank, or twigs of a tree; or by throwing a string across the stream, with many hooks at it, and those baited with the aforesaid baits; and a clod, or plummet, or stone, thrown into the river with this line, that so you may in the morning find it near to some fixed place; and then take it up with a drag-hook, or otherwise. But these things are, indeed, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... any walk of life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machine to make a machine out of a man. Anything will do it if the man will let it. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, and working in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he buries his soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands of years, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody—the farmer who is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression of the soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... come to set mine eye: The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd; And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail, Are turned to one thread, one little hair: My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Which holds but till thy news be uttered; And then all this thou seest is but a clod, And ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Scarcely had she paused, however, when a great crash came, followed by a long mingled sound of many stones and much earth falling. It seemed as if the whole roof must be coming down. A shower of damp soil descended upon her head, and one clod larger than the rest knocked her over. Happily she was more stunned and frightened than hurt. The glimmer of light had disappeared, and she began to realise that the door must have shut. Terrible as her position was, the full horror of it did not ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... him doing so had always given his mother a peculiar pleasure. The habit in him, she felt, strengthened the secret bond that existed between them. A thousand times she had whispered to herself of the matter. "He is groping about, trying to find himself," she thought. "He is not a dull clod, all words and smartness. Within him there is a secret something that is striving to grow. It is the thing I let be killed ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... lies, like a clod of earth; and there, too, will lie many more, in a few minutes. There is another! I did not notice him at first. Poor Dona Dolores! what will ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... rim of the mouth coming on the soil and the bottom elevated on an old tin pan, so that the beaker stood inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees with the horizon. The slides were moistened, one was laid on a stone, one on a clod, and a third on the grass. Returned to bed, not having been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... robbers Time and Death Athwart my path conspiring stand, I cheat them with a clod, a breath, And pass the sword ...
— Songs of Two • Arthur Sherburne Hardy
... lay dying with the bullet wound in the shoulder. Occasionally in her rage she bit her own paw violently, and then struck and clawed the ground. A pool of blood lay by her side. She was about ten yards from us, and I instructed my men to throw a clod of earth at her (there were no stones), to prove whether she could rise, while I stood ready with the rifle. She merely replied with a dull roar, and I terminated her misery by a ball through the head. She was a beautiful animal. The patch ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they escape hanging, return to the place from ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle |
