"Gist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considerable part of my triumph and my laurels. For what does it help me, if the arrangements and decorations, if the whole establishment, are excellent, should there be a failure in the highest and most sublime part of the entertainment—in the food. The food, my dear sir, and a well-ordered table, is the gist of a festival, and should there be the least failure in that, the whole is profaned and desecrated, and must be covered with a mourning-veil. Take my words to heart, signor; let us have a table covered with food ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... support the authority of fabulous accounts, and to detract from that of historical narratives, which sort the Greeks call "Propositions," "Refutations" and "Corroboration," until by a gradual process they have exhausted these topics, and arrive at the gist of the argument. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the listener), though well practised in the art of eavesdropping, could not gather the gist of the plotters' discourse. Only this he made out, that, in some way or other, they meant to do, or had done, mischief to the man who had spared and helped, and, above all, had trusted him! It was tantalising to hear so little, though so near, for, from his ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... forth, that they might continue the amusement which was interrupted by his flight. The lad spent a minute or two in conversing by means of gestures with the chief, whose meaning seemed plainer now that he had caught the gist of his ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... theological doctrines into the minds of the people. Reimarus had been a doubter like many others of his countrymen. He committed his mental phases to paper, though he thought that it was not yet time to issue them for public notice. The Fragments published by Lessing contain the gist of his entire work, and contributed far more to the growth of skepticism than a larger production would probably have done. The historical evidences of Christianity and of the doctrine of inspiration, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... inbeing[obs3], inherence, inhesion[obs3]; subjectiveness; ego; egohood[obs3]; essence, noumenon; essentialness[obs3] &c. adj.; essential part, quintessence, incarnation, quiddity, gist, pith, marrow, core, sap, lifeblood, backbone, heart, soul; important part &c. (importance) 642. principle, nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis[obs3], diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which the bride's mother is supposed to give her on this occasion, in which the desire imputed to the caste to make money out of their daughters is satirised. They are no doubt libellous as being a gross exaggeration, but may contain some substratum of truth. The gist of them is as follows: "Girl, if you are my daughter, heed what I say. I will make you many sweetmeats and speak words of wisdom. Always treat your husband better than his parents. Increase your private money (khamora) by selling ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... The gist of Tommy's threat has often been couched in modern language by grandsons of the boys from whom the Socratic Mr. Day wrote to expose the evils of too luxurious an education. His method of compilation of facts to be taught may best be given ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... sensibilities and position dressed in the gowns of the declasse street-women of Paris. The somewhat sensational nature of the articles attracted the attention of the American newspapers, which copied and commented on them; the gist of them was cabled over to Paris, and, of course, the Paris couturiers denied the charges. But their denials were in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of the charges was furnished. The French couturier simply resorted to a shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... practical politics, and already she sickened of the sordid subject. Unionism, public ownership of public utilities versus private privilege, charges and counter-charges of political corruption, problems of taxation—such things would constitute his sole interest in life and the gist of his conversation. It was not enough that he talked intelligently, even eloquently, on these subjects. Her active mind had already exhausted their possibilities, and what to her was a mere by-play of the intellect was to him the be-all and end-all of existence. Of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... The gist of this doctrine of Individuality, as it is now largely prevalent in respect to the institutions of the Church and the State, and which is squarely affirmed in the proposition above mentioned, is this: Men and Women do not ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... cease to be, would be good; but no man is strong enough to make a new law for his own governing at the spur of the moment;—and certainly no woman. The existing distances between man and man were radically bad. This was the very gist of his doctrine; but the instant abolition of such distances had been proved by many experiments to be a vain dream, and the diminution of them must be gradual and slow. That such diminution would go on till the distances should ultimately disappear in some future millennium was to him a certainty. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... with conviviality. Following an interminable period of eating and drinking came a long speech by Baahaabaa which, like most after-dinner speeches, meant nothing to me. Captain Triplett replied. The gist of Triplett's remarks, memorized from the "Argus," were taken from the 1916 report of the New Bedford Board of Trade. When he proclaimed that "besides cotton goods, 100,000 pianos were turned out yearly and ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... Hallam, his criticism of Bacon Hardy, Thomas Hastings, battle of Hathaway, Anne Hazlitt, William Hengist (h[)e]ng'gist) Henry Esmond Herbert, George; life; poetry of Hero and Leander Heroes and Hero Worship Heroic couplet Heroic Stanzas Herrick, Robert Hesperides and Noble Numbers (h[)e]s-p[)e]r'[)i]-d[e]z) Heywood, John Heywood, Thomas Hilda, abbess Hildgund (hild'gund) ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the gist of what I got out of Mildred Thurston. Letters to Miss Somers elicited no real response—only a line to say that she wasn't strong enough to write. None of her other female friends could get any encouragement to visit her. It ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the old man, whom he found lying upon a bed, with the door of his house lying on the ground. One servant stood by the bed holding the sage's head and fanning him, and another was engaged in rubbing his feet. Herutataf addressed a highly poetical speech to Teta, the gist of which was that the old man seemed to be able to defy the usual effects of old age, and to be like one who had obtained the secret of everlasting youth, and then expressed the hope that he was well. Having paid these compliments, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... crying memories. His boyhood, the night with the fat young man, the death of his adopted parents, the summer days with Marjory, and many of those small circumstances, which seem nothing to another, and are yet the very gist of a man's own life to himself—things seen, words heard, looks misconstrued—arose from their forgotten corners and usurped his attention. The dead themselves were with him, not merely taking part in this thin show of memory that defiled before his brain, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Such was the gist of Mrs. Reynolds's discourse. I have not the courage to attempt to transcribe her rich brogue and picturesque phraseology; and even were I able to do so, it could give the reader no adequate idea of the wealth of optimism ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... States Congress; so had L.M. Keitt, who fell at Cold Harbor at the head of our brigade, while Colonel of the Twentieth Regiment. James L. Orr, one of the original Secessionists and a member of Congress, raised the first regiment of rifles. The son of Governor Gist, the last Executive of South Carolina just previous to Secession, fell while leading his regiment, the Fifteenth, of our brigade, in the assault at Fort Loudon, at Knoxville. Scarcely was there a member of the convention that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... The verticals of the letters were perforated only four holes high, and the four rollers were arranged in pairs, one pair being slightly in advance of the other. There were, of course, only four pins at the receiving instrument. Two were of iron and two of tellurium, it being the gist of Edison's plan to effect the marking of the chemical paper by one metal with a positive current, and by the other metal with a negative current. In the following diagram, which shows the theory of this arrangement, it will be seen that both the transmitting rollers and the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid, or if yon have not the tongues seek out the ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... I heard little of the controversy, yet 'tis like I know the gist of it, as I have just conversed with a wounded soldier of mine, Barbeau, who repeated the story as he understood it. My hand to you, Sieur de Artigny, and it seems to me, Messieurs, that De Tonty hath the right ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... service, who come within the description of the resolution, together with our state troops in Continental service. Colonel Cabell was so kind as to send me a return of the Continental regiments, commanded by Lord Sterling, of the first and second Virginia State regiments, and of Colonel Gist's regiment. Besides these are the following, viz. Colonel Harrison's regiment of artillery, Colonel Bayler's horse, Colonel Eland's horse, General Scott's new levies, part of which are gone to Carolina, and part are here, Colonel Gibson's regiment stationed on the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... right," was the reply he received, "but understanding the gist of it is another thing. The sentences seem disconnected, and some of them are queer. When Hen wrote this he must either have been half out of his mind, or else he was in great fear ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Eyes, followed, and the gist of his speech, also, Henry learned somewhat later from Heno. He was sorry to differ from his friend, Captain Pipe. He thought they ought to wait a little, to be more cautious, they had already suffered greatly from two expeditions ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... slaves has done them infinite credit, and that the key to their successful management is simply to treat them with justice. That this justice includes equal rights of citizenship he fully asserts, and states the gist of the matter in one of the most telling paragraphs of the book. "God, who made the liberation of the negro the condition under which alone we could succeed in this war, has now, in His providence, brought about a position of things under which it would seem that a full ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... never told anybody how he had gone once to Barney Thayer's door, and there stood long and delivered himself of a strange harangue, wherein the penitence and desire for peace had been thinly veiled by a half-wild and eccentric philosophy; but the gist of which had been the humble craving for pardon of an old man, and his beseeching that his daughter's lover, separated from her by his own fault, should forget it and come ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... learned, as he loved to be among the laity on such occasions, and was in no undue haste to bring his narrative to a close. But the gist of the matter was this—Sturk was labouring under concussion of the brain, and two terrific fractures of the skull—so long, and lying so near together, that he and Doctor Pell instantly saw 'twould be impracticable to apply the trepan, in fact that 'twould be certain and instantaneous death. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... resorted to force to obtain supplies; and late in August he sent an expedition up the Combahee for the purpose. General Gist, with some Maryland troops, was there to oppose him, and the British were compelled to retreat to Charleston. In the skirmish that ensued, the noble Colonel John Laurens, who had volunteered in the service, was killed. He was mourned by all as a great public loss; and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... another form, in the action of the police board of the parish of Bossier, which was an attempt to revive at once the old slave laws, and to prevent the freedmen from obtaining employment (away) from their former masters. The gist of the enactment alluded to is contained in the paragraph directing the officers on patrol duty "to arrest and take up all idle and vagrant persons running at large without employment and carry them before the proper authorities, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... gist un povre menestrel, Occis par maint ennuict cruel— Ne plains pas trop sa destinee— N'est icy que son corps mortel: Son ame est toujours a Gillwell, Et ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... conceive, and it is still more unaccountable that they should have neglected the natives, whose consent and assistance they might have procured at a very small expense. Instead of acting such a fair, open, and honourable part, they sent a Mr. Gist to make a clandestine survey of the country, as far as the falls of the river Ohio; and, as we have observed above, his conduct alarmed both the French and Indians. The erection of this company was equally disagreeable to the separate traders of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who saw themselves on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... said hopelessly. "You have misunderstood the gist of the play, then! 'Walter Severn' in the comedy is a man of singular points. He is a great author. Instead of being that woman's plaything, he is her merciless analyst. The great scene in the play comes when she finds this out. Now, you do not for a moment presume to put yourself ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza, and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the gardeners about ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter the gist of which was the desire to know what I meant by trying to fob off on him such stuff. That was the meaning of the question, if not exactly its form, and it made my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake was I could now only look it in the face and accept it. I knew where I had failed, but ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... paho to the second group of sacrifices mentioned by Tylor,[163] that of homage, "a doctrine that the gist of sacrifice is rather in the worshiper giving something precious to himself than in the deity receiving benefit. This may be called the abnegation theory, and its origin may be fairly explained by considering it as derived from the ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... It stands upon record that while Massachusetts was preparing for the contest in the earlier days, there were men along the Chesapeake and the Potomac who took the alarm with their northern brethren. Mordecai Gist, Esq., of "Baltimore town," was among the first to snuff the coming storm, and the first to act, for he tells us that as early as December, 1774, at the expense of his time and hazard of his business, he organized "a company composed of men ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... lived there—let them stay there; they had certain rights relating to their faith and property—let them enjoy these rights in the future. The Interpretation of the Senate even more strongly emphasised this thought. Here is the gist of this Interpretation: "Since the Imperial Ukase has placed the Jews in a legal status of equality with the rest of the population, the rule established by her Majesty should, therefore, be followed in application to each particular case. Every one should enjoy his rights ...
— The Shield • Various
... false report that his Majesty was disposed to allow them liberty of conscience and the free choice of religion, now, etc." Fresh "transplanting" of English and Scotch settlers on the lands of the Irish was the gist of his answer to the "false reports." So again the war of surprise, ambush, raid, and foray went on in a hundred places at once, but the result was that the English power was even ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... laymen by a specialist, during a busy, assiduous practice. I take such radical ground, however, going to the very root of the matter, that the general practitioner will do well to give my thesis his careful consideration; he should at least glance at the following Introduction for the gist of my claim. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... This is the gist of the story the clergyman told me, and, believing it as I undoubtedly do to be true, there is every reason to suppose that the inn, to which I have, of course, given a fictitious name, if still ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... (i. e. sayings of the Fathers), the name given to a collection of aphorisms in the manner of Jesus the Son of Sirach by 60 doctors learned in the Jewish law, representative of their teaching, and giving the gist of it; they inculcate the importance of familiarity with the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with Aristotle's further suggestion that poetry involves "a strain of madness," a statement which we are wont to interpret as meaning that the poet is led by his passions rather than by his reason. This constitutes the gist of the whole dispute between the romanticist and the classicist, and our poets are such ardent devotees of love as their muse, simply because, in spite of other short-lived fads, the temper of the last century has remained predominantly romantic. It is obvious that the idea of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could complain of no restraint, or pine ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to realize how her statement would sound—in such a place as Goldite. Van had turned sick when it reached him. He was emphatically denying the story. The gist of it went through the mass of maddened beings, only to be so soon impugned by the man who had started it from Beth. The fury, at what was deemed an attempted deception, burst out ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... reconciling metaphysically difficulties which a far inferior but less inquisitive and vorsehender geist pronounces for itself simply contrary to the word of God. There are two Greek prepositions which contain the gist of the whole matter, huper, in behalf of, and anti, instead of, in the place of. Maurice's doctrine goes far to do away with the truth of the last, as applied to the Sacrifice of Christ. I have an exceedingly high regard for him, and respect for his goodness no less ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little, and made us a speech. I forget his words, but remember the gist of them. He was pleased to welcome us within his army, and trusted to our honor and loyalty. He made an allusion to the power of the press, and promised us facilities for seeing and writing, within the bounds of censorship. I noticed that he pronounced St.-Omer, St.-Omar, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the gist of the Yogi meditative breathing methods, and if persisted in will give one a wonderful sense of the reality of the Soul, and will make him seem almost independent of the body. The sense of immortality will often come with ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... have been a huge animal, a hulking creature of some sort walking upright. Carrigan's fingers closed more tightly on the butt of his automatic. The woman began to talk swiftly in a patois of French and Cree. David caught the gist of it. She was telling Bateese to carry him to the canoe, and to be very careful, because m'sieu was badly hurt. It was his head, she emphasized. Bateese must be careful of ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... right to treat such a man with contempt? She remembered hour he had looked, at her when he stood on the corner by the Catherwoods' house. And, worst of all, she remembered many spiteful remarks she had made, even to Anne, the gist of which had been that Mr. Brice was better at preaching than at fighting. She knew now—and she had known in her heart before—that this was the greatest injustice ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... finalities. There were finalities on the war, finalities on the social unrest; finalities on art, life, religion, the past, present, and future. A cock-sure magazine, gently, tolerantly elbowing aside the mysteries of existence and holding up between carefully manicured thumb and forefinger the Gist of the Thing. The Irrefutable Truth. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... The gist of this statement having been repeated in Spanish, both prisoners burst into clamorous explanation of their presence together. Panfilo, it seemed, had encountered his companion purely by chance, and was horrified now to learn that his newly made ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... following: "Be it Resolved, that Miss Katherine Burke McDermott be, and hereby is, elected an honorary member for life in the Forestburg Rifles, and that we swear to cherish and protect her forever." That was the gist of it, I believe, and there were other resolutions regarding the same young lady, which have unfortunately escaped my memory. But, boys, need I remind you that these resolutions were adopted unanimously? O, let them bind us still! That ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... by Mr. Bernard Shaw, the gist of the matter can be compressed in fewer words. The ideas expressed are not the exclusive property of Mr. Shaw. The Old World for indefinite ages has been controlled and directed by what he calls the "Junker" class, the rich and idle aristocrats who want for nothing, and, being born to ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... of the woman taken in adultery, and of Christ's challenge to her judges, "Which of you will dare to assault with the first stone?" The course of his argument was curious. He began with examining the passage from the standpoint of verbal scholarship, the gist of his criticism being that its authenticity was at least doubtful. From this argument he diverged into one of wider scope, insisting on how much is doubtful in what the Gospels record as the sayings of our Lord generally, from ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... exclusively. It is in this final phase that the Bread-and-Beef culture passes over eventually into the New World, and into the South Temperate Zone. It has been rather a long story to tell, and full of platitudes, but the gist of it is by this time clear. Whatever be the superstructure of social institutions, of arts and sciences, of religion and philosophy, that European men have built upon it, the regime which has made ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... curious tradition of the Eskimo, not quite quotable here, the gist of which is that a man who desired to make his sister his wife was transformed into the moon, while the woman became the sun. Something like the same legend has been traced as far south as Panama. Another notable thing about Eskimo traditions is that the moon is ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... is a little essay some 25 or 30 pp. long, which is still all in the rough and I don't know how it will shape, but the gist of it is somewhat ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Mrs. Crane in the woman described; and, if surprised, he was rejoiced. For, much as he disliked that gentlewoman, he thought Sophy might be in worse female hands. Without much need of sagacity, he divined the gist of the truth. Losely had somehow or other become acquainted with Rugge, and sold Sophy to the manager. Where Rugge was, there would Sophy be. It could not be very difficult to find out the place in which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the duchy of Arezzo, impelled by a like curiosity, consulted a learned clerk of Milan, one Cosmo Raimondi of Cremona. The following is the gist ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... I tell the hull abeout it," Ab replied, rather choosing, like Captain Cuttle, to break the gist of his information into small chunks, and so make it the more ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the gist of our conversation as the cab rattled through the streets on the way to the prison; and certainly it contained matter sufficiently important to draw away my thoughts from other subjects, more agreeable, but less relevant ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... belonging to him in this world; and that being so, it was natural enough for him to make a promising and favorite pupil his heir. At first sight, therefore, no difficulties presented themselves; but old Felix slept upon the matter, and by morning grave doubts had risen in his mind. The gist of them was that "If they took and grabbed the ould gintleman's bit of money, and he after dyin' all his lone up among them there, wid ne'er a one of his own folks near him to see he had his rights, it might look ugly enough agin them, and set some people passin' remarks he'd be long ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... earlier soliloquy on self-slaughter. But, for one thing, Hamlet's soliloquies are contrary in drift to Montaigne's argument; and, for another, the phrase "Conscience makes cowards of us all" existed in the soliloquy as it stood in the First Quarto, while the gist of the idea is actually found twice in a previous play, where it has a proverbial ring.[69] And "the hope of something after death" figures ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... popular price. The "Masters of Medicine" is a series of biographies written by "eminent hands" intended to supply this want. It is intended that the man shall be depicted as he moved and lived and had his being, and that the scope and gist of his work, as well as the steps by which he reached his results, shall be set forth ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... it, if I'se you, what he said. He says just what he thinks—right out with it, no matter who's hurt—and he usually gets the gist on't. But I wouldn't mind what he said, the public was purty generally pleased." And the long whip lash cracks and ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... and lose, and mingle in murder and war," is the gist of Brynhild's message, and the whole ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... was the gist of the story of Bellward's arrest. The report laid great stress on the fact that no one outside half a dozen Intelligence men had any knowledge (a) of Bellward being an unnaturalized ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... confuse and mystify me, I confess. Come, let me write down your wishes, and the matter can be arranged formally, which is always best in any case. There, I think I have the gist of your idea," he said a few moments later, as he pushed over to me a slip of paper to read and sign, which done, I shook hands with him cordially, preparing to go. "But your receipt—you have forgotten ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... sister, the people you saw just now. There are thousands of people in London who are different from that and ever so much nicer; but I don't see them, I don't know how to get at them; and after all, poor dear man, what power have you to help me?' That was in the last analysis the gist of what she had ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Britain was no less surprised to see Allan and this stranger whom he but faintly recalled. And to him, to Cadoris, and the assembled knights, the two had to recount again what had occurred. And when the full gist of it came home, Arthur brought down a heavy hand on the shoulder of Cadoris who was shaking with laughter and himself fell into a seat nearby for very faintness at his own mirth. While about him there was great boisterousness and loud guffaws. A yeoman who had listened eagerly to ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... was blind and Hew was dumb, But both had the wild, wild heart; And God's calm will was their burning will, And the gist of their toil ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... another drink, an' then Jo-Jo an' I'll renew our conversation. An' while we're at it, Percy, if I was you I'd stand a little to one side so's I wouldn't get my clothes mussed. Now, Jo-Jo, what was the gist of that there remark ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... was agog with the full details of the remarkable story. Cabled despatches in the newspapers gave the gist of the clever trick played by the Medcrofts, and the whole of England was to ring with the stories of Mrs. Medcroft's pluck and devotion. Everybody was buying the papers and staring with admiration at ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... things. But it is not so with your red brothers. When we go on any great business and have any great things to say, we say them in a few words.' With no little ingenuity, but with apparent courtesy, these sons of the forest declined a mission in their midst. The gist of the reply is contained in the following sentence: 'Brother, your religion is very good; but it is only good for white people. It will not do for Indians, they are quite a ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... Sir Lionel Sackville-West was British Minister to the United States from 1881 to 1888. In the latter year a letter was published which he had written to an American citizen of British origin, the gist of which was that the reelection of President Cleveland would be of advantage to British interests. For this gross interference in American domestic affairs, President Cleveland immediately handed Sir Lionel his passports. The incident ended his ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... actually proclaimed to the world, Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother. No one knew better than he what Elsmere's gifts were. It was absurd that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. 'Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi!' was about the gist of Langham's mood during the days that followed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... instance, I have often tried, in my pulpit discourses on theft, to imbue the folk of this parish with the very ideas of Right to which you have just given utterance. For truly, God does not estimate theft by the value of the thing stolen, He looks at the thief. That has been the gist of the parables which I have tried to adapt to the comprehension ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... could write, "Socrates and Jesus were patterns to me" lived a correct life in its essentials. His asceticism, his unselfishness, the sympathy which he continually showed for others, his unworldliness,—what else is this but the gist of New Testament teaching? Like a tree nourished on alien soil, which yet produces fairer and better fruit than the native ones, and becomes the parent of a new variety, this man achieved his high development of character by being a law unto himself ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... was just the way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn't a shooting business—yet. But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... how these two understood each other. She knew that he had for her a plan fully matured, and wasting no time in needless questionings, waited to hear the gist of the whole matter, assured from past experience that he would suggest nothing that would be an undertaking unworthy of her talent, and he knew that she would weigh his suggestions while they were being made, and be ready with her decision at ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... did not seem to require the services of an interpreter, for he answered Mr Rawlings as if he thoroughly comprehended the gist of the question Moose was ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the Utrecht Gazette, and came over hither, to the signal edification of the court of Leicester- fields. This is an additional reason, besides the internal evidence, for my believing the letters genuine. This old dame was mother of the Regent; and when she died, somebody wrote on her tomb, Cy gist l'Oisivet'e. This came over too; and nobody could expound It, till our then third Princess, Caroline, unravelled it,—Idleness is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... your old fiancee to the place, because it seems as if you had completely forgotten your catechism, until she came to refresh your memory. But, after all, it is not for me to interfere as it does not concern me. The gist of it all is that you are going to marry. You do well. Man is badly off alone, and when he finds a worthy companion like you have done, he ought not to lose the opportunity. Fernanda is a very good girl; I am sure that she will ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... anybody in the house, or to the disquieted Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife. The gist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond which was becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and was even then virtually so. "If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side." All the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the whole letter—one of the most interesting that was ever written, as telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his life—did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Caesar to have been meant. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... consequences arising from lectures and periodicals, as though a short account of anything must of necessity be a superficial one; but this is far from the truth. A quarto volume on one theme may be entirely superficial, while a lecture or review-article on the same theme may contain the whole gist of the matter. Prolixity is oftener superficial than brevity. Books are superficial if they relate only to the outside of a subject,—if they describe only its husk; and the reverse, if they give its kernel. Many an able review-article contains ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... world she followed him," added Patty; "I think our quotations are a bit inaccurate, but we have the gist of Tennyson's ideas." ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... conditions forming at once the foundation and environment of his activities. On the contrary, he multiplies his dependencies upon nature;[124] but while increasing their sum total, he diminishes the force of each. There lies the gist of the matter. As his bonds become more numerous, they become also more elastic. Civilization has lengthened his leash and padded his collar, so that it does not gall; but the leash is never slipped. The Delaware ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the car!" he roughly ordered, after she had given him a gist of her suspicions. He turned off the lights, stepped out, and shut the gates with a furious bang. "And stick to the corner! I'll attend ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it involves determination and therefore ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said was something like this: "The performance of your worship seems good to me. You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know that when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... The gist of the little skipper's talk was a parental warning that, though we were well enough here in the 'Ost-See', it was time for little boats to be looking for winter quarters. That he himself was going by the Kiel Canal to Hamburg to spend a cosy winter as a decent citizen ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... not pretend to quote Sir William Harcourt's words literally. I am repeating entirely from memory, but I give the gist of some of his amusing, characteristic remarks when speaking in the Birmingham Town Hall at the time he was Mr. Chamberlain's friend and guest. Certainly, I have always found Mr. Chamberlain a delightfully pleasant host. He is not given to monopolizing the talk. He does not dogmatize or lay ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... accepted the sealed canister. "What's the gist? I suppose he wants me to squeal for help already? To admit that we're licked before we're ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... "The gist of the letter is all right," I said, "but the style wants polishing. Higgins's education will be gauged by our style. Cross out 'some toothless old people' and write 'certain edentulous persons.' Put 'masticate' instead of 'eat.' Then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... letter came; but not in such a form that he could pass it on to Mr. Wilkins; he preferred to make quotations, and even these quotations were a little altered and dressed before he sent them on. The gist of his letter to Mr. Wilkins was this. He stated that he hoped soon to be in a position to offer Ellinor a home; that he anticipated a steady progress in his profession, and consequently in his ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... interesting to us, not that these are dull, but that the speakers are. Said Corder to me after one such, "When I was a Sunday School superintendent I let no one speak to the school that hadn't something to say." Yet on the whole I am surprised how well the officers can give us the gist of their subjects. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... others to do the same. The weight of evidence would seem to favour the idea that he was not the first to raise his hat, or to request the removal of the hats of his fellow-members. At all events the request was generally complied with. And this was the gist of the story. Captain Matthews's share in the events of the evening was the having joined in the demand for the two objectionable airs, in the applause which ensued upon the rendering of one of them, and in the request for the uncovering of heads. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the exact words, but the gist of it had been that Woman, however she might treat a man in times of prosperity, could be relied on to rally round and do the right thing when he was in trouble. How little the ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... be in the mood of the little girl who said, "I don't want to go to bed; I want to be in bed." The gist of eloquent speeches delivered on their behalf by Mr. HARTSHORN and Mr. RICHARDS was that the Government already possessed all the relevant facts, and should give the desired relief at once. But they mustered only 43 in the Division ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... a friend of Mary Louise, therefore the Colonel wires to ask if there is a furnished house to rent at a modest price and if a competent female servant can be secured for the man and his daughter. He requests me to wire an answer promptly. That is the gist of the telegram, although the Colonel, in his usual extravagant way, has paid for more words than were required to ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... I understand the gist of your complaint: the longer you allow folks to live, the more they won't die. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... indifferently an expressed meaning or a significant form. Perhaps on this point I may in Oxford appeal to authority, that of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater, the latter at any rate an authority whom the formalist will not despise. What is the gist of Pater's teaching about style, if it is not that in the end the one virtue of style is truth or adequacy; that the word, phrase, sentence, should express perfectly the writer's perception, feeling, image, or thought; ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... elegaic effusions on some person or impressions of some occurrence or other, and are impromptu songs readily set to the music of wind or string instruments, so that any one who is not cognisant of their gist cannot appreciate the beauties contained in them. So you are not likely, I fear, to understand this lyric with any clearness; and unless you first peruse the text and then listen to the ballad, you will, instead of pleasure, feel as if you were ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... been agreeable to see him weakened by the loss of some southern provinces. Mr. Pooley gives a good account of the actions of Japan during the Chinese Revolution, of which the following quotation gives the gist[62]:— ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... letter for subsequent perusal and took its companion, which was addressed in an unfamiliar hand. It was from Alice Burnet and it was written in that sprawling hand and diffused style natural to a not very well educated person with a complicated story to tell in a state of unusual emotion. But the gist was in the first few sentences which announced that Alice had been evicted from the hostel. "I found my things on the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... his interpretation of his former dispatch. Waiting indefinitely to see whether the National army would advance, and declaring the administration plan impracticable, hardly looks like assuming the initiative. It was not a difference as to details. The very gist of the subject under discussion was a prompt advance against the parts of our army before they could be united for any purpose. The question would naturally arise, What might happen in the places from which troops were drawn, if they ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... his nature and his opinions an air of authority wholly unecclesiastical, purely personal, but immensely impressive. It came in part from his particular type of intellect. He had an assimilative mind, which enabled him, for example, to acquire rapidly the gist of a book, and to state succinctly and clearly a point which he was desirous of making. His was an intuitive knowledge rather than a scientific. It was not the kind of knowledge of which the dogmatists speak and in which they alone can believe. Mr. Nelson's knowledge was the sort ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... read newspapers published on the Lord's Day," said Mr. White reproachfully. "I do not know the habits of the criminal classes, but as you say, and I fear I must convey the gist of your speech to the officers of the law, money has been missed from your department for a considerable time. As to your accuser, acting as—ah—as a good citizen and performing the duties which are associated with good-citizenship, I cannot reveal ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... himself like an Indian, and attended by several friendly Indians and by a white man named Gist,[10] who knew the country well, he set out on his journey through what was called the ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... or her liberty. Secondly, this appointment, at which they will come to a final agreement, is to be followed this evening by a walk along the cliffs, when the third person will bring with him or her the man or woman, I can't definitely say which, whom they want to get rid of. That is the gist of the whole thing. Now, as I know a spot called the Trois Mathildes some way above Etretat and as this is not an everyday name, we came down yesterday to thwart the plan of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... enthusiasm she grasped Jefferson's broad, sunburnt hand which was lying outside the carriage rug. He tried to appear unconscious of the contact, which made his every nerve tingle, as he proceeded to tell her the gist of the reviews he had ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... legend of the Bears from the west. The story of the Bears from the east tells of encountering the Fire people, then living about 25 miles east from Walpi; but these are now extinct, and nearly all that is known of them is told in the Bear legend, the gist of which ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... considered the second best belle of Toledo, changed the gist of the situation by a remark she ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... they've poor mouths for it," said Miss Cornelia. "Well, the gist of what you tell me is that the thing is settled and there's no use in talking. If that's so I'll hold my tongue. I don't propose to wear MY teeth out gnawing files. When a thing has to be I give in to it. But I like to make mighty sure first that ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... figures, there were calculations of profits, there were records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... taken ten minutes to possess him with the necessary facts, so rapidly did I tell the gist of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Fortunately we have ample accounts of everything that occurred—the testimony of many eye-witnesses, which, through varying in some unimportant details (as is inevitable), agree nevertheless upon all essential points. I shall give the gist of the narrative as concisely as a proper attention to its more ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... Badr al-Din Hasan, son of Nur al-Din Ali, the Egyptian; and the thousand dinars were also there. No sooner had Shams al-Din read this than he cried out with a loud cry and fell to the ground fainting; and as soon as he revived and understood the gist of the matter he marvelled and said, "There is no God, but the God, who All-might is over all things! Knowest thou, O my daughter, who it was that became the husband of thy virginity?" "No," answered she, and he said, "Verily he is the son of my brother, thy cousin, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... was right, but it was an error of judgment by no means implying swindling—in fact. He disposed of Miss Hacket in the same way—foolish, sentimental, unscrupulous, but not to that degree. Girls might be silly enough in all conscience, but not so as to commit forgery or perjury. That was the gist of it, and happily the jury ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Benham to come nearer the gist of the dispute when he said that they were not discussing the importance of men, but their relative inequalities. Nobody was denying the equal importance of everybody. But there was a virtue of this man and a virtue of that. Nobody could dispute the equal ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... with what he had been told, but he knew that Foster had said all he meant to say. One thing stuck in his mind as the gist of the hint. The attorney was advising him to go to the court-house and ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... friend had departed, Albert resumed his rather monotonous copying the gist of a lot of decisions bearing upon a case that Frye had pending just then, and when he went out to lunch, it was, as usual, alone, and ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... forms which attend industrial authority—all these evils became attached to the notion of sweating. The word has thus grown into a generic term to express this disease of City poverty from its purely industrial side. Though "long hours" was the gist of the original complaint, low wages have come to be recognized as equally belonging to the essence of "sweating." In some cases, indeed, low wages have become the leading idea, so that employers are classed as sweaters who pay low wages, ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... sailed in her to New York, where he disposed of her, having determined to let it be thought that he was dead and thus escape his second-hand family—we use the term second-hand family. The above is the gist of the narrative. What else may concern our narrative will be recorded incidentally as Jack had developed. As our readers know, Mr. Canfield was killed on the railroad and never spoke a word, and owing to the fact that he was supposed to have been drowned ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully; but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. And all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... had a long conversation; but, alas! the gist of his father's conversation was this, that it behoved him, Frank, to marry money. The father, however, did not put it to him in the cold, callous way in which his lady-aunt had done, and his lady-mother. He did not bid him go and sell himself ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to the court of mystery, he narrated to Professor Maxon the gist of his conversation with Virginia, wishing to forestall anything which the girl might say to her father that would give him an impression that von Horn had been talking more than he should. Professor Maxon listened to the narration in silence. When von Horn had finished, ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heard, in a doubtful way, the gist of Mr. Dove's opinion, namely, that the necklace could not be claimed from the holder of it as an heirloom attached to the Eustace family. But he had heard at the same time that Mr. Camperdown was as confident as ever that he could recover the property by claiming it after another fashion. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... general idea of what sich things meant. He was cautious about cultivatin' too close an acquaintance with such an animal, unless something oncommon obligated him to do so. I heard him bayin' a little way over a ridge layin' gist beyond where I shot the buck. I warn't in any great hurry, for I knew Crop would attend to his case, and I tho't I'd wipe out my rifle afore I loaded it again. I was standin' by the upturned roots of a tall fir tree that had been blown down, and in fallin' had lodged in a ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... in a hat and feather?' Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next? And you answer, of course, that 'you don't, because every body ought to remain content in the position in which Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them in that position, or did you? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placed him.' That's ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... his name for me; you know how lively he is. He has always said to me, then, "My dear little chicken, I am not a man to do violence to your opinions, but in return give way to me as regards some of your pious practices." I only give you the mere gist of it; it was said with a thousand delicacies, which I suppress. And I have agreed by degrees,... so that, while only paying very little attention to the outward observances of religion, I have remained, as I told you, a bar of iron as regards dogmas. Oh! as to that, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... From the gist of the poem it is evident that Alfred, in the course of his wanderings, came near to the White Horse, but as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... brief and colourless letters she repeated the same bald statements in the same few terms. She was well, she had been "round" with Bertha Shallum, she had dined with the Jim Driscolls or May Beringer or Dicky Bowles, the weather was too lovely or too awful; such was the gist of her news. On the last page she hoped Paul was well and sent him a kiss; but she never made a suggestion concerning his care or asked a question about his pursuits. One could only infer that, knowing in what good hands he was, she judged such solicitude superfluous; and it was thus ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... English in this respect, the failure of the Anglican Church, and so forth—are already as questionable as they are confident, he puts them with a certain modesty, a certain [Greek: epieikeia], which was perhaps not always so obvious when he came to preach that quality itself later. About the gist of the book it is not necessary to say very much. He practically admits the obvious and unanswerable objection that his French Eton, whether we look for it at Toulouse or look for it at Soreze, is very French, but not at all Eton. He does ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... saying it over?"; and enables Pegeen, in The Playboy of the Western World, to perceive, if only from pique, the preposterousness of her infatuation—"There's a great gap," she says—and this is the gist of the matter—"between a gallous story and a dirty deed." But never does such common sense stay the flight of the poetic dream. Pegeen may know the difference "between a gallous story and a dirty deed," but that does not stop her from breaking out into wild lamentations: ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... most important was a plan for the concentration of the fleet, carrying a large body of soldiers, so that they might pounce down on Jamaica while the English squadrons were being led away in opposite directions. It was some time before I arrived at the gist of the matter. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... The gist of the appeal was contained in two clauses, one of which declared that the Nebraska bill would open all the unorganized territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery; the other arraigned the bill as "a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights." In ominous ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... there came a time when Aggie couldn't go to lectures any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them, lest she should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even for him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes was, she made him go, sending, as it were, her ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... private life as "The Mighty," has been described by Lord Cockburn as "famous for law, paunch, whist, claret, and worth." His indulgence in wine and his great bulk made him slumbrous, and when sitting in Court after getting the gist of a case he almost invariably fell fast asleep. Yet it is strange to find it recorded that whenever anything pertinent to the matter under discussion was said he was immediately wide awake and in full ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you; All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you; The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same; If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... recollection has not yet come. It is only in his own country that Byron's influence has been a comparatively superficial one, and its scope and gist dimly and imperfectly caught, because it is only in England that the partisans of order hope to mitigate or avoid the facts of the Revolution by pretending not to see them, while the friends of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... all the more bewitching to him. If he had thought she liked somebody else better, he might have been furiously jealous; but "her way of liking a fellow would be a slow kind of a way, after all." That was the gist of his thought about it; and I believe that to many very young men, at the age of waxed moustaches and German dancing, that "slow kind of a way" in a girl is the best possible insurance against any lasting damage that ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... even as He willeth); and, going in to the Prince, kissed the ground between his hands and handed to him the letter. On receiving the kerchief he opened it and, reading the epistle and recognizing its gist he was ware that his father's wife was essentially an adulteress and a traitress at heart to her husband, King Kamar al-Zaman. So he waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and railed at women and their works, saying, "Allah curse women, the traitresses, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... gist of it; vague as you see, but significant. Then, two days ago, Hugues spoke a second time, urging Saxe to a decision. If the Dauphin were king, all France would breathe freely, all France would say, Thank God! The ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... none of your ologies here," snarled Judge Witberg. "It is a plain question. Answer it plainly. Is it true or not true that you were drunk? That is the gist ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Monsieur des Ilettes, who lives near the Pont-Neuf in a garret where you must be either a cat or an imp to get at him; he is reduced to earning a living by making punch-and-judies. He is a man of judgment, for which reason I report to you, sir, the main gist of his conversation. He does not believe that the existing state of things will last long. Nor does he foresee its being ended by the victory of the coalition, and events appear to justify his opinion; for, as you are aware, sir, for some time past tidings from the front have been ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... an agonised thought back through the years, to try to remember the gist of those three missives, failed completely, and ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... exclaimed. The old man vanished again and rode once more into the smoke and the night. Gist's brigade led the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging lines. "In passing from the left to the right ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... at Auguste's request, to the chief of the private police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules' name or person into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it, he made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincour about this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death of an officer of the Guards, in defiance of the law and the police. The chief pushed up his green spectacles in amazement, blew ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the Senate, Senator Ducey rose to ask a question of privilege, and proceeded to explain his vote by stating that he had failed to get the gist of the amendment. He thereupon requested that the Senate grant him the courtesy of a reconsideration of the vote taken at the morning session. Under the unanimous consent rule, a motion for reconsideration carried, after ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... the gist of it and it took a long time to say; a long time during which Cochise told Jeffords many things and Jeffords spoke with Cochise of many subjects outside the direct line of discussion. For that was the Indian manner; they must feel each other ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a quarter of an hour. The man was a great orator, and spoke so earnestly that my interpreter Nabor was affected almost to tears. The speech was a kind of dialogue with the dead, the speaker supplying the responses himself, and this is the gist of it: ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... cake-making to run on errands," said Lucina, though her heart smote her, for this was where the true gist of her duplicity came in; "write them now, Aunt Camilla, and give them to me. I will ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... city church probably I should have thrown propriety to the winds and had the gist of the story out of him at once, but in a country church there are always such listening spaces,—the very pew-backs and cushions seem attentive, the hymnals creak in their racks, and the little stools cry out nervously when one barely touches them. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... in a country where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were pinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, note this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that the two great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, all the arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces and kindness of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. Greek art begins in the gardens of Alcinous—perfect ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Nevertheless, under such circumstances, a man with half a dozen children always wants all the money he can lay hands on; and whether he does or no, he ought not to be allowed to deprive himself of any, which leads me to the gist of my letter. His name was on your list as one of those hearty friends who came to my rescue last year, and it was the only name which made me a little uneasy, for I doubted whether it was right for a man with his responsibilities ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... would ever think of it, let alone speak of it publicly." She was wise in politics; we were nice, eager, young girls, but pretty ignorant-that was the gist of her remonstrance. My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called "mad" or "foolish" I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with the sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined. I had never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington only a ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... PLACE PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THAT I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be as well for me to read them both. That of your father is a very short and simple document, extending, indeed, only over a few lines. Your uncle's is longer and more complicated, but as you are well aware of the gist of it, it will take us but a short time ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... vaguely how this was done: you bought stocks and then waited for the melon to be cut. You got on the inside of things. You were found to have bought up securities that trebled in value over night. Those that decreased in value had been bought by people who were not Napoleons. That was the gist of it. A Napoleonic mind would divine the way. "Napoleon knew human nature like a book," said one of the inspired historians. That was all you needed to know. He resolved to study ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... activity, spreading along the axons that extend from this group of neurones to another, arouses the second group to activity; and so on. The brain process may often be exceedingly complex, but this simple scheme gives the gist ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Flash after flash she sent that way, until the sun went altogether behind the clouds and she could signal no more. Not a glimmer of an answering twinkle could she win from the peak. The most she did was to stimulate old Mike to the point of mumbling wild harangues to the uneasy pines, the gist of which was that folks better look out how they went spyin' around after him, an' makin' signs back and forth with glasses. They better look out, because he had good eyes, if Murphy didn't have, and they couldn't run over him and ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower |
