"Pith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the top of your head you must have a sun helmet. Get it of cork, not of pith. The latter has a habit of melting unobtrusively about your ears when it rains. A helmet in brush is the next noisiest thing to a circus band, so it is always well to have, also, a double terai. This is not something to eat. It is a wide felt hat, and then ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... bones this night! and where are the sheep's trotters to deny him entry? Where are the walnuts or the peach stones whose kernels are removed from him? Ahi, signori! do you think, if Signor Dives had had so wholesome a mouth he would have left to Lazarus the bones? Not he—but the pith of every one of them had gone to make him sleeker. Avanti, signori, avanti! Let the next in torment come up." He had abundant custom, and seemed never to tire; but my turn came at last, introduced by a string of panegyric which spoke of me as the Nerve-Acrobat, the Lodestone ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... it would be to turn his verse-narratives into prose, and less would be lost in the transfer. In Multitude and Solitude, the author has given us more of the results of his own thinking than can be found in most of the poems. Whole pages are filled with the pith of meditative thought. In Captain Margaret, we have a remarkable combination of the love of romance ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,—a first-rate calculator,— can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... proceeding a little way over it, she came to a large oak-tree,—a memorial of antiquity, whose fruit (a mouthful which Time gives to this bitter age of its lost sweetness) tasted like sweetmeats to the maiden, who was satisfied with little. Then the oak, making lips of its bark and a tongue of its pith, said to Cianna, "Whither are you going so sad, my little daughter? Come and rest under my shade." Cianna thanked him much, but excused herself, saying that she was going in haste to find the Mother of Time. And when the oak heard this he ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone, and with him the pith and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the ocean into fury, Most forlorn was the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... being little better than insane visions? Did not Doctor Lardner prove to demonstration that railway carriages could never go more than twenty miles an hour, owing to the laws of resistance, friction, &c., and did not Brunel take the breath out of him, and the pith out of his arguments, by carrying the learned demonstrator with him on a locomotive, and whisking him ten miles out of London in as many minutes? When I see that among so intelligent and practical a people as the New Englanders—a people whose thoughts and energies are so largely ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... London, could set high-bred wits, like Beaumont, uncopiable lessons in drawing gentlemen such as are seen nowhere else but on the canvas of Titian; he could take Ulysses away from Homer and expand the shrewd and crafty islander into a statesman whose words are the pith of history. But what makes him yet more exceptional was his utterly unimpeachable judgment, and that poise of character which enabled him to be at once the greatest of poets and so unnoticeable a good citizen ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the power of the sun and the danger of exposure to it. They will run up on deck bare-headed to look at some passing object, and then are surprised that they at once get a bad headache. They are all well provided with pith hats, and awnings are spread everywhere, so that one cannot feel quite as much sympathy for them as if they were sufferers ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... joke for the ages; Full of intricate meaning and pith; A feast for your scholars and sages - How it would have rejoiced Sidney Smith! 'Tis such thoughts that ennoble a mortal; And, singing him out from the herd, Fling wide immortality's portal - But what ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... last addition to the Duke of York's sixteenth article that contains the pith of the author's ideas. All his examples are chosen to show that the system of bearing down together from windward in a line parallel to that of the enemy is radically defective, even if all the advantages of position and superior force ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... often likened to a lotus-bud which is similar to a thumb in size and shape. Through the process of steadfast discrimination, one should learn to differentiate the Soul from the body, just as one separates the pith from ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... had been primarily designed to be rational creatures, there would be no explanation for their being permitted to continue in existence," he lucidly explained. "And to have grasped this fact is the pith ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... intended for all young people from one to one hundred, it opens with about eighty of the old MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES. Nothing better was ever invented to tell to little folks who are young enough for lullabies. Their rhythm, their humor, and their pith will always cause us to prize ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... wise instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all things in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was the heart and pith; the State being the tree, every branch and leaf bound, after its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the Army's behoof. That, probably for any Nation in the long-run, and certainly for the Prussian Nation straightway, life or death depends ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... loyal spunk To think of that old tree! Its stately stem, its spacious trunk By Nature robbed of pith and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... gets to the end. His jokes would be the sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his good-nature. He wants malice—which is a pity." "But," said I, "his words at first seemed so—" "Oh! as for that," replied Hazlitt, "his sayings are generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the postscript." ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and passer: All this you will probe to the pith As a freshman at Wellesley or Vassar Or Bryn Mawr—though I ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... must be flung into water, and kept there, for otherwise they will dry and shrink, and the peel will not run. At first a person would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom that may support the pith; but this, like other feats, soon becomes familiar, even to children; and we have seen an old woman, stone blind, performing this business with great despatch, and seldom failing to strip them with the nicest regularity. When these junci are thus far prepared, they must lie out on the grass ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... biography of Douglass extracts are given from letters of distinguished contemporaries who knew the orator. Colonel T.W. Higginson writes thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] illustrations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Figures 462 and 463 represent leaves of Annularia and Sphenophyllum, common in the coal, and believed by Mr. Carruthers to be leaves of Calamites. Dr. Williamson, who has carefully studied the Calamites, thinks that they had a fistular pith, exogenous woody stem, and thick smooth bark, which last having always disappeared, leaves a fluted stem, as represented in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of evil has proceeded from slight occasions;" and to this remark, I think, the marriage under our consideration would not be found, upon enquiry, to be an exception. Lord Byron himself, indeed, when at Cephalonia, a short time before his death, seems to have expressed, in a few words, the whole pith of the mystery. An English gentleman with whom he was conversing on the subject of Lady Byron, having ventured to enumerate to him the various causes he had heard alleged for the separation, the noble poet, who had seemed much amused with their absurdity and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in the center it is all soft pith." He got from the boat one of the augers that had scuttled the Proserpine, and soon turned the pith out. "They pound that pith in water, and run it through linen; then set the water in the sun to evaporate. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... deserted me here last night?" the woman was demanding of Ram Nath, too preoccupied with her resentment to have eyes for the other traveller, who at sight of her had stopped and removed his pith helmet and now stood staring as if he had come from a land in which there were no women. "Where," she continued, with an imperative stamp of a daintily-shod foot, "is that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... note from Miss Smith, recounting shortly and accurately the very incidents which I had seen, but the pith of the letter lay ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... poetical to a fault (see notes passim, cf. also, Monboddo's critique on the style of Tacitus). "The work," says La Bletterie, "is brief without being superficial. Within the compass of a few pages, it comprises more of ethics and politics, more fine delineations of character, more substance and pith (suc), than can be collected from many a ponderous volume. It is not one of those barely agreeable descriptions, which gradually diffuse their influence over the soul, and leave it in undisturbed tranquillity. It is a picture in strong ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... was bred in a bangalow wood, And bangalow pith was the principal food His mother served out ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... jacket cut in the latest fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as well on salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for them to see and to admire his nautical ability. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... emancipated citizens of the world had permitted the dissolvent philosophy of the century to enter the very pith and fiber of their mental quality. For the rich and the well-born it was rather an imported fashion, an attractive drapery laid over the surface of minds that were conventional down to the ground, the modish mental recreation of men who lived by custom and guided their steps in the well-worn ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... about with the other, is going in the long run to get ahead of a stout little boy in a red fez. It is getting awfully hot here, almost hot enough for me, and I can lay aside my overcoat by ten o'clock in the morning. Everyone else has been in flannels and pith helmets, but as they had to wear overcoats at night I could not see the advantage of ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Man alone has the privilege of being everywhere and always the same, because the human race is one. The white man (European or Caucasian), the black man (Ethiopian), the yellow man (Mongol), and the red man (American) are only varieties of the human species. As the Scots express it with wonted pith, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... mischief. In one corner was an acorn drilled through with two holes at right angles to each other, a small feather run through each hole; in the second a joint of cornstalk with a cavity scooped from the middle, the pith left intact at the ends, and the space filled with parings from that small callous spot near the knee of the horse, called the "nail;" in the third corner a bunch of parti-colored feathers; something ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and Industry. Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that an author who is well spoken of by a respectable newspaper must be all right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with undisturbed edification from his own point ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow: Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, Or passed or not arrived to pith and puissance; For who is he, whose chin is but enriched With one appearing hair, that will not follow These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege: Behold the ordnance on their ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... to Barto left it one of the ironical, veiled Republican, semi-socialistic ballads of the time, which were sung about the streets for the sharpness and pith of the couplets, and not from a perception of the double edge down the length ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... darling of the gods, Carl Snoilsky. At a fete in Rosenborg Park, amongst the songs was one which, with my critical scent, I made a note of. It was by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was far from possessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that later distinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a troubadour song to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of it was a youth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and smooth brown hair, a regular Adonis. The following ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... The ripe corn, free from husk, was carefully assorted and stored in the ventilated bins prepared for it. The selected husks were packed and baled, ready for market. The stalks were stripped and topped by a clever machine. The excellent forage thus accumulated, was baled and stored. The pith in the large part of the stalk, was then extracted by another machine. These piths were then treated to a water-proofing process, sent to a shop on the farm, and made up into life preservers. Both life preservers ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... not rejoice at all; he grew and grew, and was green both winter and summer. People that saw him said, "What a fine tree!" and toward Christmas he was one of the first that was cut down. The axe struck deep into the very pith; the tree fell to the earth with a sigh: he felt a pang—it was like a swoon; he could not think of happiness, for he was sorrowful at being separated from his home, from the place where he had sprung up. He knew well that he should never see his dear old comrades, the little bushes and flowers ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... of inhabitants is estimated at about 2,000,000, mostly immigrants from China, with the original natives. The island is exceedingly rich in its vegetation, and the plants are about the same as those of the main land. Rice paper is made of the pith of a tree found only in Formosa. In the south sugar and turmeric are the staples. The latter is a plant whose root is bright yellow, used in dyeing silk. Formosa tea has become well known at home as of excellent quality. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Such is the homely wisdom which gained for Cato the proud title of Sapiens, by which, says Cicero, [30] he was familiarly known. Other original works, the product of his vast experience, were the treatise on eloquence, of which the pith is the following: "Rem tene: verba sequentur;" "Take care of the sense: the sounds will take care of themselves." We can well believe that this excellent maxim ruled his own conduct. The art of war formed the subject of another volume; in this, too, he had ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... from all terrestrial bonds," she continued, not exactly remarking the pith of his last observation; "from bonds quasi-terrestrial and quasi-celestial. The full-formed limbs of the present age, running with quick streams of generous blood, will no longer bear the ligatures which past time ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... abbey, grey and warm, immense avenues of trees, clouds flying confusedly amid the song of waters, silent strolls in the woods at nightfall; he called up the solemn liturgies of Saint Benedict's time; he saw the white pith of monastic chants rise under the scarcely pruned bark of sound. He succeeded in his decision, and cried: "You have dreamed for years of the cloisters, now rejoice that you will know them at last," and he wished ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... done, who might have been supposed to know something, if they had only kept still. (Laughter). If these papers, to which I have referred, were all in the hands of women, and so destitute of editorial pith and point as they now are, I should counsel against any further efforts for the elevation of the sex, believing the case to be hopeless. (Applause). If I mistake not, women have a peculiar fitness for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... observe that he has given an account of the engagement at Huamantla, and the fall of Walker. We believe the Major's account, compiled as it is from "the documents," to be in the main correct, but lacking incidental pith, and slightly erroneous in the grand denouement, in which our gallant friend—whose manly countenance even now stares us in the face, as if in life he "yet lived"—yielded up the balance ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady, a former schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families common in this generation, the heads of which, especially the female heads, can never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and Europe, like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment, alternately attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium. Every few years they pull their families up by the roots, and by the time they have begun to take hold a little with their radicles in the spots ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in which he has shown the strange and violent side of his character, and omitting the stretches between where his wisdom and judgment have had a chance. His conversation when he does not fly off at a tangent is full of pith and idea. "The greatest monument ever erected to Napoleon Buonaparte was the British National debt," said he yesterday. Again, "We must never forget that the principal export of Great Britain to the United States IS the United States." Again, speaking of Christianity, "What is intellectually ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and its men, by the way, merit passing remark, for they were fashioned by our chief entirely, and very neatly, out of the pith of a bush, the name of which I forget; and, on the voyage, many an hour that might otherwise have been tedious we whiled away with this interesting game. I knew nothing of it when we began, but ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... now living, sometimes being as much as eight feet high. In the nature of their stems, too, they exhibited a more highly organised arrangement than their living representatives, having, according to Dr Williamson, a "fistular pith, an exogenous woody stem, and a thick smooth bark." The bark having almost al ways disappeared has left the fluted stem known to us as the calamite. The foliage consisted of whorls of long narrow leaves, ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... talking all manner of nonsense and sense, and laughing myself and making you laugh, as I used to do, though I am six years beyond the allotted age and have had so many attacks of illness within the last two years; but I am, as Bess Fitzherbert and poor dear Sophy used to say, like one of those pith puppets that you knock down in vain, they always start up the same as ever. I was particularly fortunate in my last attack of erysipelas in all the circumstances, just having reached Harriet and Louisa's comfortable home, and happy in having Harriet Butler coming to me the very day she heard I ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... forget the countless palms which wave their crowns in the tepid winds of the monsoons. There are the date palms, the coconut palms, the sago palm, and a multitude of others. The sago palm, from the pith of which sago grains are prepared, is a remarkable plant. It flowers only once and then dies. This occurs at an age of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... hand into the bare arm of the milkmaid, Adonis drew the figure down a pith toward the small lake that was on one edge ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, but her heart was where her treasure was—namely, in her escritoire, with her list of Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... crimes; and Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce. But should thy soul, form'd in some luckless hour, Vile interest scorn, nor madly grasp at power; 30 Should love of fame, in every noble mind A brave disease, with love of virtue join'd, Spur thee to deeds of pith, where courage, tried In Reason's court, is amply justified: Or, fond of knowledge, and averse to strife, Shouldst thou prefer the calmer walk of life; Shouldst thou, by pale and sickly study led, Pursue coy Science ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... friends he was noted for the flashes of a delicate and subtle wit. Collections were made of his apophthegms by friends, and some are recorded by his anonymous biographer.[5] Their finer perfume, as almost always happens with good sayings which do not certain the full pith of a proverb, but owe their force, in part at least, to the personality of their author, and to the happy moment of their production, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which seems still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius: 'Gold is the soul of labour, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... no traveller returns—puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and so the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment by this regard their currents turn awry and lose the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... consulted as an oracle on all kinds of subjects, and his replies were generally the pith of common sense. So famous had Johnson become for his conversations that George III. met him on purpose to hear him talk. A committee from forty of the leading London booksellers waited on Johnson to ask him to write the Lives of the English Poets. There was ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... a nice youngster of excellent pith,— Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,— Just read on his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lodgings in the city. Here go the ladies with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... united conservation of boy life. On the other hand, the Boy Life Expert of the Young Men's Christian Association should thoroughly acquaint himself with the genius of the Sunday school, the plan of its organization, and the pith of all its problems of sex and age, leadership and training, aims and objectives. He should also know thoroughly the policies of denominational and interdenominational Sunday school bodies, and, where there are denominations in plural quantity, ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... once to the very pith of the whole matter, I think I've been sticking to the mill long enough—for the present. And it may come to pass that some day I shall ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and the multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General Knowledge out of "The Child's Guide to Knowledge," which asked you "What is sago?" and required you to reply by heart, "Sago is a dried, granulated substance prepared from the pith of several different palms." "Where are these palms found?" "These palms are found ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... something peculiar to it. The Food often grows in one Country, and the Sauce in another. The Fruits of Portugal are corrected by the Products of Barbadoes: The Infusion of a China Plant sweetned with the Pith of an Indian Cane. The Philippick Islands give a Flavour to our European Bowls. The single Dress of a Woman of Quality is often the Product of a hundred Climates. The Muff and the Fan come together from the different Ends of the Earth. The Scarf ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the veranda, where ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... fears for the harvest that is coming in this blessed year!" In the centre of the table, its browned crust slashed with a cross, was the great loaf of Christmas bread, pan Calendau; on which was a bunch of holly tied with the white pith of rushes—the "marrow" of the rush, that is held to be an emblem of strength. Old Jan, the master of the house, cut the loaf into as many portions as there were persons present; with one double-portion over to be given to some poor one in charity—"the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... an old man. The contemplation so absorbed him that he could not quit his theme till he had composed twenty-two quatrains. Only four or five—or at most only seven of them—are now in general use. Like his "Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire," they have the pith of devotional thought in them, but are less ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... was passed by Kilpatrick's command at Gainesville, but the first faint streak of dawn saw him and his faithful followers in the saddle, booted, spurred, and equipped for some enterprise as yet unexplained to them, but evidently, in their leader's estimation, one of "pith and moment." At the word of command, the force, including the "Harris Light," moved forward at a quick trot, taking the road to Warrenton, and anticipating a brush with Stuart's cavalry who, during the previous ten hours, had thrown out videttes ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... diameter. Its general appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the sago tree sibla, but the Malays give it the name of rumbiga. They say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... your England as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance, For who is he whose chin is but enrich'd With one appearing hair that will not follow Those cull'd and choice-drawn ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... latter should 'consider what chance there is of making terms,' and since then he had been repeatedly pressing on the Envoy the 'hopelessness of further resistance.' Macnaghten, vacillating as he was, yet had more pith in his nature than was left in the debilitated old general. He wrote to Elphinstone on the 18th recommending, not very strenuously, the policy of holding out where they were as long as possible, and indeed throughout the winter, if subsistence could ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... called palmiste, is like raw turnip-shavings and tastes like green almonds; is very delicate and good. Costs the life of a palm tree 12 to 20 years old—for it is the pith. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... assurance than his culture. Of the latter quality he has so little that the best clubs of which he is a member tolerate rather than accept him. In most cases he is deplorably curt of speech and brusque of deportment. Suavity, repose, that kindliness which is the very marrow and pith of high-breeding, shock you in his manners as acutely by their absence as if they were rents in his waistcoat or gapes in his boot-leather. The "bluff," impudence, and swagger of the Stock Exchange cling to him in society like burrs to the hair ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... head he wore a pith helmet, and across the frock coat a broad red sash like a field marshal's. He and his henchmen climbed the trail leading back ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... make a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a' that, But an honest man's aboon his might Gude faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that and a' that, Their dignities and a' that, The pith o' sense and pride o' worth Are ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... all worldly objects, like a fish (dragged to its ruin) by the bait of meat. Like unto the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all mortal creatures exist depending upon one another. They are as destitute of vigour as the pith of the banana plant. (Left to themselves) they sink in the world's ocean like a boat (made of weak materials). There is no fixed time for the acquisition of righteousness. Death waits for no man. When ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... his tea and munched his cookies, with his head on one side and the air of a thievish jackdaw; and proceeded, after his wont, to extract such pith as ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... certain "maxims for seasoning conversation," which, he says, were Talleyrand's, but which convey to the mind the idea of a lively and acute, rather than that of a profound thinker. If they want the bitterness of Rochefoucauld, they have not the point and pith of Bacon, nor the gravity of Locke. Three of these may suffice as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... their common interest. Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China plant is sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippic islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of an hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... designed; but though not yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly degeneration had already overtaken his features. The fine nose had grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were sunk in fat. His hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the second cabin told me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was, but thought, "by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite, that he was some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to cheer The prince with counsel wise and clear. Who, prompt to seize the pith of all, Let not that wisdom idly fall. With vigorous effort he restrained The passion in his breast that reigned, And leaning on his bow for rest His brother Lakshman thus addressed: "How shall we labour now, reflect; Whither ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... burgher, in the plenitude of self-importance, now sate down upon a chair, wiped his brow, collected his breath, and made the first experiment of the resolved pith of his lungs, in a deep and dignified sigh, resembling a groan in sound and intonation—"Awfu' times these, neighbour ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... medical students the value of power and promptitude in combination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of nearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the sense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best of all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in Emma, "Depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in it." Talent here denoting intelligence ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... which Henry entered upon the general question—assuredly a more calm and rational one than historians have usually represented it to be. In dealing with the obstacle which had been raised, he displayed a most efficient mastery over himself, although he did not conclude without touching the pith of the matter with telling clearness. The secretary was to take some opportunity of speaking to the pope privately; and of warning him, "as of himself," that there was no hope that the king would give way: he was to "say plainly to his Holiness that the king's desire and intent ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Later, his taste for reading seemed to grow less. He had a keen instinct for reality, and perhaps he found little in books that satisfied him. For poetry and philosophy he had small aptitude, and in science he had no training. What books he read he seemed to digest and get the pith of. Once, made suddenly conscious by defeat of his lack of book-culture, he took up Euclid's geometry, and resolutely studied and re-studied it. Doubtless that helped him in the close logic which often characterized his speeches. The strength of his speeches ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... mother sent me some pretty flower-holders made of bamboos of different lengths, intended evidently to hang against door-jambs or in hallways. The pith was hollowed out here and there, and the hole plugged from beneath to make little water pockets. These did admirably for a season, but when the wood dried, it invariably split, and treacherous dripping followed, most ruinous ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and Portola at San Diego in 1769, began the Spanish period of California. The chief events of this period are in a pith, the following: The establishment of the missions, the christianizing of the Indians and the exploration and colonization of California. It is from the Spanish period that the history and standing of California date. The ten Spanish Governors of ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... regimentals, with a large rat in the centre of the room, which had just been suspended with all the formalities of a military execution. It appeared that the unfortunate beast had transgressed the laws of war; it had climbed the ramparts of a card-board fortress, and had actually eaten two pith sentries on duty at the bastions. It was to be exposed to the public view as an example during three days following! Catharine, unluckily, was so lost to the fitness of things as to betray open merriment. The Grand Duke was furious; and she had to retire, excusing herself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... grizzly-hide or so. They got their four bighorn heads at the Mandans, none very large, though 'two feet long and four inches diameter' seemed big to them. And I shouldn't wonder if those horns could have been pulled off the pith after they got good and dry. The horns of the bighorn will dry out and lose at least ten per cent of their measurement, in a few years' hanging on a wall. I have had a bighorn's curly horn come off the pith in rough ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... when they were new. First, come soft felt wide-awakes, broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned, now presenting every diversity of slouch. Next, are hats of the same original shape, made of coarse plaited straw or reeds, now very much broken and bent. Finally, there are the remains of one or two pith helmets and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... hasten to atone for our sins, and forward the work of national purification, by doing our duty—our whole duty—now. One thing is certain: we cannot look for help to other nations, nor to the amiable disposition of a foe whose pith and pluck are consanguineous with our own, nor to the agency of individuals. It was written in the beginning that the people which aspired to make its own laws should also work out its own salvation. For this reason great leaders have not been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... and gum Out of the old dark forest come; Where birds their beaks like hammers wield, And pith is pierced and bark is peeled; Where the green walnut's outer rind Gives precious bitterness to the wind; There lurks the sweet creative power, As lurks the honey in the flower. In winter's bud that bursts in spring, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... youngster of excellent pith; Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith! But he shouted a song for the brave and the free— Just read on his medal, 'My ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... prose-writer, and the application of the man of business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is genius in undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is one who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not; a great man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest importance make of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... imagination, without, necessarily, being in the slightest degree imaginative themselves. The vacancy of a truly imaginative work results not from absence of ideas, or incapability of grasping and detailing them, but from the painter having told the whole pith and power of his subject and disdaining to tell more, and the sign of this being the case is, that the imagination of the beholder is forced to act in a certain mode, and feels itself overpowered and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... very much over the ground his proposer had taken, so that, bating the bad temper, the pith of his speech was much the same, quite as much deprecating the political views of his opponent, and harping on O'Grady's worn-out catch-word of "Having chalked out a line for himself," ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... exactly in it, I was raised in a sitting posture upon the spiral thread of water, which, as I explained to your highness, forced itself upwards to join the tongue protruded by the cloud. There I sat, each second rising higher and higher, balanced like the gilt ball of pith, which is borne up by the vertical stream of the fountain which plays in the inner court of your highness's palace. I cast my eyes down, and perceived the vessel not far off, the captain and crew holding up their eyes in amazement at the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... he would have trimmed, so that one of the nodes between the hollow spaces would serve as a bottom for each. In the node, or partition, at the top, he would have pierced a small hole to admit the water, which hole could be closed by a stopper of the pith of a palm or some soft wood, easily procured in the tropical forests of India. In case he could not have found bamboos with joints sufficiently long for the purpose it would have mattered little. Two or more joints would have been taken for each jar, and the partitions ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... with a strong send of sea. The spray flew in the oarsmen's faces. They saw the Union Jack blow abroad from the Flying Scud, the men clustered at the rail, the cook in the galley-door, the captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and binoculars. And the whole familiar business, the comfort, company, and safety of a ship, heaving nearer at each stroke, maddened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chapter of contents is the seed; the divisions called Pauloma and Astika are the root; the part called Sambhava is the trunk; the books called Sabha and Aranya are the roosting perches; the books called Arani is the knitting knots; the books called Virata and Udyoga the pith; the book named Bhishma, the main branch; the book called Drona, the leaves; the book called Karna, the fair flowers; the book named Salya, their sweet smell; the books entitled Stri and Aishika, the refreshing shade; the book called Santi, the mighty fruit; the book ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... a branch of the 'Ricinus communis', or castor-oil plant, I denuded about 20 inches of the bark on the tree side of the insects, and scraped away the inner bark, so as to destroy all the ascending vessels. I also cut a hole in the side of the branch, reaching to the middle, and then cut out the pith and internal vessels. The distillation was then going on at the rate of one drop each 67 seconds, or about 2 ounces 5-1/2 drams in 24 hours. Next morning the distillation, so far from being affected by the attempt to stop the supplies, supposing ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... our later literary women prefer the epigrammatic form in sentences, crisp and laconic; short sayings full of pith, of which I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... scene is taking place at the Roulette table—a goodly crop of florins, with here and there a speck of gold shining amongst the silver harvest, is being sown over the field of the cloth of green, soon to be reaped by the croupier's sickle, and the pith ball is being dropped into the revolving basin that is partitioned off into so many tiny black and red niches. For the next twelve hours the processes in question are carried on swiftly and steadily, without variation or loss of time; relays of croupiers are laid on, who unobtrusively ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... will attract all light bodies. This gutta percha when rubbed with a cat's skin attracts these bits of paper, and this pith ball, and this copper ball; it moves this long lath balanced on its center, and deflects this vertical jet of water into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... These specimens should be cut green and dried. They should be uniform in length—not more than six inches—and should show the bark at one side. The side showing the bark should be two inches wide at most, six inches long, and running in a V-shaped, radial section toward the pith. A tangential section also shows well the annual layers. A piece of slab as cut lengthwise off a round stick is tangential. Also visit wood-working factories for specimens of rare or foreign woods. In securing these specimens, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... worship be placed upon the kamidana, are set two quaintly shaped jars for the offerings of sake; two small vases, to contain sprays of the sacred plant sakaki, or offerings of flowers; and a small lamp, shaped like a tiny saucer, where a wick of rush-pith floats in rape-seed oil. Strictly speaking, all these utensils, except the flower-vases, should be made of unglazed red earthenware, such as we find described in the early chapters of the Kojiki: and still at ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... paying wages of $2 a day, the news would hum through foreign lands in a month, and that swamp would become a beehive of humanity and industry in an incredibly short space of time." Dr. A. F. Schauffler says, with equal pith, that "the great cause of immigration is, after all, that the immigrants propose to better themselves in this country. They come here not because they love us, or because we love them. They come ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... lacks self-control he seems to lack everything. Without it he can have no patience, no power to govern himself, he can have no self-reliance, for he will always be at the mercy of his strongest passion. If he lacks self-control, the very backbone, pith, and nerve of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... pregnant and pithy sentences which would give a ready handle to his opponents: Macht geht vor Recht; he had not said these words, but he had said something very much like them, and they undoubtedly represented what seemed to his audience the pith of his speeches. And then these words, blood and iron. He has told us in later ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... seemed to be to teach Barnwell the language, and then to confide to him not only the story of his eventful life, but the pith of it, which ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... one that which is fitting, and striveth to keep them from decaying so long as they can remain. What should I tell thee, if all of them, thrusting as it were their lips into the ground, draw nourishment by their roots, and convey substance and bark by the inward pith? What, that always the softest, as the pith, is placed within, and is covered without by the strength of the wood, and last of all the bark is exposed to the weather, as being best able to bear it off? And how great is the diligence ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... greatness on the ruin of States and Empires? The conquests of Rameses, of David, of Nebuchadnezzar, of Cyrus, of Alexander, of Hannibal, of Caesar, and other heroes are still the subjects of contemplation among statesmen and schoolboys. The exploits of heroes are the pith of history. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) 20 Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes, as he ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... an Englishman could go. Drake proposed to try. There was a party in Elizabeth's Council against these adventures, and in favour of peace with Spain; but Elizabeth herself was always for enterprises of pith and moment. She was willing to help, and others of her Council were willing too, provided their names were not to appear. The responsibility was to be Drake's own. Again the vessels in which he was preparing to tempt fortune seem preposterously small. The Pelican, ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... powers, buffeted, tortured as we see helpless things on earth—dogs beaten and horses lashed—for the mere pleasure of the stronger in inflicting pain, and for no ultimate good to be attained by the chastening. The souls of such men are like those weighted tumblers of pith: knocked down twenty times, on the twenty-first they stand upright, and nothing short of absolute destruction robs them of their elasticity. As now when Sebastian planned the base-lines of his new home with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... word of it is worth a pint of guineas; and this is the pith of it. Far down West Indies way, some twenty-five, maybe, or thirty years ago, there was a plate ship wrecked upon a reef. I got it from a Spaniard, who had been sworn upon oath to keep it secret by priests who knew. The priests were killed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
