"Ready to hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhat similar to those delivered by the daemon of Socrates[328]. The appearance of Brahma Sahampati is related with more detail and largely in verse, which suggests that the compiler may have inserted some legend which he found ready to hand, but on the whole I am inclined to believe that in this narrative we have a tradition not separated from the Buddha by many generations and going back to those who had themselves heard him describe his wrestling to obtain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... armour, and even sometimes, it appears to me, to make admissions against himself which are quite unnecessary. A critic who desires to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... paint. Here they dismounted, tied their horses, and went in. Carson, with a quick eye toward preparedness for what might lie on the cards, looked for Lee's gun. It wasn't in his pocket; it wasn't in his waistband, ready to hand. It wasn't anywhere that Carson could see. At the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... party in England. But it is none the less essential to remember that, as in 1688 and as in 1798 a great and militant foreign Power used the weapon of Irish sedition against England, so in 1912 the same instrument lies ready to hand. For the Home Rule conspiracy of to-day is nothing but the lees of the evil heritage bequeathed ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Harry Morton's love. I never had any doubts or jealousies—we seemed to perfectly understand each other. I never looked forward to our future—I was too quietly happy in the present. I only dated from one meeting to another—from the dinner to the party, when he would be ready to hand us from our carriage, to take me off my father's arm in compliance with my mother's constant inquiry and request of, 'Where's Harry Morton? Here, Harry, do take charge of Mary,' a request which he always seemed delighted to obey. Then, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... thought to these days, and incidents would flash into memory that half amused and half shamed her. Some of her escapades she would describe with whimsical zest, and trivial as they were they served to show that, even then, her native wit and resource were always ready to hand. But very early the Change came. An old widow, living in a room in the back lands, used to watch the children running about the doors, and in her anxiety for their welfare sought to gather some of the girls together ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... consider the period the more this strange and restless alliance of doctrine with temperament appears to be of its essence; wherefore, I shall not hesitate to make of it a light wherewith to take a hasty look about me. Here are two labels ready to hand—"temperamental" and "doctrinaire." I am under no illusion as to the inadequacy and fallibility of both; neither shall I imagine that, once applied, they are bound to stick. On the contrary, you will see, in a later chapter, how, having dubbed Matisse "temperamental" and Picasso ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... open at the right place and her writing materials ready to hand. In a very few minutes her outer garments and simple ornaments were put away, and clothed in a clean but shrunk and faded blue dressing-gown, she sat down to work. The work was Aristotle's Ethics, and she ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... place? Late in the eighteenth century two things happened; the discovery of the potential inherent in coal and its derivative, steam, with electricity yet unexploited but ready to hand, and the application of this to industrial purposes, together with the initiating of a long and astounding series of discoveries and inventions all applicable to industrial purposes. With a sort of vertiginous rapidity the whole industrial process was transformed from what it had been during the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said: "With heaven and earth for my coffin and my shell; with the sun, moon and stars as my burial regalia; and with all creation to escort me to my grave,—are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?" "We fear," argued the disciples, "lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master;" to which Chuang Tzu replied: "Above ground I shall be food for kites; below ground for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... against which they hewed with their sharp scimitars, frequently severing the steel top from the ashpole, and then breaking through and engaging in hand-to-hand conflict with the knights. Behind the latter sat their squires, with extra spears and arms ready to hand to their masters; and in close combat, the heavy maces with their spike ends were weapons before which the light clad horsemen went down like reeds before ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... next the theatre of war. Springfield, Hatfield, Deerfield, and Northfield were attacked the last two having to be abandoned. At Hadley the onset occurred on a fast-day. The men rushed from their worship with their muskets, which were ready to hand in church, and hastily formed for battle. Bewildered by the unexpected assault, they were on the point of yielding, when, according to tradition, an aged hero with long beard and queer clothing appeared, placed himself ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... his celebrated researches on the movements of the planets. He had found, as we have already indicated, that the movements of the planets could not be reconciled with circular orbits. What shape of orbit should next be tried? The ellipse was ready to hand, its properties were known, and the comparison could be made; memorable, indeed, was the consequence of this comparison. Kepler found that the movement of the planets could be explained, by supposing that the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the agent: on the contrary, Clowes looked out for a fellow who would be useful to Laura, a gentleman, an unmarried man, who would be available to ride with her or make a fourth at bridge—and there by good luck was Val Stafford ready to hand. Born and reared in the country, though young and untrained, Val brought to his job a wide casual knowledge of local conditions and a natural head for business, and was only too glad to squire Laura in the hunting field. For Laura must hunt: as Laura Selincourt ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... evidently in constant use. The large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around—all indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... costume, with his hat in his hand, he stood under the great gateway of the hotel, ready to hand Mrs. Thompson into the carriage. This would have been nothing if the landlord and landlady had not been there also, as well as the man-cook, and the four waiters, and the fille de chambre. Two or three other pair of eyes Mrs. Thompson also saw, as she glanced round, ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... a young white moon, trailed a wavering ghost of smoke, and at the end of it I came upon the Pocket Hunter making a dry camp in the friendly scrub. He sat tailor-wise in the sand, with his coffee-pot on the coals, his supper ready to hand in the frying-pan, and himself in a mood for talk. His pack burros in hobbles strayed off to hunt for a wetter mouthful than the sage afforded, and gave ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... into these little books we find much of the plain sense of law. There is no mystification by technicalities, but all the information is practical, all ready to hand, we mean mouth; so that, as Mrs. Fixture says in the farce of A Roland for an Oliver—"If there be such a thing as la' in the land," you may "ha' it." Joking apart, they are sensible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... At last the eyes of the world were upon it. News of the great sensation was flashed to the end of the earth; every detail was gone into with harrowing minuteness. The Hemisphere Company announced by telegraph that it stood ready to hand over the ten thousand dollars; and the sheriff of Bramble County with all the United States deputy marshals within reach raced at once to Tinkletown to stick a ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of activity in Mr Powell was released with great force. He jumped. The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches ready to hand. Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under the companion slide. He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to strike a light. But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with one arm, his fingers were damp ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... willing mistress his revenge upon her father. She cheerfully undertook to experiment with the poisons which Sainte-Croix, possibly with the help of a chemist, Christopher Glaser, prepared, and found subjects ready to hand in the poor who sought her charity, and the sick whom she visited in the hospitals. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix, completely ruined financially, enlarged his original idea, and determined that not only M. Dreux d'Aubray but also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... ugly head, dissent that had its birth in Germany. These kill-joys got the upper hand. The recognition of the Christ-Mass, Christmas and the Michael-Mass, Michaelmas, was put down by law. Dissent has never hesitated to use compulsion when it lay ready to hand to enforce materialism. So belief in angels well nigh ceased to exist. To-day the revival comes from actual experience rather than from church teaching. The antagonism to such belief amounts to unreasonable heights of folly. Luther has so long ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... saw him pacing the Vicarage garden in a soutane, buckled shoes, and beaver hat, and he could not understand why Mr. Ogilvie, who had often laughed about Dorward's eccentricity, should now that he had an opportunity of enjoying it once more be so cross about his friend's arrival and so ready to hand him over to Mark ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that tin cup right now and have it ready to hand over when we come back the proud victors of the day, for we'll be thirsty and you can just bet we're going to come back in that fascinating guise— winners, we mean. What? Let those lobsters from the 'Chi' beat us out? Not on your life! You just watch us play with them, and pull all around them," ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... up the task with renewed zest. Since my clothing day I had received abundant lights on religious perfection, chiefly concerning the vow of poverty. Whilst I was a postulant I liked to have nice things to use and to find everything needful ready to hand. Jesus bore with me patiently, for He gives His light little by little. At the beginning of my spiritual life, about the age of fourteen, I used to ask myself how, in days to come, I should more clearly understand the true meaning ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... make—only, indeed, I may humbly and fearfully say to such as have by long wrestling with the spirit been able to see truth, when the inward eye has been purged from the grossness of passion, for which to Him be praise and power. Amen! I herewith enclose you the proposal formally made, and will be ready to hand over the two hundred Christian manifestations of my gratitude at the proper season. As to Lord Cumber being a loser by the transaction, such a loss must have been, we are bound to hope, shaped out for him ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Rich returned the chloral hydrate to the shelf, and took down another bottle labelled quin. sulph. sol. From this she poured out a certain quantity, and by the time the glass had shed its last drop, Bob was ready to hand another and larger bottle, which he had taken down with eager haste, as if fearing she would ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... she put on her best clothes for the Festival, stuffing a few precious mementoes into her pockets and wearing her father's portrait next to her lover's at her breast. She hung a travelling cloak and a hat on a peg near the hall-door ready to hand as she left the house. Of little use was she in the kitchen that day, but her mother was tender to her as knowing her sorrow. Time after time Hannah ascended to her bedroom to take a last look at the things she had grown so tired of—the little iron bed, the wardrobe, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... cease to preserve himself, abstain from food, as the Roman noble did, in the tortures of the gout, and by abstaining end them? I answer, a man's taking food periodically is as much part of his life as the coursing of the blood in his veins. It is doing himself no less violence to refuse food ready to hand, when he is starving, on purpose that he may starve, than to open a vein on purpose to bleed to death. This, when the food is readily accessible: the case is otherwise when it is not procurable ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... split; men therefore bethought themselves of constructing a light framework of wood, which they covered with bark or skin. Then artificers in iron invented saws; logs were ripped up; planks were formed; pitch oozed ready to hand from the trees; with grass, perchance, they caulked the seams;—and soon the first boat floated on the water—clumsy and tub-like, no doubt, but serviceable withal—and youths of a hundred years old, and full-grown men of two or three hundred, capered and shouted ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... this, astute as Morano, and simple as his naive mind. The clothing for which Rodriguez searched the plain vainly was ready to hand. No disguise was effective against la Garda, they had too many suspicions, their skill was to discover disguises. But in the moment of la Garda's triumph, when they had found out the disguise, when ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... fixed and determined, so that it may be possible to consider the manner of its treatment with undivided attention. It is not so easy to find as might be supposed; or rather it might be difficult to find, but for the fact that immediately in a critic's path, always ready to hand and unavoidable, there lies one book of exactly the sort I seek, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Whatever this book may be or may not be, after much re-reading, it remains perpetually the novel of all novels which the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... uxoriously-inclined men cannot be brought into contact with some of the thousands of young women whose lives are passed in uncongenial toil and who are eating out their hearts in their anxiety for a home and a husband of their own. Until the I.F.E.M. becomes fact, here is splendid work ready to hand for a philanthropist of infinite tact, and large, sympathetic heart. What a chance to add to the sum of human joy! What a rich reward for the expenditure of but ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... influence of a good woman, and Guffey much preferred his operatives should be married men, living a settled and respectable life. They could be trusted then, and sometimes when a woman operative was needed, they had a partner ready to hand. If Peter had got married long ago, he might have had a good sum of money in ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... times it would be impossible to do without them now; but this does not touch the argument, which is not that demonstration is unwise but that as long as a demonstration is still felt necessary, and therefore kept ready to hand, the subject of such demonstration is not yet securely known. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse; and unless a matter can hold its own without the brag and self-assertion of continual demonstration, it is still more or less of a ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... hosses been stole since we went away," said Bradley, jocosely. "Ben and I ain't quite ready to hand ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... and alert that the touch of a passing leaflet on the hook produces some sort of excitement. Every cast goes out with a cluster of hopes in pursuit, and dreams as to possibilities; you keep looking round to be satisfied that the gaff is ready to hand, and everything in the boat shipshape for action. As it was after luncheon to-day, you think of anything but a fish taking hold; you swish on monotonously and mechanically; you muse of friends at home and ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the philanthropic clergyman was found to work well, and was acceptable to his parishioners. One reason why it was so was because dry earth was ready to hand, or could be easily procured in a country district where labor was cheap. But where labor was dear and dry earth scarce, those who had to pay for the carting of the earth and the removal of the deodorized increment found it both expensive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... hundred yards, before a change of the ice revealed a small flock of seven geese, quietly feeding along the border of a low piece of field ice. Cocking his gun and laying it ready to hand, La Salle drifted nearer and nearer, keeping barely enough headway to steer her, bow on. The gander, a noble bird, suddenly raised his head to gaze at the advancing boat. All the rest instantly raised theirs ready for immediate flight. The anxious sportsman ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... bound to overtake me. You may be sure I took no steps to prevent it, and so in a very short time we were both standing before the same picture, a portrait of Holbein the younger. A subject of conversation was ready to hand. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... domestic fire-sticks than anything else. The somewhat suggestive name of Frogmore was inscribed on the small gate, and I remembered that I quite shivered as I walked up the sloppy path, with my usual inquiry ready to hand. This time, though, I was right, and when, a few minutes later, I was sitting before a roaring fire, imbibing hot tea, and listening to my Aunt's account of her latest complaint (did I tell you she was hypochondriacal?) I felt that really ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... found Maggard busied about his dooryard, albeit with his rifle standing ready to hand, and to-day he wore his shirt with the arm-pit ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... cities aped the nobility. If the daughter of a citizen's family had the luck to please a gentleman high at court, perchance the Serenissimus himself, in nineteen cases out of twenty she felt highly blessed by such favor, and her family was ready to hand her over for a mistress to the nobleman or the Prince. The same was the case with most of the noble families if one of their daughters found favor with the Prince. Characterlessness and shamelessness ruled over wide circles. As bad as the worst stood matters in the two German capitals, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... and parentage are such that I can reward you as I should wish. I give you a discharge now from your regiment and appoint you ensign. You will at present form one of my staff; and glad am I to have so dashing and able a young officer ready to hand for any perilous service ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... if you can? One of them even went in for the luxury of having three shooting irons, two revolvers and a double-barrel slug pistol, so that when either of the weapons got hot while he was holding Baggara horsemen at bay, there was always one cooling, ready to hand. He also, which I believe is a phenomenal record with any campaigner, took with him thirteen pairs of riding breeches, a half dozen razors and an ice machine. Even our commander-in-chief, when campaigning, denies himself more than two shirts and never travels with ice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... be nothing ready to hand that you call work, there is always preparation for work to be done," Mrs. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... succeed in really lending her any help, for she herself put forth all her cleverness and power of head and hand, forgetting nothing that might be useful or agreeable in the nursing of the sick. In that wealthy, well-ordered house everything stood ready to hand; and in less than a quarter of an hour the tribune Nemesianus was informed that the chamber was ready for the reception of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with discretion and vigour. If he cannot do this, if his eye is not wary enough, or if his conscience forbids him to obey his eyes' warnings, Wilson is not for him. It is true that Mr. Skelton has tried to make a "Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae," in which the skipping is done ready to hand. But, with all the respect due to the author of Thalatta, the process is not, at least speaking according to my judgment, successful. No one can really taste that eccentric book unless he reads it as a whole; its humours arbitrarily ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... to think as we was planning our escape, so after a few words we sat down by one of the fires till it got time to lie down for the night; but we had both been a-thinking. We saw, when we lay down, that the Injuns lay pretty well around us, while two on 'em, with their rifles ready to hand, sat down by a fire close by and threw on some logs, as if they intended to ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... Polly, who gave promise of some day growing into the goodly proportions of her mother. Mr Deane, with full wig, lace coat, and sword by his side, stood in the old oak hall, accompanied by his son Jasper, ready to hand the ladies from their sedan-chairs as they were brought into the hall. The last to arrive, who was received with all due honour, was a Dr Nathaniel Deane, a cousin of Mr Deane's, the only physician, and one ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the packet of sandwiches which lay ready to hand, and as she put on the cap she saw the lawyer, a middle-aged, but stout gentleman, conferring with the detective and smiling triumphantly and rubbing his hands at the news of her presence in the house. She smiled too—a smile of pleasant ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... him over to you)—Ver. 1086. "Vobis propino." The word "propino" was properly applied to the act of tasting a cup of wine, and then handing it to another; he means that he has had his taste of the Captain, and is now ready to hand him ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he who found fault was merely lessening his own chance to secure his share of the vast resources that spread before him, welcoming the greedy fingers of him who courted the future and shunned the past. All ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... strain on the existing teaching personnel in the army, and would be indirectly detrimental to it as well. Nor would any strengthening of the field army be possible under this scheme, since the cadres to contain the mass of these special reservists are not ready to hand. This mass would therefore only fill up the recruiting depots, and facilitate to some degree the task of making ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... sure, is true; and I have its English parallel ready to hand. For I once heard a father and his child talking of the goodness of God. "God," says the father, "gives thee the milk to thy porridge"; and the child thought it a good saying, yet puzzled over it, doubting, as it afterwards appeared, the part to be assigned to a friend ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... entrance to the Ambermere Arms at five. He had brought up with him a pair of opera-glasses, with the intention of taking them to bits, so he had informed Foljambe, and washing their lenses, but he did not at once proceed about this, merely holding them ready to hand for use. Hermy and Ursy had gone back to their golf again after lunch, and so callers would be told that they were all out. Thus he could wash the lenses, when he chose ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... sat down at the head of the table with the Comtesse on his right. Jellyband was bustling round, filling glasses and putting chairs straight. Sally waited, ready to hand round the soup. Mr. Harry Waite's friends had at last succeeded in taking him out of the room, for his temper was growing more and more violent under the Vicomte's obvious ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... they had no backing elsewhere, then went up and persuaded them to be good by cutting off the heads of their leaders, who both happened to be priests: one was even a bishop. He had been taught in a school that always found an axe ready to hand. Let those who lament the savagery of modern warfare consider what happened then to a Danish fleet that tried to bring relief to hard-pressed Stockholm. It was beaten in a fight in which six hundred men were taken prisoners. They were all, say the accounts, "tied hand and foot and flung ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... got ready to hand things that might be wanted in the night, she settled herself in a chair by the head of the bed in order to snatch what sleep she might. Before she dozed, she wondered if that day week, which she would be spending at Mrs Gowler's, would find her as prostrated ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... part. Then Yorke, having finished with the raft, went with me along the beach, and collected some old coconuts for food, and some young ones to drink, for, as my comrade observed, one never knew what might happen, and it would be as well to have some provisions all ready to hand in case of emergency. There were still thousands of dead fish to be seen everywhere lying on the sand, cast up among the debris above high-water mark, but these were now turning putrid, ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on any terms you like or on ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the winter. But do not rest at that. Begin to plan now for your next year's garden. Put a pile of dirt where it will not be frozen, or dried out, when you want to use it next February for your early seeds. If you have no hotbed, fix the frames and get the sashes for one now, so it will be ready to hand when the ground is frozen solid and covered with snow next spring. If you have made garden mistakes this year, be planning now to rectify them next—without progress there is no fun in the game. Let next spring find you with your plans all made, your materials all on hand and a fixed ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Government services or any professional calling that agents, merchants, officials and the professional classes find employment, so that if in exile we surround ourselves with such luxuries and enjoyments as are reserved for the wealthy at home it is because they are ready to hand at but little cost, and that they serve in a degree to compensate us for the sweet pleasures of home-life which are forfeited by those who leave Old England to push their ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... fair and sweet land so bright and sun-litten, and he now rested and fed, the horror and fear ran off from him, and he wandered on merrily, neither did aught befall him save the coming of night, when he laid him down under a great spreading oak with his drawn sword ready to hand, and fell asleep at once, and woke not ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris |
