"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... established, was surprising. If her friends' aim changed, so as to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened by it, and did not let them go without a struggle. But wherever they continued "true to the original standard," (as she loved to phrase it) her affectionate interest would follow them unimpaired through all the changes of life. The principle of this constancy she thus expresses in a letter to one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... score is brought to a concertmaster—he may be a violinist—he is kindly disposed, he looks it over, and casually fastens on a passage "that's bad for the fiddles, it doesn't hang just right, write it like this, they will play it better." But that one phrase is the germ of the whole thing. "Never mind, it will fit the hand better this way—it will sound better." My God! what has sound got to do with music! The waiter brings the only fresh egg he has, but the man at breakfast sends it back because ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... as hard as a brick. The crevices between the logs are sometimes filled with the same. These huts generally cost the master nothing—they are commonly built by the negroes at night, and on Sundays. When a slave of a neighboring plantation takes a wife, or to use the phrase common at the south, 'takes up' with one of the women, he builds a hut, and it is called her house. Upon entering these huts, (not as comfortable in many instances as the horse stable,) generally, you will find no chairs, but benches and stools; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... The phrase 'humble voice,' in the closing Sentence of the preceding Exhortation, seems to have a double force, moral and vocal; and to point to the careful solemnity with which the Confession should be said. A low pitch of voice, therefore, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... floundered; seemed to make assertions without proof and phrases without point; when suddenly he would utter a statement so pregnant as to clear up a whole policy, or a sentence so audacious as to paralyze a whole line of his opponents, or a phrase so vivid as to run through the nation and electrify it. Then, perhaps after more rumbling and rambling, came a clean, clear, historical illustration carrying conviction; then, very likely, a simple and strong argument, not infrequently ended by some heavy missile in the shape of an accusation ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... friend and hostess suspected her of listening. She therefore raised her voice at intervals, knowing the exquisite torture of unsatisfied curiosity, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker heard the word "Fitz," and the magic syllables "money," more than once, but no connecting phrase to soothe her aching ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... both between his shoulders and between his ears. Then his face came round slowly, he relinquished something heavy, stood up, held up a hand. "Zu spaet," he whispered, as though he too was surprised. He sought in his mind for English and then found his phrase: "He ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... necessary—she is a good girl, and she has no sentiment. Besides, why should we go so fast? If she produces the effect I hope—— Why should not some one present himself whom she could also love? Oh yes; fall in love with, as you say in English—such an innocent phrase; let us hope that, when the proper person comes who satisfies my requirements, Bice—to whom not a word shall be said—will fall in love with him ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... everywhere, and deny the Absolute. All that I have ever written, all I have denied or affirmed, I have written, denied or affirmed in the name of one unique idea, Progress. My adversaries, on the other hand, are all partisans of the Absolute, IN OMNI GENERE, CASU, ET NUMERO, to use the phrase of Sganarelle." [Footnote: Philosophie ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... give, any particular reason for her law. But the instinct by which she drew Wolf's attention to his sister's goodness, or noted Wolf's cleverness for Rose's benefit, was better than any reason. She summed the situation up simply for the few friends she had, with the phrase: ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... can spell"—an exercise of which ghosts are probably as incapable as was Matt's little Mistress of Quality. But Living Authors are very different people, and it would be perilous, as well as impertinent, to direct one's comments on them literally, in the French phrase, "to their address." Yet there is no reason why a critic should ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... stood in the hall deeply perplexed, when Tom sauntered from Mr. Dalken's bedroom where he had been smoking a cigarette to steady his nerves. Now he joined Polly and began a conventional phrase, but ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... is unnecessary to say in a law journal that the indeterminate sentence is a measure as yet untried. The phrase has passed into current speech, and a considerable portion of the public is under the impression that an experiment of the indeterminate sentence is actually being made. It is, however, still a theory, not adopted in any legislation or in practice ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... heard, and a number of the domestics charged with melancholy duties at the approaching rite, were seen slowly sweeping in black robes along the opposite gallery. Perhaps that interruption restored both of us to our senses, for we said, almost in the same breath, and nearly in the same phrase, "This way of terminating strife is not for us;" and, as Gerald spoke, he turned slowly away, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here was a further check to the passage—a hundred miles in ten days—provisions running short, grass a foot long on the counter, and still no sign of wind. There would be no congratulatory letter from the owners at the end of this voyage, no kindly commending phrase that means so much to a shipmaster. Instead it would be, "We are at a loss to understand why you have not made a more expeditious passage, considering that the Elsinora, which sailed," etc., etc. It is always a fair wind in Bothwell Street! It was maddening to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to "regulate commerce between the several States." It was a rubber phrase, capable of infinite stretching. It was drawn out so as to cover antitrust legislation, control and taxation of corporations, water-power, railroad rates, etc., pure-food law, white-slave traffic, and a host of others. But even with the most generous extension of this phrase, which, though it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... fireplace pondering deeply and drops down in a chair). What did she say?... Lived my life?... A soothing phrase! A cradle-song! No more pain, no more care! All over!... Lived my life! (Supports his head on ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... lol; a difficult phrase, translated by Brasseur, "le dernier rejeton;" lol is applied to a condition of desertion and silence, as that of an abandoned mill or village. On ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... the Russian torpedo fleet, Charmes refers to the type which will, no doubt, be most successful upon the sea, namely, the torpedo cruisers, and it is to this type, more than for any other, that we may expect torpedo boats to be adapted. Already, writers have dropped the phrase "torpedo boats" ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... from a wholly different standpoint. Affairs had reached a state that no longer was endurable. Among the men there was no doubt whatever but that it was a question of time only when Firmstone, to put it in the graphic phrase of the mine, "would be shot in the ear with a time check." Firmstone had no benevolent designs as to the reconstruction of Hartwell, but he had decided ones as to the reconstruction of the company's affairs. The meeting thus mutually decided upon as ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... phrase "Change of Life," or "The Critical Period," we understand the final cessation or stoppage of the menses. This chapter explains all about this trying time, the symptoms of its appearance, and the ages at which ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... any one was sick in the village, either a little child with the measles, or a wounded soldier from the wars, Isabeau's modest child—no doubt the mother too—was always ready to help. It must have been a family de bien, in the simple phrase of the country, helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. An honest labourer, who came to speak for Jeanne at the second trial, held long after her death, gave his incontestable evidence to this. "I was then a child," he said, "and it ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... mutter a phrase about being here if she should return, but it perished in the conviction of its uselessness. Calvin saw her with green-yellow hair, a cigarette in painted lips; he heard the blurred applause of men at the spectacle of Hannah on the stage, dressed like the women he had ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... such performances begins and ends with the first author. He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be difficult, must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... that after all the lamentations of the "De Profundis" and the "Dies irae," the presence of God, who comes then upon the altar, brings consolation, and sanctions the confident and solemn pride of that melodious phrase, which then invokes Christ, without ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple descriptive statement, 'He's a down-in-the-mouth chap': but I found that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen. There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence of positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, which marked pretty accurately the man's place in public esteem. Still, there was some dissimilarity between this and his ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... one there but Upton and Eric; they were standing very harmlessly by the window, with Upton's arm resting kindly on Eric's shoulder as they watched with admiration the net-work of rippled sunbeams that flashed over the sea. Upton had just been telling Eric the splendid phrase [Greek: anerithmon gelasma pontion], which he had stumbled upon in an Aeschylus lesson that morning, and they were trying which would hit on the best rendering of it. Eric stuck up for the literal sublimity of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... The conception is at least conceivable. If adopted, merely for argument's sake, it would first explain the purposeless behaviour of ghosts, and secondly, relieve people who see ghosts of the impression that they see "spirits". In the Scotch phrase the ghost obviously "is not all there," any more than the sleep walker is intellectually "all there". This incomplete, incoherent presence is just what might be expected if a dreaming disembodied mind could affect an ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... employes of the firm he worked for, before whom the North-countryman pleaded to be allowed to earn his bread. The tall, finely grown, famished-looking lad spoke with a natural eloquence, and here and there with a Biblical force of phrase—the inheritance of his Scotch blood and training—which astonished and melted most of his hearers. He was afterwards let alone, and even taught by the men about him, in return for 'drinks,' which swallowed up sometimes as much as a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... guaranteeing full liberty "in religious concernments" and freedom from all obligations to conform to the "litturgy, formes, and ceremonyes of the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oathes and articles made and established in that behalfe." This may have been the phrase that Clarendon, who was a High Churchman, objected to when the draft was presented. The form of government was similar in all essential particulars ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... real commercial nuns; it was a premeditated affair entirely, merely a comfortable phrase borrowed by the lonesome ones unwilling to be called old maids; a big, brave bluff that women have adopted during these times of commercial necessity and economic stress. Commercial nuns! As foolish as the tales told children of the wunks living in the coalbins—as if there ever could be ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... 'as they have already submitted us to the form of the British,' &c.; making me express hostility to the form of our government, that is to say, to the constitution itself. For this is really the difference of the word form, used in the singular or plural, in that phrase, in the English language. Now it would be impossible for me to explain this publicly, without bringing on a personal difference between General Washington and myself, which nothing before the publication of this letter has ever done. It would embroil me also with all those with whom his ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... little study, if so ambitious a phrase may be used of what is purely a piece of self-indulgence, is to present the public with as complete an idea as possible of Mr. Belloc and his work. Up to the present, the relations between Mr. Belloc and the public have been, to say the least, peculiar. If ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... concluded that it must have been from youth. Lord Mahon has pointed out this error, p. 401. I should add that in the last 4to. edition, corrected by Gibbon, it stands "want of youth and experience;"—but Gibbon can scarcely have intended such a phrase.—M.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of The English Review, who cast a friendly eye nearly six years ago on my Reminiscences, and know how much the merchant service, ships and men, has been to me, will understand my indignation that those men of whom (speaking in no sentimental phrase, but in the very truth of feeling) I can't even now think otherwise than as brothers, have been put by their commercial employers in the impossibility to perform efficiently their plain duty; and this from motives which I shall not enumerate here, but whose intrinsic unworthiness ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and again in his latest works, must have been partly due to his never learning to follow the processes of more normally constituted minds. It would be a great error to suppose that they ever arose from the absence of a meaning clearly felt, if not always clearly ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... lime-light. The incandescent burner was widely employed, and until the use of electricity became common the lime-light was the mainstay for the stage and for the projection of lantern slides. It is in use even to-day for some purposes. The origin of the phrase "in the lime-light" is obvious. The luminous intensity of the oxyhydrogen lime-light as used in practice was generally from 200 to 400 candle-power. The light decreases rapidly as the burner is used, if a new surface ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... by the phrase, "silkworm-moth eyebrow," in an old Japanese, or rather Chinese proverb:—The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man. So I went to my friend Niimi, who keeps silkworms, to ask for ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... their own needful centre, could have lasted over many miles of his journey. But such delicate inward revelations are none the less precious that they are evanescent. Many feelings are simply too good to last—using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, expressing the conviction that God is a hard father, fond of disappointing his children, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot yet coexist in the human economy. But the virtue of a mood depends ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... expressly to try the case, and the result was the condemnation and execution of six women and some forty men. The extreme penalty of the Egyptian code was reserved for Pentauirit, and for the most culpable,—"they died of themselves," and the meaning of this phrase is indicated, I believe, by the appearance of one of the mummies disinterred at Deir el-Bahari.* The coffin in which it was placed was very plain, painted white and without inscription; the customary removal of entrails had not been effected, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... crudely outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until now accomplished. Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or an indirect suggestion, here and there. That the writer's method, when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets he had been studying—chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan era—will, he hopes, be obvious. It was part of his design, however far he ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Cicero and Quintilian, seconded by that of Jonson, finally did away with the mediaeval ideal of rhetoric as being one with aureate language and embroidered style. The stylistic exuberance of the Elizabethans gave place to a more restrained and polished phrase in the reign of Charles. Bolton, for instance, in his Hypercritica (c. 1618) warns the historians against the style of the Arcadia. "Solidity and Fluency," he says, "better becomes the historian, then ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... know what, but remembering a phrase she had often heard used, and thinking it might be just what was ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, "'twas his neckverse at ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... arguments to put quite innocent people to death, and not less often to acquit the guilty, either through some touch of pity excited by the pleadings, or that the defendant had skill to turn some charming phrase?" Thus appealed to, Socrates replied: "Nay, solemnly I tell you, twice already I have essayed to consider my defence, and twice the divinity [9] hinders me"; and to the remark of Hermogenes, "That is strange!" he answered again: "Strange, do you call it, that to God it should ...
— The Apology • Xenophon
... man of superior mental equipment rarely fails to extract some crumbs of consolation out of the direst disaster. Andrew extracted his by summoning Jean before he started for the office and handing her the terrible letter. As he watched her read it, the phrase shaped by his countenance might be read without the aid of ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... expression that is really an infinitive, though disguised as a prepositional phrase: "It is hard for honest men to separate their country from their party, or their ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... generation and development of organisms were quite diverse, and there were seldom criteria other than enthusiasm or philosophical predilection to distinguish the fanciful from the feasible. Applying a well-known phrase from another time to seventeenth-century embryological theory, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... after having pursued me for a few yards, turned and went on his way, but had I not been nimble—in other words, had I been completely invested by the bear and thrown down—he might, as the natives would phrase it, have made my wife a widow. It is commonly supposed that, when making an attack, the bear stands on its hind legs, and thus gives the sportsman a good chance of killing him with a shot in the chest, but this ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... here under orders to take a woman spy whose password was the key to a Latin phrase. But until you stood straight in your rags and smiled at me, I did not know it was you—I did not know I was to take the Special ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... found sixpence in the street! The ordinary comforts of modern life were unattainable luxuries. Once when a newly posted notice in the lavatory at the British Museum warned readers that the basins were to be used (in official phrase) 'for casual ablutions only,' he was abashed at the thought of his own complete dependence upon the facilities of the place. Justly might the author call this a tragi-comical incident. Often in happier times he had brooding memories of the familiar old ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... skull, he replied that what I saw was the hind part of the head (termed the occiput, I believe, by anatomists), and that the face was turned, as usual, to the earth!!—Not exactly understanding his phrase 'as usual,' I inquired if the body had been buried with the face upwards, as in the ordinary way; to which he replied to my astonishment, in the affirmative, adding, that in the course of decomposition the face of every individual turns to the earth!! ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... library of knowledge, not only of books, but also of men and things. Accordingly, I hoped to extract from him some information about Tevkin. He was a portly man, with a round, youthful face and a baby smile. He smiled far more than he spoke. He answered my questions either by some laconic phrase or by leaving me for a minute and then returning with some book, pamphlet, or newspaper-clipping in which he pointed out a passage that was supposed to contain a reply to my query. I had quite a long talk with him. Now and then ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... and methods of work. To keep abreast of the times one must read the newspaper and the magazine. The newspaper is the history of the hour, the magazine is the history of the day. The magazine corrects the newspaper, and "sums up in clear and noble phrase those fundamental facts which are only dimly seen in the newspaper." A serious and growing tendency is that the newspaper and magazine shall take the place of the best books. A few minutes a day is ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... was already at the Somme, a few days' march from the capital! But the awakening was as free from disturbance as the dream had been. Paris felt absolute confidence in the army, in Joffre; and the Parisian reasoning was expressed in one phrase, "The army has retreated, but it is neither destroyed nor beaten; as long as the army is there, Paris has nothing to fear...." And when Sunday the thirtieth of August came, Paris was as calm and confident as it was on the first day of ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... a trout. Very well; if you tell a German to send your trunk to you by "slow freight," he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase in the German tongue, before you get that trunk. The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reached Heidelberg. However, it was still sound, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with a fine spontaneity, and I must say the man's fervour impressed me. If he was a fatalist, he was a fighting fatalist, and I am sure he believed in his fortune. I was not able to do that; but I thought we had, in the vulgar phrase, a sporting chance. And that I was right events proved, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... train stopped for dinner. I got out, and took a lunch, after the old lady had refused my invitation to do so. Reflecting that she had no money, I carried her a cup of tea and some sandwiches, which she did not refuse. The tea was hot and strong, and in refined and elegant phrase, she informed me that it "went to the right spot." I returned the cup and saucer as the bell rang, and resumed my place ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... will never be a poet," was the phrase of Dryden to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so it thrilled me to the core To read the phrase, "Electric bore," And think of happy days ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... proofs. It is necessary to begin at the beginning. From the first Burton took up his work at Damascus with "pinioned arms," to use his own phrase. In other words, he started with a prejudice against him. Lord Derby (then Lord Stanley), as we know, gave him the appointment; but before it was confirmed Lord Clarendon succeeded Lord Stanley at the Foreign Office, and in the interval Burton's enemies, chiefly ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Then, "Yes," the Duke of Ormskirk conceded, "I suppose I do, at the bottom of my heart, regret that lost folly. A part of me died, you understand, when it vanished, and it is not exhilarating to think of one's self as even partially dead. Once—I hardly know"—he sought the phrase,—"once this was a spacious and inexplicable world, with a mystery up every lane and an adventure around each street-corner; a world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,—some amiable, and some detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... at a reasonable rate of interest, and the publicani are thoroughly satisfied by receiving in full measure what I mentioned—complimentary speeches and frequent invitations. Need I say more? They are all on such terms with me that each thinks himself my most intimate friend. However, (Greek phrase)—you know the rest. ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "Anthropological Review and Journal of the Anthropological Society," May 1864, page clviii. The deep interest with which Mr. Darwin read his copy is graphically recorded in the continuous series of pencil-marks along the margins of the pages. His views are fully given in Letter 406. The phrase, "in this case it is too far," refers to Mr. Wallace's habit of speaking of the theory of Natural Selection ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... There was an argument in that advertisement, "Easier than washing, ironing, scrubbing or sewing," that appealed to many a feminine imagination, and when the fancy, thus awakened, played around the promising phrase "$21 a week—and up," hope presently turned to desire—and desire ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... divine things but in a divine light. God only, who is the true light, and in whom there is no darkness at all, can so shine out of himself upon our glossy understandings, as to beget in them a picture of himself, his own will and pleasure, and turn the soul (as the phrase is in Job) like wax or clay to the seal of his own light and love. He that made our souls in his own image and likeness, can easily find a way into them. The word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... were spoken with an air of ingenuous welcome, David felt the malignity in the last phrase, and knew that now was come the most fateful moment of his life. In his inner being he heard the dreadful challenge of Fate. If he failed in his purpose with this man, he would never begin his work in Egypt. Of his life he did not think—his life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the herring leaves the water it dies; hence the phrase, "dead as a herring." To preserve the fish, salt is immediately thrown upon them in the boats; they are carried to the fish-house in open wicker baskets, called swills, where they are delivered over to a man called a "tower," when they are ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... is surelie a strange happenninge, that I, who am ofte accompted a man of y^e Worlde, (as y^e Phrase goes,) sholde be soe Overtaken & caste downe lyke a Schoole-boy or a countrie Bumpkin, by a meere Mayde, & sholde set to Groaninge and Sighinge, &, for that She will not have me Sighe to Her, to Groaninge ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Bixiou gravely resumed, "and for that matter, men too, who can cut their lives in two and give away but one-half. (Remark how I word my phrase for you in humanitarian language.) For these, all material interests lie without the range of sentiment. They give their time, their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that between themselves it is not the thing to ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... The phrase had slipped out of my German vocabulary. I had not even recognized it until the boy had rapped it out in a context with which I was familiar and then it had come back. With it, it brought that tableau in the dimly ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... child. Indeed at five-and-forty she was rather set in her ways, disliked noise and bustle, and could not bear to have a house "torn up," as she phrased it. Twelve years before she had come here to "housekeep," as the old phrase went. She had not lacked admirers, but she had been very particular. Her sisters said she was a born old maid. There was in her soul a great love ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... fine, strong old gentleman."] can handle a sword, I grant you,—but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is here to play propriety—propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... degrade him, to make him something lower than yourself." The child remembered that phrase, and he felt that this was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl. We were all quite indignant with Bones—but, oddly enough, I think it was greatly tempered with our new pride in him. While he was with us alone, his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent phrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers" gave us a mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a "mascot" ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... and the murderer: usually of opposite sexes. There are witnesses to old scenes of reproach and recrimination, in which they were the actors; and the murderer has been heard to say, in this or that coarse phrase, "that he wouldn't mind killing her, though he should be hanged for it"—in these cases, the ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... school-room; she immediately flung the French phrase-book from one end of the room to the other. She took some story-books, and a little basket full of apples, bath-buns and "three-corners," and ran down to a little plantation called the Wilderness, at the bottom of the garden. She selected one of the tallest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... a most ludicrous manner. Afterward they enjoyed prolonged spasms of mirth, their cachinnations carrying far out over the flat lands disturbing inoffensive truck gardeners in their sleep. They cried "S-o-m-e time!" so often that the phrase struck even their fuddled ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... also, viz. the earth and so on, are attributed to him in the passage, 'He who dwells in the earth,' &c. (B/ri/. Up. III, 7, 3). And among those the eye also is mentioned, viz. in the clause, 'He who dwells in the eye,' &c. The phrase 'and so on,' which forms part of the Sutra, intimates that not only locality is assigned to Brahman, although not (really) appropriate to it, but that also such things as name and form, although not appropriate to Brahman which ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... as a soldier I beg of you not to turn from it. Read it again and again till its words become part of your consciousness. It was written by a man for mankind's sake, that 'that which is humane' might no more be an empty phrase, that the words of Blake might blossom to ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... three equal horizontal bands of red (top), white, and black with three green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; the phrase ALLAHU AKBAR (God is Great) in green Arabic script - Allahu to the right of the middle star and Akbar to the left of the middle star - was added in January 1991 during the Persian Gulf crisis; similar to ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... line upon a card, as he might sign a beggar's petition—with a supercilious parade of benevolence—and passed it to the other, who accepted it with a phrase of acknowledgment neither hearty nor grateful. Then the master of the house paced the floor with a slow, regular step, his hands behind him; his countenance placidly ruminative, his thoughts apparently engaged with anything rather than ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... against these men for "preaching the gospel contrary to law," a deep and solemn voice interrupted the proceedings. Patrick Henry had come on horseback many a mile over roughest roads to listen to the trial, and this phrase, which savoured of the religious despotisms of old, was quite too much for him. "May it please your worships," he exclaimed, "what did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these men, whom your worships are about to try for misdemeanour, are charged with preaching the gospel ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... of the seven hills upon which Rome is built. Un dona, an Italian phrase meaning a ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... which he exerted over the mind of the young man whom he had unconsciously saved from suicide was as irresistible as it was inscrutable. His language had the charm of perfect familiarity. Every word and phrase had fallen from his own lips a hundred times in similar exhortations. In fact, they seemed to him strangely like the echo of his own voice coming back upon him from ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the working as well, the old orders of chivalry or knighthood strongly commend themselves, for here there was, in principle, both the maintenance of high ideals of honour courtesy and noblesse oblige, and the rendering of chivalrous service. Chesterton has put it well in the phrase "the giving things which cannot be demanded, the avoiding things which cannot be punished." Moreover, admission to the orders of knighthood was free to all provided there were that cause which came from personal character alone. Knighthood ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... could see, there would have been protesting tears in her eyes; and even Mrs. Grey, who did not know the meaning of the familiar Neapolitan phrase,[1] noticed the tremulous indignation in the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... himself at her feet, and was about to kiss her hand, when she exclaimed, "Ah, Launcelot! why do I see thee again, yet feel thee to be no longer worthy of me, after having been disgracefully drawn about the country in a—" She had not time to finish the phrase, for her lover suddenly started from her, and, bitterly lamenting that he had incurred the displeasure of his sovereign lady, rushed out of the castle, threw his sword and his shield to the right and left, ran furiously into the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the phrase: "At night we stood in again," arrested my languid attention, because it was a sea phrase. "Let's see what it is all about," ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... saddles off and now sat on their horses' bellies, while the big dog-like animals lay on their backs, with their feet in the air. It was circus business, or what they call "short and long horse" work—some not understandable phrase. Every one does it. While I am not unaccustomed to looking at cavalry, I am being perpetually surprised by the lengths to which our cavalry is carrying thus Cossack drill. It is beginning to be ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... Fleury in Picardy—though M. Fleury spent some time with the General as a not unsympathetic ally—than I have been able to get from any of the General's most devoted partisans in Paris. In Picardy as in Paris, Boulangism seems to represent a destructive—or, if the phrase be more polite, a detergent—rather than a constructive force. It is not the less worthy of consideration, perhaps, on this account. But on this account it appears to me more likely to play a subordinate than a leading ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... his arguments will have upon them. He relies too much, among other things, on the patience of his hearers, and on his ability to turn every thing to his own advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of his tether (in vulgar phrase) and often overshoots the mark. C'est dommage. He has no reserve of discretion, no retentiveness of mind or check upon himself. He needs, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... —"To distinguish them, I suppose," said the Doctor, "from artificial manures, such as superphosphate, sulphate of ammonia, and nitrate of soda." —"No; that is not how I used the term. A few years ago, we used to hear much in regard to the 'exhaustion of soils.' I thought this phrase conveyed a wrong idea. When new land produces large crops, and when, after a few years, the crops get less and less, we were told that the farmers were exhausting their land. I said, no; the farmers are not exhausting ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instantly sat down on the curb, tore it with his teeth, and hastily devoured it, unwashed and uncooked as it was. He and his fellows were types of the "submerged tenth," as our missionary guide told us, with some little satisfaction in the then new phrase, and he further added that so many of them could scarcely be seen in one spot save at this Saturday night auction, the desire for cheap food being apparently the one thing which could move them simultaneously. They were huddled into ill-fitting, cast-off clothing, the ragged ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... His self-conceit was supreme, and had always stood him in such stead with the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were 'dead nuts on him,' that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas. 'Don't be a bloomin' fool!' was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour's wrangling, Clem abandoned her hostile attitude, and eyed him with a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... smaller by means of reef-points. All these things were fitted into their respective places with so keen an eye to economy of space that the arrangement cannot be better described than by the familiar phrase—multum ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... prowess—has scored off his failure at cricket by the taking of prizes, and has revenged himself for a drubbing by writing a lampoon. But even this last resource was not open to Goldsmith. He was a dull boy; "a stupid, heavy blockhead," is Dr. Strean's phrase in summing up the estimate formed of young Goldsmith by his contemporaries at school. Of course, as soon as he became famous, everybody began to hunt up recollections of his having said or done this or that, in order ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... brick and spotty stucco, of other undressed backs, of glass invidiously opaque, of roofs and chimney-pots and stables unnaturally near—one of the private pictures that in London, in select situations, run up, as the phrase is, the rent. There was no indication of value now, however, in the character conferred on the scene by a cold spring rain. The place had moreover a confessed out-of-season vacancy. She appeared to have determined on silence for the present mark of her relation ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... was put in motion, but little trace of a regular dance remained; all was a perfect maze, and the cutting in and out (as the fraternity of the whip would phrase it) of these cumbrous machines presented to the mind only the figure of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... productions of Nature into useful articles; but you enlightened citizens, men of science and improvement, artists and manufacturers. The laboratory of Nature will be thrown open to you, and to use the scriptural phrase, 'Ye shall know even as ye ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... we have only her reply, from which it appears her father is under her care. She declines her brother's sympathy, and wonders that he can suppose "the deadening drudgery of the world" can imprison a soul in its caverns. "It is not merely an eloquent phrase," she says, "but a distinct truth that the outward has no power over us but that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I who drudge; it is merely the case that contains me. I defy all the powers of earth and hell to make me scour floors and feed pigs, if I choose meanwhile ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... -m, and that gradually, as its more concrete significance faded away, it took over a syntactic function that did not originally belong to it. This sort of evolution by transfer is traceable in many instances. Thus, the of in an English phrase like "the law of the land" is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the "genitive" suffix -is in the Latin lex urbis "the law of the city." We know, however, that it was originally ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... can get on perfectly well," said Miss Van Buren, mutinous-eyed. "I've learned things out of the phrase-book. You can't expect a skipper to be a ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians) or to turn every phrase inside out and find ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... patronage and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection, benevolence, and other fine names, which I have described as inherent in my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.' Well understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting a companion with a knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no occasion to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heart. He did not look at her, but all the week he wondered about her. He thought of her almost constantly, and the words she sang lay in his ears, soothing and healing like some subtle Oriental balm. "On the wings of the morning light" was one haunting phrase—the other was, "And tell them to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... punishment for the sins of his erring characters. The whole story—at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that he chose to add—became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work) blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its custodians; Round Table; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... were as low as Luigi's were high, and also that he had a jaded look. Her motherly solicitude was aroused, and she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him to a happier frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his countenance. Luigi lent his help, too. He used a form and a phrase which he was always accustomed to employ in these circumstances. He gave his brother an affectionate slap on the shoulder and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sum,—the authority of the nation. This is social self-government,—not the anarchy of individuals each having his own way for himself, but government through a delegated self, if one may use the phrase, organically combined with others in the single power of control belonging to a State. This fusion is accomplished in the secondary stage, for the continuous action of the State, by representation, technically; but, in its primary stage and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... to say something which I had omitted in my last, and to add a word or two on the subject of an expression in your answer to it. I mean the phrase "plan of assistance." I do not suppose that you had the slightest intention of mortifying me by that phrase; but I should wish to impress upon you, that I did not consider my application to you as coming ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... it may seem, Samuel had never before heard the phrase, "the survival of the fittest." And so now he was living over the experience of the thinking world of fifty or sixty years ago. What a marvelous generalization it was! What a range of life it covered! And how obvious it seemed—one ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... existed in the valley of Goshen. The population of Israelites and Nomads, however, which dwelt on the confines of the irrigable land, must have been very great; as the Hebrews alone exceeded 600,000 souls, and they were accompanied by "a mixed multitude," which is the phrase used in Scripture to designate the nomad Arabs. But though no canal existed at this period, we find evidence that a considerable trade in the produce of Egypt was already carried on through this district, caused by the want of agricultural produce in Arabia; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various |
