"Pebble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Otanabee are so clear and free from impurity that you distinctly see every stone-pebble or shell at the bottom. Here and there an opening in the forest reveals some tributary stream, working its way beneath the gigantic trees that meet above it. The silence of the scene is unbroken but by the sudden rush of the wild duck, disturbed from its retreat among ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... bridge of glass when all was said; a bridge that carried me safely over for the moment into my Lord's confidence, yet one which a pebble flung by any one of a dozen hands might shiver in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; atom &c (small quantity) 32; fragment &c (small part) 51; powder &c 330; point of a pin, mathematical point; minutiae &c (unimportance) 643. micrometer; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fraction of a Planet is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident may have become familiar; but does the Minnow understand the Ocean tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses, by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... have to," replied Jimmy, firing a pebble at nothing in particular. "I forgive you all right because we've found the watch. If we hadn't found it, I wouldn't! But don't you 'jolly' me again, Nate Pollard, ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... tell him that he has done that to me, in the course of the discussion., which he complains of others having done to him; in other words, he has, in the language of a right honourable friend of his and mine, thrown a large paving-stone instead of throwing a small pebble. I say, that if he accuses me of acting with secrecy on this question, he does not deal with me altogether fairly. He knows as well as I do how the cabinet was constructed on this question; and I ask him, had I any right to say a single word to any man whatsoever ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... rhythm of the plodding horses, and the way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill's aim was unerring. He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how a bag was ever ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Hiram flipped a pebble. "I reckon you're right, Uncle Sebastian, and I reckon I know you're aimin' at somethin'. You came 'way up here to spring somethin' on me, didn't you? Well, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... thing," retorted the general testily. His speech came thickly as if he held a pebble in his mouth, and the swollen veins ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... led to observe the utility of this invention by various examples, before he applies it to the rules of arithmetic. Let him count as far as ten with black pebbles,[17] for instance; let him lay aside a white pebble to represent the collection of ten; he may count another series of ten black pebbles, and lay aside another white one; and so on, till he has collected ten white pebbles: as each of the ten white pebbles represents ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... trip, and Mr. Butler went to the ground, mussing the knees of his spooniest pair of white ducks. Moreover, he cut the palm of his right hand, slightly, on a sharp pebble. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... deserted vessel, behind it, his lump of iron swung like a pebble in a sling. A cloud of smoke burst from the burned lining of the friction brake, in the reel. Then the wire was all out; there was a ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was giving 7 lb.; and Bonny Jean, in receipt of 10 lb., was unplaced. A 7 lb. penalty seemed to put him completely out of the Dewhurst Plate; but he must then have been out of form, as, on the following day, it took him all his time to defeat Pebble by a neck in the Troy Stakes. This season he has only run twice. His fourth in the Two Thousand was by no means a bad performance, considering that he was palpably backward; and his victory of last week is too recent to need further ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... where Janet and Rebecca and Mistress Gertrude dwell," said Benjamin, as they watched their father's figure vanish in the distance, and felt themselves quite alone in the world; "perchance one of them may be waking, and may look forth from the window if we throw up a pebble. I would fain say a farewell word to them ere we go forth, for who knows whether we ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... bullet is the best thing," said Bassett, stooping and picking up a pebble, which he polished on his trousers, "but this will do as well. Suck that and you won't be ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... hurried down, and wading in up to the knees, had dragged him from the water half dead; they had turned him upside down to make him throw up the water, they had shaken him, but to no purpose. To indicate just how far the poor little fellow had gone in, the man picked up a pebble and threw ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... armor of King Saul he too would have gone to his death. But instead he stepped forth untrammeled by its weight, with nothing but a stone and a sling, and because the scoffing giant refused to raise his shield he was struck down by the pebble of a child. But giant Judson Eells was in a baby-killing mood when he invited Wunpost and Wilhelmina to his den; and when they emerged, after signing articles of incorporation, he licked his chops ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... have reflected in your sager moods, an ordinary pebble may roll where it likes, for individualism of the multitudinously obscure little affects us. Not so the costly jewel, which is a congregation of ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexions thick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things must needs carry us, both by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... once to look at me, for I lost his profile, and saw for a second only a sharp upright line. That instant the wind found me and blew through me: I shuddered from head to foot, and my heart went from wall to wall of my bosom, like a pebble in a ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... perhaps have continued this chase until one or the other of the horses dropped, but now her horse picked up a pebble and went somewhat lame. She pulled up and told me to ride on alone. After a pause I slowly approached the top of the next ridge, and there, as I more than half suspected, I saw the antelope lying down, its head turned back. Eager to finish the chase, I sprang down, carelessly neglecting ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... reality Hansel was not looking at a cat; but every time he stopped he dropped a pebble out of his pocket ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... simple narrator, for it varies from 5ft. 10in. to 5ft. 8in., being somewhat above the middle height among Europeans. For arms they had a short massive bow, and arrows made of reed, of which the point was formed of a sharp pebble. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... projecting crag, close under the wall, they rested to collect their breath, and listen. It was the moment when the guards were going their rounds, and, to their horror, they heard a soldier exclaim, as he threw a pebble down on them, "Away! I see you well!" A few more stones, and every man of them might have been hurled from the cliff by the soldiers merely rolling down stones on them. They dared not more, and a few moments' silence proved that the alarm had been merely ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sound broke, so faint, so far, she could not tell from whence it came nor what its cause might be. It might have been the rattle of a pebble under the feet of a near-by squirrel or the scrambling rush of a distant bear. A few moments later the voice of a man—very diminished and yet unmistakable—came pulsing ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... a sevillana I came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had not ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... them, you know—for one man. That's the limit, a hundred and sixty acres. Those eight men aren't jumping that ranch as eight individuals; they're in the employ of a principal who is engineering the affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the head mogul, I'd sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with the fishy eye. And that," she added, "is what all these cipher messages for Saunders mean, very likely. Baumberger had to have someone here to spy around for him and perhaps help him ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Park when much afflicted by thirst in the Desert, found great relief by keeping a pebble ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... more. You see a grey moving cloud about that pebble bed, and underneath that bank. It is a countless swarm of 'sug,' or water-shrimp; a bad food, but devoured greedily by the great trout ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... ranging in pitch from a low tone in imitation of the bull frog's croak to a shrill whistle, and in loudness from the fall of a pebble to the report of a pistol, were tried for the purpose of testing their effects upon the animals in their natural environment. To no sound have I ever seen a motor response given. One can approach to within a few feet of a green frog ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... one might easily fling a pebble; yet, being separated from him by the River of Heaven, alas! to hope for a meeting (except in autumn) ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... were arranged with perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles; and from the great square diverged four principal streets connecting with the high roads of the empire. The square itself, and many parts of the city, were paved with a fine pebble. *35 Through the heart of the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for the distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone *36 Across this stream, bridges, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... I should remain hidden, when, all on a sudden, I slipped over a round pebble, fell from one stone to another, down into the depths of the mountain. At last it was pitch dark and I could ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... which stand on it, as Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashdod, are surrounded with huge groves of olives, sycamores, and palms, or buried in orchards and gardens, bright with pomegranates and orange-trees. The more inland region is of marvellous fertility. Its soil is a rich loam, containing scarcely a pebble, which yields year after year prodigious crops of grain—chiefly wheat—without manure or irrigation, or other cultivation than a light ploughing. Philistia was the granary of Syria, and was important doubly, first, as yielding ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Friday, exactly at half-past four, Came the Ogs with triumphant glee. And the first of their stones hit poor Mister Ghones, The captain of industry. Then a pebble of Podge took the Knight, Sir Stodge, In the curve of his convex vest. He gurgled "Un-Gluggish!" His heart growing sluggish, He solemnly sank to rest. 'Tis inconceivable, Scarcely believable, Yet, he ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. "There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat," the Major-General had said. It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the pebble which his kingly foot First presses into some more costly stone Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike; I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond. Let the great angel of the church come ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... him went ahead; the two officers, acknowledging the crash of arms of the sentry's salute at the gate, followed. The improvised prison was in the long wing of the building that housed the stables. They took the crackling pebble path that led ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened, All breathless with awe have I ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... under trees that fringed the Common ... houses with different, quaint colours ... the "green" in the centre carefully cropped as if nibbled by sheep ... well-kept paths of parti-coloured stone, as if each pebble had ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Melody; you cannot think how soft her speech was.) "Poor leetle docks, that go flap, flap; not yet zey have learned to swim, no! But here now, see a bird of ze water, a sea-bird what you call." She turned her wrist and sent the flat pebble flying; it skimmed along like a live thing, flipping the little crests of the ripples, going miles, it seemed to Petie and me, till at length we lost sight ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... her always with studied gentleness that was quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small shells, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while the forms ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... bottom of the yellow clay and on top of the gravel, was a chalcedony pebble about 21/2 inches in diameter. The material is foreign to this locality. It had plainly been used as a hammer stone, and is the only object of human origin found anywhere below the dark earth. There was ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... was stooping down to pick up a pebble. Sometimes people do find things, Mrs. Jarvis thought, and yet in this hazy moonlight it was impossible to see anything, except bones, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... regions expend on the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look at, to think about, to study over, to dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat one's brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was it broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of what ocean? How and when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became stone, and by-and-by was lifted into bald summits and steep cliffs, such as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... brute could damage him further, fired my second barrel almost with the first, but with no apparent result except to rouse the animal to yet greater fury, and he turned, wild with rage, and came at me. A miserably insignificant pebble my boulder seemed then, and I remember vaguely and hopelessly wondering why I hadn't climbed a tree. But there was small time for speculation, as I hurriedly, and with hands that seemed to be "all thumbs," tried to slip in a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... squaw and together they folded the cast-off clothing. Rhoda saw that her scarf had blown near the canon edge. A quick thought came to her. Molly was fully occupied with muttering adoration of the dainty underwear. Rhoda tied a pebble into the scarf and dropped it far out into the depths below. Then ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me palm the pearl. I put a pebble in place of it. Right now that pearl is in my coin purse, keeping company with the rest," and Max chuckled again as he snuggled down ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... not even one golden pebble? for he had gathered them all—not one was in sight, no more were to ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... looked again. She certainly was not there, nor could he discover the slightest indication of an opening through which she could have vanished. Yet, even as he looked, a pebble leaped, apparently from the unbroken face of the cliff, and dropped with a clatter to the ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... threw a stone at a huge bullfrog croaking at him from a spring, and made it dive under with a loud splash. Pleased with his prowess, he took a good drink at the spring, and filled his flask with the sparkling water. At the second milestone he threw a pebble at a bird, singing in a tree. Off flew the bird, and down fell a great red apple. "Ah, how fine!" he exclaimed, picking it up; "and how the bird flies! I wish I had such wings." On the third milestone sat a quiet-looking little man, cracking nuts; so ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles. See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet; Epics in each pebble Underneath ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... small! No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere: . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... is generally less desirable than either of the others; it has the bad qualities of sandy soil and not the good ones of clay, besides being poorer in plant food. (Calcareous, or limestone pebble, soils are an exception, but they are not widely encountered.) They are not suited for garden work, as tillage harms ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... was quite near. The charge for this privilege was one penny and one halfpenny, which had to be presented in a leather purse; but this ancient ceremony was afterwards done away with and a culvert constructed. On this pebble bank one of the King's frigates was ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... thy life-depth thrown Being and suffering (which are one), As a child drops some pebble small Down some deep well, and hears it fall Smiling—so I! THY DAYS ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... order, and harmony, may be read in every page of the book of nature. From the minutest insect, up through all the animal creation, to the structure of our own bodies, there is a systematic arrangement of every particle of matter. So, from the little pebble that is washed upon the sea-shore, up to the loftiest worlds, and the whole planetary system, the same ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... the day before, they had rather over-done and possibly had over-eaten. They were on the verge of doing something that the Bunker children seldom did—quarreling. Fortunately something suddenly attracted Laddie's attention and he stopped kicking the pebble and pointed down the yard in ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... intimacy, her hair had blown across his face, she had thrilled through him like a sudden burst of music ... When he jerked his head up and looked at her he could not see her face; she was very busy with a white pebble she had picked up. He jumped across to land and went on, and the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... dusty seed, and they can set up the scheme of life of a shadowy mammoth out of a fragment of its skeleton, or tell the story of hill and valley from the contemplation of a handful of earth or of a broken pebble. Often they are right, sometimes they are driven deeper and deeper into error by the complicated imperfections of their own science. But he who loves greatly possesses in his intuition the capacities of all instruments of observation which ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... we can pray to all the saints to help us, and if that don't fill our bellies we can put a pebble in our mouths and suck ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... night. I was cold. A semi-darkness was about me and over me many stars twinkled. I sat upon the shingle roof of the bowling alley. It was not a far leap to the ground below. But the pebble stones of the seminary garden pricked my bare feet. Moreover, when I wanted to get into the house, I found the gate closed. My God! how had I then come out? Somewhere I found an open window and climbed into the house and noiselessly up to the dormitory. The window near my bed stood open—and ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... of Researches' page 193; and 'Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle: Mammalia' page 92.) Within recent times the sealers have stocked some of the small outlying islets in the Falkland group with rabbits; and on Pebble Islet, as I hear from Admiral Sulivan, a large proportion are hare-coloured, whereas on Rabbit Islet a large proportion are of a bluish colour, which is not elsewhere seen. How the rabbits were coloured which were turned out of these ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... moved through wet fields of some kind of globe-seeded plant, abundantly variegated with gladiolus and hyacinth. Every one was suffering from our course of Sumaikchah waters, and progress was slow. Splashing through the marshes, we came to undulating upland, long, steady slopes, pebble-strewn and with pockets of grass and poppies. The morning winds made these uplands exceedingly beautiful. Colonel Knatchbull said, the week he died, that what he most remembered from Beled were the flowers through which we marched to battle. As we approached them, the ruffling wind laid ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... therefore, of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded entirely on experience. If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits. It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... looked at the face lying so quiet there, and while I looked, it sort of shook—more like when you throw a little pebble into a pond—and the eyes opened. And I knew mother was ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... displayed by scenes of imagery, points of conceit, unexpected sallies, and artful compliments. Trifles always require exuberance of ornament; the building which has no strength can be valued only for the grace of its decorations. The pebble must be polished with care, which hopes to be valued as a diamond; and words ought surely to be laboured, when they are intended to stand ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... beautiful sight to behold that imposing fleet of canoes, apparently so frail in texture that the dropping of a pebble between the skeleton ribs might be deemed sufficient to perforate and sink them, yet withal so ingeniously contrived as to bear safely not only the warriors who formed their crews, hut also their ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... from the Stymphalian[72] wood; the weather was hot, and my toil had redoubled the intense heat. I found a stream gliding on without any eddies, without any noise, {and} clear to the bottom; through which every pebble, at so great a depth, might be counted, {and} which you could hardly suppose to be in motion. The hoary willows[73] and poplars, nourished by the water, furnished a shade, spontaneously produced, along the shelving banks. I approached, and, at first, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the fringed skirt. She laid a wreath of little star-fish across the brown hair, a belt of small orange-crabs round the waist, buttoned the dress with violet snail-shells, and hung a tiny white pebble, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders—as here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,—that many folk had presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... with an infamous species of large pebble, so uncomfortable to walk on that I chose the grass at the side and I only stepped on to this apology for gravel when I was quite close to the house; approaching the front of it, I may say, at an angle. My footsteps made a noise like a cart and horse, and instantly down went the blind ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... flows into all the creeks and crannies of the World."[33] But to find Him—this original Ground and Reality—we must "leave the outcoasts" and go back into "the Abysse." Most of us are busy "playing with cockel-shells and pebble-stones that lie on the outcoasts of the Kingdom," and we do not put back to the infinite Sea itself, where we become united and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... at the head of our most gracious king, Disloyal Collins did his pebble fling,— "Why choose," with tears the injured monarch said, "So hard a stone to break so soft ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... ourselves are "saved to save"—we are made to give—to let everything go if only we may have more to give. The pebble takes in all the rays of light that fall on it, but the diamond flashes them out again: every little facet is a means, not simply of drinking more in, but of giving more out. The unearthly loveliness of the ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... marvels at this strange Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength. David's clear eye measures the length; With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee, Poises a moment thoughtfully, And hurls with a long vengeful swing. The pebble, humming from the sling Like a wild bee, flies a sure line For the forehead of the Philistine; Then ... but there comes a brazen clink, And quicker than a man can think Goliath's shield parries each cast. Clang! clang! and clang! was David's ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... and not like the spots of his children; for Christ's blood can purge from all sin, and wash away all their filth, of how deep soever a dye it be. Christ's blood is so deep an ocean, that a mountain will be sunk out of sight in it, as well as a small pebble stone. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... Vermilion by overmuch grinding may be attributed to the Grindstone, or muller, for that some of their parts may be worn off and mixt with the colour, yet there seems not very much, for I have done it on a Serpentine-stone with a muller made of a Pebble, and yet observ'd the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... could so easily be impressed by the stylus upon the soft clay. It is probable that the use of the clay as a writing material was first suggested by the need there was in matters of business that the contracting parties should record their names. The absence of stone made every pebble valuable, and pebbles were accordingly cut into cylindrical forms and engraved with signs. When the cylinder was rolled over a lump of wet clay, its impress remained forever. The signs became cuneiform characters, ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send them crashing to death in the tumbled mass of ice below. They scaled an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by the aid of a skin-rope. Then, ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... a white pebble, or a white dinner plate, into the blackest Atlantic water; as it sinks it becomes greener and greener, and, before it disappears, it reaches a vivid blue green. Break such a pebble, or plate, into fragments, these will behave like the unbroken mass: grind the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... over." The shrapnel fuse goes up and then comes down vertically; but that of the percussion shell detaches itself from the broken mass after the explosion and usually abides buried at the point of contact, but at other times it flies off at random like a big red-hot pebble. One must beware of it. It may hurl itself on you a very long time after the detonation and by incredible paths, passing over the embankment ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... much wealth had been expended by Lord Castleclare in pilgrimages, donations, foundations, and endowments that, some months after it, his lordship conveyed to his three daughters that, in the interests of the Viscount, to whose swollen gums a gold-set pebble enclosing a pious relic of an early Christian martyr was at that moment affording miraculous relief, he, their father, would be obliged by their providing themselves as soon as possible with husbands of suitable rank, corresponding religion, and sufficient means to dispense with the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... believe what you say," rejoined Hollingsworth; "and as for me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of this pebble for its realization, were that possible. And what more do you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our strength, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... movie starlet, and her mom is exactly the same, except that she has that grey streak in front to match her husband. You can see the car in the drive; the treads of the tires must have just been scrubbed; they're not even dusty. There's not a pebble out of place; all the flowers are in full bloom; no dead ones. No leaves on the lawn; no dry twigs showing on the trees. That other house in the background looks like a palace, and the man with the rake, looking over the fence: he looks like this one's twin ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... sort of despair came on me when the police got me turned out of my work in York. I know it was only a little thing (though I still think it unfair), but it was like a pebble in your boot when you're already going ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... creep downstairs, fearing to wake my mother. My shoes creaked, so I took them off and carried them. Crossing the hall, I softly drew the bolts of the front door; then I passed into the moonlight. The gravel of the carriage-drive cut through my stockings, and a pebble bruised one of my heels so that I nearly fell. When I got safely under the shadow of the large cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the lawn, I stopped and looked up at my mother's window to see if she were a watcher. The blinds were down, there was no movement, no noise. Evidently ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... necessary that we should change our residence, and the new home was to be in a certain quiet little town, not much bigger than some big villages—a town of pebble streets and small shops, silent, sunny, and rather dull—on the ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pool and a pebble will help to make it clear to us. If we throw a pebble into a quiet pool (Fig. 90), waves or ripples form and spread out in all directions, gradually dying out as they become more and more distant from the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken up by recent storms, and in learning to distinguish their numerous components. But I was sadly in want of a vocabulary; and as, according to Cowper, "the growth of what is excellent is slow," it ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... must be the observing powers of these wonderful little creatures! Every patch of ground must, for them, have its own character; a pebble here, a larger stone there, a trifling tuft of grass—these must be their landmarks. And the wonder of it is that their interest in each nest is so temporary. A burrow is dug, provisioned and closed up, all in two or three days, and then another is made ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... first lake Pete called my attention to a fresh caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger lake ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... prisoner should ransom himself; and the lady, pulling out a large embroidered purse, proceeded to tell down the ransom, like a mother who pays little respect to gold in comparison of her son's liberty. In this operation, a pebble inserted in a coin, some say of the Lower Empire, fell out of the purse, and the Saracen matron testified so much haste to recover it as gave the Scottish knight a high idea of its value, when compared with gold or silver. "I will not consent," he ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... off, and a thousand feet down. So Tom found it, though it seemed as if he could have chucked a pebble onto the back of the woman in the red petticoat who was weeding in the garden, or even across the dale to the rocks beyond. For the bottom of the valley was just one field broad, and on the other side ran the stream; and above it, gray crag, gray ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tinned lobster and muffins, which they seem to relish. You appear to be alarmed at their swallowing the tins. There is no occasion for any anxiety on this point, the tin, doubtless, serving as the proverbial "digestive" pebble with which all birds, we believe, accompany a hearty meal. We fear we cannot enlighten you as to how you make your profits out of an ostrich-farm; but, speaking at random, we should say they would probably arise by pulling the feathers out of the tails of the birds ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... spot, once they had dived in, a long line of ripples, radiating outwards towards the open sea, like that caused by a pebble flung into a pond, was the only indication, as far as could be seen, that the penguins were below the surface, not a ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first lungfish ventured from ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... placid expression, as of men to whom the Atlantean weight of this weary world was as the down on a feather. Calmly and judicially, as if seeing nothing, yet weighing all things, they looked on pebble and broken limestone, never raising their heads, never removing their hands from their pockets. They had been there since breakfast time that morning, and it was ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... of the people, the first time when he set out against Nahash, the Ammonite, and the second time when he set out in war upon Amalek. It is significant of the enormous turn in the prosperity of the Jews during Saul's reign, that at the first census every man put down a pebble, so that the pebbles might be counted, but at the second census the people were so prosperous that instead of putting down a pebble, every man brought a lamb. There was a census in the reign of David, which, however, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... as his word. The damsel took her imprisonment as any girl of spirit would, but was unable to effect her escape until one evening, as she sat at her window, watching the moon go down and paint the harbor with a path of light. A tap at the pane, as of a pebble thrown against it, roused her from her revery. It was her lover on ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... pebble; I wiped it clean on my coat sleeve and put it into my mouth so that I might have something to mumble. Otherwise I did not stir, and didn't even wink an eyelid. People came and went; the noise of cars, the tramp of hoofs, and chatter ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... slipped, or stumbled, to her knees, she balanced briefly, clutching at random while the earth and crumbling cement gave way beneath her; then she slid forward and disappeared, almost out from between Esteban's hands. There was a noisy rattle of rock and pebble and a great splash far below; a chuckle of little stones striking the water, then a faint bubbling. Nothing more. The stepson stood in his tracks, sick, blind with horror; he was swaying over the opening when Asensio dragged ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... and Odysseus marked out a space for the fight, and into a bronze helmet Hector placed two pebbles and shook them in the helmet, looking behind him. And the pebble of Paris leapt out the first, so that to him fell the lot to cast ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... he felt that uncomfortable creeping of the scalp which we call, the hair standing on end. The third cannon sent up its cloud, and De Plonville's eyes extended at what they saw. Coming directly towards him was a cannon ball, skipping over the water like a thrown pebble. His experience in the navy—at Paris—had never taught him that such a thing was possible. He slid down flat on the buoy, till his chin rested on the iron, and awaited the shock. A hundred yards from him the ball dipped into the water and disappeared. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... that their clever son had planned everything marvellously, and next morning Chang went into the small court and waited to see what would happen. He had not been there long when he saw a little red ball on the other side of the wall rise up in the air several times. Nelly was trying to throw a pebble wrapped in a piece of red paper over the wall, but as Bob Bates had often told her, she threw just like a girl, and it was only after several attempts that her little red messenger ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... Holy Virgin! it must needs be a curious thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides so secretly! 'Tis said that he lights up the kitchens of hell there, and that he cooks the philosopher's stone there over a hot fire. Bedieu! I care no more for the philosopher's stone than for a pebble, and I would rather find over his furnace an omelette of Easter eggs and bacon, than the biggest philosopher's ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the question of himself, "with this sand I have traced the shores of Loch-na-Keal. This turf is green Ulva, and this is Gometra, and the shell is Little Colonsay. With this wet sand I have moulded Ben Grieg, and this higher pile is Ben More. If I had but a sprig of heather, now, or a pebble ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... thou nam'st, not for Ferdinand. There liv'd a Knight exceld his petty fame As far as costly Pearle the coursest Pebble,— An English Knight cald Pembroke: were his bones Interred heere, I would confesse of him Much more than thou requir'st, and be content To hang both shield ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... brought were in the same condition, and she picked up a good-sized pebble and tapped it against the depression, showing that the injury must have ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... meditation. So did Captain von Poppenheim. He kicked a pebble. So did Captain von Poppenheim—only a smaller pebble. Discipline is very strict in ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... where the black chasm of the Pass opened portals to the sunny blue of another valley, lay a lake, the Lake Behind the Peak, spangled with light, marbled like onyx or malachite, with the sheen of a jewel. Almost at his feet below, the near end of it lay. He could have tossed a pebble into it, seven-thousand feet below, where the white foaming river came ramping through a great pile of moraine that dammed up this end of the Pass to the width of a bridle trail. The outlaws would ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... unobserved. He peered out, and down the long road; it lay dead empty. He went to the corner of the by-road that comes by way of Dean; there also not a passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide of his affairs; and he drew the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebble in the chink, and made off downhill to find ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... won't be any panic. She'll slide into the sand like a baby nestling down into a crib. There isn't a pebble in that sand for miles. Half of this bunch of passengers will be abed and asleep. They won't wake up. The rest will never know anything special except that the engines have stopped. And that ain't anything unusual in a fog. It's a quiet night—not a ripple. Nothing to hurt us. The ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... there a gleam of metal, centering on a large and jagged boulder. Smaller rocks were scattered through the melange. It was exactly like a heap of giant jack-straws into which some mischievous spirit had tossed a large pebble. At one end a flame ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the pulpit he was simplicity itself. His sermons were like the waters of Lake George, so pellucid that you could see every bright pebble far down in the depths; a child could comprehend him, yet a sage be instructed by him. His best discourses were extemporaneous, and he had very little gesture, except with his forefinger, which he used to place under his chin, and sometimes against ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... girl," said Dick, throwing a pebble into the chasm. "I didn't expect you'd really go down there and fetch him. Girls generally ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... uncertain wings. There was a regal tower built with vocal walls, on which the son of Latona[4] is reported to have laid his golden harp; {and} its sound adhered to the stone. The daughter of Nisus was wont often to go up thither, and to strike the resounding stones with a little pebble, when it was a time of peace. She used, likewise, often to view the fight, and the contests of the hardy warfare, from that tower. And now, by the continuance of the hostilities, she had become acquainted with both the names of the chiefs, their arms, their horses, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Hans Floriszoon had paid his debts without even letting him know it. Yet he had lent many a gold piece to Tom Rookwood, while the memory of that base, cruel blow given to Hans made his cheek burn with shame. Had he not been treasuring the pebble, and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt |
