"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the gates through which the bride had vanished. He sees the blue night-sky, and a single star sparkling upon it, and as he looks upon the star, he takes a sword from under his cloak, draws the steel from the scabbard, and, still gazing upon the star, sharpens it on his whetstone. Thus, with widely opened eye, yet seeing, hearing nothing, the somnambulist, wrapped in deep, magnetic sleep, strides on in the moonlight, possessed by a power of which he is not conscious, which may stain his hands with blood, or hold him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... did not raise his eyes, but drew a damp cloth up and down the counter, slowly and heavily, as a man sharpens a knife on a whetstone. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... beyond, and again beyond, lay the naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana—white with poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect, to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... possible that the cruel boy-god "who sharpens his arrows on the whetstone of the human heart" had found the moment to avenge himself for the neglect of his altars and the scorn of his power? Must that redoubted knight-errant, the hero of this tale, despite the Three Fishes ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... After the article has been carefully made from specially selected wood—in the case of the choicest specimens of lacquer work this is usually a pine-wood of fine grain—it is first coated with a preparation composed of clay and varnish, which, after being permitted to dry, is smoothed down with a whetstone. When this operation has been concluded, the article proposed to be lacquered is covered with some substance, either silk, cloth, or paper. It is then given from one to five coats of the foregoing mixture, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the ink is easily made from a glass tube 1/4 in. in diameter. Heat the tube in an alcohol or Bunsen flame and then, by drawing the two portions apart and twisting at the same time, the tube may be drawn to a sharp point. An opening of any desired size is made in the point by rubbing it on a whetstone. Owing to the fact that the style of universal joint described has so little friction, the stylus ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Tully himselfe; if Mother Hubbard, in the vaine of Chawcer, happen to tel one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged fables, libles, slaunders, lies, for the whetstone. But many will sooner lose their liues than the least jott of their reputation. What mortal feudes, what cruel bloodshed, what terrible slaughterdome have been committed for the point of honour ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... will sit mumchance The evening through: he's got a powerful gift Of saying nothing: no sparks to strike off him; Though he's had to serve as a whetstone, this long while, To keep ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... inches long, 1-1/2 inches wide, and half an inch thick. The two perforations are 2-1/2 inches apart; they have been bored from opposite sides, and show no evidence of use. Nine notches have been cut in one end of the tablet. It has been much injured by recent use as a whetstone. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... let's see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier to the hilts ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... is not Fortunes work neither, but Natures, who perceiueth our naturall wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this Naturall for our whetstone: for alwaies the dulnesse of the foole, is the whetstone of the wits. How now Witte, whether wander you? Clow. Mistresse, you must ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... into my house and asked me for a whetstone. I gave it, not daring to refuse him. He sat down and sharpened his knife, feeling its edge and pointing often and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... and none other like him: a little, great man, a man of cunning plots and contrivances, very bold and determined and crafty beyond words. He is moreover a notable good seaman and commander, quick of hand and eye. Dangers and difficulty are but a whetstone to set a keener edge to his abilities. He was once a chief of buccaneers and is now a baronet of England and justice of the peace, aye, and I think a member ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... envy would allow No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... is not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... rubbed their k[n]iues vppon a whetstone; Some threw them vnder the table, & said they ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... "fossiliferous specimens of the oolite formation," "tertiary," "silurian," "saurian," "stratification," "carboniferous." It was quite wonderful to hear such a stream of learning, and to see, at the same time, the vigour of these terrene philosophers in polishing their specimens upon a whetstone, laid upon their knees. A few shillings put us all in possession of memorials of Clifton, in the shape of little slabs of different strata, polished on both sides, and ingeniously moulded to resemble a book. A little further up, we got besieged by another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away till his hands were blistered ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... one of mine commonly of a Sunday. After dinner up to my Lord, there being Mr. Kumball. My Lord, among other discourse, did tell us of his great difficultys passed in the business of the Sound, and of his receiving letters from the King there, but his sending them by Whetstone was a great folly; and the story how my Lord being at dinner with Sydney, one of his fellow plenipotentiarys and his mortal enemy, did see Whetstone, and put off his hat three times to him, but the fellow would not be known, which my Lord imputed to his coxcombly ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Mrs. Ramsey doesn't get out to her concerts any more, on account of her leg, and that makes her bluer'n a whetstone, but otherwise I guess we're all pretty much of a muchness. Everybody misses—land t' goodness," she caught herself up, "I guess there is one piece of news! I guess there ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... again an intermediary is commonly conjectured. The novel from Cinthio's Hecatommithi which formed the basis of Othello existed in a French translation; and his form of the plot of Measure for Measure came to Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone. The version of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice closest to the play is in Il Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is widespread. Incidents in The Merry Wives have sources or parallels in the same work, in Straparola's Piacevoli Notti, and in Bandello, but in both cases ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, the Hecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play, The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book The Heptameron ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as a whetstone." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... wit," or gagging of the comic actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony and Cleopatra" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the Old Academy. It is not large, but it is a golden book, and one, as Panaetius tells Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know, but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... by all that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a long time to achieve a ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather than the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... WHETSTONE, GEORGE (1544?-1587?).—Dramatist, one of the early, roistering playwrights who frequented the Court of Elizabeth, later served as a soldier in the Low Countries, accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Bertram; "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... governing this empire; I am too young and inexperienced. They put gold to the test when they wish to learn if it is fine. And so it is my wish, in brief, to try to prove myself, wherever I can find the test. In Britain, if I am brave, I can apply myself to the whetstone and to the real true test, whereby my prowess shall be proved. In Britain are the gentlemen whom honour and prowess distinguish. And he who wishes to win honour should associate himself with them, for honour is won and gained by him who associates with ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... what is said, that thou knowest the number of the designs of the dwelling of Tahuti?" And Dedi replied, "Pardon me, I know not their number, O king (life, wealth, and health), but I know where they are." And his majesty said, "Where is that?" And Dedi replied, "There is a chest of whetstone in a chamber named the plan-room, in Heli-opolis; they are in this chest." And Dedi said further unto him, "O king (life, wealth, and health), my lord, it is no It that is to bring them to thee." And his ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... forth all day. They made nine trips. They had now on shore a surprising quantity of all kinds of tools, goods and weapons. They had all kinds of ware to use in the kitchen, clothes, and food. Robinson prized a little four-wheeled wagon and a whetstone. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... millet were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Ku was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... build, which it was reported had been used by its former owner in several tournaments and there borne itself handsomely. This done, well or ill, his armour must be seen to, and Dick's also, such as it was; his lance tested, and all their other weapons sharpened on a whetstone that Sir Geoffrey borrowed. For this was a task that Grey Dick would leave ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... chair was placed for him opposite to Gwrnach. And Gwrnach said to him, "Oh man! is it true that is reported of thee that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kai. Then was the sword of Gwrnach brought to him. And Kai took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked him whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, and as thou wouldest if it were thine own." Then Kai polished one half of the blade and put it in his ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope[11] of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain I will drink, while I weave for warriors the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... and my line, my flote and my lead, My hook, & my plummet, my whetstone & knife, My Basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat for that is the chief; Then I must have thred & hairs great & smal, With mine Angling purse, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... of their lives in plenty, just as they had formerly quarrelled in poverty; for wrangling curs will fight over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Raoul died first, and Gillian having lost her whetstone, found that as her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent hours in long ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Smith, the representative for Norwich, took the mail; and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the wisdom of the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... bath-room rare. For things are come to this; the merest dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, And how a work is made, and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original use of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter him. I put the case last Thursday. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... whiche hath been verie good, but the goodnesse was not so much in the fishe as in the cookerie, which may make that sauorie, which of it selfe is vnsavourie ... it is sayd a good Cooke can make you good meate of a whetstone.... Therfore a good Cooke is a good iewell, and to be much made of." "Stockfish whilst it is unbeaten is called Buckhorne, because it is so tough; when it is beaten upon the stock, it is termed stockfish." Muffett. Lord Percy (A.D. 1512) was to have "cxl Stok fisch for the expensys ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... it when you visit this country. The next rock crystal, of which I have two specimens.[7] The fourth is alum, of which I procured a small quantity, as I did not visit the cave where it is to be obtained. The fifth is oil and whetstone, of which there is a great abundance in that quarter. The sixth is asbestus. In a word, the subjects are worthy the attention of those who wish to be instrumental in enlarging or ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... a book—any sort of book—to pass away the night withal, and returned for answer, that she knew of no other books in the house than her young mistress's (as she always denominated Mistress Martha Trapbois) Bible, which the owner would not lend; and her master's Whetstone of Witte, being the second part of Arithmetic, by Robert Record, with the Cossike Practice and Rule of Equation; which promising volume Nigel declined to borrow. She offered, however, to bring him some books from Duke Hildebrod—"who ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... with millet were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Kau was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... unconsciously timed to the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began to swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet folk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and, like the Gladiator's, they were far away. He was a splendid figure of ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... of diplomatists' pens and the creaking wheels of the pioneer's ox-wagon. It will sound above the clatter of Baltic ship-yards and in the silence of the desert where the caravan routes stretch white beneath the moon. The Afghan, bending knife in hand over a whetstone, and the Chinese coolie knee-deep in his wet paddy-fields, will pause in their work to listen to the sound, uncomprehending, even while the dust is gathering on the labours of the historian and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... playgrounds. Private charity has to keep a beggarly half-dozen going where there ought to be forty or fifty, as a matter of right, not of charity. Call it official conservatism, inertia, treachery, call it by soft names or hard; in the end it comes to this, I suppose, that it is the whetstone upon which our purpose is sharpened, and in that sense we have apparently got to be thankful for it. So a man may pummel his adversary and accept him as a means of grace at the same time. If there were no snags, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... [Greek Sigma omitted] complains that T has deprived him of many letters that ought to begin with [Greek Sigma omitted]. 84. If Jovis or Jupitris. 85. The celebrated Roman grammarian. A proverbial phrase for the violation of grammar was "Breaking Priscian's head." 86. Livy says, Actius Nevius cut a whetstone through with a razor. 87. A kind of lizard that was supposed to kill ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... some their whittles rubbed On whetstone, and on hone: Some threwe them under the table, And swore that they ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... me that the very contradiction and opposition we meet with from our fellow-men, ought to rouse our spirit to love them more, for they serve as a whetstone ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... insulting names. Finally he took the bold step to call himself king of Denmark and Norway, a baseless claim which he proposed to enforce. He made a vow never to use a hat until he had driven out Margaret, and sent her a whetstone several yards long, advising her to use it to sharpen her scissors and needles instead of using a sceptre. He was much too hasty, as he had only a weak hold upon Sweden even, whose nobles did not like his habit of bringing in Germans to fill the posts of honor and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... reluctance returned to Jamaica, having not only lost a leg, but also received a large wound in his face, and another in his arm, while he in person attempted to board the French admiral. Exasperated at the treachery of his captains, he granted a commission to rear-admiral Whetstone and other officers, to hold a court-martial and try them for cowardice. Hudson, of the Pendennis, died before his trial: Kirby and Wade were convicted, and sentenced to be shot: Constable, of the Windsor, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
