"Whittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whether the vocation he thinks of choosing is a healthy one. Statesmen, judges, and clergymen are noted for their longevity. They are not swept into the great business vortex, where the friction and raspings of sharp competition whittle life away at a fearful rate. Astronomers, who contemplate vast systems, moving through enormous distances, are exceptionally long lived,—as Herschel and Humboldt. Philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, as Galileo, Bacon, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... next day Peter came with a pair of birch-bark shoes for her. The milkmaid must have laughed when she saw Lisbeth coming home that second day wearing the birch-bark hat and shoes, and carrying her ordinary shoes in her hand. Another day Ole gave her a pocketknife. She ought to have something to whittle with, he thought, and he did not need that knife because he had one with a sheath that he always wore in his belt. The next day Peter brought her a musical horn that he had made in the evenings from a goat's horn. It had an unusually ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... answered Mrs. Schofield, turning upon him a stare of perplexity. "Don't cut into the leather with your new knife, dear; the livery man might ask us to pay if——No. I wouldn't scrape the paint off, either—nor whittle your shoe with it. COULDN'T you put it up ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... and his ideas, which made Tom more and more close and reserved. On this very day, when the momentous project was ripening, she had said he was lazy, that "a rolling stone gathered no moss," that the "boy was father to the man," and that if all he could do was to whistle and whittle, he had better go over to Squire Green's and help them shuck ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of Borneo, is thirty miles in length, and from four to six in breadth, with numberless rivers flowing into it. There is no danger on the right-hand shore going up, but what is seen; on the larboard shore considerable coral-reefs are met with. Laurie and Whittle's chart of it is tolerably correct. The principal towns are, Sungy Bassar, nearly at the head of the bay, and Bankaka, on the left; the former, under Sheriff Mahomed, sends its produce to Sulo; the latter, under Orang Kayas, trades with ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... got over their merry fit and skipped off to wake up another crowd of time assassinators, at Rockywold, or some such place as that, I says to myself, "Shorty," says I, "you stick to the physical-culture game and whittle out the by-plays." ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... I've time enough to whittle away at this before mother comes back. Now let's see ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... rend, slit, split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, tear, burst; rend &c, rend asunder, rend in twain; wrench, rupture, shatter, shiver, cranch^, crunch, craunch^, chop; cut up, rip up; hack, hew, slash; whittle; haggle, hackle, discind^, lacerate, scamble^, mangle, gash, hash, slice. cut up, carve, dissect, anatomize; dislimb^; take to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces, tear to pieces; tear to tatters, tear piecemeal, tear limb from limb; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Slick declined any share in the bottle of wine, he said he was dyspeptic; and a glass or two soon convinced me that it was likely to produce in me something worse than dyspepsy. It was speedily removed and we drew up to the fire. Taking a small penknife from his pocket, he began to whittle a thin piece of dry wood, which lay on the hearth; and, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... also recollect the boy who sat in front of you, who was the envy of all the boys in the school by being the possessor of a fine, new five-bladed jackknife, with which he used to whittle kites and whistles during recess. Ah! I see you do remember," said Halloran grimly, "and you also remember the day the ragged boy, sitting at the right of you, believing no one was looking, reached over and quietly, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... beastly, mad-brain'd war, Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged and our youth I cannot choose but tell him that I care not, And let him take't at worst; for their knives care not While you have throats to answer. For myself, There's not a whittle in the unruly camp But I do prize it at my love before The reverend'st throat in Athens. So I leave you To the protection of the prosperous gods, ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... cousin (besides Mrs. Ross) who passes her winters in Florence, or near it—Mrs. James Whittle. She is a great invalid, and never goes out. But she is now returning to a Schloss (Syrgenstein) they have in Bavaria. ... You are right. I have left my hill, which overlooks the great seaway between the Needles and Hengistbury ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Mrs. McLaren and Mrs. Lucas had determined to see us safely on board the Servia, they escorted us to Liverpool, where we met Mrs. Margaret Parker and Mrs. Scatcherd. Another reception was given us at the residence of Dr. Ewing Whittle. Several short speeches were made, and all present cheered the parting guests with words of hope and encouragement for the good cause. Here the wisdom of forming an international association was first considered. The proposition ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... beside the door, and she sat down comfortably on that, while Bob, picking up a handy stick of wood, drew a knife from his pocket and began to whittle. ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children that evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a second one to keep peace. While he was whittling the second one a neighbor came in and said: "Why don't you whittle toys and sell them? You could make money at that." "Oh," he said, "I would not know what to make." "Why don't you ask your own children right here in your own house what to make?" "What is the use of trying that?" said the carpenter. "My children ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... his path. What a Ceasar is lost to this benighted world, because in its blindness, it will not search out such men as Alkali and ask them to lead it onward to deeds of inconceivable greatness. Alkali Bill can whittle more chips in an hour than some men could in a week. Much of the Humboldt Valley, through which my road now runs, is at present flooded from the vast quantities of water that are pouring into it from the Ruby Range of mountains now visible to the southeast, and which have ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Both primogeniture and entail smacked of inequality and alienation of rights by one generation against the next. Although his Statute on Religious Freedom was not passed until 1786, each session after 1776 saw Jefferson successfully whittle down the privileges of the once-established Anglican Church. From 1776 until 1778 Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton labored on a revision of the state law code, but only a part of their code was adopted. A revised criminal code was not fully enacted until the 1790's. Jefferson made ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the reduction or purification of the pension list. This list had been, in truth, as much a matter of political principle and of party feeling as of mere finance. In the preceding session government had consented that it should be printed; and on April 19th, Mr. Whittle Harvey moved this resolution on the subject:—"That a select committee be appointed to revise each pension specified in the return ordered to be printed on the 28th of June, 1836, with a view to ascertain whether the continued payment thereof is justified by the circumstances ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... healthy children are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... their hard swinking and swiving. So I put my knife to the bear's gullet and pressed upon it, till I finished him by severing his head from his body, and he gave a great snort like thunder, whereat the lady started up in alarm; and, seeing the bear slain and me standing whittle in hand, she shrieked so loud a shriek that I thought the soul had left her body. Then she asked, 'O Wardan, is this how thou requites me my favours?' And I answered, 'O enemy of thine own soul, is there a famine of men[FN433] that thou must do this damnable thing?' She made no answer but bent ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... half in thought, Ben gave forth the burden of his anxieties, till at last self-reproachful beyond endurance, he seized a fragment of pine wood, and opening his jack-knife with superfluous energy, began to whittle, as if his life depended on sharpening ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Trot, and had been made welcome on account of his cleverness, honesty and good nature. He wore a wooden leg to replace the one he had lost and was a great friend of all the children in Oz because he could whittle all sorts of toys out of wood ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... there a new phlox and a pretty pink stone-crop, to add to our herbarium, while here as elsewhere the bignonia grows profusely in every crevice of the rock. At dark, two ragged and ill-smelling young shanty-boat men, who are moored hard by, came up to see us, and by our camp-fire to whittle chips and drone about hard times. But at last we tired of their idle gossip, which had in it no element of the picturesque, and got rid of them by hinting our ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... mysel',' said he; 'and I've heerd tell as whalers wear knives, and I'd ha' gi'en t' gang a taste o' my whittle, if I'd been cotched up just as I'd set ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... attempts of Sir Henry Tyler and his friends to stimulate persecutions for blasphemy at length took practical shape, and in July, 1882, Mr. Foote, the editor, Mr. Ramsey, the publisher, and Mr. Whittle, the printer of the Freethinker, were summoned for blasphemy by Sir Henry Tyler himself. An attempt was made to involve Mr. Bradlaugh in the proceedings, and the solicitors promised to drop the case against the editor and printer if Mr. Bradlaugh would himself sell them ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and put up your blade, Sheathe your whittle, or by Jis,[135] that was never born, I will rap you on the costard with my horn; What, will ye play ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewood to-day, mother. She's kin to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with 'em," he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's that Aurelia's child, the one that ran away with Susan Randall's son just before we come ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
