"Chisel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pointing joints, the pointing staff being held on a small board called the hawk. For roughly cutting bricks the large trowel is used; for neater work such as facings, the bolster and club-hammer; the cold chisel is for general cutting away, and for chases and holes. When bricks require to be cut, the work is set out with the square, bevel and compasses. If the brick to be shaped is a hard one it is placed on a V-shaped cutting block, an incision made where desired with the tin saw, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... out, which they had no doubt omitted to do. But if they had done this they would have been able properly to get to the lining, when two small pieces of wood about an inch square let into the plank made themselves apparent. And these, if removed with the point of a knife or chisel, brought small pieces of cork (circular in shape) to become visible. As soon as these corks were removed, the heads of bed-screws were observable, and these being unscrewed allowed two boards running the whole lengths of the berths to be taken up, by which means ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... the lover of architecture as architecture will protest that Michael Angelo's was meretricious, however inspiring, so M. Rodin declares his sculpture unsatisfactory, however poetically impressive. "He used to do a little anatomy evenings," he said to me, "and used his chisel next day without a model. He repeats endlessly his one type—the youth of the Sistine ceiling. Any particular felicity of expression you are apt to find him borrowing from Donatello—such as, for instance, the movement of the arm of the 'David,' which ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... whatever, he didn't know how the matter could be supposed to interest him. He did not inquire the means resorted to, but perhaps that was unnecessary, as the drawer had evidently been forced by a heavy chisel and the woodwork about the lock was crushed. Leonard glowered at him with stormy eyes during the brief interview but, true to his notions of subordination, asked no questions whatever. It was the colonel who presently gave it up as a hopeless job ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... wind blowing hard, and pouring water upon the earth, but the rock, fixed and unmoved beside the highway. Now, at last, he felt that he was stronger than all. But even as he rejoiced, he felt the sharp point of a stonecutter's chisel, and heard the sound of his heavy mallet striking upon its head. Then he knew that, though the water had fallen upon the rock and been unable to change it, and the wind had blown hard against it and had no effect, yet ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... overtake the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Michelangelo's foster-mother was the daughter and the wife of stone-cutters. "George," said he in after-years to his friend Vasari, "if I possess anything of good in my mental constitution, it comes from my having been born in your keen climate of Arezzo; just as I drew the chisel and the mallet with which I carve statues in together with ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... through the fissured bone will reveal the presence of the fracture (f. 88a). In the treatment of such fissures he directs that the scalp wound be enlarged, the cranium perforated very cautiously with a trepan (trepano) at each extremity of the fissure and the two openings then connected by a chisel (spata?), in order to enable the surgeon to remove the discharges by a delicate bit of silk or linen introduced with a feather. If a portion of the cranium is depressed so that it cannot be easily raised into position, suitable openings are to be made through the depressed bone in order ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet black eyes, shaded by their long dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely formed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the door; then it required all his self control to repress a cry, for in the comparative gloom of the passage beyond, he could just make out the figure of Vera, who stood there with her finger on her lip as if imposing silence. He could see that in her hand she held something that looked like a chisel. A moment later she flitted away once more, leaving Gurdon to puzzle his brain as to what it ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... that block; had it removed to his studio, and then went to work with his mallet and his chisel, and never rested till out of that rough, unshapen mass of stone he made a ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... shame in appropriating to himself a royal tomb recently constructed by a king, named Siphthah, whom he looked upon as a usurper, and therefore as unworthy of consideration. In this sepulchre we see the names of Siphthah and his queen, Taouris, erased by the chisel from their cartouches, and the name of Set-nekht substituted in their place. By one and the same act the king punished an unworthy predecessor, and provided himself with a ready—made tomb befitting ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Darkness within, yet beyond question there was a cavity there, not a solid wall; and with infinite care we removed another brick. Still the hole was too small to admit enough light from the dimly illuminated cell. With a chisel we pried at the sides of a large block of masonry, perhaps eight bricks in size. It moved, and we softly slid it from ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... pere," and Marie imitated in pantomime the use of the hammer and chisel. "Cut them all time winter, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... gentlemen went ashore and were astonished to find a native occupied in building a small sloop of about thirty tons: the tools of which he made use consisted of a half worn-out axe, an adze, about two-inch blade, made out of a paring chisel, a saw, and an iron rod which he heated red hot and made it serve the purpose of an auger. It required no little patience and dexterity to achieve anything with such instruments: he was apparently not deficient in these qualities, for his work was tolerably well advanced. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... not harder than Porphyry or Agate, the Chisel of my love, drove by the Mallet of my fidelity, would have made some impression on thee. I, that have shaped as I pleased the most untoward of substances, hoped by the Compass of reason, the Plummet of discretion, the Saw of constancy, the soft ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... hands shook so that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too, like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and it's a wonder we didn't spill the whole lot between us. I got away from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he's just made an ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... themselves into: each man's personal effects in their entirety, including weapons and ammunition, the latter, however, to be securely screwed up in a stout wooden case, so that it might not be got at and used against us whilst effecting the transfer of the mutineers to the shore; a saw, hammer, chisel, and an assortment of nails; half a dozen barrels of beef, and the same of bread; a half-chest of tea, a few pounds of coffee, and some sugar; a cock and three hens; some cooking utensils; a little crockery; matches; and an old main-course; which, with the axes, shovels, picks, rope, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... Sprinkle carbon, graphite, or metal dust on commutators. Put a little grease or oil at the contact points of commutators. Where commutator bars are close together bridge the gaps between them with metal dust, or sawtooth their edges with a chisel so that the teeth on adjoining bars meet or nearly meet and current can pass from ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him,'" quoted Old Man Curry, "and that's sound advice, my son. When a fool gets an idea crossways in his head, nothing but a cold chisel will get it out again, and, anyway, people don't thank you for pointing out their mistakes. It's human nature to get mad at a man that can prove he knows more than you do. This Hopwood has got it all whittled down to a fine point how ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... rough particles must positively be removed with chisel and hammer and with a free application of emery cloth and wire brush. The metal exposed to the welding flame should be perfectly clean and bright all over, or else the additional material will not unite, but will ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... the flame of the lamp is directed against the old paint, which becomes soft and is removed with a chisel knife, or a scraper called a shavehook. The door was ajar and he had opened the top sash of the window for the purpose of letting in some fresh air, because the atmosphere of the room was foul with the fumes of the lamp and the smell of the burning paint, besides being heavy ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... implements and take not kindly to metal ones. Rude knives are still used for skinning deer, especially by the old Indians. The axe, of course, is employed for cutting trees and excavating canoes and mortars. It has really taken the place of the stone chisel, yet many old men prefer burning the roots of the tree until it can be made to fall by giving it a few hacks with the rude ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... later, Gautreau was on his knees, holding on to the leg of the table. His head was covered with blood-stained bandages, and Dr. Boussin, chisel in hand, was tapping on his skull with the help of a little mallet, like ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... "scirocco" mood, to a few excursions into the neighbourhood. But there seem to be no walks hereabouts, and the hills, three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... nut came off as easily as the first and with no ill effects. Jason pushed a sharp chisel between the upper case and the baseplate where he had removed the solder, and when he leaned on it the case shifted slightly, held down only ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... heart almost to bursting, as a roaring grey cloud swept upon her from her right quarter, and she felt the burning thrust of Finn's fangs in her neck. She sat up valiantly to fight for her life and the young life in her pouch, and her left hind-leg, with its chisel claws, sawed the air like a pump-handle. The dingoes knew that it would be death, for one or two of them, at all events, to face those out-thrust chisels. They surrounded the big beast in a snarling, yowling ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... pity," said Denham, looking first at one block and then the other. "They are curious; why, they look as if some one had tried to chisel out a hand-barrow on a ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... to time," he said, in speaking of Don Giovanni, "in the sacred earth of Hellene we find a fragment, an arm, the debris of a torso, scratched and damaged by the ravages of time; it is only the shadow of the god that the sculptor's chisel once created; but the charm is somehow still there, the sublime style is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... varies in different countries. In the great slaughter-houses at Montmartre, in Paris, they are slaughtered by bisecting the spinal cord of the cervical vertebrae; and this is accomplished by the driving of a sharp-pointed chisel between the second and third vertebrae, with a smart stroke of a mallet, while the animal is standing, when it drops, and death or insensibility instantly ensues, and the blood is let out immediately by opening the blood-vessels of the neck. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... had not returned. The fellow had gone to his quarters, to fetch some implement, nearly an hour before. When another half-hour had gone by, Anthony, in some impatience, dispatched Blake for the tool. Twenty minutes later the latter returned, chisel in hand, but with no news of his mate. When it was five o'clock and there was still no sign of Stokes, Anthony struck work and ordered an organized search. It seemed rather hopeless, but, on the whole, the best thing to do. The ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Saxon Edward, but to British Arthur, as their great ancestor. A gloomy porch conducts us into a blaze of splendour. Walls, ceilings, and arches are richly decorated; the "stone seems by the cunning labours of the chisel (says Washington Irving) to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic." Nobody seems to be quite sure who was the architect of this beautiful piece of workmanship. The king lavished vast sums of money on the costly edifice, and left plenty with the abbot ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... fancy the gems which our best artists are content to servilely copy—the sculptor who would sign works that now make the cities that possess them famous—the lapicido ("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same Perugia—the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to shame the coarser and heavier work of our time—the painter for whose presence at their courts princes were bidding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... greatly benefit them in a wide sense, and enlarge and strengthen their mental powers, or pleasantly contribute to the joys of life, and so even to the growth of a man's moral nature. The wise physician, who is fond of etching or botany, the brush, or the chisel or the pen, or who is given to science, does well to keep these things a little in the background until he is securely seated in the saddle of professional success. Then usually he may feel free to reasonably follow out his tastes, and to write, or in any other way ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... interstices being filled with mud, and the outside was plastered with earth and stones which the frost had so completely consolidated that to break through required great labour with the aid of the ice chisel and the other iron instruments which the beaver hunters use. The chase however was unsuccessful as the beaver ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... transforming chisel Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well, In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle - Pits, where peonies ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... The carpenter's hammer and chisel disposed of the resistance of the door in a few minutes. But some article of furniture had been placed against it inside, as a barricade. By pushing at the door, we thrust this obstacle aside, and so got admission to the room. The ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... mean. Clair, what shall we ruthlessly tear it away with? I hate to take a chisel ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... not in those days factories. The master of a craft worked, surrounded by his craftsmen and apprentices. Every wheel and spring were made upon the premises, fashioned and finished with chisel and file; and there was an interest in the work far beyond any which it possesses in the present day, when watches are turned out wholesale, the separate parts being prepared by machinery, and the work of the artisan consisting solely in ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... clapping his hands, "what a happy day it will be! I shall buy that tool-box at the store round the corner! It's such a beauty, with a little saw, a claw-hammer, a chisel, a screw-driver, and everything a carpenter needs. It costs ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... three—not only Hyde but another, a greater than Jekyll—a man as near to the angels as Hyde was to the demons. These well-fed City men, these Gaiety Johnnies, these plough-boys, apothecaries, thieves! within each one lies hidden the hero, did Fate, the sculptor, choose to use his chisel. That little drab we have noticed now and then, our way taking us often past the end of the court, there was nothing by which to distinguish her. She was not over-clean, could use coarse language on occasion—just ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... parents' criticisms as a matter of fact; she would have preferred to postpone parrying them. She acknowledged this to herself with a little irritation that it should be so, but when her father insisted, chisel in hand, she went down on her knees with charming willingness to help him. Mrs. Bell took a seat on the sofa and clasped her hands with the expression of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... as nothing; the truth is, that both he and Margaret commenced life, if not with a heavy purse, at least with each a light heart. He immediately took a house in Ballykeerin, and, as it happened that a man of his own trade, named Davis, died about the same time of lockjaw, occasioned by a chisel wound in the ball of the thumb, as a natural consequence, Art came in for a considerable portion of his business; so true is it, that one man's misfortune is another man's making. His father did all he could for him, and Margaret's sisters also gave them some assistance, so that, ere ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... roused from sleep by a volley of bullets fired through his tent; he rushed out, and was shot down by a trooper, and handcuffed. He lay there for two hours bleeding from a wound in his breast, until his friends sent for a black-smith, who forced off the handcuffs with a hammer and cold chisel. When I last heard of Mr. Haslam, a surgeon was attending him, and probing for the ball. R——, from Canada, [Captain Ross, of Toronto, once my mate] escaped the carnage; but is dead since, from the wounds. R—— has effected his escape. [ ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... easy to see where the power of his brush lay. No timid, uncertain, niggling stroke ever came from that torso or forearm or thigh. He hewed with a broad axe, not with a chisel, and he hewed true—that was the joy of it. The men of Meissonier's time, like the old Dutchmen, worked from their knuckle joints. These new painters, in their new technique—new to some—old really, as that of Velasquez and Frans Hals—swing their brushes from their spinal columns down their forearms ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... temple was begun by the sons of Pandu, after "the great war," Mahabharata, and that after their death every true believer was bidden to continue the work according to his own notions. Thus the temple was gradually built during three centuries. Every one who wished to redeem his sins would bring his chisel and set to work. Many were the members of royal families, and even kings, who personally took part in ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... face, too," rejoined his mother, quickly. "Jane, dear, run up to my room and get the one before this—that's something like; second drawer on the left. And stop eying those books; you can't get at them with anything less than a cold-chisel! ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... is from a bas-relief by Michelangelo, and as we examine it closely we discover that the sculptor's work was left unfinished. The rough marks of the chisel are still seen on the surface of the marble. A child's figure in the background is quite indistinct. Probably it was intended for the boy St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus. The child Jesus himself is by no means completed; his right ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... clanged. The gentleman looked up, with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid, staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and now I am somewhat at fault; I am in want of assistance; I want you, brother, or some one else, to take the bar out of my hand and support it upon the covantza, whilst I, applying a chinomescro, or kind of chisel, to the heated iron, cut off with a lusty stroke or two of the shukaro baro, or big hammer, as much as is required for the petul. But having no one to help me, I go on hammering till I have fairly knocked ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of northern Italian sculptors in his dexterous use of his chisel; his ease in composition and his skill in the management of drapery would have made him eminent; but the effect of all these good qualities was injured by his mannerism, and the fact that his standard of beauty was not a high one. This may ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... an' don't stan' laffin' like a loon, ye bloody Irishman," he said to Chips, and the carpenter disappeared quickly. He returned in a moment with a brace and bit, a cold chisel, and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... exuberance, we must remember that the word is far from corresponding to an idea of absolute beauty. Thus the Ideal of an ordinary taste is not so high as that of a person whose standard of beauty is superior, and the two will be very distant from the image conceived by the pen, the chisel or the brush of a great artist. In many cases the Ideal is nothing but a searching for the intention of nature, obliterated by the circumstances and accidents of life. Then the task of the artist should be to reestablish the type in his logic—a vulgar face ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... a start in the education, but it is far short of what is necessary for one in his condition. If he is told that the chisel or bit for a lathe has a diamond point, or is round-nosed, and must be ground at a certain angle, he naturally wants to know, as all boys do, why it ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... attention being fixed upon two men in the centre. One was turning a small stock, which was supported by two stakes standing perpendicularly, with a cleft at the top, in which the crown piece went round in the form a carpenter holds a chisel on a grinding stone; the other was holding a small branch of fir on that which was turning. Directly below it was a quantity of tow spread on the ground. I observed that this work was taken alternately by men and women. As I was turning about in order to leave them, a man ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... erection of this massive machinery has been admirably done. The parts, as sent from the shops of the contractor, have matched in all cases without interference here; and, when lowered into place, its final adjustment was then made without the use of chisel or file, and has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... traditions rise from its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August, her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the North, and the longer you looked at them the deeper they grew, just like the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as deep as the heavens above, that is, whose ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a chisel, and a knife. Secrete them. Work straight out under your window. We shall be ready for you by Wednesday night. Don't fail to give a signal if anything happens that prevents your cutting through. There is only an old stone wall between you and the river. You must take ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... had not been idle. He had made frequent trips to the vicinity of the cave, bringing away with him each time a bagful of the ore, which he had detached with his hammer and chisel, all of which he had submitted to the blow-pipe, acid tests, and, in most instances, with the same result that had ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... that the many picturesque incidents in this Addition have not been overlooked by Christian artists in search of subjects for the brush or the chisel. Of these three supplementary sections of Daniel the History of Susanna has, in this respect, been found much the most suggestive; probably as the one which is thought to contain the ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... for, time out of mind, the carvers of Vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two objects—a time-piece and a cabbage. But these they do exceedingly well, and intersperse them, with singular ingenuity, wherever they find room for the chisel. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as he proceeds, but there are no visible signs of growth in the workman's skill. Even when the highest point of finish is attained we cannot say that the hand is any more cunning than it was from the first. As well might we say that the last light touches of the sculptor's chisel upon the perfected statue are more skilful than its first vigorous strokes upon the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... iron rod, after the manner of a large chisel, and with this rub over those seams on the bronze which remain on the casts of the guns, and which are caused by the joins in the mould; but make the tool heavy enough, and let the strokes be long ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... would have a mind to make one of dem flyin mare, we chillun would slip a ax to de woods wid us en chop down a nice little pine tree, so as dere would be a good big stump left in de ground. Den we would chisel de top of de stump down all round de edges till we had us a right sharp peg settin up in de middle of de stump. After dat was fixed, we would cut us another pole a little bit smaller den dat one en bore a hole in de middle of it to make it set down on dat peg. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... did a wilful murder yet," said he. "Mallet and chisel come readier to my fist than a cutlass. Bide here, Joe. Let me get my bearings. This has the look of a ticklish matter for the lot of us. I shall be keepin' a weather ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... chisel trace A Nymph, or Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form, or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown, The sportive toil, which, short and light Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, Served too in hastier swell to show Short glimpses of a breast ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... had not more than descended at half past seven precisely (her usual hour) when Oliver came hastily into the room, demanding a hammer and chisel, and with such evident dismay upon his countenance that Miss Euphemia asked if anything ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... 'obsolete,' like war. The arts were kindled with celestial fire; New poets sang so Homer's fame grew dim; And brush and chisel gave the wondering race Sublimer treasures than old Greece displayed. Men differed still; fierce argument arose, For men are human in this human sphere; But unarmed Arbitration stood between And Reason settled in a ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... minted into coin. They were as statues rough-hewn at the quarry, and would have ripened to forms of majestic beauty, with brows like Jove and Minerva; with bosoms like Venus, cheeks like Ceres, and lips like Apollo, had the chisel of art but sculptured them out, rounded them off, and polished them down to an ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... game. One player goes out. The others decide on some workman to represent, each pretending to do some different task belonging to his employment. Thus, if they choose a carpenter, one will plane, one will saw, one will hammer, one will chisel, and so on. Their occupation has then to be guessed. It is perhaps more interesting if each ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... realise the idea of equality, and here in England we have been taught to hate the word by the evil effects of those absurd attempts which have been made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that, because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of the vocabulary of good men. Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it. How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think otherwise? How can ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... talking to a tall man clad in his mason's blouse, who looked about forty, but was I daresay older, who had his mallet and chisel in hand; there were at work in the shed and on the scaffold about half a dozen men and two women, blouse-clad like the carles, while a very pretty woman who was not in the work but was dressed ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... side by side in academic glory, which is not unlike theatrical glory. Ducis had succeeded in doing something with Shakespeare; he had made him possible; he had extracted some "tragedies" from him; Ducis impressed one as being a man who could chisel an Apollo out of Moloch. It was the time when Iago was called Pezare; Horatio, Norceste; and Desdemona, Hedelmone. A charming and very witty woman, the Duchess de Duras, used to say: "Desdemona, what an ugly name! Fie!" Talma, Prince of Denmark, in a tunic of lilac satin trimmed with fur, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... a suit of greasy overalls, and went into the grimy vitals of the destroyer, a wrench in one hand, a chisel in the other. In about ten minutes he had solved the problem, explained it to the mechanics gathered about him, and then demonstrated just how simple the remedial measures were. All torpedo boat officers do this more often than not. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Dr. Dwight remarks; 'The numbers of the poet, the delightful melody of song, the fascination of the chisel, and the spell of the pencil, have been all volunteered in the service of Satan for the moral destruction of unhappy man. To finish this work of malignity the stage has lent all its splendid apparatus of mischief; the shop has been converted ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Vibart with hammer and chisel —deuce take me! Most distressing! and, you will pardon my saying so, you do not seem to thrive on hammers and chisels; no one could say you looked blooming, or even flourishing like the young bay tree (which is, I fancy, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... engaging and disengaging frictions; we do not know how we can better explain this term than by illustrating the idea with a grindstone. Suppose two men are grinding on the same stone; each has, say, a cold chisel to grind, as shown at Fig. 17, where G represents the grindstone and N N' the cold chisels. The grindstone is supposed to be revolving in the direction of the arrow. The chisels N and N' are both being ground, but the chisel N' is being cut much the more rapidly, as each particle ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... beautiful. Architecture was consecrated to the gods, and so was art. You go to Delphi, said Plutarch, and see those wonderful works of the ancient artists and sculptors, as fresh still as if they had left the chisel yesterday, and they had stood there for hundreds of years, wonderful in their beauty. Think of some of the remains of the Greek art—of that Victory, for instance, which the Messenians set on the temple at Olympia in 421 B.C. She stood ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery. The ingenuous Alice gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Heyward, though accustomed to see the perfection of form which abounds among the uncorrupted natives, openly expressed his admiration at such an unblemished specimen of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... naturally depends upon the quality of the soil; if rock is to be cut through, it is worked with a mason's axe and the cold chisel. Fortunately the geological formation is principally sedimentary limestone, which offers no great resistance. At length the water is reached. The well is now left open for a few days that an opinion may be formed of the power; if favourable, another precisely similar well ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... place by a little contrivance connecting the two sashes, which is held in place by a couple of baby screws. If these contrivances are of the best kind and cannot be opened from the outside with a knife-blade or piece of tin, the burglar puts a chisel or jimmy under the lower sash and gently presses it upward, when the baby screws come out as easily as if they were babies' milk-teeth. Not for a moment does the burglar trouble himself about the front door, with its locks and chains and ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... the statue of Philip Lebon, the inventor of lighting by gas, occurred on the 26th of June, at Chaumont, under the auspices of the Technical Gas Society of France. The statue, which we illustrate herewith, is due to the practiced chisel of the young sculptor Antide Pechine, who has perfectly understood his work, and has represented the inventor at the moment at which he observes a flame start from a glass balloon in which he had heated some sawdust. The attitude ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... few minutes each was armed with a chisel and a light crowbar. They then went to the edge of the wall, and, throwing these weapons down, lowered themselves as far as they could reach and dropped ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... to the carpenter's tool-basket, and taking from it an old chisel, a screw-driver, and a pair of pincers, went back to the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... light which came in through the small opening which has been spoken of. From another pocket he produced two iron instruments carefully wrapped up, so as not to strike against each other. "Here is a strong chisel," he said, "and here is a stout file. I have heard of people working their way through prison walls with worse instruments than these. Now farewell, friend Moretz. The time I am allowed to remain with you is ended, and the gaoler will be here ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... sister Florrie's birthday present; and the way he drove the motor-car. It had taken them over an hour and a half, and rather than waste the tickets for the theatre, they had gone without their dinner. The matter of the cold chisel still remained ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... boulders, and as bald of vegetation as a desert. The rocks on the slope of the ridge and along the sides of this wide shallow ravine were cut as sharply and worn as smooth as if the stone cutter's chisel had ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth. A piece of hoop iron may be prepared by bending it back and forth at a point about one inch from the end, until the fragment is nearly broken off, or by cutting nearly through it with a cold chisel. When the iron has been heated red-hot, the prepared end is taken between the teeth, a couple of bends will complete the break. The piece which drops from the teeth into a dish of water will make a puff of steam and a hissing sound, which will demonstrate ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... at work in the other end of the shop when she began, had drawn near, chisel in hand, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... chief characteristics of mature genius is that it springs directly from conception to expression without much thought as to the means; a man who has used the same tools for a dozen years is not likely to take his chisel by the wrong end, nor to hesitate in choosing the right one for the stroke to be made, much less to 'take a sledge-hammer to kill a fly,' as the saying is. His unquiet mind has discovered some new and striking relation between the true and the beautiful; ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... chisel. The three events presented themselves together—Tom's escort of Catharine, the interview with Mrs. Furze, and the departure to Chapel Farm. He was excited, and his excitement took the form of a sudden passion ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... worse, the lieutenant's desk in the front room, securely locked when he went to town, had been burst open with a chisel, and Mr. Ray had declined to say how much he had lost. Indeed, he did not ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... and rhetoric, And exult with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! —Love, while able to acquaint her While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art. Gone, music too! The air was stirred By happy wings: ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of humanity, happiest man among men, Who, with hammer, or chisel, or pencil, with rudder, or ploughshare, or pen, Laboureth ever and ever with hope through the morning of life, Winning home and its darling divinities—love-worshipped children and wife, Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly the sharp chisel ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... of Dea Flavia's house, where the air is filled with the perfume of roses and violets and tame songbirds make their nests in the oleander bushes? Wouldst like to recline on soft downy cushions, allowing thy golden hair to fall over thy shoulders the while I, mallet or chisel in hand, would make thy face immortal by carving it in marble? The praefect saith thine is a case for pity, then do I have pity upon thee, and give thee the choice of what thy life shall be. Squalor and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... floor-space in Memorial Hall and its northern annex. In extent of both "hanging" and standing ground they but equal England and France, each occupying something over twenty thousand square feet. Italy in the aesthetic combat selects the chisel as her weapon, and takes the floor with a superb array of marble eloquence, some three hundred pieces of statuary being contributed by her sculptors. She might in addition set up a colorable claim to the works executed on her soil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... scarab in cameo, in soft material was easily done, and the incising of its flat under surface with the hieroglyphics not difficult; the artist most likely used, one or more instruments of different sizes, formed at the end like a very small chisel or bradawl, and gouged or punched out the figures and inscriptions desired, before the glazing or enameling was put on, this gave a flat appearance at the depth or bottom of the incised work. On those of hard stone they used ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... endowment from the same source. Did it never strike you as being absurd, that men should expect, and as far as they can, require all women to be good housekeepers? They might as well expect every mechanic to carve in wood or chisel marble into forms of life. But it is my one available talent, and has stood me in good stead, though I have no doubt it was one chief cause of my trouble, by attracting ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of Exodus without being impressed with the fact that the man who wrote them had in him the spirit of the Master Workman—a King's Craftsman. His carving the ten commandments on tablets of stone also shows his skill with mallet and chisel, a talent he had acquired in Egypt, where Rameses the Second had thousands of men engaged in sculpture and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... once moulded and marred was his life: the statue which we all, as we sketch it, endow with the strength of the Milo, the glory of the Belvedere, the winged brilliance of the Perseus! which ever lies at its best; when the chisel has dropped from our hands, as they grow powerless and paralysed with death; like the mutilated torso; a fragment unfinished and broken, food for the ants and worms, buried in the sands that will quickly ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... from the rock the rough and rudest stone, It needs no sculptor, it is Washington; But if you chisel, let the strokes be rude, And on his ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... difficult to imagine the scenes of the intense young life which filled these noble halls in that fresh day of aspiration and hope, when this Spanish sunlight fell on the marble and the granite bright and sharp from the chisel of the builder, and the great Ximenez looked proudly on his perfect work and saw ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Governor, to the crypt, and satisfy your archaeological curiosity. The place is much lower, and worse lighted, than the contemporary crypt of St. Peter's-in-the-East, but not, perhaps, less interesting. The square-headed capitals have not been touched, like some of those in St. Peter's, by a later chisel. The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise much as Robert D'Oily left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor. It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work very well, and gives satisfaction to the persons who have to employ it. Sinister the Norman castle ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... hew, crop, reap, mow, lop, prune, clip, shear, whittle, shave, trim, detruncate, dock, curtail, exscind, dissect, chamfer, amputate, carve, chase, chisel, lance, bisect, cleave, razee, slit, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... could knock a little off at a time or chisel it," ventured Mr. Budlong. "It's hard as a rock," feeling of it. "You'll ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... and a steady hand, but a cabinet-maker has to have more than that. I once allowed my conceit to deceive me into thinking that I could put together, as you call it, a first-class cabinet, because I had handled plane and chisel and T-square more or less doing carpenter's work. I measured and marked and squared off the wood and had everything fitted down to the inch. Yes, but now when it came to the joining and gluing together, everything was all wrong; the sides were warped and wouldn't come together, the lid in front was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... yourself no further to exhibit plans and ideas here. I confirm them beforehand, knowing well what I do. Prince Zeno, whose good taste and intellect I admire, advised me to turn to you. At his house, moreover, I have seen works of your chisel which charmed me. Some declare that we men of finance and business represent only matter, and have no concern with Psyche (the soul). But I say that your Psyche, now in Prince Zeno's palace, produced on me the impression that I ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... which served as the principal channel of publication. It contained successively "Footprints on the Beach," January; "Snowflakes," February; "Howe's Masquerade," May; "Edward Randolph's Portrait," July; "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "Chippings with a Chisel," and a sketch of Jonathan Cilley, his friend who had just been shot by Graves in a duel, all in September; and these tales he signed as by The Author of "Twice-Told Tales." The Province House series was ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Montepulciano. But when the church, which this triumph of art adorned, came to be repaired, the miracle of beauty was dismembered. The sculpture for which Aragazzi spent his thousands of crowns, which Donatello touched with his immortalising chisel, over which the contractors vented their curses and Bruni eased his bile; these marbles are now visible as mere disjecta membra in a church which, lacking them, has little to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that "the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured. The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones. Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir." "Sculptured with an axe," reads rather ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... to confusion between the genuine old work and the modern imitation of it. It is far better, when there is no question of stability but only of appearance, to leave the old stonework, even though much decayed, as it is, unscraped, untouched by the chisel, and where strength is needed to put in frankly nineteenth-century work, which could never by any possibility be mistaken for part of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... see the city. Everything was quiet and still, and he devoted himself to a more particular examination of the bars of the brig. They were two inches thick, but the case looked hopeful. Pursuing his investigations still farther, he found, under the steps, a saw, a hammer, a chisel, and some other tools, which Bitts, the carpenter, had placed there a few days before, and forgotten to remove. Clyde took up the saw; but just then, Peaks, with a book in his hand, seated himself at a table near the brig, and began ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... hands in successive stages, and the wholesale manufacture of furniture by steam has taken the place of the personal supervision by the master's eye of the task of a few men who were in the old days the occupants of his workshop. As a writer on the subject has well said, "the chisel and the knife are no longer in such cases controlled by the sensitive touch of the human hand." In connection with this we are reminded of Ruskin's precept that "the first condition of a work of Art is that it should be conceived and ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... soft and wet it readily took the shape of any figure impressed upon it. The deftly-handled tool could engrave characters upon its yielding surface almost as fast as the reed could trace them upon papyrus, and much more rapidly than the chisel could cut them in wood. Again, in its final condition as solid terra-cotta, it offered a chance of duration far beyond that of either wood or papyrus. Once safely through the kiln it had nothing to fear short of deliberate destruction. The message intrusted to a terra-cotta slab or cylinder ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... who frequented country churchyards and the graves of covenanters. He was first discovered in the burial ground at Gandercleugh, clearing the moss from the gray[TN-24] tombstones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscriptions, and repairing the decorations of the tombs.—Sir W. Scott, Old ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... out an ugly knife and tried to put it between his lips like a lever or chisel. But Pinocchio, as quick as lightning, caught his hand with his teeth, and with one bite bit it clear off and spat it out. Imagine his astonishment when instead of a hand he perceived that a cat's paw ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... shaped it must be hollowed out. This is done by means of a "gouge," or chisel with a curved edge. A small vessel can be hollowed by means of a knife or ordinary chisel, but it is best to have a "gouge," if there is much wood to be taken out. When he has made the interior of his vessel as deep and wide as he thinks proper, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Joyce. She grasped the chisel and inserted it in the crack, pushing on it with all her might. But the door resisted, and Cynthia was just uttering the ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... walked, you would have imagined she had descended from a pedestal; the pose of her head was like that of the Greek Venus; her delicate, dilating nostrils seemed carved by a cunning chisel from transparent ivory. She had a startled, wild air, such as one sees in pictures of huntress nymphs. She used a naturally fine voice with great effect; and had already cultivated, so far as she could, a taste ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the very next day, and get the parts I needed cut on the lathe. "All you need do is to give me the measurements," he said. "And you must want some tools, surely? Saw and drills; right! Screws, yes, and a fine chisel ... ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... hundred thousand. In five years we can make the Haynes-Cooper organization look as modern and competent as a cross-roads store. This isn't a dream. These are facts. You know how my mind works. Like a cold chisel. I can see this whole country—and Europe, too, after the war—God, yes!—stretched out before us like a patient before expert surgeons. You to attend to its heart, and I to its bones and ligaments. I can put you where no other woman has ever been. I've a hundred ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the lot of the man seemed hard, as he sat there in the hot, heavy atmosphere, hour after hour, from morn till eve, with the sweat pouring down his brow and over his naked shoulders, toiling and moiling with hammer and chisel. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... entered, the artist was busy in his atelier, working upon the figures of the characters in the "Mimic," the latest work of Professor Engel. "Master," said he, smilingly, extending him his hand, "I have come to thank you for many beautiful, happy hours which I owe to you. You paint with the chisel and poetize with the brush. An ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... been exercised by any statesman before or after. When he rises to speak in the House all eyes are riveted on him as though with a vice until he has finished speaking. Even when he has finished they sometimes have to be removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms with a chisel. His speeches have the moral fervour and intensity of one of the Minor Prophets—NAHUM or AMOS, in the opinion of some critics, though I personally incline to MALACHI or HABAKKUK. This personal magnetism which Mr. LLOYD GEORGE radiates in the House he radiates no less in 10, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... conceal Giotto's important tempera picture in Santa Croce is a better instance, but a still more impressive lesson might be received by comparing the inanity of Canova's garland grace, and ball-room sentiment with the intense truth, tenderness, and power of men like Mino da Fiesole, whose chisel leaves many a hard edge, and despises down and dimple, but it seems to cut light and carve breath, the marble burns beneath it, and becomes transparent with very spirit. Yet Mino stopped at the human nature; he saw the soul, but not ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... drew attention. Under a patient chisel, the latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the cloudings incident to casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now revealed. Round and round the bell, twelve figures of gay girls, garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... had seemed difficult before had grown easy, the American, who had cut plenty of tough short pieces of pine and formed them chisel-ended, driving one in between the natural faults in the stone with the head of the axe, and then climbing upon it to drive in another, which formed a standing-place in turn, the slope upward of ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Englands, where an age sublimates into a genius, and the whole population is made into Paddies to feed his porcelain veins, by transfusion from their brick arteries. Our few fine persons are apt to die. Horatio Greenough, a sculptor, whose tongue was far cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years. Nature has only so much vital force, and must dilute it, if it is to be multiplied into millions. "The beautiful is never plentiful." On the whole, I say to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... yet, no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts. Michel Angelo's head is full of masculine and gigantic figures as gods walking, which make him savage until his furious chisel can render them into marble; and of architectural dreams, until a hundred stone-masons can lay them in courses of travertine. There is the like tempest in every good head in which some great benefit for the world ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... beyond the grave, and to snatch as much as we can from oblivion—such is our natural love of immortality; but it is here that letters obtain the noblest triumphs; it is here that the swarthy daughters of Cadmus may hang their trophies on high; for when all the pride of the chisel and the pomp of heraldry yield to the silent touches of time, a single line, a half-worn-out inscription, remain faithful to their trust. Blest be the man that first introduced these strangers into ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... wound up in his occupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a man who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is no room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made to cut his way through life alone, or a file full of roughness, made to be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so married to their occupation or profession ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... clothes, his last year's nankeen trousers, and his shabby tight jacket were ridiculous. Put Antinous or the Apollo Belvedere himself into a water-carrier's blouse, and how shall you recognize the godlike creature of the Greek or Roman chisel? The eyes note and compare before the heart has time to revise the swift involuntary judgment; and the contrast between Lucien and Chatelet was so abrupt that it could ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... circular well partly scooped out, partly built up for the reception of the sparkling water, a cliff rises perpendicularly to the height of fifty feet, surmounted, after a break in the strata, by another, perhaps twenty feet higher, the upper portion being curiously wrought by nature's chisel into the shape of a human countenance. The forehead is shelving, the eyebrows heavy and menacing; the nose large and hooked like the beak of a hawk; the upper lip short, the chin prominent and pointed, while ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... eagle eye detected in a man who entered the shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows of age, and who requested Poll to shave him clean. He was a sailor-man to look at; but his profile, David, might have been carved by a Grecian chisel out of an iceberg, and that steel grey eye of his might have struck a chill, even through a chink, into any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of Montague Tigg. The task of rasping so hirsute a customer ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... frequently heard him mentioned in sermons as a person to be imitated. In reality he was the worst kind of ass; and I wouldn't like to think of your getting embalmed as he did, and being dug out afterwards by an antiquary with a chisel. For the matter of that I shouldn't care to hear of people writing odes about you on account of your going under while your sword was in its sheath and ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... attracted by certain singular, cautious, subdued noises in that of her husband. After listening to them for some time with thoughtful attention, I at length succeeded perfectly in translating their import. They were sounds occasioned by the artist in prying open the oblong box by means of a chisel and mallet, the latter being apparently muffled or deadened by some soft woollen or cotton substance in which its head ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... a massive block of granite called the Giant's Column. It is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter, and still bears the mark of the chisel. When or by whom it was made remains a mystery. Some have supposed it was intended to be erected for the worship of the sun by the wild Teutonic tribes who inhabited this forest; it is more probably the work of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... What arouses my wonder most is, that when I arrived no Sangley knew how to paint anything; but now they have so perfected themselves in this art that they have produced marvelous work with both the brush and the chisel, and I think that nothing more perfect could be produced than some of their marble statues of the Child Jesus which I have seen. This opinion is affirmed by all who have seen them. The churches are beginning to be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... givin' of 'e thicky toy bwoat, a matter o' twelve or vourteen year agone 'tis now. My goodness me! how time du vly, to be sure. It du seem to me only like a vew months ago that I took spokeshave and chisel in hand to make thicky bwoat, and here you be, a'most a man in years, and quite a man in ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... mainly polychromatic. Greek Ionic and Corinthian monuments, however, as well as minor works such as steles, altars, etc., were richly adorned with carved mouldings and friezes, festoons, acroteria, and other embellishments executed with the chisel. The anthemion ornament, aform related to the Egyptian lotus and Assyrian palmette, most frequently figures in these. It was made into designs of wonderful vigor ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... shouts which these strangers usually repeat thrice, as well when bidding hail to their commanders and princes, as when in the act of engaging in battle. Many a look was turned back by their comrades, and many a form was seen in the ranks which might have claimed the chisel of a sculptor, while the soldier hesitated whether to follow the line of his duty, which called him to march forward with his Emperor, or the impulse of courage, which prompted him to rush back to join his companions. Discipline, however, prevailed, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... read it, I seem to hear a well-known sculptor as he talked one night to me of the spiritual way in which marble, so soft and yet so firm, answered like living material to his tool, sending flame into it, and then seemed, as with a voice, to welcome the emotion which, flowing from him through the chisel, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend will see to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have there in your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file—any tools that will cut these things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certain gentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get an answer—until he comes here. He will pay ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the very bush on which grew the rose John wore at his wedding. Pin it on the old scamp to-night, and see how he will look. He was a dapper little chap that night, and the years have hardly begun their work on him; or perhaps he is such a tough customer that he dulls the chisel of time. I do not know, and so long as it is so, you do not care, but we both know, and are both glad that of all the many things God has sent you in thirty years, he has sent you nothing so fine as ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... turned their attention to the felled tree once more, studying the innumerable teeth marks, like so many tiny chisel cuts, on stump and butt. Then they noticed the great chips lying about the stump, some of them half ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... at some time had been varnished, and the cracks, or joints of the trap, had been filled and sealed with the varnish. I now hoped I had found the habitation of my troublesome and noisy guest. I procured a chisel and cut the varnished joint, and found that there was a trap door, as I supposed. By the aid of a long screwdriver I was able to move the door, but at that moment a repetition of the noise, immediately under me, made me hesitate for ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... helm, You command a double realm; Labouring here to pay your debt, Till your little sun shall set; Leaving her the future task: Loving her too well to ask. Eglantine that climbs the yew, She her darkest wreathes for those Knowing her the Ever-new, And themselves the kin o' the rose. Life, the chisel, axe and sword, Wield who have her depths explored: Life, the dream, shall be their robe Large as air about the globe; Life, the question, hear its cry Echoed with concordant Why; Life, the small self-dragon ramped, Thrill for service to be stamped. Ay, and over ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Adrian, "but when last I saw him he was working at its hilt with a chisel, which seemed strange. He always wanted that sword. During the siege he offered a large reward to any soldier who could kill you and bring ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard |
