"Cubit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whose every cubit Seems to cry out, "How shall that Claribel Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis, 250 And let Sebastian wake." Say, this were death That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate As amply ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... possibly be any good in making a struggle to be a lady? Was it not rather one of those things which are settled for one externally, as are the colour of one's hair and the size of one's bones, and which should be taken or left alone, as Providence may have directed? "One cannot add a cubit to one's height, nor yet make oneself a lady;" that was the nature of Miss ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... saw fishes of 100 and 200 cubits long, that occasion more fear than hurt; for they are so timorous, that they will fly upon the rattling of two sticks or boards. I saw likewise other fish about a cubit in length, that had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Fergusson, estimating the cubit rather lower than in the text, makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or Holy Place, 60 by 30; the Holy of Holies, 30; the height 45 feet. Mr. Fergusson, following Josephus, supposes that the whole Temple had an upper story of wood, a talar, as appears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... often say, "I do well to be angry, why is it thus with me?" But, "who hath hardened himself against him and prospered?" His counsel must stand; and you may vex yourself, and disquiet your soul in the mean time, by impatience, but you cannot by your thought add one cubit to your stature. You may make your case worse than providence hath made it, but you cannot make it better by so doing, so that at length you must bow to him or be broken. Oh then that this were engraven on our hearts with the point of a diamond! "All his ways are judgment;" that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... (arm, cubit) is an Italian measure which varies in length, not only in different parts of Italy, but also according to the thing measured. In Parma, for example, the braccio for measuring silk is 23 inches, for woolens and cottons 25 and a fraction, while that for roads and buildings ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... spans long—Furttenbach measures a ship by palmi, which varied from nine to ten inches in different places in Italy,—say 150 feet, the length of an old seventy-four frigate, but with hardly a fifth of its cubit contents—and its greatest beam is 25 spans broad. The one engraved on p. 37 is evidently an admiral's galley of the Knights of Malta. She carries two masts—the albero maestro or mainmast, and the trinchetto, or foremast, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... to camp outside a village at a distance of not less than a mile. In the rains they make huts with a roof of bamboos sloping from a central ridge and walls of matting. The huts are built in one line and do not touch each other, at least a cubit's distance being left between each. Each hut has one door facing the east. As a rule they avoid the water of village wells and tanks, though it is not absolutely forbidden. Each man digs a shallow well in the sand behind his hut and drinks the water from it, and no man may drink the water ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... "As I gazed upon her, she chanced to look up and caught sight of me whereupon her face changed and she said to her women, 'Sing ye till I come back to you.' Then, taking up a knife half a cubit long, she made towards me, crying, 'There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious the Great!' Now when I saw this, I well-nigh lost my wits but, whenas she drew near me and face met face, the knife dropped from her hand, and she exclaimed, 'Glory to Him who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... consulted it as a mainspring of action. People who aim at the short cuts to knowledge should study stenography, and for this purpose they will do well to provide themselves with Mr. Harding's System, which will be as good as "a cubit to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... of his descendants. Some observers have made the remark that men of civilized nations who live in a degraded social state do actually approach to the physical type of inferior races. However this may be, it is quite certain, that as no man can by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, so no man can by taking thought make his skull brachycephalic or dolichocephalic. But the language which a man speaks does depend upon his will; he can by taking thought make his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... inconveniencies either of extreme heat or cold they want no clothing. Beyond these two islands is the sea of Andaman. The people on this coast eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, with frizzled hair, their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked. They have no sort of barks or other vessels, or they would seize and devour all the passengers they could lay their hands upon. When ships have been kept back by contrary winds, and are obliged to anchor on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the 'admiral and general at sea' never outgrew a tenderness for literature—his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... You must know that it is a round temple made of a single stone, the gateway all in the manner of joiners work, with every art of perspective. There are many figures of the said work, standing out as much as a cubit from the stone, so that you see on every side of them, so well carved that they could not be better done — the faces as well as all the rest; and each one in its place stands as if embowered in leaves; and above it is in the Romanesque style, so well made that it could not be better. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... background stay back where it belonged, my figure sometimes had a way of clinging to it in a kind of smudgy weakness, as if it were afraid to come out like a man and stand the inspection of my eye. How often have I squandered paint upon the ungrateful object without adding a cubit to its stature! It refused to look like flesh and blood, but resembled rather some half-made creature flung on the passive canvas in a liquid state, with its edges running over into the background. There are a good many of these people in literature, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... poet's conception—and the sagaman's—of Bodli—a man in the grip of terrible Fate, who can no more swerve from the paths she marks out for him than he can add a cubit to his stature. The Greek tragedy embodies this idea, and Old Norse literature is full of it. Thomas Hardy gives it later in his contemporary novels. We sympathize with Bodli's fate because his agony is so terrible, and we call him the most striking ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... thirty-four), but it was hard to shake out the entrenched. He had his public hypnotized. He could sell ten copies of a book where a reviewer could sell one. His word on a play was final—or almost. Personal mention of any of the Sophisticates added a cubit to reputation. Three mentions made them household words. Neglect caused agonies and visions of extinction. Disparagement was preferable. By publicity shall ye know them. Even public men with rhinocerene hides had been seen to shiver. Cause women courted ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the ancient cubit of Karnak.[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard. But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... time from one camp. As soon as a mile or more had been prospected or a new specimen secured, the boat was dropped down to a new convenient anchorage. Box after box was added to the collection till scarcely a cubit's space remained unoccupied on board ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... country, while those who engage in the immemorial art of knitting, and, in doing so, repeat designs found on neolithic pottery, continue to measure in finger breadths, finger lengths, and hand breadths as did the ancient folks who called an arm length a cubit. Nor has the span been forgotten, especially by boys in their games with marbles; the space from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger when the hand is extended must have been an important measurement from the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... a god, a cosmogony, a theology; gets no thought of goodness from God or for himself; gets no sign of reformation in character; rises not a cubit above the ground where he constructs his monologue; puts into God only what is in Caliban; has no faint hint of love toward him from God, or from him toward God, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... troublesome,—but simply by looking at her. You can see the feeling in their faces. They are for the most part small in stature, well made little men, who are aware that they have something to be proud of, wearing close-packed, shining little hats, by which they seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... till about six a.m., and then go indoors till dark again. This fortnight is the hottest time. To-day the drop falls into the Nile at its source, and it will now rise fast and cool the country. It has risen one cubit, and the water is green; next month it will be blood colour. My cough has been a little troublesome again, I suppose from the Simoom. The tooth does not ache now. Alhamdulillah! for I rather dreaded the muzeyinn (barber) with his tongs, who is the sole dentist here. I was amused the other ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... stalk of a cubit high, round, and joyned, whereupon do grow leaves very finely cut, like to those of Fennel, but much smaller." The herb is of the umbelliferous order, and its fruit chemically furnishes "anethol," a volatile empyreumatic oil similar to that ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Zu-lai [3], And the cypresses of Hsin-fu [3], Were cut down and measured, With the cubit line and the eight cubits' line. The projecting beams of pine were made very large; The grand inner apartments rose vast. Splendid look the new temples, The work of Hsi-sze, Very wide and large, Answering to the expectations of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in the sense of his desirability and watched with amusement the innocent manoeuvres by which his fair entertainers checkmated each other, and in their zeal occasionally forgot that he, too, was a rational ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... inmates of this floating menagerie, supposing them got in, supplied with fresh air? According to the Bible narrative the ark was furnished with but one window of a cubit square, and one door which was shut by God himself, and it may be presumed, quite securely fastened. Talk about the Black-hole of Calcutta, why it was nothing to this! What a scramble there must have been for that solitary window and ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... while waiting there they saw some wonderful things in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him, though rather doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird, struck them most,—"a cubit long and more, three fingers' breadth across, and the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as if artificially worked with fire and tools,"—the mouth and gullet so big that the leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On these birds particularly, says Azurara, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... much, but they cannot make a poet. Nothing can, but being a poet. Nor can these gifts make a great romancer or poet in prose. Nothing can, but being born to romance, being a prose poet. As the Gospel has it—"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?" George Eliot had not sufficiently meditated on this scripture. She too often supposed that by taking thought—by enormous pains, profound thought, by putting this thought in exquisite and noble words—she might produce an immortal ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Spendius. An inspiration guided him. He drew Matho behind Tanith's chariot, where a cleft a cubit wide ran down the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... conquest, an injunction that the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. Most nations have regulated the standard of measures of length by comparison with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the span, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as these are of different dimensions in men of different proportions, our antient historians[r] inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... warning? Look, then, and whether thou desirest my life or my death, thou shalt see that I dread not these robbers." Then, as the foremost of the four rode upon him, Geraint drove upon him with his spear with such force that the weapon stood out a cubit behind him; and so he did with the second, and the third, and the fourth. Then, dismounting from his horse, he stripped the dead felons of their armour, bound it upon their horses, and tying the bridle reins together, bade Enid drive the beasts before her. "And," said he, "I charge ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... "I did not speak, I did not think, of handles to his name. I find no good in them, but only means for deceiving and deluding the world. Such honours as might make him baronet, or duke, would add not a cubit to his stature. If he had such a thing by right" —his voice hardened, his eyes grew angry once again—"I would wish it sunk ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... waited pale and sorrowful, And down upon him bare the bandit three. And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint Drave the long spear a cubit through his breast And out beyond; and then against his brace Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him A lance that splintered like an icicle, Swung from his brand a windy buffet out Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunned the twain Or slew them, and dismounting like a man ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Columbus on his second voyage alludes to another method of using the herb. They make a powder of the leaves, which "they take through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder, and so draw it up, which purges them ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... fearful suddenness, whence they knew not, that crocodile arose. An awful scaly head appeared with dull eyes and countless flashing fangs, and behind the head cubit upon cubit of monstrous form. The fangs closed upon ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... friend, and the frank and jesting tongue was silent in that presence. Anne Brinsmade came with her father and wondered. A miracle had changed Virginia. Her poise, her gentleness, her dignity, were the effects which people saw. Her force people felt. And this is why we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature. It is God who changes, —who cleanses us of our levity with the fire of trial. Happy, thrice happy, those whom He chasteneth. And yet how many are there who could not bear the fire—who would cry out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ocean, and go thyself to the dwelling of Hades.[Footnote: Ha'-des] There is a certain rock, and near to it meet two streams, the river of fire, and the river of wailing. Dig there a trench; it shall be a cubit [Footnote: cubit, a foot and a half] long and a, cubit broad; pour out therein a drink-offering to the dead; and sprinkle white barley thereon. And as thou doest these things, entreat the dead, and promise that when thou shalt come again to Ithaca, thou wilt offer a barren heifer, even the best ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul's price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... on the same side, sit the ladies of his lineage yet lower, after that they be of estate. And all those that be married have a counterfeit made like a man's foot upon their heads, a cubit long, all wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made with peacocks' feathers and of other shining feathers; and that stands upon their heads like a crest, in token that they be under man's foot and under subjection of man. And they that be unmarried ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... to this species by Mr. Gammie are very regular ovals, pure white, and somewhat glossy, but they are so small that I can scarcely credit their really belonging to this species. Their cubit contents are not half those of the average eggs of S. nigriceps. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a 'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine gift which is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... art. Put on thy head a wig with countless locks, And to a cubit's height upraise thy socks, Still thou remainest ever, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... errand, his heart secure, as he thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,—an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with great energy. Stationed at the head of their divisions, all of them, remembering their great sufferings, without doubt, wander along the field like so many Indras! All of them are endued with high souls, and are tall in stature like the trunks of Sala trees. Taller than other men by half-a-cubit in stature, all the sons of Pandu are brave as lions and endued with great strength. All of them, O sire, have practised Brahmacharya vows and other ascetic austerities. Endued with modesty, those tigers among men are possessed of fierce strength like the veritable tigers. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from the members of the body that they derived the fundamental ideas of the measures which are obviously necessary in all works, as the finger, palm, foot, and cubit. These they apportioned so as to form the "perfect number," called in Greek [Greek: teleion], and as the perfect number the ancients fixed upon ten. For it is from the number of the fingers of the hand that the palm ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... place, that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the seventh ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Chron. iv. 2. 5. by proving that a vessel of oblate spheroidal form—of 30 cubits in the periphery, and 10 cubits in the major axis—would (according to the acknowledged relation of the bath to the cubit) hold exactly 2,000 baths liquid measure, and 3,000 baths when filled and heaped up conically with wheat (as specified ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... earth feed you who can help yourselves, because God has given you understanding and prudence? But as for anxiety, fretting, repining, complaining to God, 'Why hast Thou made me thus?' what use in that? 'Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?' Will all the fretting and anxiety in the world make you one foot or one inch taller than you are? Will it make you stronger, wiser, more able to help yourself? You are what you are: you can do what God has given you power to do. Trust Him ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... Livingstone and Kirk, and Charles Livingstone started for Nyassa with a light four-oared gig, a white sailor, and a score of attendants. We hired people along the path to carry the boat past the forty miles of the Murchison Cataracts for a cubit of cotton cloth a day. This being deemed great wages, more than twice the men required eagerly offered their services. The chief difficulty was in limiting their numbers. Crowds followed us; and, had we not taken down in the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... thing which ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... each of us agree with himself about the comparative length of the span and of the cubit? Does not the art ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... 40:5] There was a wall encircling a temple, and in the man's hand a measuring reed six cubits long, each cubit being equal to about twenty-one inches. And he measured the thickness of the building one reed (about ten and one-half feet); ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... couched his lance, and rushed upon Geraint. And he received him, and that not feebly. But he let the thrust go by him, while he struck the horseman upon the centre of his shield in such a manner that his shield was split, and his armour broken, and so that a cubit's length of the shaft of Geraint's lance passed through his body, and sent him to the earth, the length of the lance over his horse's crupper. Then the second horseman attacked him furiously, being wroth at the death of his companion. But with one thrust Geraint overthrew him also, and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... bid a man be habitually cheerful, he not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution—like the bone, the muscle, the power of memory, the aptitude for science or for music; and is partly the outcome of the whole ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... will not take food from any other caste. They work by contract on the dangri system of measurement, a dangri being a piece of bamboo five cubits long. For one rupee they dig a patch 8 dangris long by one broad and a cubit in depth, or 675 cubic feet. But this rate does not allow for lift ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... to live; though, as I have said, he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were placed under his direction; and Hans von Buelow came to serve his apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. Wagner mentions a performance ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... brave words. When I compare them with the general tone of Free Soil men in Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Washington and of politics. These men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by many a cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. Sumner's speech in the Senate unsays no part of his Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though discussing the same topic, no one would gather from any word or argument that the speaker ever took such ground as he did in Faneuil Hall. It is all through, the law, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... place. Although this fig-tree, growing out of the wall between the cellar and us, is fantastic enough in its branches, yet that other which I see yonder, bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by the prepotency of the young shapely walnut-tree, is much more so. It forms a seat, about a cubit above the ground, level and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 'holding part' of a tree, that which is like a handle to all its branches; 'stock' is another form in which it has come down to us: with some notion of its being the mother of branches: thus, when Athena's olive was burnt by the Persians, two days after, a shoot a cubit long had sprung from the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... men now who have even a "little faith" have learned this Christian secret of a composed life. Apart even from the parable of the lily, the failures of the past have taught most of us the folly of disquieting ourselves in vain, and we have given up the idea that by taking thought we can add a cubit to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... seashore and look at the sand, and behold the smallness of the particles thereof'—I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you understand—'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles there are, say in a cubit foot of sand—about one thousand million particles. Think of that! In eight thousand years, if the inhabitants of earth increased one trillion a century, three cubic yards of sand would still contain more particles than there would be people on the whole globe. Yet there you got ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... You overrate me, dear, but that does me good: makes me work harder. What a pity it is, May, that one can't add a cubit to his stature. I'd be a giant then.... But never fear; it'll be all right. You wouldn't wish me, I'm sure, to run away from a conflict I have provoked; but now I must see my father about those debts, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... that we cannot bring our experiences to an end, however petulantly and irritably we desire to do so, because it simply is not in our power to effect it. We talk about the power of the will, but no effort of will can obliterate the life that we have lived, or add a cubit to our stature; we cannot abrogate any law of nature, or destroy a single atom of matter. What it seems that we can do with the will is to make a certain choice, to select a certain line, to combine existing forces, to use them within very small limits. We can oblige ourselves to ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... when the workmen had raised their structures a cubit in the daytime, two cubits more were added in the night. Vathek fancied that even invisible matter showed a forwardness to subserve his designs, and his pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for the first time the eleven thousand stairs of his tower, he cast his eyes below and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... better and higher morality. Why, my Masters, it can not as much as purge its own channels. For what is the ballot box, I ask again, but a modern vehicle of corruption and debasement? The ballot box, believe me, can not add a cubit to your frame, nor can it shed a modicum of light on the deeper problems of life. Of course, it is the exponent of the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of the Party that has more money at its disposal. The majority, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the day, and how many days of the wasted year, do some females devote to the improvement of their persons! Impossible as it has ever been, and ever will be found, to make one hair black or white, to add one cubit to the stature, to bend one untractable feature into the admired curve to which common consent attributes grace and loveliness; the impossible transformation is nevertheless attempted. The treasures of opulence are exhausted; the more valuable possession ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... A space, whose eu'ry cubit Seemes to cry out, how shall that Claribell Measure vs backe to Naples? keepe in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake. Say, this were death That now hath seiz'd them, why they were no worse Then now they are: There be that can rule ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the wilds of air! Freely as an angel fair Thou dost leave the solid earth, Man is bound to from his birth Scarce a cubit from the grass Springs the foot of lightest lass— Thou upon a cloud can'st leap, And o'er broadest rivers sweep, Climb up heaven's steepest height, Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, Thou art neither seen nor heard, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... journeys of the women, and their mournings and festivals. A woman was not allowed to travel with more than three dresses, nor with more than an obolus' worth of food or drink, nor a basket more than a cubit in length; nor was she to travel at night, except in a waggon with a light carried in front of it. He abolished the habits of tearing themselves at funerals, and of reciting set forms of dirges, and of hiring mourners. He also forbade them to sacrifice an ox ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... have represented that as a failure to be surmounted; he could have repented it. It was his own inner being from which he revolted, from limitations which are worse than crimes, for who, by taking thought, can add one cubit ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... ramparts (enclosing the whole of Nebuchadrezzar's city), the remains of which can still be traced to the east. According to Nebuchadrezzar, Imgur-Bel was built in the form of a square, each side of which measured "30 aslu by the great cubit"; this would be equivalent, if Professor F. Hommel is right, to 2400 metres. Four thousand cubits to the east the great rampart was built "mountain high," which surrounded both the old and the new town; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... he, "of the herds of Conall, from Finnabndir—i.e., from Clochar; and let your body be placed in a wagon after them; and what way soever these young oxen go by themselves, and the place where they will stop, let it be there your interment shall be; and let there be a man's cubit in your grave, that your remains be not taken out of it." It was so done after his death. The oxen carried him to the place where to-day is Dun-da-leth-glas; and he was buried there with all honor and respect. And for a space of twelve ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... brains of one, two and three storeys. As you cannot, by thinking, add a cubit to your stature, so can you not, by thinking, add a storey to your brain. You may furnish and brighten the one storey or the two storeys with which your mental house was built before your birth. You may open the windows and let in the sun ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... fear the old woman opened a casket, a cubit long, containing a waxen statue of a man lying on his back. My name was written on it, and though it was badly moulded, my features were recognizable. The image bore my cross of the Order of the Golden Spur, and the generative organs were made of an enormous size. At this I burst into ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with scrupulous regard to all the rules of art. When I had finished that part of my work, I raised the mold by windlasses and stout ropes to a perpendicular position, and suspending it with greatest care one cubit above the level of the furnace, so that it hung exactly above the middle of the pit, I next lowered it gently down into the very bottom of the furnace, and had it firmly placed with every possible precaution for its safety. When this delicate operation was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... connection with what we are. The consciousness of having reflected seriously and conclusively on important questions, whether social or spiritual, augments dignity while it does not lessen humility. In this sense, taking thought can and does add a cubit to our stature. Opinions which we may not feel bound or even permitted to press on other people, are not the less forces for being latent. They shape ideals, and it is ideals that inspire conduct. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... it really hygiene which helped them to increase in weight, stature, and beauty, and improved their material development? Hygiene did not accomplish quite all this. Who, as the Gospel says, can by taking thought add one cubit to his stature? Hygiene merely delivered the child from the obstacles that impeded its growth. External restraints checked material development and all the natural evolution of life; hygiene burst these bonds. And ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... Abhayagiri dagoba at Anarajapoora, built B.C. 89, was originally 180 cubits high, which, taking the Ceylon cubit at 2 feet 3 inches, would be equal to 405 feet. The dome was hemispherical, and described with a radius of 180 feet, giving a circumference of 1130 feet. The summit of this stupendous work was therefore fifty feet higher than St. Paul's, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... biology, and it applies equally well to philology. Hence any system of philology, as the term is here used, made from a survey of the higher languages exclusively, will probably be a failure. "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature," and which of you by taking thought can add the antecedent phenomena necessary to an explanation of the language of Plato or ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... man should ascertain his height; height of his eye above ground; ditto, when kneeling: his fathom; his cubit; his average pace; the span, from ball of thumb to tip of one of his fingers; the length of the foot; the width of two, three, or four fingers; and the distance between his eyes. In all probability, some one of these is an even and a ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... for advancement; and, when grace is begun, it is sweet to grow in grace. If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely, we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, and so our progress be stopped ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... method almost to ridicule when He said, "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" Put down that ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... philosophy of the practical. Emerson is a great apostle of the ideal, an unexcelled preacher of New World self-reliance. His teachings, which have become almost as widely diffused as the air we breathe, have added a cubit to the stature of unnumbered pupils. We still respond to the half Celtic, half Saxon, song of one ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... by the power of the imagination he thinks to "gain a being more intense," to add a cubit to his spiritual stature. Byron professes the same faith in The Dream (stanza i. lines 19-22), which also belongs ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the traffic can bear!"—a brazen rule. Of such sage policy the result can be seen in the wizened and undersized submerged of London; of nearer than London. Man, by not taking thought, has taken a cubit ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... preached in Nauvoo, March 20, 1842, he said: "As concerning the resurrection, I will merely say that all men will come from the grave as they lie down, whether old or young; there will not be 'added unto their stature one cubit,' neither taken from it. All will be raised by the power of God, having spirit in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... which we have any knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, deep, wide, and full of water. Within this is a wall, the width of which is fifty royal cubits, and its height two hundred cubits.[6] The royal cubit exceeds the common measure by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... perhaps because the budding woman in her relished the power of choice and command it conferred on her own sex. Certainly no thought of possible future commands dawned on Roy. It was her pride in his achievement, so characteristically expressed that flattered his incipient masculine vanity and added a cubit to his stature. He knew now what he meant to be when he grew up. Not a painter, or a soldier or a gardener—but ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they lend us ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... keeper of the virtues to the far more important and exciting post as keeper of the vices. It is not an ideal power which she thus acquires. But then none of this is about ideals. This is just a little practical 'study in what is going to happen, and why. Taboos never yet have added a cubit to the stature of the soul of humanity. They have nearly always been the chattering children of fear and pure idiocy. They have always tried to throw the race back on to all fours, and have left the nobility of standing ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... demolished in order to obtain it. (184) The cross was tall enough for Haman and his ten sons to be hanged upon it. It was planted three cubits deep in the ground, each of the victims required three cubits space in length, one cubit space was left vacant between the feet of the one above and the head of the one below, and the youngest son, Vaizatha, had his feet four cubits from the ground as ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... just tell you what their respective weights are. The weight of a pint of hydrogen is three-quarters of a grain; the weight of the same quantity of oxygen is nearly twelve grains. This is a very great difference. The weight of a cubit foot of hydrogen is one-twelfth of an ounce; and the weight of a cubit foot of oxygen is one ounce and a third. And so on we might come to masses of matter which may be weighed in the balance, and which we can take account of as to hundredweights ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... vital force, mentality, aptitude for tool or industry, for art or science. These birth-gifts are quantities, fixed and unalterable. No heart-rendings can change the two-talent nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle flies over the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Entering the gorgeous palace, he finds all manner of minstrels and historians; harpers, pipers, and trumpeters of fame; magicians, jugglers, sorcerers, and many others. On a throne of ruby sits the goddess, seeming at one moment of but a cubit's stature, at the next touching heaven; and at either hand, on pillars, stand the great authors who "bear up the name" of ancient nations. Crowds of people enter the hall from all regions of earth, praying the goddess to give ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the kindling pile was laid, And pierced by Roderick's ready blade. Patient the sickening victim eyed The life-blood ebb in crimson tide Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb, Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet framed with care, A cubit's length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, And, answering Lomond's breezes deep, Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep. The Cross thus formed he held on high, With wasted ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... manuscripts were found. See E.N. Adler's Jews in Many Lands, p. 28, also J.Q.R., IX, 669. The Nilometer is in a square well 16 feet in diameter, having in the centre a graduated octagonal column with Cufic inscriptions, and is 17 cubits in height, the cubit being 21-1/3 inches. The water of the Nile, when at its lowest, covers 7 cubits of the Nilometer, and when it reaches a height of 15-2/3 cubits the Sheikh of the Nile proclaims the Wefa, i.e., that the height of the water necessary for irrigating every ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... a hard saying if we had to rely on ourselves. But we have God to rely on, who gives His help not according to the measure of our powers. A man cannot by taking thought add a cubit to his stature; he cannot increase the scope of his mind or the range of his senses; he cannot, by willing, make himself a philosopher, or a leader of men. But drawing on the source that is open to the poorest and the weakest he can become a good man; ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... The Grand Khan a tributary Prince. Argosies of gold, silk and spices, sailing steady, sailing fast over a waterway unblocked by Mahound and his soldans. All Europe burning bright, rising a rich Queen. Holy Church with another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... measure? Or could I indeed measure the motion of a body how long it were, and in how long space it could come from this place to that, without measuring the time in which it is moved? This same time then, how do I measure? do we by a shorter time measure a longer, as by the space of a cubit, the space of a rood? for so indeed we seem by the space of a short syllable, to measure the space of a long syllable, and to say that this is double the other. Thus measure we the spaces of stanzas, by the spaces of the verses, and the spaces ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Yukas a heart of barley, which is held Seven times a wasp-waist; so unto the grain Of mung and mustard and the barley-corn, Whereof ten give the finger joint, twelve joints The span, wherefrom we reach the cubit, staff, Bow-length, lance-length; while twenty lengths of lance Mete what is named a 'breath,' which is to say Such space as man may stride with lungs once filled, Whereof a gow is forty, four times that A yojana; and, Master! if it please, I shall ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity sweeping westward in the middle of the last century, it passed its tenth thousand with ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... than the raiment. 24 Consider the ravens, that they sow not, neither reap; which have no store-chamber nor barn; and God feedeth them: of how much more value are ye than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit unto the measure of his life? 26 If then ye are not able to do even that which is least, why are ye anxious concerning the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... nerves of life which give the consciousness of the body, and there was therefore no reaction from it of those feelings of weakness and need which, to such a man as Cosmo, soon reveal the fact that he is not lord of his body, that he cannot add to it one cubit, or make one hair white or black, and must therefore leave the care of it to him who made it, he had to learn in other ways that his castle of stone was God's also. His truth and humility and love had not yet reached to the quickening of the idea of the old house with the feeling that God ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... also found the rhinoceros, an animal less than the elephant, but larger than the buffalo. It has a horn upon its nose, about a cubit in length; this horn is solid, and cleft through the middle. The rhinoceros fights with the elephant, runs his horn into his belly, and carries him off upon his head; but the blood and the fat of the elephant running into his eyes and making ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... moving his legs, and with body half paralysed, he was nevertheless enabled to accompany a procession for the length of two miles on foot, walking, to the stupefaction of thousands of spectators, at about a cubit's height above the street, on air; after the fashion of those Hindu gods whose feet—so the pagans fable—are too pure to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... longitude, span; mileage; distance &c 196. line, bar, rule, stripe, streak, spoke, radius. lengthening &c v.; prolongation, production, protraction; tension, tensure^; extension. [Measures of length] line, nail, inch, hand, palm, foot, cubit, yard, ell, fathom, rood, pole, furlong, mile, league; chain, link; arpent^, handbreadth^, jornada [U.S.], kos^, vara^. [astronomical units of distance] astronomical unit, AU, light- year, parsec. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to Christ's gracious argument and wise remonstrances. What, He asks, is the good of our anxiety? What can it do for us? "Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature? If, then, ye are not able to do that which is least, why are ye anxious concerning the rest?" "But, the morrow! the morrow!" we cry. "Let the morrow," Christ answers, "take care of itself; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; learn thou to live a day at a time." "Our earliest ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... and simple words, I can fancy no wiser method than a something between a house and a diving-bell; a vessel, entirely storm-tight and water-tight, which nevertheless for necessary air should have an open window at the top: say, one a cubit square. This, properly hooded against deluging rain, and supplied with such helps to ventilation as leathern pipes, air tunnels and similar appliances, would not be an impracticable method. However, instead of being under water as a diving-bell, the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... very diverse corporations. Some, more industrious and equipped with better tools, remove the pith from the dry stem and thus obtain a vertical cylindrical gallery, the length of which may be nearly a cubit. This sheath is next divided, by partitions, into more or less numerous storeys, each of which forms the cell of a larva. Others, less well-endowed with strength and implements, avail themselves of the old galleries of other insects, galleries that have been abandoned ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... apparently of the ordinary angular shape, but with a somewhat broader ridge than common; and it measured three hundred cubits in length, fifty cubits in breadth, and thirty cubits in height. A good deal of controversy has, however, arisen regarding the cubit employed; some holding, with Sir Walter Raleigh, and most of the older theologians, such as Shuckford and Hales, that the Noachian cubit was what is known as the common or natural cubit, "containing," says Sir Walter, "one foot and a half, or a length equal to that of the human fore-arm ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... trackless, all Our joys and griefs befall; In thy full sight our secret things go on; Step after step, thy wrath Follows the caitiff's path, And in his triumph breaks his vile neck bone. To all alike, thou meetest out their due, Cubit for ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with gray. Beside the Major's gaunt figure he appeared singularly boyish, though he held himself severely to the number of his inches, and even added, by means of a simplicity almost august, a full cubit to his stature. Ten years before he had been governor of his state, and to his friends and neighbours the empty honour, at least, was still ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... bird's bill, or some such ornament, which was turned upwards, and which was often sustained by gold or silver chains tied to the knee [g]. The ecclesiastics took exception at this ornament, which they said was an attempt to belie the scripture, where it is affirmed, that no man can add a cubit to his stature; and they declaimed against it with great vehemence, nay, assembled some synods, who absolutely condemned it. But, such are the strange contradictions in human nature! though the clergy, at ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... instructions of a certain Semitic king, probably no other than Melchizedek. By supernatural means, the architects were instructed to place the pyramid in latitude 30 deg. north; to select for its figure that of a square pyramid, carefully oriented; to employ for their unit of length the sacred cubit corresponding to the 20,000,000th part of the earth's polar axis; and to make the side of the square base equal to just so many of these sacred cubits as there are days and parts of a day in a year. They were further, by supernatural help, enabled to square the circle, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... this, Noah was commanded to build an ark, three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and thirty high. It was to be made with three stories, and furnished with one door, and one window a cubit wide. Into this ark were to be taken two of every sort of living thing, and of clean beasts and of birds seven of every sort, male and female, and food ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... annoint it through all thy might. Three hundred cubits it shall be long, And so of breadth to make it strong, Of height so, then must thou fonge,[21] Thus measure it about. One window work though thy might; One cubit of length and breadth make it, Upon the side a door shall fit For to come in and out. Eating-places thou make also, Three roofed chambers, one or two: For with water I think to stow[22] Man that I can make. Destroyed all the world shall be, Save thou, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... be a mongrel breed, between the human and ape species; their strength is said to be very great. The Africans assert with considerable confidence, which is corroborated, that the Hel Shual have a tail half a cubit long; that they inhabit a district in the Desert at an immense distance south-east of Marocco; that the Hel El Killeb[148] 200 are in a similar direction; that the latter are diminutive, being about two or three ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... wheat, barley, and mustard. The Raja reserves to himself the sole right of catching the elephants, and annually procures a considerable number. They are sold on his account at 200 Mohurs, or 86 rupees, for every cubit of their height; but five cubits of the royal measure are only six English feet. As few merchants are willing to give this price for elephants which have not been seasoned, the Raja generally forces them on such persons as have ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... by Mr. Pinches throw light on the building and cost of the ships. One of them is as follows: "A ship of six by the cubit beam, twenty by the cubit the seat of its waters, which Nebo-baladan, the son of Labasi, the son of Nur-Papsukal, has sold to Sirikki, the son of Iddin, the son of Egibi, for four manehs, ten shekels of silver, in one-shekel pieces, which are not standard, and are in the shape of a bird's tail ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... [6:26]Look at the birds of heaven; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into store-houses; but your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? [6:27]Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? [6:28]And why are you anxious concerning clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they perform no hard labor, neither do they spin; [6:29]but I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was ...
— The New Testament • Various
... satisfactory. Their strength is not equal to the draughts made upon it. They are not able to stand so long as clerks are required to stand. They have not the patience, the civility, the tact that male clerks have.... All the voting in the world can never add a cubit to a ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... those who witnessed them, with ominous brevity. Such crimes were of daily occurrence; perhaps sometimes multiplied by rumour, but often unheard of and unrecorded. The perils of the stockmen were constant: many of them were repeatedly wounded; and one, named Cubit, was nine times speared, and yet survived. Death assumed new forms daily: the poet of the Iliad did not describe more numerous varieties, in ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Hobab's knowledge of the places where water and pasturage were to be found. (3.) There is decisive evidence that this region was once better watered than it is now, and more fruitful. The planks of acacia-wood, the shittim-wood, which were employed in the construction of the tabernacle, were a cubit and a half in width; that is, in English measure, something more than two and a half feet. No acacia-trees of this size are now found in that region. The cutting away of the primitive forests seems to have been followed, as elsewhere, by a decrease in the amount of rain. But, however this may be, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... who called them into existence be limited in his further intents for the perfecting of their creation, by their notions concerning themselves who cannot add to their life one cubit?—such notions being often consciously dishonest? If he knows them worthless without something that he can give, shall he withhold his hand because they do not care that he should stretch it forth? Should a child not be taught to ride because he ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... long, and 500 broad, and was compassed with a walk, called the Mountain of the House: and this walk being 50 cubits broad, was compassed with a wall six cubits broad, and six high, and six hundred long on every side: and the cubit was about 211/2, or almost 22 inches of the English foot, being the sacred cubit of the Jews, which was an hand-breadth, or the sixth part of its length bigger ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... blossoms are past. A brief space, and the same crowds that flocked to the cherry turn to the wistaria. Gardens are devoted to the plants, and the populace greatly given to the gardens. There they go to sit and gaze at the grape-like clusters of pale purple flowers that hang more than a cubit long over the wooden trellis, and grow daily down toward their own reflections in the pond beneath, vying with one another in Narcissus-like endeavor. And the people, as they sip their tea on the veranda opposite, behold a doubled delight, the flower itself and its mirrored ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... awe have we gazed upon the bearded face of the man, drawn by himself, in the manner we have described, with the brush on the canvas and without any previous sketch. The locks of the beard are almost a cubit long, and so exquisitely and cleverly drawn, at such regular distances and in so exact a manner, that the better any one understands art, the more he would admire it, and the more certain would he deem it that in fashioning these locks the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... and everything cannot seat us in the high places of these princes of Nature. "Who, by taking thought, can add a cubit to his stature?" (The Bible again, you see; we cannot get away from ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... very quantity that science to-day admits to be the curviture of the earth—and accepts in surveying. It was their knowledge of this fact that kept the building sound, without the cracking of a joint, through centuries, though so high. The Egyptians did not use the sacred amma, or cubit, which is about twenty-five of our inches. They used a profane cubit, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Hermapion, an Egyptian priest. In order to take away its pagan character from the religious ceremony with which the yearly rise of the Nile wras celebrated in Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from the temple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches; and nothwithstanding the gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and the clergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... darker-complexioned than would have been expected in that part of the world; and when some of our men went on shore and showed them bells and pictures, they began to dance round our men with a hoarse noise and unintelligible chant, and to excite our admiration they took arrows a cubit and a half long, and put them down their own throats to the bottom of their stomachs without seeming any the worse for it. Then they drew them up again, and seemed much pleased at having shown ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... around the Champion at the other. The sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, labouring there under the brazen shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs. Its length was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch pin she ploughed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much less. Trees such as the earth nourished then upheld the massy roof beneath which feasted that heroic brood, the great-hearted children of ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... flow from a neglect of the maxim which stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss me—enough." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... Terrentius Varro doing!" cried Decius suddenly, and the three turned at his voice. A nodding forest of crests, red and black, rising a cubit above the uncovered helmets of the legionaries, seemed to fill the eastern plain and extend almost to where the Adriatic beat upon the shingle. "Look at his front! Look at how closely the maniples are crushed together! Gods! they are almost 'within ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... feats I have done in times past at Bologna, when I used to go after the women with my comrades, you would be lost in amazement. God's faith! on one of those nights there was one of them, a poor sickly creature she was too, and stood not a cubit in height, who would not come with us; so first I treated her to many a good cuff, and then I took her up by main force, and carried her well-nigh as far as a cross-bow will send a bolt, and so caused her, willy-nilly, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... with fear? Or let me grant what many professional men deny utterly, that some knowledge of what is called practical value to the race has been thus attained—what can be its results at best but the adding of a cubit to the life? Grant that it gave us an immortal earthly existence, one so happy that the most sensual would never wish for death: what would it be by such means to live forever? God in Heaven! who, what is the man who would dare live a life wrung from ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... See Tertullian, De Spectaculis. This severe reformer shows no more indulgence to a tragedy of Euripides, than to a combat of gladiators. The dress of the actors particularly offends him. By the use of the lofty buskin, they impiously strive to add a cubit to their stature. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sold for two farthings, yet not one of them is forgotten by God? But even the hairs of your head are all numbered; fear not therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. Which of you moreover can by taking thought add a cubit to his stature? .. . if then you are unable to do what is least, why do you take thought for the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow . . . If then God so clothed the grass, which is in the field today and is cast into an oven tomorrow, how much more ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... world am I going to tackle Honor?" He foresaw a pitched battle, ending in possible defeat; and decided to defer it till he felt more physically fit for the strain. For he possessed the rapid recuperative power of his type; and, the fever once conquered, each day added a cubit to his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... but in their length and breadth, just as you read here of the square of this city. As to instance: The altars, though they were five cubits long, and five cubits broad, yet but three high (Exo 27:1; 33:1; 1 Kings 7). So the bases, they were a cubit and an half broad, and a cubit and an half long, yet but half a cubit high; the tables also on which they slew the sacrifices, they were a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half broad, yet but one cubit high (Eze 40:42). Which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "This man is mad," quoth Mane as he leaves him. Then he goes to accost Cuchulain. It was there Cuchulain had doffed his tunic, and the [4]deep[4] snow was around him where he sat, up to his belt, and the snow had melted a cubit around him for the greatness of the heat of the hero. And Mane addressed him three times in like manner, whose man he was? "Conchobar's man, and do not provoke me. For if thou provokest me any longer ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... built in Mesopotamia, less than five thousand years ago, to save Noah from the flooded Euphrates. The shipwrights seem to have built it like a barge or house-boat. If so, it must have been about fifteen thousand tons, taking the length of the cubit in the Bible story at eighteen inches. It was certainly not a ship, only some sort of construction that simply floated about with the wind and current till it ran aground. But Mesopotamia and the shores of the Persian ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... to correspond with the slice on the stock, bringing the bark of the slice up on the outside of the graft, after which the whole is covered up with mud and straw, exactly as we do. The commentator on Magalhen seems doubtful as to the length of the Chinese che or cubit. At this island they have two sorts, one measuring thirteen inches and seven-tenths English, which, is commonly used by merchants; the other is only eleven inches, being used by carpenters, and also in geographical measures. Though Father Martini is censured by Magalhen for spelling ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof: with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... been left alone. It had been widened, as an inscription in the middle told the world at large. He leant on it and looked up the river. Peel Tower was the same, anyway. No one had dared to add one cubit to its grey stature. It was a satisfaction to ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... 3,600 GAN, perhaps called a karu. Mr. Thureau-Dangin has further shown that the SAR was the square of the measure GAR-DU, which seems at one time to have measured 12 U. The U is often taken to be a cubit, but seems at this time to have been nine hundred and ninety millimetres, which is sometimes called "a double cubit." On these suppositions the SAR would be a square, each side measuring about twenty-two yards, about ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... persisting at work amid distractions. But the bad habits and the good are already fixed in our nervous system, and in physiology also possession is nine tenths of the law. We may intend to change, but by taking thought alone we cannot add a cubit to our stature. Reflection can do no more than point the way we should go. For unless the wrong actions are systematically and repeatedly refrained from, and the proper ones made habitual, thinking remains merely an impotent summary of what can be done. Conduct is governed, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman |
