"Tenpenny" Quotes from Famous Books
... Smith, 'I must just hammer the head of this tenpenny nail first; meantime, you can just climb up into the pear-tree, and pluck yourself a pear to gnaw at; you must be, both hungry ... — Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... heaven do not affect us as Dickens affects us, because they are exaggerations of nothing. If asked for an exaggeration of something, their inventors would be entirely dumb. They would not know how to exaggerate a broom-stick; for the life of them they could not exaggerate a tenpenny nail. Dickens always began with the nail or the broom-stick. He always began with a fact even when he was most fanciful; and even when he drew the long bow he was careful to hit ... — Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... ports—we see a large number of beautiful buildings in which an endless series of dusky pictures are darkening, dampening, fading, failing, through the years. By the doors of the beautiful buildings are little turnstiles at which there sit a great many uniformed men to whom the visitor pays a tenpenny fee. Inside, in the vaulted and frescoed chambers, the art of Italy. lies buried as in a thousand mausoleums. It is well taken care of; it is constantly copied; sometimes it is "restored"—as in the case of that beautiful boy-figure of Andrea del Sarto at Florence, which may ... — Italian Hours • Henry James
... the time it is finished, the cost of this water will be something absolutely frightful. But of course it proportionately increases the value of the property, and that's my only comfort. . . . The horse has gone lame from a sprain, the big dog has run a tenpenny nail into one of his hind feet, the bolts have all flown out of the basket-carriage, and the gardener says all the fruit trees want replacing with new ones." Another note came in three days. "I have discovered that the ... — The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and to farce (the culinary technical for to stuff) a boiled leg of lamb with red herrings and garlic; with many other receipts of as high a relish, and of as easy digestion as the devil's venison, i. e. a roasted tiger stuffed with tenpenny nails, or the "Bonne Bouche," the rareskin Rowskimowmowsky offered to Baron Munchausen, "a fricassee of pistols, with gunpowder and alcohol sauce."—See the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 12mo. 1792, p. 200; and the horrible but authentic account of ... — The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner |