"Whittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the maxims of "Poor Richard's Almanac," and disapproved of the aimless way in which I had been bred. He began to suggest the desirableness of my learning to do something to make a living. I thought of certain mechanical tastes which had moved me in former years to whittle and to make a reel on which to wind yarn, and to mend things generally. So I replied that I thought the trade of a carpenter was the one I could most easily learn. He approved of the idea, and expressed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... upon the deck. The captain coming up to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, began to 'whittle' it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty good will, that but for his being called away very soon, it must have disappeared bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... set by this universal agreement. It is time for patience and understanding and cooperation. The workers of this country have rights under this law which cannot be taken from them, and nobody will be permitted to whittle them away, but, on the other hand, no aggression is now necessary to attain those rights. The whole country will be united to get them for you. The principle that applies to the employers applies to the workers as well, and I ask you workers to ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... of Sir Henry Tyler and his friends to stimulate persecutions for blasphemy at length took practical shape, and in July, 1882, Mr. Foote, the editor, Mr. Ramsey, the publisher, and Mr. Whittle, the printer of the Freethinker, were summoned for blasphemy by Sir Henry Tyler himself. An attempt was made to involve Mr. Bradlaugh in the proceedings, and the solicitors promised to drop the case against the editor and printer if Mr. Bradlaugh would ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... large apple or turnip, and cut from it a piece of the shape to resemble the butt-end of a tallow candle; then from a nut of some kind—an almond is the best—whittle out a small peg of about the size and shape of a wick end. Stick the peg in the apple and you have a very fair representation of a candle. The wick you can light, and it will burn for at least a minute. In performing ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... see it. He'd quit drinking—that was certain; and now he was a picture of a man—not pretty, but strong-looking, with his eyes glowing and his skin flushing with the good blood inside him. He took a seat on the lockers and began to whittle a block of soft pine into a model of a hull, and after a while, with a squint along the sheer of his little model, he asked if anybody had seen Tom O'Donnell or Wesley Marrs. Several said yes, they had, and he asked where, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... notch, slash, gash, split, chop, hew, lop, prune, reap, mow, clip, shear, trim, dock, crop, shave, whittle, slice, slit, score, lance, carve, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... over this rather unsatisfactory line of reasoning for some minutes. His companion fitted a wooden chimney on the doll house, found it a trifle out of plumb, and proceeded to whittle a shaving off the lower edge. Then Asaph sighed, as one who gives up a perplexing riddle, put his hand in his pocket, and produced ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and state should not be united, but that the state should protect the church and that neither should undertake to boss the other. It was also held that religious qualifications should not be required of political aspirants, also that no man should be required to whittle his soul into a shape to fit the religious ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... on the north of Borneo, is thirty miles in length, and from four to six in breadth, with numberless rivers flowing into it. There is no danger on the right-hand shore going up, but what is seen; on the larboard shore considerable coral-reefs are met with. Laurie and Whittle's chart of it is tolerably correct. The principal towns are, Sungy Bassar, nearly at the head of the bay, and Bankaka, on the left; the former, under Sheriff Mahomed, sends its produce to Sulo; the latter, under Orang Kayas, trades with Borneo Proper. The British, when last ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... had risen for the recess just before the circular appeared, so it could not be challenged in the House of Commons; but it raised a storm of indignation out of doors which astonished its authors. Disraeli wrote "The incident is grave;" and, though in the subsequent session the Government tried to whittle down the enormity, the "incident" proved to be graver than even the Premier had imagined; for it showed the Liberals once again that Toryism is by instinct hostile ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... he; 'and I've heerd tell as whalers wear knives, and I'd ha' gi'en t' gang a taste o' my whittle, if I'd been cotched up just as ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... distressing weakness is due to the absence of a clear conviction that we are right; it is an intellectual difficulty; but frequently it is simple mushiness of character, the same defect which tempts us, when we know a thing is true, to whittle it down if we meet with opposition, and to refrain from presenting it in all its sharpness. Cowardice of this kind is not only injustice to ourselves, but to our friends. We inflict a grievous wrong by compromise. We are responsible for what we see, and the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... here," answered the storekeeper. "Used to be one some years ago, but it didn't pay, so the feller that run it gave it up. But Mrs. Whittle serves lunch to travelers ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... old dead top of a pine or cedar. If you cannot find one, chop down a cedar tree. Whittle a handful of splinters and shavings from the dry heart. Try to find the lee side of a rock or log where the wind and rain do not beat in. First put down the shavings or some dry birch bark if you can find it, and shelter it ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... of the first week in April—when the men left in the stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, or Tchoupitoulas street could do nothing but buy the same goods back and forth in speculation; loathed by all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the shedded sidewalks and swap and swallow flaming rumors and imprecate the universal inaction and mis-management—there embarked ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war, Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged and our youth I cannot choose but tell him that I care not, And let him take't at worst; for their knives care not While you have throats to answer. For myself, There's not a whittle in the unruly camp But I do prize it at my love before The reverend'st throat in Athens. So I leave you To the protection of the prosperous gods, As thieves ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... Oh, I'd know that whittle a mile off. We call 'em daggers—Smith's daggers. Where did you ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... do you call it, Boss? I guess it's no such thing. No man knows better nor you, that, if I can whittle the smallest stick in creation, I can bring down the stoutest tree as well as ere a fellow in Michigan. Work is work—play is play. It's only the difference, I reckon, of the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... particularly patient and kind. With them he would converse as freely as did George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square. The children recognized in him something very much akin to themselves—he would play upon his flute for them and whittle out toy boats, regardless ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... then. There's your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a stick 1/2 in. square and about 12 in. long. Whittle the corners of the stick until it fits firmly into the hole in the small board. Nail the small board to the ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... as I tell you, I don't care to be critical. I don't want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the wall Poured a deeper cheer than all The revels of the Carnival. We a pine-grove did prefer To a marble theatre, Could with gods on mallows dine, Nor cared for spices or for wine. Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned. Arch on arch, the grimmest land; Whittle of a woodland bird Made the pulses dance, Note of horn in valleys heard Filled ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... like a puzzle. They are natural mechanics; but the other eight or nine boys have different aptitudes. I belong to the latter class; I never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the contrary, I have a sort of abhorrence for complicated machinery. I never had ingenuity enough to whittle a cider tap so it would not leak. I never could make a pen that I could write with, or understand the principle of a steam engine. If a man was to take such a boy as I was, and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an apprenticeship ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... spell, till one was "turned down;" then another took his place, and so on until all on one side were down. I began at this school in the alphabet, and the second winter I could spell almost every word in Webster's old Elementary Speller. If provided with a sharp knife, and a stick on which to whittle, which the kind old man would allow, I could generally stand most of an afternoon without missing. Strange to say, after a few years, when I had given myself to the study of other things, it all went from me, and I have been a ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, tear, burst; rend &c, rend asunder, rend in twain; wrench, rupture, shatter, shiver, cranch^, crunch, craunch^, chop; cut up, rip up; hack, hew, slash; whittle; haggle, hackle, discind^, lacerate, scamble^, mangle, gash, hash, slice. cut up, carve, dissect, anatomize; dislimb^; take to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces, tear to pieces; tear to tatters, tear piecemeal, tear limb from limb; divellicate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... long whistle and fell into grave meditation. His conclusion was: "Can't navigate nights, that's a fact. Have to come to anchor. That makes twenty days on't. Wal, Capm, fust thing is to fish up a bit 'f driftwood 'n' whittle out 'nother paddle. Want a boat-pole, too, like thunder. We're awful short 'f spars for a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... and sweetly offered to lend him her knife to whittle his lead pencil. He looked surprised. He did not know she had ever wronged him ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... did not expect an answer, for he straightened up once more and proceeded to whittle. The pitter-patter of the trotting horse, and the clatter of the wheels upon the flinty road, broke rudely upon the familiar little noises of the quiet summer morning. One sidewise glance satisfied Orn that the men in the vehicle were from Auburn ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... objections I saie that I doe knowe curtesey and civility became a governor. No penny whittle was asked me, but a knife, whereof I have none to spare The Indyans had long before stoallen my knife. Of chickins I never did eat but one, and that in my sicknes. Mr. Ratcliff had before that time tasted Of 4 or 5. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... trading. And the man with the straw in his mouth is the one anxious to have the trade go through. See how nervous Matthew is, and Captain Joe, sitting on the log whittling, looks just as calm and contented as a frog in a puddle. When you trade, Ben, don't chew a straw, but sit down and whittle. Captain Joe probably wants the trade to go through as much as Matthew does. But the whittling keeps his hands and eyes busy, and steadies his nerves. It gives him a chance to look as if he didn't care a snap ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... in the night; sleep very bad: and among his sore bodily pains, ennui falls very heavy to a mind so restless. He can paint, he can whittle, chisel: at last they even mount him a table, in his bed, with joiner's tools, mallets, glue-pots, where he makes small carpentry,—the talk to go on the while;—often at night is the sound of his mallet audible in the Palace Esplanade; and Berlin townsfolk ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but they don't know what has ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... had thrown himself into an arm- chair, and took, as was his custom in moments of the greatest excitement, his penknife from the writing-desk, and began to whittle on the back ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... made a bow, Well indeed he loved to whittle, Shaped it like the half of O— How he could I scarcely know, For his fingers were so little. As he whittled came a sigh: "If I only had an arrow; Something light enough to fly To the tree-tops or the sky! Then ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... plaster of paris in water and run the foot full and place the ink well or other fitting in place and allow the plaster to "set" and the foot is finished. If you wish a pen rest you can now place it in position. In setting up thermometers remove bone to hoof and whittle out a stick shape of bones removed. Coat inside of skin with arsenic and alum and place stick in position and sew up skin. Put on metal cap at top and tack on thermometer. For hooks on racks, work up a stick with crook into ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... stirred restlessly, gave her a surprised look, and began to whittle again at his stick, with the dull, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... now makes for the ridge of Harlow Hill, while the Vallum goes on in a perfectly straight line past the picturesque Whittle Dene and the waterworks, until the Wall joins it again near Welton, where the old pele-tower is entirely built of Roman stones. After Matfen Piers, where a road to the northward leads to the beautiful little village ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... holding Nell's hand. Mr. Wells again bowed his head. Zeisberger continued to whittle a stick, and Heckewelder paced the floor. Christy stood by with every evidence of sympathy for this distracted ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... sitting-rooms of ample size, one of which was occupied as the bar. In this there were congregated some six or seven men, seated in arm-chairs round a stove, and among these I placed myself. No one spoke a word either to me or to any one else. No one smoked, and no one read, nor did they even whittle sticks. I asked a question, first of one and then of another, and was answered with monosyllables. So I gave up any hope in that direction, and sat staring at the big stove in the middle of the room, as the others did. Presently ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope |
