"Cubit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... language can do 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
... 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. [metric units of length] nanometer, nm, micron, micrometer, millimicron, millimeter, mm, centimeter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 Gulf were great places for shipbuilding. They were once the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... farmers content themselves chiefly with winter crops of 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
... 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 speech Romance or Teutonic. No doubt he has in most cases practically no choice ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... who accompanied 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, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... age. This shining 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 flood and field, he made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... the 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 for the funeral ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... baked, I set to work at digging the pit in which to sink it. This I performed 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... we 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 ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... "I believe I can inform you somewhat on that head. A scriptural cubit measures twenty-one inches, and it has been calculated according to the dimensions given in the 6th chapter of Genesis, that the ark must have been of the enormous burden of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... all men alike in words, and yet to deal with some of them as moderate persons and with others as very wicked; and exceedingly to admire Chrysippus, to deride Alexinus, and yet to think neither of them more or less mad than the other. "'Tis so," say they; "but as he who is not above a cubit under the superficies of the sea is no less drowned than he who is five hundred fathom deep, so they that are coming towards virtue are no less in vice their those that are farther off. And as blind men are still ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... deal in the same afternoon's work, on the one hand with men of keen powers of intellect, whose subtle reasoning made one look to the foundations of one's own faith; and on the other hand with ignorant crowds, whose conception of sin was that of a cubit measure, and to whom the terms 'faith' and 'love' were as absolutely unknown as though they had been born and bred in some undeveloped race of Anthropoids." Rev. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... because of the insects. I sleep outside 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. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... imagination to venture upon prophecy. The care and thoroughness with which the work is done is beyond all praise, but it is as difficult to make your brother love you by taking thought thereon, as it is to add a cubit to one's ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ear affectionately. "Little matchmaker! No one by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature; and no one by just wishing it, I am inclined to think, can influence the little god Cupid whither he will aim his arrow. Perhaps, perhaps not; that is all ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... 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 at work in man's salvation, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... may be made to yield to their parents. The consequence is, that the children of human beings are brought up for all the world like the young of animals, the chief care of their parents being not to train them to such work as is worthy of men and women, but to increase their weight, or add a cubit to their stature, to make them spruce, sleek, well-fed, and comely. They rig them out in all manner of fantastic costumes, wash them, over-feed them, and refuse to make them work. If the children of the lower orders differ in this last respect ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the 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 ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... 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 ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... structure as it was; it was so old and still and highly respectable. He descended from the omnibus nervously and went into the office. A clerk handed him a pen, and he registered his name in a clerkly hand, "A. Armstrong Webb." He had decided to acknowledge his debt to his uncle and add a cubit to his stature at the same time. The clerk wheeled the book round, glanced indifferently at the name, and handed a key to a bell-boy. Webb, conscious of a faint chill, followed the boy up-stairs. The ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Noah built the ark according to the pattern given him by Jehovah. It was a sort of box-like boat 525 ft. long 87-1/2 ft. wide and 42-1/2 ft. deep, if we count a cubit at twenty-one inches. It was three stories high, and the building of it was a huge undertaking. We need not, however, think of it as an undertaking beyond the resources of the times. All those early people seem to have ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... 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 ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... obeyed, and 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... 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 ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... 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 ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shore of 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 ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... Knights of the Round Table that were a hundred and fifty, and they sat down to dine. When they were seated there entered the hall two men well and richly dressed, and upon their shoulders leaned the handsomest young man that ever was seen of any of them, higher than the other two by a cubit. He was wide in the chest and large handed, but his great height seemed to be a burden and a shame to him, therefore it was he leaned on the shoulders of his friends. As soon as Arthur beheld him he made a sign, and without more words all three went ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... similar compiler of facetiae. It would seem, however, that even this absurd legend can boast some foundation of fact. At any rate, Mr. Parke, the respectable oboist of the Opera House, who published his Musical Memoirs in 1830, is found gravely recording of one Cubit, a subordinate actor and singer of Covent Garden Theatre, that once, "when during one of his summer engagements at a provincial theatre, he was announced to perform the character of Hamlet, he was seized with a sudden and serious illness in his dressing-room, just before the play was going ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... quantity of them, 'alive and kicking,' and let them go into my tank. The most strange thing that ever struck me in connexion with this event, was, that the fish did not fall helter skelter, everywhere, or 'here and there;' but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." Another shower is said to have taken place at a village near Allahabad, in the month of May. About noon, the wind being in the west, and a few distant clouds visible, a blast of high wind came on, accompanied with so much dust as to change the tint of the atmosphere to a reddish ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... 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 their bravery. At length three men came up as a deputation, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... 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, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... all those fine methods of proceeding that are prescribed by our art. When I had completely dug my hole, I took my mold, and by means of levers and strong cables directed it with care, and suspended it a cubit above the level of the furnace, so that it hung exactly in the middle of the hole. I then let it gently down to the very bottom of the furnace, and placed it with all the care ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various |
