"Penning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Little, "and that I will print her a letter soon."*[7] For it was a practice of this good son, down to the period of his mother's death, no matter how much burdened he was with business, to set apart occasional times for the careful penning of a letter in printed characters, that she might the more easily be able to decipher it with her old and dimmed eyes by her cottage fireside at The Crooks. As a man's real disposition usually displays itself most strikingly in small ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... seated at his table penning the "Prophet's chair" column for the next morning's issue of his paper. It was only natural, under the new order of life and thought that prevailed, that a daily paper, conducted on the lines of the "Courier," should drop heavily in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... paper about him and read it later. The message was in Flavia's hand; he had seen her write more than once. But if he had not, he knew that neither James nor the O'Beirnes were capable of penning a grammatical sentence. Colonel John's spirits rose as he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... you—dropping this lightsome vein for a precious moment—that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at the top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?—I stick to my title, 'An Author's Mind,' ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... every-day duties which bring him into working contact with his fellow-men. This is, as it were, a reversed form of the prejudice which believes that a physician or a lawyer will be a worse doctor or advocate because he writes verses or amuses an hour of leisure by penning a magazine article. As regards medicine, this popular decree is swiftly fading, though it still has some mischievous power. It was once believed, at least in this country, that a doctor should be all his life a doctor, and nothing else: the notion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... fine Piece is of your penning, Parson,—though it be countenanc'd by the Council's Names.—Oh Ingratitude! Burn, burn the treacherous Town, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... that he had Scotland at his feet, and that he had nothing to fear from anything the Covenanters could bring against him. He had been writing despatches throughout the night; and he was sitting in the best house in Selkirk, penning a letter to his sovereign, when he was startled by the sounds of cannon and of musketry. He rushed to the street. The inhabitants were hurrying from their houses—many of his cavalry were mingling, half-dressed, with the crowd. "To horse!—to horse!" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... defence of the town were so ably and energetically carried out by Sir Owen Lanyon, assisted by the military officers, that no attack upon it was ever attempted. It seems to me that the organisation that could provide for the penning up of four thousand people for months, and carry it out without the occurrence of a single unpleasantness or expression of discontent, must have had something remarkable about it. Of course, it would have been impossible without the most loyal ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed. Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penning long letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, did not fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... it, patted it; he kissed it, and flung it, stamped on it, and was foul-mouthed. Seeing it at his feet, he bent to it like a man snapped in two, lamenting, bewailing himself, recovering sight of her fragmentarily. It stuck in his ribs, and in scorn of the writer, and sceptical of her penning it, he tugged to pull it out, and broke the shaft, but left the rankling arrow-head:—she had traced the lines, and though tyranny racked her to do that thing, his agony followed her hand over the paper to her name, which fixed and bit in him like the deadly-toothed arrow-head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tigris, have always sheltered fierce fighting clans, covetous of the winter pasturage and softer climate of the northern Mesopotamian downs, and it has been the anxious care of one Mesopotamian power after another, even to our own day, to devise measures for penning them back. Since the chief weakness of these tribes lies in a lack of unity which the subdivided nature of their country encourages, it must have caused no small concern to the Assyrians that, early in the ninth century, a Kingdom of Urartu or, as its own people called it, Khaldia, should begin ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... Across the moon's face had drifted a white, fleecy cloud; therefore the light was not so brilliant as half an hour before. Still, I could see his features almost as plainly as I see this paper upon which I am penning my strange adventure, and could recognise every lineament and peculiarity of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... more than the most hasty preparation, Washington started for Massachusetts, after penning the following tender letter to his wife. The epistle shows so much of his noble character that our narrative would be incomplete ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... have not exhausted the patience of my readers by presenting too long a series of illustrations extracted from manuscripts. I love, as I look at them, to picture to myself the medieval man of letters, laboriously penning voluminous treatises in the writing room of a monastery, or in his own study, with his scanty collection of books within his reach, on shelves, or in a chest, or lying on a table. We sometimes call the ages dark in which he lived, but the mechanical ingenuity displayed ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... be surprised to learn that I am penning these lines from Blancheville, which as everybody, except the chief of the chowder-heads, knows is the most important town of one of the principal departments of France. Nothing but an overwhelming sense of what is due to myself, to my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... were obliged, within a given time, to make, if a sculptor, a clay model; if a painter, a picture such as may be seen at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; if a musician, a cantata; if an architect, the plans for a public building. At the time when we are penning the words, this menagerie has already been removed from these cold and cheerless buildings, and taken to the elegant Palais des Beaux-Arts, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... economy, offended by that revelation of mechanical methods which made the autobiography either a disgusting or an amusing book to those who read it more intelligently. A man with a watch before his eyes, penning exactly so many words every quarter of an hour—one imagines that this picture might haunt disagreeably the thoughts even of Mudie's steadiest subscriber, that it might come between him or her and any Trollopean work that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Really one can't help laughing, and as we don't know whose letters these are, why shouldn't we laugh? Then think of the poor girl, up there in the country, writing long letters in return, proud of her lover's ardor, yet shy in penning words of devotion. Isn't it an attractive picture, Jim?—full of that 'soothing, fond complaining' for them, and comedy for the rest of us? Go on, my dear, and let us hear more of this poetic woe; although Jim doesn't say anything, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... shrank from making any direct accusation, not wishing to break with the man with whom he had long been on close terms of friendship. It is highly improbable that either his own or Emma's past histories escaped his memory when he was penning his grievances. Indeed, there are evidences gleaming through his memorandum that his reflections were harassed by the remembrance of his own conduct, which had plunged to epic depths of wrongdoing in other days. These and other considerations would doubtless have a restraining ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... apologize in the most abject manner to the present Governor of California, to Hon. Mr. Low, the Governor elect, to Judge Field and to Hon. Wm. M. Stewart, for the great wrong which my natural imbecility has impelled me to do them in penning and publishing the foregoing sanguinary absurdity. If it were to do over again, I don't really know that I would do it. It is not possible for me to say how I ever managed to believe that refined and educated gentlemen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... a solitary instance of such neglect; for when he next inditeth, may he show that he is not the "Wrong Man" to write a good piece; although alas, he appeared on Saturday last to be exactly the right man for penning a bad one. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... Cf. Palladis Tamia (1598), 'As Accius, M. Atilius, and Milithus were called Tragediographi, because they writ tragedies: so may wee truly terme Michael Drayton Tragaediographus for his passionate penning the downfals of valiant Robert of Normandy, chast Matilda, and great Gaueston.' Cf. Barnefield, Poems: in diuers humors (ed. Arber, p. 119), 'And Drayton, whose wel-written Tragedies, | And Sweete Epistles, soare thy fame to skies. | Thy learned name is equall with the rest; | Whose stately ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Hernando to Lousia." But whether Voltaire accepted the 'New Atalantis,' or the Examiner, as an authority for the statements of his very laughable passage, it is scarcely credible that he believed himself to be penning the truth. The most reasonable explanation of the matter appears to be, that tickled by Swift's venomous lines, the sarcastic Frenchman in malice and gaiety adopted them, and added to their piquancy by the assurance that the Chancellor's book was not only published, but was preserved by ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... hate mankind for multiplying, even though population created pressure and pressure created panic that drove me mad. I mustn't blame Leffingwell for solving the overpopulation problem, even though he used me as a guinea-pig in his experiments. I mustn't blame the Yardsticks for penning me up in prison until revolution broke out, and I mustn't blame the Naturalists for bombing the place where I took refuge. So whose fault was it that I've gone through eighty years of assorted hell? Why did I, Harry Collins, get singled out ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Virgil, Ouid, Seneca, were neuer such ornaments to Italy as thou hast beene. I neuer thought of Italy more religiously than England til I heard of thee. Peace to thy Ghost, and yet mee thinkes so indefinite a spirite should haue no peace or intermission of paines, but be penning Ditties to the Archangels in another world. Puritans spue forth the venome of your dull inuentions. A Toade swelles with thicke troubled poison, you swell with poisonous perturbations, your mallice hath not a cleare ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... blind ravine, or rocky pocket, into which we could drive the horses we needed, and to that end all our energies were directed. Darting back and forth to arrest the dodging and fleeing animals, we at length succeeded in "penning" about a dozen horses in the pocket. Then I watched Sinyela, hand extended, slowly and stealthily approach the pony he needed. Time and again, as he got nearer and nearer, all the time making a peculiar sissing sound, the horse would suddenly swing around and ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... penning a letter. It must not be long; it must not strike the lyrical note; yet assuredly it must not read like a commercial overture. He had great difficulty in writing anything that seemed tolerable. Yet done it must be, and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... gross blunders as to noted edifices, works of art, &c., is quite probable; but that I have truthfully though hastily indicated the topography, rural aspects, agricultural adaptations and more obvious social characteristics of the countries I traversed, I am nevertheless confident. I made a point of penning my impressions of each day's journey within the succeeding twenty-four hours if practicable, for I found that even a day's postponement impaired the distinctness of my recollections of the ever-varying panorama of hill and dale, moor and mountain, with long, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... application of this sort, his first emotion is an indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the same, that application has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time for everything," agreed the Philosopher. "With the lover, penning poetry to the wondrous red and white upon his mistress' cheek, we do not discuss the subject of pigment in the blood, its cause and probable duration. Nevertheless, the ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... after a few weeks sickness. Sir ANDREW FREEPORT has a letter from one of his correspondents in those parts, that informs him the old man caught a cold at the country-sessions, as he was very warmly promoting an address of his own penning, in which he succeeded according to his wishes. But this particular comes from a whig justice of peace, who was always Sir ROGER'S enemy and antagonist. I have letters both from the Chaplain and Captain SENTRY, which mention nothing of it, but are filled with many particulars ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... sheet on the other side; and the pen that writes on the flimsy top surface makes an impression that is carried through the black to the sheet below, and there is a duplicate which the writer keeps. You and I, upon the flimsinesses of this fleeting—sometimes, we think, futile—life, are penning what is neither flimsy nor futile, which goes through the opaque dark, and is reproduced and docketed yonder. That is what we are doing every day and every minute, writing, writing, writing our own biography. And who is going to read ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren |
