"Pick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but when they perceived the whole fleet moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a scream of grief and despair that it is almost impossible to describe or conceive. When I had got out of danger, I stopped a while to pick out the arrows that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of the same ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as I have formerly mentioned. I then took off my spectacles, and, waiting about an hour till the tide was a little fallen, I waded through the middle ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... want is to sight land," the Lieutenant remarked. "Then we can start for the interior, and try to pick a nice soft spot for landing without ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could feel curious concerning it, the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... be quite a large number of very able and very heretical sinners in the Church of England, within easy hail of each other, and so thick in some neighborhoods that it is the readiest thing in the world to pick out a set of them who, 'without concert or comparison,' will contribute all the parts of a fresh and unhackneyed ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... canal-boat as if it were trying to tug it loose and carry the old craft and all the family out to sea. Little Bertel hoped the tide would fetch it, for it would be kind o' nice to get clear out away from everybody and everything—where there were no chips to pick up. His mother could supply a quilt for a mainsail and he would use his shirt for a jib, and they would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Here is a strong-built but lumpish-looking fellow, seemingly a ploughman or day-labourer, leaving the scene of action in evident disgust, who, on being asked if he had been successful, answers roughly: 'No!' and adds: 'I'll sell you this pick for a glass of ale or a dram of whisky.' Here are angry words passing between a middle-aged man and a youth, respecting the right of possession, the former having driven the latter away from a promising-looking place on which he was employed, and commenced ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... pleased enough. It was better than going down with your back to the horses! He had no objection to driving down with Irene. He supposed they would pick up the others at Montpellier ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... idling about, after their lunch, Mallard kept near to Miriam, but without speaking. He saw her stoop to pick up a piece of stone; presently another. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Yes, I'm sure I have. My basket's most full; and if we hurry, we shall get ever so many before we go home. So pick away as fast as you ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Paris is the early morning. "The take," as anglers say, is "on" from half-past seven to half-past nine a.m. At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares, and the agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up everything worth having. These agents quite spoil the sport of the amateur. They keep a strict watch on every country dealer's catalogue, snap up all he has worth selling, and sell it over again, charging pounds in place of shillings. But M. de Resbecq vows that he once picked up a copy of ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... style of those heroic times? 35 For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth, Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' 'But I,' 40 Said Francis, 'pick'd the eleventh from this hearth' And have it: keep a thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears; ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... steadily at the tree with what I now know was an axe, but which at the time we all supposed to be a thunder-stick, and at each blow the splinters of wood flew just as Cinnamon had told us. After a while he stopped, and stooped to pick something off the ground. This hid him from my sight, and from Kahwa's also, so she strained up on her tiptoes to get another look at him. In doing so her feet slipped on the bark of the log, and down she came with a crash that could have been heard at twice his distance from us, ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... matters, that his only acquirements were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... level road, and the afternoon a pleasant one late in the fall. Hetty could not chase the squirrels, for fear of upsetting her pail; neither could she pick berries, for they were all gone. And so she trudged on silently, wishing she were as old as Matilda Ann, so that she might go to the concert. As she passed a lot which was covered with stubble, a boy appeared, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... off fish only, they contributed little more than rich beds of guano to the permanent colonising of the islands. As well as I can remember, the land-snails were the earliest truly terrestrial casuals that managed to pick up a stray livelihood in these first colonial days of the archipelago. They came oftenest in the egg, sometimes clinging to water-logged leaves cast up by storms, sometimes hidden in the bark of floating driftwood, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and if the girls come all that way out of their road in the morning to pick you up, it will be only civil that you should go back by Castle Richmond, and you would enjoy an evening there with the girls ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring: 130 She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... stated that, having been four years and as many months upon the island without any human creature with whom to converse, he had forgotten the use of his tongue. He had been so long inured to water and such insipid food as he could pick up, that it was some time before he could reconcile himself to the ship's victuals, or to the taking of a dram. He stated that he was a native of Largo, in Fifeshire, that his name was Alexander Selkirk, and that he had belonged to a ship called the Cinque Ports, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... often without a meal. I know, too, that she frequently stinted herself to give me food. She lived on the banks of the Thames somewhere below London, and I very soon found my way down to the mud, where I now and then used to pick up odds and ends, bits of iron and copper, and sometimes even coin, and chips of wood. The first my mother used to sell, and I often got enough in the week to buy us a hearty meal; the last served to boil our kettle when we had any food to cook in it. ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... fresh supply of ammunition, and snowballs flew in all directions. Poor Sam was struck in the ear, and the carrier of the flag was hit in the arm and in the mouth. Down went the flag, and before the carrier could pick it up, three of the enemy pounced upon him, and while two held him, the ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... sort, who pick up their grains of food with a bodkin.—O.W. Holmes, Autocrat of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... appear regularly at the fetes in the streets of Paris in the summer season, living all of them in a roving gipsy wagon as is the custom of these fete people. What a charming moment it was always to see the simple but well built Mlle. Jeanne of twenty-two pick up her stalwart and beautifully proportioned brother of nineteen, a strong, broad-shouldered, manly chap, and balance him on one hand upright in the air. It was a classic moment in the art of the acrobat, interesting to watch the father of them all training the fragile bodies of the younger ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... have enabled me to buy it. It was the portrait of a typical Spanish cavalier and beyond doubt a Menendez. In fact, the resemblance between the haughty Spanish grandee, who seemed about to step out of the canvas and pick a quarrel with the spectator, and Colonel Don Juan himself was almost startling. Evidently, our host had imported most of ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... but with few shot in the locker. In other words, Peru had not wherewithal to pay off its troops. But the Creole—I forget his name—volunteered to take his pay in lands. So they told him he might have his pick of the Enchanted Isles, which were then, as they still remain, the nominal appanage of Peru. The soldier straightway embarks thither, explores the group, returns to Callao, and says he will take a deed of Charles's Isle. Moreover, this deed must stipulate that thenceforth Charles's ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a good manner, with good will. Depesshed; French depecher, defpatched. Deporte; deport. Devour; French devoir, duty. Dismes; Latin decimal, tenths, or tithes. Disobeyfance; disobedience. Difpendynge; spending. Distemprance; intemperance. Dolabre; Latin dolabra, axe, pick-axe. Doubted; redoubted, of doughty. Drawhtes; draughts, movements. Drof; drove. Dronkelewe; drunkenness. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... the matter? Haven't you the whole gang under your hand? The very pick of the basket? That old terrorist Yundt is here. I see him walking about Piccadilly in his green havelock almost every day. And Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle—you don't mean to say you don't know where he is? Because if you don't, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... replies that, as long as there are hands unemployed and misemployed, a government such as he would see need never be at a loss for labourers. If corn can be made to grow where juniper grew before, the benefit is a positive one, the expense only comparative. And so you take your pick with the rest, and are almost persuaded to become a companion ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... explosion in a mine. I think no one was hurt, and the mischief done seemed to consist in a Wide hole in the asphalte and a door reduced to splinters. The National Guards got up from the ground, and several of them proceeded to pick up fragments of the shell. They had, however, not gone many yards when another cry of alarm was given, and again we heard the ominous Whizzing sound; in an instant we were all on our faces. The second shell burst, but we did not see it; we only saw at the top of the house that had already been ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... tombs are common in all Muhammadan countries and very frequently they bear inscriptions. On the third day a feast is given in the morning and after it trays of flowers with a vessel containing scented oil are handed round and the guests pick flowers and dip them into the oil. They then proceed to the grave, where the oil and flowers are placed. Maulvis are employed to read the whole of the Koran over the grave, which they accomplish by dividing it into sections and reading them at the same time. Rich people sometimes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... true pleasure, delightful enjoyment, the scraps of that happiness which is greatly calumniated and accused of not existing because we expect it to fall from heaven in a solid mass when it lies at our feet in fine powder. Let us pick up the fragments, and not grumble too much; every day brings us with its bread its ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... leaves nothing with which to buy even a head-stone! Little she thought that it might strain the wealth of the Bank of England to move Sugar up twelve points. I moved it up, and it went so easy—oh, so easy! that—well, I will let the first description I pick from my scrap-book from among a hundred from the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... tried your joke, I will now try mine. I'll teach you to pick up a stranger in the street to make him the victim of your joke. Oh, yes, we will call it a joke, a good joke, but the joke is not played out yet. You have had your fun. I must have mine, and here goes!" Oscar whipped out a club. He leaped forward and down went Girard, and the other detectives also ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... said to himself that if he lingered among them it was in the miserable hope that one of the number might ask him to dine. Miss Trent had told him that she was to go to the opera that evening with her rich aunt; and if he should have the luck to pick up a dinner-invitation he might join ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... was in accordance with the savage nature, a dash, irregular volleys, shots from ambush, an endeavor to pick off the settlers, whenever a head was shown, but no direct attempt to storm the palisade, for which the Indian is unfitted. A bullet would not reach from the forest, but from little hillocks and slight ridges in the open where a brown breast was pressed close to the earth came the flash of ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that's simple and real! And as for her heart—" His voice was low and very tender: "Why, her heart is the biggest I've ever known. It's just overflowing with sweetness and kindness. I've seen her pick up a baby that had fallen in the street, and mother it in a way that—well, no one could do it as she did it, unless her soul ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... that about this time there was a strange confusion of place among all the books in the library, for which several reasons were assigned. Some imputed it to a great heap of learned dust, which a perverse wind blew off from a shelf of Moderns into the keeper's eyes. Others affirmed he had a humour to pick the worms out of the schoolmen, and swallow them fresh and fasting, whereof some fell upon his spleen, and some climbed up into his head, to the great perturbation of both. And lastly, others maintained that, by walking much in the dark about the library, he had quite lost the situation of it out ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... representation in St. Louis must be by duly elected representatives from congressional districts in so far as that was possible. Each such district was awarded double its congressional representation, in addition to the delegates at large. It was no easy task to pick these committeemen. The decision of the Paris gathering that the organization must be non-partisan and non-political had to be adhered to in its fullest sense. There were soldiers and sailors enough in all ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... upon the same testimony and the jury had disagreed—six to six, each time—Mr. Tutt, who had overstayed his lunch hour at the office, put on his stovepipe hat and strolled along Washington Street, looking for a place to pick up a bite to eat. It was in the middle of the afternoon and most of the stores were empty, which was all the more to his liking. He had always wanted to try some of that Turkish pie that they had all talked so much about at the trial. Presently a familiar juxtaposition of names ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... just in the century when mere scientific interest was uppermost. Nay, one is tempted to think that matters were made worse by that very love of the strenuous, the definite, the lucid, which is part of the Tuscan spirit. So that we have to pick out, in men like Donatello, Uccello, Pollaiolo and Verrocchio, nay, even in Lippi and Botticelli, the fragments which correspond to what we get quite unmixed and perfect in the Romanesque churches of Pisa, Florence, and Pistoia, in ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... put you on the first or even the scrub. I must pick from the substitute teams to fill any vacancy. I have nothing at all to do with the sub. The physical instructor does that, and of course picks out the girls whom she thinks will be able to play the game. But I'll speak ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... the other, hurling the brand in the midst of the combustibles. In an instant the building was in flames. "Come on; let us move towards the heights while we have light to pick our road." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... answered her at once, his eyes on the haze caught like a dream in the tender green of the budding trees,—"it makes me think of a half-naked, sweating man, far underground in black night, striking at a rock with a pick." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... tried to pick a black crimson Victor Hugo, pricked her fingers and said "Damn!" With my penknife I cut the stalk and handed her the rose, which she ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... not know what he would have done if it had not been for the Downs. There there were spaces where he might wander for miles, and over these spaces he wandered. He would pick branches from trees and make insane vast nosegays there until he was forbidden, take up sheep and put them in neat rows, from which they immediately wandered (at this he invariably laughed very heartily), until he ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... be. There's Mrs. Figgins, now, the baker's wife; her daughter has just chosen to get married to a bank clerk in London; and I said to her this morning, "Well, Mrs. Figgins, so you've let your Polly go and pick up with some young fellow from town that you've never seen before, haven't you? And that's the way of all you people. You marry your girls to bank clerks without a reference, for the sake of getting 'em off your hands, and what's the consequence? ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the Daisy without noticing one special charm, that it is peculiarly the flower of childhood. The Daisy is one of the few flowers of which the child may pick any quantity without fear of scolding from the surliest gardener. It is to the child the herald of spring, when it can set its little foot on six at once, and it readily lends itself to the delightful manufacture of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... never been able to account exactly for it myself. Fortunately, I took the disorder as I did the measles—young; and neither of these complaints is apt to be so fatal then, I'm told, as when they pick a man up later in life. It was, however, a very severe attack while it lasted. A very charming hand at hooking a gudgeon was that delightful ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... "That I could pick up a better suit for half the price at old Battista, the Lombard's at Bordeaux; nevertheless, since young Eustace would be the show of the camp if he appeared there provided in Ralph's fashion, it may be as well to see ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... just as Joseph had said. Three days after that, king Pharaoh sent his officers to the prison. They came and took out both the chief butler and the chief baker. The baker they hung up by his neck to die, and left his body for the birds to pick in pieces. The chief butler they brought back to his old place, where he waited at the king's table, and handed ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... hand, too; I've known him pick seven hundred and fifty pounds of cotton in a day—of course, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the streets of any large city without hitting one of 'em. When the fickle public tired of giving up its dimes to see 'em, a guy named Merritt and myself had a choice collection on hand, and we went on the road with the big show for the summer, thinking perhaps our business would pick up in the fall. Our two great attractions were the biggest boa-constrictor in captivity, which we called 'Jointless Jake,' and the heaviest fat man in the world. That snake was about two hundred feet long, and while the fat man wasn't much on length, he held the record ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... perfectly," asserted John, solemnly. "I can see them going by right now! Pretty soon we pick up old man Dorion, coming down from the Sioux, and hire him to go back ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... window she could see him walk leisurely down the lane to the street, and pick his way carefully over the broken planks of the sidewalk to the avenue. Then he disappeared behind the short shutters that crossed ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... for coffee, and Mr. Minturn had to sip the generous and fragrant beverage slowly. Meanwhile, his thoughts were busy. "Bah! for the old saying, 'Take the goods the gods send,'" he mused. "Go after your goods and take your pick. I knew my head was level in coming out. All is just as genuine as I supposed it would be—simple, honest, homely. The girl isn't homely, though, but she's just as genuine as all the rest, in that old dress which fits her like a glove. No shams and disguises ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... it in my mind this long time to get and to keep it in my cave under ground, along with the rest of my treasures that are in charge of my two enchanted cats. I have had near enough of grubbing for gold with a pick in the clefts and crannies of the earth. It is time for me to find some rest, and get into my hand what is ready worked and smelted and purified. We are going to that Courthouse to-night. If we cannot get in at the door, I will ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the ancient races running through this Bible is so confused by the introduction of new matter by the "author"* and by repetitions that it is puzzling to pick it out. The Book of Ether was somewhat puzzling even to the early Mormons, and we find Parley P. Pratt, in his analysis of it, printed in London in 1854, saying, "Ether SEEMS to have been a lineal ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... looked up from his packing. "That's a sort of image I broke. Come along; we haven't time to pick up ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not an easy task to pick out the choicest gems from the abundant treasures of this splendid collection, but the following are a few of the most interesting ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... fine clothes and monasteries towering on high like a castle in its bulwarks: 'For such things as these,' the supplication continues, 'we, their books, are cast out of their hearts and regarded as useless lumber, except some few worthless tracts, from which they still pick out a mixture of rant and nonsense, more to tickle the ears of their audience than to assuage any ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... him when at school, he must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that time so delicate that when compelled to go to a large closet containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were always tender, the smell from the number in this place used to make him so sick that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... pear-tree. There they sat so quietly, all in a row, in their sober russet suit of feathers, just as if they were Quakers at meeting. The birds are very tame here; thanks to Friend Joseph's tender heart. The Bob-o-links pick seed from the dandelions, at my very feet. May you sleep like a child when his friends are with him, as the Orientals ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... 101. Cranberry Sauce.—Carefully pick and wash one quart of cranberries; put them over the fire in a sauce-pan with half a pint of cold water; bring them to a boil, and boil them gently for fifteen minutes, stirring them occasionally to prevent ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... read and mused for more than an hour, Alma tore out the two passages that had a personal interest for her, and put them in her purse. The papers she left lying for anyone who chose to pick them up. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... house over my head before I will pay a cent," cried Mr. Russell. And he meant it. This was the way the others felt. Who were to be on this mysterious list of "Sixty"? That was the all-absorbing question of the town. It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous ones. Colonel Carvel was sure to be there, and Mr. Catherwood and Mr. Russell and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer. Mrs. Addison Colfax lived for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared would break her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... desolate, unfrequented spot, is the guebre "tower of silence," where they dispose of their dead. On top of the tower is a kind of balcony with an open grated floor; on this the naked corpses are placed until the carrion crows and the vultures pick the skeleton perfectly clean; the dry bones are then cast into a common receptacle in the tower. The guebre communities of Persia are too impecunious or too indifferent to keep up the ever-burning-fires nowadays; the fires of Zoroaster, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... took no notice at all: she just removed her gloves, held her knife and fork with the tips of her fingers, let Pa help her, thanked him with a pretty "'K you." From the corner of her eye, she watched other groups, to pick up good manners. She seemed to have frequented smart restaurants all her life: beside her, Nunkie and the Three Graces, who cut their bread with their knives and made a noise when eating, looked like a family ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... which had been lying in Miss Atwood's lap had gradually slipped forward and at this moment dropped to the floor. As she reached down to pick it up, Morgan's alert eyes noted a purplish mark ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... evidence of innate intellectual inferiority, and there seems to be no good reason to doubt that most of the people could be taught to use figures as readily as the average European; those children who have entered the schools seem to pick up ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... been made, not only to tell an interesting tale, but to interest the younger generation in this remarkable and dramatic phase of our national development, possibly the most picturesque and dramatic period in the history of the nation: to picture to them how these knights of the pick and the shovel lived and worked, how they found and wrested the gold from the hard hand of nature, and to give to them something of an idea of the hardships and the perils they were obliged to endure while ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... to look at her face, because he did not dare; but he saw her pick the berries from a red bunch she had pulled, and drop them one by one to the ground. Never had he loved her as he did then in the anguish of farewell, and he called himself a fool for not having gone, as prudence prompted, leaving only a ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... if it reclaims where it was design'd, and prevents others, by shewing the Danger: And this is the Design of Comedy. But the Question is, Whether our Poets have managed it as they ought? Whether they have not pick'd out a particular Person, and expos'd the Character in general, under the Notion of one Man? I answer to this, That whatever the Design of the Poet has been, it has not had the effect with the People: For who disbelieves the Authority of their Function, or thinks the worse of Good, ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... work, and lug down my rag-bag. His steel-yards wuz broke, so he had to weigh 'em in the house. It wuz a tegus job, for he wuz one of the perticuler kind, and had to look 'em all over before he weighed 'em, and pick out every little piece of brown paper, or full cloth—everything, he said, that wouldn't make up into the ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... repetition they came even to rankle. At last he grew—unconfessed, of course—so aggravated by them that a secret longing for revenge rose up within him. She had thrown down the gauntlet, why should he not pick it up? The marchesa, he knew, had a niece, why should he not marry the niece, in ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... awfully sorry," he said, with a swift glance at Sir Seymour, which the latter did not miss, "but I must turn you both out. I'm dining at the Arts Club to-night. Jinks—you know the Slade Jinks—is coming to pick me up. You'll ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... this till, by Rollo's assistance, she had reached the spot whence she could observe the facts for herself. The knowledge that there was a watch set below, who would not fail to take her alive, though his affair was to pick up her dead body, kept her from yielding to audible grief, but never had she been more convulsed with passion. She pulled up the heather by handfuls. She dashed her head against the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... I declare!" he exclaimed, with a start of surprise, as he stooped to pick it up. It was without an envelope, written in a bold, legible hand, and unintentionally he read the date, "Lansdale, Ohio, Aug. — 185-," and farther down the page some parts of sentences connected with the "D—— family" ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... one or the other be equitably discontinued? As long as there are any such persons left, to stop, without their consent and without adequately compensating them, arrangements, rights in which have been vested in them by bequest, would be as palpable a violation of justice as to pick their pockets of sums equivalent to their several interests, real or supposed, in ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... over-sensitive ego-feeling, together with a lack of parts to play, of histrionic activity, had that effect upon this perfect artist and impoverished human being ... An artist, a real one, not one whose official profession is art, but a predestined and pre-condemned artist, you can pick out of a thousand men, with a little sharpness of sight. The feeling of separation and of non-membership, of being recognized and observed, is in his face, something at once regal and perplexed. In the features of a prince walking ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the portal to a long avenue excavated in a deeper-seated bed of coal. In some of the dark and dusty chambers which open here the miner's pick is heard, and now and then the muffled report of the miner's blast comes echoing through the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... thanking me at all,' replied Miss Gwynne, stooping to pick up a book, doubtless to conceal a very ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... a sharp Oak pick with his axe, and Yan used it to pick holes in each piece of bark and then did a sort of rude sewing till the wigwam seemed beautifully covered in. But when they went inside to look they were unpleasantly surprised to find how many holes there were. It was impossible to close them all because ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... interest in the locality of Scottish Song; and it was probably the case, as Professor Blackie writes, that 'such a lover of the pure Scottish Muse could not fail when wandering from glen to glen to pick up fragments of traditional song, which, without his sympathetic touch, would probably ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... until it appeared that half the ship's company were overboard. Some of the men who could not swim, but were too proud to refuse to follow, were nearly drowned. As it was, the first lieutenant was obliged to lower the cutter to pick them up, and they were all ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... earth does carry it from him?" Horace Walpole, at the beginning of his Royal and Noble Authors, has mottoed his book with the Cardinal's address to Ariosto, "Dove diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pigliato tante coglionerie?"[271] Walter Scott says you could hardly pick out, on any principle of selection—except badness itself, he means of course—the same number of plebeian authors whose works are so bad. But his implied satire on aristocratic writing forgets ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... at a reckless rate of speed by its indifferent driver, whirling around curves where the outer wheels had scarcely an inch to spare, while we looked fearfully down upon the tops of the tall trees in the canyon far below. If the horses slackened their pace for an instant, the driver stooped to pick up a stone from a pile that he kept at his feet and bombarded them into a fresh spurt. At the Toll House, half-way up the mountain, which still exists in much the same condition as in those days, we arrived as mere animated pillars of fine white dust, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... some pick out bullets from the side, Some drive old okum through each seam and rift; Their left hand does the calking-iron guide, The rattling mallet with the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Scanlan, that hasn't done annything since th' siege iv Lim'rick; an' that was two hundherd year befure he was bor-rn. He's prisident iv th' Pome Supply Company,—fr-resh pothry delivered ivry day at ye'er dure. Is there an accident in a grain illyvator? Ye pick up ye'er mornin' pa-aper, an' they'se a pome about it be Roodyard Kipling. Do ye hear iv a manhole cover bein' blown up? Roodyard is there with his r-ready pen. ''Tis written iv Cashum-Cadi an' th' book iv th' gr-reat Gazelle that a manhole cover ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... absorb quantities of odd-looking water-ices, served in cups, which taste like scented frost, or rather like flowers steeped in snow. Our mousmes order for themselves great bowls of candied beans mixed with hail—real hailstones, such as we might pick up after a hailstorm ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... "We could pick them all off from here," said one of the men—a huge, burly fellow, who had climbed up to a projecting rock commanding an extensive view. "All down to ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... accordingly he held that a master-piece of this kind was the very short harangue of General Vandamme to the soldiers he commanded the day of the battle of Austerlitz. When day began to break General Vandamme said to the troops, "My brave fellows! There are the Russians! Load your pieces, pick your flints, put powder in the pan, fix bayonets, ready and—forward!" I remember one day the Emperor spoke of this oration before Marshal Berthier, who laughed at it. "That is like you," he said. "Well, all the advocates of Paris would not have said it so well; the soldier understands ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... one afternoon, she was sure, all but the house, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and the plain cat, which she thought she could pick up in the village ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... papa Taillefer lost his son through the interposition of a wise Providence, he would take back his pretty and amiable daughter, who would inherit his millions. To this end he, Vautrin, frankly volunteered to play the part of destiny. He had a friend, a colonel in the army of the Loire, who would pick a quarrel with Frederic, the young blackguard son who had never sent a five-franc piece to his poor sister, and then "to the shades"—making a pass as if with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... outside this rushed the river, black and silent, save for the dull crunch of the ice-floes as they ground against one another in their race down the stream. On the end of the dock stood a solitary figure watching a number of men, who, with pick and axe, were cutting away the lodged ice that blocked the pier, while already a motley variety of boats being filled with men could be seen at each point of the shore where the ground ice made embarkation possible. Along the banks groups of soldiers were clustered about fires ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... heel and dropped it directly in front of him; I knew he would recognize it, for it was his own, loaned to me for my more fashionable appearance. He heard the jingle and glanced around. His hat blew off as if by accident and fell near the spur. In stooping to pick it up, the spur also found its way into his hand beneath the hat. He was truly a quick-witted gentleman, and I forgave him from my heart all his chaff in the matter of teaching me manners. It took him not a great while to comprehend, and taking note of the situation ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... sovereignty? How also may this destruction of creatures be stopped? Say all these unto me, O lord. Tell us the means of thy own death. How, O hero, shall we be able to bear thee in battle? O grandsire of the Kurus, thou givest not thy foes even a minute hole to pick in thee. Thou art seen in battle with thy bow ever drawn to a circle. When thou takest thy shafts, when aimest them, and when drawest the bow (for letting them off), no one is able to mark. O slayer of hostile heroes, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... precisely the same sort of magnanimity which for himself he is determined to attain to. To be his friend is the task of all tasks: for he is so touchy, you need only cough, or eat with your knife, or not sip your drink as delicately as a cow, or even pick your ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... What hay it'll be!" said an old man, squatting down beside Levin. "It's tea, not hay! It's like scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!" he added, pointing to the growing haycocks. "Since dinnertime they've carried ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... third day of the voyage they saw a coffin with iron bands floating on the waves. The two eldest brothers sailed past without heeding it, but as soon as Sila Tsarevich saw the coffin, he ordered the sailors to pick it up, lay it on board his ship, and carry it to land. The next day a violent storm arose, by which Sila's ship was driven out of its course, and cast upon a steep shore in an unknown country. Then Sila ordered his sailors to take the coffin and to carry it on shore, whither he himself ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... glory; the ice being once broken, officers were to her but like so many school-girls, and she rattled away to the admiral and the fleet captain and two or three lieutenants at once, while others hovered behind the circle of her immediate adorers, to pick up the stray shafts of what passed for wit. Other girls again drove two-in-hand, at the most, in the way of conversation; while those least gifted could only encounter one small Frenchman in some safe corner, and converse ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Persian gun, jump up and use both hands to fire to the right or left, or over his horse's croupe; or that he could wield a long heavy lance with the power of a Cossack; or at full gallop hurl the djerrid to the rear with the force of a Persian, and again, without any diminution of speed, pick it from the ground. On the other hand, his peculiar seat renders the Eastern horseman so utterly helpless in the performances of the manege, that he is unable to make his horse rein back, or pass sideways a step. And I have seen three hundred Mussulman troops from the northern parts ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... hours passed. The wind had abated, the sun was struggling to dissipate the murky bank of cloud that hung from zenith to the eastern horizon. From his coign of vantage at the little port hole Dan saw Madame de la Fontaine pick her way across the Dunes and come upon the little beach. A small boat had put off from the schooner and was being rowed to shore by two seamen. The French lady gathered her skirts about her ankles, and stepped lightly into the skiff, as the men held it at the edge of the surf. The little ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... returned, in the astonishment which he shared with her to the extent of letting the shawls he had knocked from her hold lie between them till she began to pick them up herself. Then he joined her and in the relief of their common occupation they contrived to possess each other of the reason of their presence on, the same boat. She had sorrowed over Mrs. March's sad state, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... received, he having a crow to pick with Hannibal with regard to some native prisoners whom Gadifer's followers had kept and would not give up. Hannibal was obliged to obey the orders, but Courtois represented his conduct to Bethencourt on his return in the very worst light, and tried to excite his master's anger ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... looked curiously at the stranger, and then proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-possessed way, to pick him up. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... deep breath. "First," he said, "we had to come here and pick this guy up. This William Logan, who's in a private sanitarium just outside of Las Vegas. That's number one. Miss Thompson wants to get all the telepaths together, so they can hold mental ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was momentary, however, and was succeeded by one smiling, frank, and open. "Ha, ha, brother," said she, "well, I like you all the better for talking Rommany; it is a sweet language, isn't it? especially as you sing it. How did you pick it up? But you picked it up upon the roads, no doubt? Ha, it was funny in you to pretend not to know it, and you so flush with it all the time; it was not kind in you, however, to frighten the poor ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is stronger and more of power and might, If he be disposed to revenge his cause, Woll soon pick a quarrel, be it wrong or right, To the inferior and weaker for a couple of straws, And woll against him so extremely lay the laws, That he woll put him to the worse, either by false injury, Or by some craft and subtlety, or else by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... statement that they set out on Friday, but agrees with Lord Westcote's. 'They had not long arrived when he was seized with a usual fit. Soon recovered. Dined at five. To bed at eleven.' Then we hear how he rebuked his servant for stirring his rhubarb 'with a tooth-pick' (a plausible touch), sent him for a spoon, and was 'in a fit' on the man's return. 'The pillow being high, his chin bore hard on his neck. Instead of relieving him, the man ran for help: on his return ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... his love, to come with a greater appetite, and to know that her favour was not so easy to be had. Many other tricks she used besides this (as she there confesseth), for she would fall out with, and anger him of set purpose, pick quarrels upon no occasion, because she would be reconciled to him again. Amantium irae amoris redintegratio, as the old saying is, the falling out of lovers is the renewing of love; and according to that of Aristenaetis, jucundiores amorum post injurias deliciae, love is increased by injuries, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... suggested. "I'd sure like to see Baumberger stub his toe in this deal! Or maybe you could get around one of those eight beauties you've got camping down on your ranch—but there isn't much chance of that; he probably took good care to pick clams for that job. And Saunders," she added slowly, "is eternally silent. Well, I hope in mercy you'll be able to catch him napping, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Why Belman is as good as he my Lord, He cried vpon it at the meerest losse, And twice to day pick'd out the dullest sent, Trust me, I take ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with silent laughter, humming a little song to himself, stooped to pick a couple of tender spring flowers from the border beside the grave, and after slipping them into a button-hole of his many caped overcoat, stood looking out over the stretch of land and sea, where Scarthey rose like a dream against the sparkle ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to-night, but that's a loss you can make good. If there's a night's sleep owing you, you can collect the debt some time. No, a night's sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you're the only one in the tent. But if you're not alone, and you lose a night's sleep, someone else may pick it up, and you might ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 3.2 beer, non- alcoholic beverage. eating house &c 189. [person who eats] diner; hippophage; glutton &c 957. V. eat, feed, fare, devour, swallow, take; gulp, bolt, snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in [Slang]; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch^, craunch^, crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of a bourgeois than you," replied the artist, rather glad to see his adversary's fury exhaust itself in words, and his attitude assume a less threatening character; "pick up your compass and return to your work. Here," he added, taking two five-franc pieces from his pocket. "You were a little boorish and I a little hasty. Go and bathe your eyes ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... middle," he directed, "and pick out something that begins good, like 'Here the true art-lover will stand entranced——' You got to write it, because I guess you can write faster than what I can. I'll tell her I dictated to you. Get a hustle on now, so's ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... at Ambialet at one time supported a multitude of dwellings, of which there would be no trace now had they been entirely of masonry. In addition to partial chambers made with the pick-axe, one sees here and there a series of stairs cut out of the mica-schist. The strength of the burg made it a place of refuge for numerous families in the Albigeois, who had retreats upon these rocks ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... lines of Tully in his own hand. His chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts skins, and is a kind of charnel-house of bones extraordinary; and his discourse upon them, if you will hear him, shall last longer. His very attire is that which is the eldest out of fashion, [[AW]and you may pick a criticism out of his breeches.] He never looks upon himself till he is grey-haired, and then he is pleased with his own antiquity. His grave does not fright him, for he has been used to ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Soon his battery is turned upon the particular offending gun with endeavor to compel its abandonment; in vain, for its work of destruction goes on. Captain Semmes places sharp-shooters in the quarter boats to pick off the officers; in vain, for none are injured. He views the surrounding devastation—a sinking ship, rudder and propeller disabled, a large portion of the crew killed or wounded, while his adversary is apparently but slightly damaged. He has completed the seventh ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... that yields it. Fennel has here become a tree, in which, like the mustard of the Gospels, the fowls of the air may lodge; we are dwarfs beside it! Three kinds of the soft, slimy Mallow of the Marsh are here so much WOODY and so tall, that we must pick their flowers on tiptoe. The flattened disk of the sky-blue Nana arborea contrasts with the Betula sanguinea, glowing deeply in the flower-bed of many lighter-coloured petals; the sweet-scented African laurel grows against the long-leafed Babylonian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... a new dress for it," continued Bell, leaning forward to pick off the biggest grapes from a bunch on the table. "I mean to look just too-too. Mr. De Forest is going to row me up. I don't know exactly how I made him ask me, but I did. It's such a triumph to get him away from Miss Vernor ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... perceived, must be full of the paid agents of the ex-cardinal and the society which employed him. Not that Dr. Franchi had told his captives anything of this society; he had merely said that he was anxious for good company, and had therefore taken the liberty of capturing the pick of the eminent persons present at Geneva and entertaining them as ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... his face and sobbed, I am not ashamed to say that I cried too. I know very well that Mahommed was not quite wrong in what he says of the Europeans. I know the cruel old platitudes about governing Orientals by fear which the English pick up like mocking birds from the Turks. I know all about 'the stick' and 'vigour' and all that—but—'I sit among the people' and I know too that Mohammed feels just as John Smith or Tom Brown would feel in his place, and that men who were very savage against the rioters in the beginning, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the Commissioners. At Borova a number of school children were sent to play in front of the house where the Commission was, and ordered to speak Greek only. Signor Labia, the Italian commissioner, threw out a handful of coppers. In their rush to pick up the money the poor children forgot their orders, and disputed aloud in their mother tongue—Albanian, to the amusement of the Commission, which, disgusted by these tricks, drew a frontier which gave the Albanians ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded, And the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers,— A temple of the heat. There we bowed us in the burning, As the sun's right worship is, To pick where none could miss them A thousand orchises; For though the grass was scattered, Yet every second spear Seemed tipped with wings of color, That tinged the atmosphere. We raised a simple prayer Before we left the spot, That in the general mowing That ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... and might possibly improve themselves in language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, and might pick up an adventure or two of ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... gold florins and the Pope's pardon,' said Tommaso boldly. 'You could not buy her like in Venice, if you had your pick of the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... drifter, a quitter or a sleeper. It all depends on how you concentrate, or centralize your thoughts. Your thinking then becomes a fixed power and you do not waste time thinking about something that would not be good for you. You pick out the thoughts that will be the means of bringing you what you desire, and they become a material reality. Whatever we create in the thought world will some day materialize. That is ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont |
