"Sprat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... papers that you are fixed fairly well for another year. You and your son will both earn something, of course, during the next twelve months. So if I were you, I would throw a sprat to catch a herring, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... power to absolve them from this covenant with death, and agreement with hell (Isa 28:15). Nor did the silly Mansoul stick or boggle at all at this most monstrous engagement, but, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale, they swallowed it without any chewing. Were they troubled at it? Nay, they rather bragged and boasted of their so brave fidelity to the tyrant, their pretended King, swearing that they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to choose between being too fat or too lean, the wise woman would certainly take the smaller allowance of flesh. Jack Sprat might incite pleasant ridicule, but Jack Sprat's wife—lo! there would be naught but pity and tears for her! It is better by far to be the butt of jokes concerning "walking shoestrings" or "perambulating umbrella cases" than to waddle ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... been dispelled by this attempt to promote a rival to the post of honour; "I am ready, sir:" muttering, however, soon afterwards to himself, as the difficulties of the way increased, "He thinks no more of his life than if he were a sprat or a spawn." No other word was breathed by either of the adventurers, as they threaded the giddy path, until about midway, when the elder paused and exclaimed, "A-hoy there, boy! there are two steps wanting; you had better indeed go back. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a split of the Maryland way, but sprat for that Delaware! I'll go in it no more. I'll stand whack with you, however, fur the madges I give you and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... BLEAK or fresh-water Sprat; a fish that is ever in motion, and therefore called by some the river-swallow; for just as you shall observe the swallow to be, most evenings in summer, ever in motion, making short and quick turns when he flies to catch flies, in the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... brush, I'm here again! At times a Pindar and Fontaine, Casting poetic pearl (I fear) to swine! For, hang me, if my last years odes Paid rent for lodgings near the gods, Or put one sprat ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Val., alluded to above, and the S. leiogaster, Val. and Cuv. xx. 270, which was found by Mr. Reynaud at Trincomalie. It occurs also off the coast of Java. Another Ceylon fish of the same group, a Clupea, is known as the "poisonous sprat," the bonito (Scomber pelamys?), the kangewena, or unicorn fish (Balistes?), and a number of others, are more or less in bad repute from ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the question. And who was I that I should rebuke Jem for calling our worthy uncle a curmudgeon, and stigmatising the Jew-clerk as a dirty beast? I really dared not tell him that Moses grew more familiar as my time to be articled drew near; that he called me Jack Sprat, and his dearest friend, and offered to procure me the "silver-top" (or champagne)—which he said I must "stand" on the day I took my place at the fellow desk to his—of the first quality and at less than cost price; and that he had provided me gratis with a choice of "excuses" (they ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... little agreeably. By this means he may readily mark down his man, and the game once in view, he should not appear too eager in the pursuit of it, but take good care, as the proverb says, to give a sprat, in order to catch a herring. This should be done by allowing some temporary success, before he make ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's Cathedral, Patrick at Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's, Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at Saint Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint Peter's in Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in ecclesiastical history, ten became Bishops, and four Archbishops. Meanwhile almost the only important theological works which came forth from a rural parsonage ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Samuel Adrian Inglethwaite. Why I was called Samuel I do not know. Possibly my parents did. Samuel may have been a baptismal sprat set to catch a testamentary whale, but if this was so no legacy ever came my way. Personally, I am rather attached to the name, as I was called nothing else until I encountered the lady who ultimately consented ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... to attach weight to English writers of the latter half of the 17th century, we shall find that one of Bacon's greatest achievements was the impetus given by his New Atlantis to the foundation of the Royal Society (q.v.). Dr Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), bishop of Rochester and first historian of the society, says that Bacon of all others "had the true imagination of the whole extent" of the enterprise, and that in his works are to be found the best arguments ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... employed in considerable quantity as a manure. That most extensively employed in this country is the sprat, which is occasionally caught in enormous quantities on the Norfolk coast, and used as an application for turnips. They are sold at 8d. per bushel, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... the sonne shyneth brighte In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space, A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace, That over-spradde hir ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... one-eyed Archer, and the fire arising betwixt him and Albion, will be made evident by the following extracts from Sprat's history of the Conspiracy. In enumerating the persons engaged in the Rye-house plot, he mentions "Richard Rumbold, maltster, an old army officer, a desperate and bloody Ravaillac." After agitating several schemes for assassinating Charles, the Rye-house ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden |
