"Stock-in-trade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... venturing to adopt the view that the conception of a beneficent Supreme Being may possibly be neither the end nor the beginning of religion, neither the final result of an evolution, euhemeristic, totemistic, or other, prolonged through countless ages and generations, nor part of the stock-in-trade of primitive man mysteriously acquired. Yet we are disposed to regard this conception as one that, amid the perpetual flux of opinion and belief which obtains among peoples destitute of written records, may be comparatively rapidly and easily arrived at under favourable ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... one holy book the Koran. This is his complete pharmacopoeia: his medicine chest, combining purgatives, blisters, sudorifics, styptics, narcotics, emetics, and all that the most profound M.D. could prescribe. With this "multum in parvo" stock-in-trade the Faky receives his patients. No. 1 arrives, a barren woman who requests some medicine that will promote the blessing of childbirth. No. 2, a man who was strong in his youth, but from excessive dissipation has become useless. No. 3, a man deformed from his birth, who wishes to become straight ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... "publics" at "the other end of the town," but all in vain. Meanwhile it had begun to dawn upon me that the stranger wasn't my friend at all. What greatly disheartened me was to know that he had my green bag, containing my stock-in-trade, in his possession wherever he was. This was a great blow to me. Having satisfied myself that he was not in Brighouse I pushed on my journey. I asked each person I met if he had seen a man with a green bag, but none of them seemed to remember having seen ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said. The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I'm ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... children who are coming here on Twelfth Night, in honor of Charlie's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the best of it is that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjuror, the practice and display whereof is entrusted to me. And if you could see me conjuring the company's watches into impossible tea-caddies and causing pieces of money to fly, and burning pocket handkerchiefs without burning 'em, and practising in my own room ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... asked many piastres for his work, but it was well worth the price, and his face shone with pleasure as Ibrahim stood solemnly, bag in hand, to count them out; and then the black cleared away his stock-in-trade and went ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... which is not always found in exalted personages. That repose of manner which is commonly believed to be the heirloom of noble birth is seen quite as often in the low-born adventurer, who regards it as part of his stock-in-trade; and there are many women, and men too, whose position might be expected to place them beyond the reach of what we call shyness, but who nevertheless suffer daily agonies of social timidity and would rather face alone a charge of cavalry than make a new acquaintance. The Princess Montevarchi ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... progress, viz., the Newtons, Bacons, Koperniks, Watts, Edisons, Shakespeares, Burkes, Keplers, Platos, Jeffersons and others who, by patient research or the outpourings of super-gifted minds have furnished forth the pedagogue's stock-in-trade? Science and Art, Philosophy and Religion—all that contributes to man's welfare, material or spiritual, originated in obscure closets and caves, in the open fields, beneath the star-domed vault of night, and during ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... been crying, and a ragged boy and girl. I treated them to a large measure of beer, and in a few minutes the tinker was telling me his history. That conversation ended very curiously, for I purchased for five pounds ten shillings the man's whole equipment. It included his stock-in-trade, and his pony and cart. Of the landlady I purchased sundry provisions, and also a waggoner's frock, gave the horse a little feed of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "chop, chop," jack's sole stock-in-trade of that intellectual puzzle, the Chinese language, and which he finds equally serviceable this side the water, our Jehus start off like an arrow shot from a bow. What endurance these ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... red ink. Some "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad margins. These have all a certain amount of magnificence in their tastes; but there are others again whose priceless collections are like the stock-in-trade of a wholesale ballad-singer, consisting of chap-books, as they are termed—the articles dealt in by pedlars and semi-mendicants for the past century or two. Some affect collections relating to the drama, and lay great ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the Central Provinces edited by C. Grant, 2nd edition, Nagpur, 1870, says that articles of merchandise belonging to two travelling traders who mocked the saint passed before him, on which he turned the whole stock-in-trade into stones as a punishment. They implored his pardon, and he created a fresh stock for them from dry leaves, on which they were so struck by his power that they attached themselves permanently ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... spent in Rupert's Land I was "without God." He was around me and within me, guarding me, bestowing upon me the physical and mental health by which alone I could fully enjoy a life in the wilderness, and furnishing me with much of the material that was to serve as my stock-in-trade during my subsequent career; yet—I confess it with shame—I did not recognise or think of, or care for, Him. It was not until after I had returned home that He opened my eyes to see myself a lost soul, and Jesus Christ—"God ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... piping, shrill voices, "We swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the stock-in-trade of a pedant on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her supporters as to the depraved condition of the Church at this period; so that we need not believe the allegations or their opponents that a chief inducement to join heretical sects lay in the greater scope for the indulgence of sin. Charges of immorality against opponents were the stock-in-trade of the controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the Church allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and negligences of the Church. Moreover, based as they were upon opposition to the existing organisation, the doctrines of the various sects had much in common. ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; these should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance, willingly ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... at least, do not seem to have trusted one another; no prince dared show ordinary courtesy to the ruling family of France, no statesman could visit Paris but voices would be heard crying that he had sold himself and his country. An accusation of this kind was the stock-in-trade which the Nationalist press was always ready to bring against every ruler who was obnoxious to them. It required moral courage, if it also shewed political astuteness, when Bismarck proposed deliberately to encourage a suspicion from which most men were anxious that their country should be free. ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... he caught her up, being to the full as willing to speak as she was. "So is my sister, and she also goes to 'Liberty's' for queer rags and tags. I suppose they are part of the amateur's stock-in-trade." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... problems in controlling the marauding activities of some of the nomadic tribes is the difficulty of meting out adequate punishment to peace-breakers. The fact that all the stock-in-trade of a township amounts to a few pots and pans and house material of cane matting and mud makes it impossible to impress them by destroying their houses. In a few days everything would be rebuilt as before. ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... that we shall achieve a striking success. We will make the old Friary as comfortable as possible," she continued, cheerfully. "The good folk of Hadleigh will be rather surprised when they see our pretty rooms. No horse-hair sofa; no crochet antimacassars or hideous wax flowers; none of the usual stock-in-trade. Dorothy will manage the house for us; and we will all sit and work together, and mother will help us, and read to us. Aren't you glad, Nan, that we all saved ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... because he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters, plaques, with their brilliant glaze, their innumerable figures, their family likeness and wide variations, are scattered through his occupied rooms; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as household ornament. As we all know, this is an age of prose, of machinery, of wholesale production, of coarse and hasty processes. But one brings away from the establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the sense of a less eager ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... like a native woman tricked out in ridiculous pomp. Some, still grimly conservative, receive the customer in their cavernous interior, and cheat his eyes in their perpetual twilight. Many of these little shops are so small that their stock-in-trade flows over on to the pavement. The toy shops, the china shops, the cake shops, the shops for women's ribbons and hairpins seem to be trying to turn themselves inside out. Others are so reticent that nothing appears save a stretch of clean straw mats, where sulky clerks sit smoking ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and papists two, all servants one shilling in the pound of their wages, all personal estates shall pay for so much as is not already taxed by the land-tax, after twenty shillings in the hundred. Cattle, corn, and household furniture shall be excepted, and all such stock-in-trade as is already taxed by the land-tax, but ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... stair railing with tall Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and artificial-looking vine,—this idea being the principal stock-in-trade of every ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... revenue officials' surprise, the coper skipper pleaded guilty to selling spirits and tobacco in British waters. He did so because, seeing Charlie and Ping Wang in court, he knew that they would give evidence against him. On his pleading guilty, the stock-in-trade, together with the stolen property which he had purchased, was confiscated. As Charlie and Ping Wang came out of the court they found the bow-legged cook waiting for them, anxious to get the balance ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... is enough to have shown that the capital, which is the stock-in-trade of finance, is not a fraudulent claim to take toll of the product of industry, but an essential part of the foundation on which industry is built. A man can only become a capitalist by rendering services for which ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... traveller. He knows what is the best of everything, how to get it, and, moreover, how to get it cheaply. He never plagues you with "shop," or secondhand guide-book extracts, or sentiment about scenery and sunsets. Cheeriness and bons mots are part of his stock-in-trade; brazen good-fellowship is ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... awls, or borers, with sharp points evidently for making holes in skins for the purpose of constructing a garment. Hammer-stones for crushing bones, tools with well-wrought flat edges, scrapers, and other implements, were the stock-in-trade of the earliest inhabitant of our country, and are distinguishable from those used by Neolithic man by their larger and rougher work. The maker of the old stone tools never polished his implements; nor did he fashion any of those finely wrought arrowheads ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... hand, of course, there are companionable, sympathetic writers whose whole stock-in-trade is themselves, their personal charm, their personal way of looking at things. Of these, Montaigne and Charles Lamb are among the great examples. It matters to us little or nothing what they are writing about; for their subjects, so far as they are concerned, are only important in relation to themselves, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is irrelevant to him altogether—he may let it lie unnoticed. I went thus through the 'inner catastrophe' of which I spoke in the last lecture; I had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, I was bankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. No words of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of concepts. But if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your own separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly driven to ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... were not unmindful; and found it convenient, indeed, to forget awhile the sorrows of the Queen of Heaven in those of the Queen of Scots. Not that they cared much for those sorrows; but they were an excellent stock-in-trade. She was a Romanist; she was "beautiful and unfortunate," a virtue which, like charity, hides the multitude of sins; and therefore she was a convenient card to play in the great game of Rome against the Queen and people of England; and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... bar he met a philanthropist who bought up his whole stock-in-trade. The stout seaman was utterly unprepared for such kindness, and stood looking at him dumbly, his lips all ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... signs not to throw them about so carelessly at the risk of breaking their delicate edges. I did at last, however, succeed in getting some good specimens, finer than any we had yet met with. In the same shop were also some Bajans, or sea-gipsies, whose stock-in-trade consisted of a miscellaneous collection, including dried trepang, strings of very uninviting dried fish, smaller pearl-shells, little skins of animals and birds, and rattan canes in the rough, but much cheaper and better than those to be bought at Singapore or elsewhere. The rattan ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the carpenter, 'Ali Sulayman; a "knowing dodger," who brought with him a little stock-in-trade of tobacco, cigarette-paper, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... opponent. He was called "Long Odds." In one particular case I won some eclat. It is not related on that account, however, but simply in consequence of its remarkable incidents. No case is interesting unless it is outside the ordinary stock-in-trade of the Law Courts, and ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... old Mackaye's will was read, and you raving mad in the next room, he had left all his stock-in-trade, that was, the books, to some of our friends, to form a workmen's library with, and L400 he'd saved, to be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd G.T.T., and cool down across the Atlantic, for seven years ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... its unfortunate sequel. He happened to have learned that the man with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow—who was already taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade—she immediately conceived the idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely necessary for his personal safety that he should have an intrepid and watchful ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... at my club, because I had paid, that morning, for a month's provender for my horses! It is true I have many valuable articles in my house, but I cannot dispose of them. People would recognize them at once; besides, they form a part of my stock-in-trade. An actor doesn't sell his costumes because he's hungry—he goes without food—and when it's time for the curtain to rise, he dons his satin and velvet garments, and, despite his empty stomach, he chants the praises of a bountiful table and rare ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring as their stock-in-trade. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... be at rest concerning thee," he replied, "With love and gladness! By Allah thy bede is good indeed and right is thy rede! By thy life, it shall be as thou dost heed." Then he unpacked some of his stock-in-trade and carrying the goods to his shop, opened it and sat down to sell in the Soko.[FN344] No sooner had he taken his place than lo and behold! up came Masrur and saluting him, sat down by his side and began talking and talked with him awhile. Then he pulled out a purse and taking forth gold, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... are Eau de Cologne, violet soap, and watch-ribbons; a smelling bottle of Ems crystal; a snuff-box of fig-tree wood. Name your price: the least trifle that can be given by a man who breaks a bank must be more than my whole stock-in-trade ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... which he dies. The Rebels may be induced to concede the negro the rights of war, when we grant him the ordinary rights of peace, namely, to be paid the price agreed upon. Jefferson Davis and the London "Times"—one-half whose stock-in-trade is "the inveterate meanness of the Yankee"—will hardly be converted to sound morals by the rebukes of an administration which allows its Secretary of War to promise a black soldier thirteen dollars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... impunity, and the utmost rigor of punishment had little terror for those whose hardships could scarcely be artificially worsened. The stagger of despair, the stricken, helpless aspect of such people, their gaunt faces and blurred eyes might conceivably be their stock-in-trade, the keys wherewith they unlocked hearts and purses and area-doors. It must be so when the sun was shining and birds were singing across fields not immeasurably distant, and children in walled gardens romped among fruits and flowers. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens |
