"Watchmaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oxford or Cambridge, preparatory to his engaging in one of the three liberal professions of divinity, law, or physic; the second son was perhaps apprenticed to a surgeon or apothecary, or a solicitor; the third to a pewterer or watchmaker; the fourth to a packer or mercer, and so on, were there more ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... cautious how I adventured upon anything with them; and indeed, when two or three unlucky projects were proposed by them, I declined the offer, and persuaded them against it. One time they particularly proposed robbing a watchmaker of three gold watches, which they had eyed in the daytime, and found the place where he laid them. One of them had so many keys of all kinds, that he made no question to open the place where the watchmaker had laid them; and so we made a kind of an appointment; but when I came to ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what the difficulty is;—which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,—which expression means you very well ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... song," asked the shoemaker. "If you will first give me those little red shoes you are making." The cobbler gave the shoes, and the bird sang the song; then flew to a tree in front of a watchmaker's, and sang: ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Captain Hardy, as he laid down his dividers. "That's pretty fine work—twenty-three circles within a space of an inch and a half. I'll wager a watchmaker made their pattern for them. The solid parts of their metal discs can't be much larger than these lines I have scratched on the celluloid. You were right when you named it, Willie. The parts of it must be just about ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... modern industrial life such a calculation no longer applies: the differences of skill, of native ingenuity, and technical preparation become enormous. The hour's work of a common laborer is not the same thing as the hour's work of a watchmaker mending a watch, or of an engineer directing the building of a bridge, or of an architect drawing a plan. There is no way of reducing these hours to a common basis. We may think, if we like, that the quantity ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... be practical and businesslike, in fact the greatest of them always are," he defended. "There was Voltaire, the successful watchmaker at Ferney ... and there was Shakespeare, who, after his success in London, returned to Avon and practically bought up the whole town ... he even ran a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went and hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped every watch and clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... wanted to carry him home in triumph; but he did not choose to go without being legally released, and returning into the committee room, he learnt for the first time the name of his preserver, one Monnot, a watchmaker, who, though knowing him only by character, and learning that he was among the clergy who were being driven to the slaughter, had rushed ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Bridgewater Treatises." The eye and the hand, those perfect instruments of optical and mechanical contrivance and adaptation, without the least waste or surplusage—these, say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this state, cross Darwin's work, and find that, after a sensitive nerve or a rudimentary hoof or claw, no design is to be found. From this point upward the development is the mere necessary result of natural ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of the country passed us; their construction was awkward to a degree. The French are very far behind the English in the ingenuity of the lower order of their artisans. A French watchmaker usually exceeds an English one; but a French blacksmith, a French carpenter, are as infinitely inferior. The things in common use are execrable: not a window that shuts close, not a door that fits; every thing clumsy, rough hewn, and as if made by ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... book, by-the-bye—is that the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in England, whether for or against, were all personal. The Dost was the favourite—which was generous—as he had no solitary merit to plead except that he had lost the election; or, as the watchmaker's daughter so pointedly said on behalf of Nigel Lord Glenvarloch, "Madam, he is unfortunate." Searching, however, in all corners for the undiscovered virtues of the Dost, as Bruce for the coy fountains of the Nile, one man reported ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... CLOCK for the other, and distinct complex ideas to which those names belong, to HIM they are different species. It will be said perhaps, that the inward contrivance and constitution is different between these two, which the watchmaker has a clear idea of. And yet it is plain they are but one species to him, when he has but one name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance to make a new species? There are some ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... such as were not shattered, were broken by bullets. Cannon-balls embedded themselves in the masonry and the heavy doorways. The upper windows were safe, however: the shots did not range so high. At one of these, over a watchmaker's shop, a little girl was to be seen, looking down with eager interest. Presently an old man came in view and led her away. A few minutes of fierce struggle passed, and then at another window on the floor below the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Miller, the broad man, an exceptional second-hand bookseller who knew the insides of books, had at least grand-parents who called themselves German, and possibly far-away ancestors who denied themselves to be Jews; Buchan, the saddler, was Scotch; Pash, the watchmaker, was a small, dark, vivacious, triple-baked Jew; Gideon, the optical instrument maker, was a Jew of the red-haired, generous-featured type easily passing for Englishmen of unusually cordial manners: and Croop, the dark-eyed shoemaker, was probably more Celtic than he knew. Only three would have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... to exist—and it has since been proved—another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in 'duffers', trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet—on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... reveals objects hidden because of their minuteness, and enlarges for our careful contemplation objects otherwise barely visible. The watchmaker, unassisted by the magnifying glass, could not detect the tiny grains of dust or sand which clog the delicate wheels of our watches. The merchant, with his lens, examines the separate threads of woolen and silk fabrics to determine the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... League that Marx and Engels saw their first opportunity to impress their ideas on the labor movement. At the urgent request of Joseph Moll, a watchmaker and a prominent member of the League, Marx consented, in 1847, to present to that organization his views, and the result was the famous Communist Manifesto. Every essential idea of modern socialism is contained in that ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Robert Hawkes, Mayor of Norwich in 1822, a prominent draper, who became extremely popular for "the nobly liberal spirit in which he sustained the splendour of civic hospitality." Mr. T. O. Springfield, commonly called "T.O.," was spokesman of the Committee—a little watchmaker with a hump, Borrow called him. Dr. Knapp denies that he was a watchmaker, but such he was in his early days, though he became very wealthy through speculations in silk, and Mayor of Norwich 1829 and 1836. Quite a character, his tombstone in the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... going that way, all at sixes and sevens, and all for no good end that I can see, buried as I am in this dark hole and scarcely allowed to move at all?' Would it be right or reasonable to charge the watchmaker with having made the watch in vain, or made it wrong? Of this I at least am convinced, that God is perfect, and that all things are working towards a good end, God's sovereignty, our mysterious free-will and personal responsibility ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... paces beyond the inn-door she halted on the edge of the kerb, flung another look up the street, and darted across the roadway. There stood a little shop—a watchmaker's—just opposite, and next to the shop a small ope with one dingy window over it. She vanished up the passage, at the entrance of which I was still staring idly, when, half a minute later, a skinny trembling hand appeared at the window and drew down ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the dress of a decent artisan of the Jura—such a man as he had known in his boyhood as a watchmaker of Locle or the Doubs. For a few days he stayed in Geneva, lodging in such a street as a Locle artisan would have chosen; but he could not feel secure there, in spite of his own certainty that his transformation was complete. A restless dread haunted him. He knew well that there are ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... scene. In Siberia, a tramp is being flogged with the lash, the direct result of an order issued by the Minister of justice. Again oblivion, and another scene. The family of a Jewish watchmaker is evicted for being too poor. The children are crying, and the Jew, Isaaks, is greatly distressed. At last they come to an arrangement, and he is allowed to stay on in ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... soon followed by mechanical clocks, the clock watch, and the more delicate work of the watchmaker. The watch has become more accurate in its marking of time by the introduction of machinery in its manufacture; and it is cheapened by competition, so that now every one for a mere trifle can carry in his pocket a watch by means of which he can tell accurately the hour of day, as Shakespeare ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... jeweler and watchmaker, besides dealing in paints, oils, glass, an' wall paper," explained the constable. "He carries a putty considerable stock of goods as are valuable. Yesterday, or early last night, when he was away, his shop was ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... taught the best within the reach of German Jews of the day, the alpha and omega of whose knowledge and teaching were comprised in the Talmud. The Wolfenbuettel school may be called progressive, inasmuch as a teacher, watchmaker by trade and novel-writer by vocation, was engaged to give instruction four times a week in the three R's. We may be sure that those four lessons were not given with ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... destined for the priesthood. Moreover, I was of sedentary habits and too weak of muscle to distinguish myself in athletic sports. I had an uncle of a Voltairian turn of mind, who did not at all approve of this. He was a watchmaker, and had reckoned upon me to take on his business. My successes were as gall and wormwood to him, for he quite saw that all this store of Latin was dead against him, and that it would convert me into a pillar of the Church which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... born in Switzerland, which land, as all folks know, has produced her full quota and more of reformers. The father of Jean Jacques, quite naturally, was a watchmaker, with mainspring ill-adjusted and dial askew, according to the report of the son, who claimed to be full-jeweled, but was not perfectly adjusted to position and temperature. Jean Jacques tells us that his first misfortune was his birth, and this cost his mother her life. He was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard |
