"Dovetail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow because they do not need to be otherwise; the conditions of their lives do not require speed and sharpness. The porcupine has its barbed quills, the skunk its pungent secretion. All parts of nature dovetail together. The deer and the antelope kind have speed and sharp senses because their enemies have speed and sharp senses. The small birds are keen-eyed and watchful because the hawks are so, too. The red squirrel dominates the gray squirrel, which is above him in size and strength, and the chipmunk ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... Archilochus. Opinion has been divided as to whether Annius was wholly a knave, or whether he was himself imposed upon. Or, again, whether he had some genuine fragments, and eked them out with his own inventions. It is observed that he did not dovetail the really genuine relics of Berosus and Manetho into the works attributed to them. This may be explained as the result of ignorance or of cunning; there can be no certain inference. "Even the Dominicans," as Bayle says, admit ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... perpetual zigzag,) counted up to something more than a thousand miles. That is, in effect, when valued in loss of time, and allowance being made for the want of continuity in those parts of the travelling system that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less than one entire fortnight must be annually sunk upon a labor that yielded no commensurate fruit. Hence the long three-years' interval which had separated father and son; and hence my own nervous apprehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the child to dovetail the two halves of her life. At night she must sit up as late as her elders, poring over her school books, and in the morning it was a fierce rush to get through her share of the housework in time for the red mark. In Mrs. Beckenstein's language: 'Don't eat, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... growers will try to produce better nut trees. Through prize contests they hope to find what nature has produced. Through the services of a scientist they hope to find what man can produce. The two aims dovetail. We are reasonably certain of the prize contests; we are not yet certain of securing the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Nelly Lebrun. He must be brought back to us and shown his folly both as regards the adventuress and Lord Nick; for so long as Nelly has a hold on him, just so long Lord Nick will have his hand in Jack's pocket. You see how beautifully their plans and their work dovetail? How, therefore, am I to draw him from Nelly? There is only one way: send my daughter to the camp—send Lou to The Corner and let one glimpse of her beauty turn the shabby prettiness of this woman to a shadow! Lou is ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... you, expect to hear of us doing great things, as an everyday matter of course. Our aim is great—it is India for Christ! and before the gods in possession here, we sing songs unto Him. But what we say to you is this: Do not expect every true story to dovetail into some other true story and end with some marvellous coincidence or miraculous conversion. Most days in real life end exactly as they began, so far as visible results are concerned. We do not find, as a rule, when we go to the houses—the literal little mud houses, I mean, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... news-reading public. The offices afford them an excellent variety of characters, which, like skilful dramatists, they work up until they become really humorous: many of the cases afford them capital plots, into which they cleverly dovetail pleasant little episodes, and adhere no closer to the deposed facts than many of our by-gone playwrights have done to the sacred page of history. We allude only to the cases of humour which occur at the police-offices: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... fact that, so far as we know, there is no analogy whatever between this oft-recorded event and any of the phenomena of suggestion known to us. If we offer a theory to explain certain facts, it must not only explain them in a rational manner, but must dovetail into what we know—into the known. That is the whole method of science. If, therefore, a man advances "hallucination" as an explanation of such facts as those under discussion, he must show how it is that hallucination might be supposed to work: he must bring forward some ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the weather, When smooth'd by rubbing them together; Thy words so closely wedged and short are, Like walls, more lasting without mortar; By leaving out the needless vowels, You save the charge of lime and trowels. One letter still another locks, Each grooved and dovetail'd like a box; Thy muse is tuckt up and succinct; In chains thy syllables are linkt; Thy words together tied in small hanks, Close as the Macedonian phalanx;[2] Or like the umbo[3] of the Romans, Which fiercest foes could break by no means. The ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... once knew a parrot who was employed by a sailor-man to curse for him when his own speech was suspended by liquor. He could also whistle ballads and polkas, and had attained an astonishing proficiency in these arts; for, by long practice, he could dovetail curses and whistles in a most energetic and, indeed, astonishing manner. It would often project two whistles and a curse, sometimes two curses and a whistle, while all the time keeping faithfully to the tune of 'The Sailor's Grave' or another. It was a highly cultivated ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... their produce, others smelt it and work it into shape, according to the designs and plans of still other men; then it is transported by new groups and marketed by an endless chain of men whose labors dovetail to the end that mankind has a tool, a habitation or an ornament. The past and present cooperate in this labor, as do the remote ends of the earth. Competition is the SPUR of trade; its mighty sinews, its strong heart and stout lungs ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... How skilfully does Nature dovetail her designs! This great multitude of fish appears when it is most needed. The terns (sea-swallows) are rearing their families, and ever need fresh food in unstinted quantities. The small fry come ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield |
