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Proverbial   Listen
adjective
Proverbial  adj.  
1.
Mentioned or comprised in a proverb; used as a proverb; hence, commonly known; as, a proverbial expression; his meanness was proverbial. "In case of excesses, I take the German proverbial cure, by a hair of the same beast, to be the worst."
2.
Of or pertaining to proverbs; resembling a proverb. "A proverbial obscurity."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Proverbial" Quotes from Famous Books



... things stirred up; making the most of the material at hand. It wasn't that he minded the grind and the responsibility of his work. He would gladly have shouldered more in his zeal to push ahead. It was the thought that all work and no play was making him the proverbial dull boy, and that he would be an old man before his time, if he went on without anything to relieve the deadly monotony. The spirit of youth in him was crying out ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... set out alone for a tramp up the mountain road in which the two men had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... At this time Washington was in the prime and vigour of life, and his fame and deportment were such that he could command reverence even from the most fanatical part of the American troops, who were disposed to own no other leader except "the Lord of Hosts." His bravery was proverbial, and his after operations sustained his fame. It was immediately after the battle of Bunker's Hill that he was appointed commander-in-chief, and when he arrived at head-quarters in Cambridge, he found the blockading army considerably discouraged by the defeat sustained, and otherwise ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... marches" between the Church and State. With level-headed common-sense upon both sides it might have been done. Unfortunately, in the struggle our most prominent national characteristics, instead of being combined, got opposed to one another. The proverbial "canniness" of the Scottish nation was all upon the one side; the equally proverbial perfervidum ingenium was all upon the other. Led by the latter feeling, the Church resolved to fall back on her own inherent rights and to get quit of Patronage by a side wind. In 1834 ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... child. It has been a rather common impression that if one knows a certain field of subject-matter, he will surely be able to teach it to others. But nothing could be further from the truth than such an assumption. Indeed, it is proverbial that the great specialists are the most wretched teachers of their subjects. The nature of the child's mental powers, the order of their unfoldment, the evolution of his interests, the incentives that appeal to him, the danger points ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... almost say always—the trying member of the family is trying only because we make her so by our attitude toward her, let her be grandmother, mother, or maiden aunt. Even the proverbial mother-in-law grows less difficult as our attitude toward her is relieved of the strain of detesting everything she does, and expecting to detest everything that she is going to do. With every trying friend we have, if we yield ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... indifferent or resigned with regard to immediate reputation. Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself. Shakespeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his Sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to Pope [9], when he ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... cigars lay in a little cigar-case at one end. Dove, as a matter of course, and without weighing the question at all, slipped a couple into his pocket. After doing this he did not feel quite so virtuous, nor so like the proverbial British workman; he jingled some of Daisy's sovereigns in his pocket, and laughed when they made a pleasant sound. Still eagerly peering at all the articles on the mantel-piece his quick eyes presently detected amongst a heap of rubbish and odds and ends Noel's ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... the proverbial philosophy of nautical men, that "a stern chase is a long one." The present instance was an exception to the general rule. Keona was wounded. Young Stuart was fleet as the antelope, and strong as a young lion. In these circumstances it is not surprising ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... them. The first messenger appeared on the terrace and announced to the Pharaoh that Tahoser could not be found. The Pharaoh stretched out his sceptre, and the messenger fell dead, in spite of the proverbial hardness of the Egyptian skull. A second came up; he stumbled against the body of his comrade stretched on the slabs; he trembled, for he saw ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... already being fed in another. Had my prisoners been of almost any one of the other seventy-one nationalities I should not have thought of letting them out of my sight. But the Zone Spaniard's respect for law is proverbial. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... spirits—certain to be insulted by a base and prostitute gang of lurking assassins who stab in the dark, and whose poisoned daggers he had already experienced. Ritson himself was a fairly venomous critic, and the "Ritsonian" style has become proverbial. Nowadays authors do not usually die of criticism, not even susceptible poets. Critics can still be severe enough, but they are just and generous, and never descend to that scurrilous personal abuse of authors which inflicted such severe ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... an approving assent to this. "A widow's only concern should be to refrain from attracting notice," she said, as though quoting from a private book of proverbial ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... launch of the liner Bismarck last week, the bottle of wine—which was thrown by the Countess Hannah von Bismarck missed the vessel, whereupon the Kaiser hauled back the bottle, and with his proverbial good luck hit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... His liberality is proverbial, and after a long and successful life, during which he has received high salaries, he is not rich. He seldom refuses to play gratis for any really worthy object, and the anecdotes of his kindness toward his pupils ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... may well be conceived, therefore, there was material enough to supply, not merely a joyous evening, but also a happy lifetime, to more than as many people as that spacious apartment could contain. The company seemed to renew their youth; while that pattern and proverbial standard of innocence, the Child Unborn, frolicked to and fro among them, communicating his own unwrinkled gayety to all who had the good fortune ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements. But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding. There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence. Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted his waistcoat, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... as it admitted of Bacon, in his history of the reign, tells us that "he was a comely youth, not without some extraordinary dignity of grace and aspect." The fashion in which he retailed his sufferings, pleaded his youth, and appealed to the proverbial generosity of the Irish people, to protect a hapless prince, robbed of his throne and his birthright, seems to have produced an immense effect. Kildare, there is reason to suspect, was privy to ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... Paul and his father into the boat, where was waiting a negro as black as the proverbial black hat, a local fisherman who had taken up sponge growing, and who, while shrewd enough for a business ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... stomachs, and hardly a good meal in a week, that God Almighty is very kind to his creatures, in this respect, as well as in all others in making much not necessary to the support of life; when three parts in four of His creatures, if it were, would not know how to obtain it. It puts me in mind of two proverbial sentences which are full of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... of proverbial sayings useful in finding expressions for the wisdom found in fables are Christy, Proverbs, Maxims, and Phrases of All Ages; Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases; ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... attention. Like the wise modern teacher they made no distinction between the religious and the secular. Everything that influenced man's acts and ideals possessed for them profound religious import. While the proverbial epigrammatic form of their teaching was not conducive to a logical or complete treatment of their theme, yet in a series of concise, dramatic maxims they dealt with almost every phase of man's domestic, economic, legal, and social life. They presented ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... wanderings lead you southward. My hacienda lies but twenty miles from here, and from this moment, it is placed at your disposition. Not in the polite terms of the proverbial Spanish etiquette which presents the visitor with everything and yet nothing at all, but actually. Indeed, I shall expect to see you there soon. The life will interest ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... right time they came leisurely up, and gravely taking their proper place, marched on with their proverbial sagacity—waiting outside Westminster Hall, whilst the lord mayor swore to do his duty, as quietly as though they were at home—and afterward left the procession at Blackfriars Bridge, to go to their own quarters and eat their well-earned dinner. It is to be hoped that the lord mayor ordered ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... gone down into East London to give six months to slum work, he had remained two years without showing any inclination to give it up. Sometimes he lived at the flat, and sometimes he was lost for a week at a time somewhere east of St. Paul's, where one might as well have looked for him as for the proverbial ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... distant region, as is the moon. We say too, a man is "out of his head," that is, his mind being in another man's head, must of course be out of his own. To "know no more than the man in the moon," is a proverbial expression for ignorance, and is without meaning, unless it be considered to refer to the Glonglims. We say that an insane man is "distracted;" by which we mean that his mind is drawn two different ways. So also, we call a lunatic a man beside himself, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... had learned—in crises, such as the present—to restrain the superabundant vitality they had inherited. If their cheekbones were a little too high, their Delft blue eyes a little too small, their colour was of the proverbial rose-leaves and cream. Gene Hollister's difficulty was to know which to marry. They were nice girls,—of that there could be no doubt; there was no false modesty in their attitude toward "society"; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... for when, by a most unfortunate series of events, suspicion was forcibly directed toward Jim, she failed to exonerate him by acknowledging her own guilt; and but for the merest accident, which brought about the proverbial "Murder will out" and fixed the crime without a shadow of doubt upon her, would have suffered the innocent boy to bear all the penalties and disgrace which by ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... was taking place in the front parlour it would not have jarred her from her dreams. For Gaylord, resplendent in ice-cream flannels, and Trudy, wearing an unpaid-for black-satin dress with red collar and cuffs, were both busier than the proverbial beaver planning their wedding. It was to be an informal and unexpected little affair, being the direct result of the Gorgeous Girl's demands as ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... significant. The Martial judge who said that "the best evidence was lost because colour could not be tested or blushes analysed," would have passed sentence at once. But if Eive's air of innocent unconsciousness and childish indifference were not sincere, it merited the proverbial praise of consummate affectation, "more golden than the sun and whiter than snow." Eveena's momentary glance at once drew mine upon this "pet child," but neither disturbed her. Nor did she overact her part. "Eive," said Enva one day, "never salts ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... Humble Pie.—the proverbial expression of "eating humble pie," explained by A.G., will be found also explained in the same manner in the Appendix to Forby's Vocabulary, where it is suggested that the correct orthography would be "umble pie," without the aspirate. Bailey, in his valuable old Dictionary, traces ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various

... 2. The following proverbial saying in India may serve to show how natural such comparisons are in the mouths of the inhabitants of hot climates: "Ah, that benevolent man, he has long been my shelter from the wind; he is a river to the dry country." See ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... pink of politeness, and his gallantry to the fair sex was proverbial. When he was caught at last, pent in "stone walls and chains and iron grates," their grief was in proportion to his rare merits and his great fame. Butler ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... of his early years is soon told. As a blue-eyed child, with long fair hair, he was curiously thoughtful and exceedingly affectionate. His temper was generous and cheerful. His truthfulness was proverbial, and his little sister found in him the kindest of playmates and the sturdiest of protectors. He was distinguished, too, for his politeness, although good manners were by no means rare in the rustic West. The manly courtesy of the true American is no exotic product; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the colour become proverbial. Her bare feet were hidden; if the General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... was carried over from the United States in the Autumn of 1887 and sown on the good ground of the late Count Tolstoy, and other noble men, whence—as results show—it spread abroad with a swiftness suggestive rather of the proverbial weed than of the fair flower its blossoming has shown ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... hair. You will not find many beasts that can afford to prostitute their ears to ornamental purposes. The only other beast that I can think of at this moment which has tufted ears is the lynx. Now the lynx is a tree cat, and there is proverbial wisdom in the saying "Eyes ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... particular, the musicians with whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with the effrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law for them? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance in omni re scibili was proverbial, though they were none the less invested with a sovereign authority in omni re scibili. They did not even take the trouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poor starving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had such things, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... Champagny—a man, with all his faults, of a noble nature, and with scarcely inferior talents to his own—to languish for a long time in abject poverty; supported by the charity of an ancient domestic. His greediness for wealth was proverbial. No benefice was too large or too paltry to escape absorption, if placed within his possible reach. Loaded with places and preferments, rolling in wealth, he approached his sovereign with the whine of a mendicant. He talked of his property as a "misery," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... prominent among the allies in one division, and the Samnites were at the head of another. [Footnote: The Marsians were an ancient people of Central Italy, inhabiting a mountainous district, and had won distinction among the allies for their skill and courage in war. "The Marsic cohorts" was an almost proverbial expression for the bravest troops in the time of Horace and Virgil.] The whole of Central Italy became involved in the desperate struggle. The Etruscans and Umbrians took the part of Rome, being offered the suffrage for their allegiance. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... disparity more conspicuous, while continued Republican control of the Senate had created intense bitterness. In fact, a tabulated statement of the inequality between senatorial districts enraged a Democrat as quickly as a red flag infuriated the proverbial bull.[1621] Although the caucus refused to adopt the protest, it issued an address showing that New York and Kings were entitled to ten senators instead of seven and forty-one assemblymen instead ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... to the close of it proverbial sayings, charged with wisdom and wit, were inserted wherever there was space enough to insert one. The following ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... With proverbial German thoroughness, uncle instructed me in all the tricks and secrets of his profession. He had found that the Mexicans were good buyers, if handled scientifically, for they would never leave the store until they had spent all their money. ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurr'd between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, it is hard for an empty ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... [300] "HAD-I-WIST. A proverbial expression, Oh that I had known. Gower."—Chalmers's Dict., also Webster's. In this phrase, which is here needlessly compounded, and not very properly explained, we see wist used as a perfect participle. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... ever knew a Rebel officer to be bought was some weeks after this at Florence. The sick exchange was still going on. I have before spoken of the Rebel passion for bright gilt buttons. It used to be a proverbial comment upon the small treasons that were of daily occurrence on both sides, that you could buy the soul of a mean man in our crowd for a pint of corn meal, and the soul of a Rebel guard for a half dozen brass buttons. A boy of the Fifth-fourth Ohio, whose ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... be respected; for it is said that no phrase becomes a proverb until after a century's experience of its truth. In England it is proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to obtain their Tria Prima, from Animals and Vegetables, yet I have often wondred that they should so confidently pretend also to resolve all Metalline and other Mineral bodies into Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. For 'tis a saying almost Proverbial, among those Chymists themselves that are accounted Philosophers; and our famous Countryman Roger Bacon has particularly adopted it; that Facilius est aurum facere quam destruere. And I fear, with You, that Gold is not the only Mineral from which Chymists are wont fruitlessly to ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... The idea of that proverbial slow coach of an Elephant ever doing anything on the spur of the moment was really too much for the rest of the boys and a general roar went up. "Don't bother your heads about me, fellows," remarked Frank, quietly, when the laughter had ceased again. "That ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... has a solid, venerable sound. Or, if you prefer poetry, I will get Gray's 'Elegy.' That cannot be a literary mushroom, for he was twenty years writing it. But perhaps it is Tupper you would like. That would suit your mood exactly, Tupper's 'Proverbial Philosophy.'" ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... in 'Katie Woodencloak', No. l, the little bird tells the Prince, 'who understood the song of birds very well,' that blood is gushing out of the golden shoe. The belief that some persons had the gift of understanding what the birds said, is primaeval. We pay homage to it in our proverbial expression, 'a little bird told me'. Popular traditions and rhymes protect their nests, as in the case of the wren, the robin, and the swallow. Occasionally this gift seems to have been acquired by eating or tasting the flesh of a snake or dragon, as Sigurd, in the Volsung tale, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... it may be recollected, Master Larrikins' tale with a very good pinch of the proverbial salt, believing he only intended to 'pull my leg'; but when on the present occasion the brig began to labour heavily and the green seas, rolling over from the open sea beyond Ushant, the wind having come on to blow a regular stiff sou'-wester, topped our bulwarks and made ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... Zarwell's tone appealed to Bergstrom for understanding. "I have only a normal man's indignation at injustice. And now I've done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually gets out, and I'm right back in a fight again. It's like the proverbial monkey on my back. I can't get ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... of the person most suitable to us, most required by us; of the person with whom life flowers and bears fruit. If this were so, the chances of our meeting that person would be small indeed; intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial. No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength. Man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Some of the young men of enterprising spirit were the sons of officers and men who had fought in the Seven Years' War against France and now came to claim their share of the conqueror's spoils. Some men were of Yankee origin, who with their proverbial ability to see a good chance, came to what has always been Canada's greatest city, on the Island of Montreal. It was only half a dozen years after Wolfe's great victory, that a great Montreal trader, Alexander Henry, penetrated the western lakes ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... close of a fine day in the month of August, a light, fairy-like craft was fanning her way before a gentle westerly air into what is called the Canal of Piombino, steering easterly. The rigs of the Mediterranean are proverbial for their picturesque beauty and quaintness, embracing the xebeque, the felucca, the polacre, and the bombarda, or ketch; all unknown, or nearly so, to our own seas; and occasionally the lugger. The latter, a species of craft, however, much less common in the waters ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be utterly lost by endeavouring ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... his idleness is proverbial; you have good cause to recollect him too, since 'twas by his courage your life was preserved, when attacked by the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... It is proverbial that dishonesty retards spiritual growth and strikes at the heart of Truth. If a student at Harvard College has studied a textbook written by his teacher, is he entitled, when he leaves the University, to write out as his own the substance of this textbook? There is no warrant in common law ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... upon which he required Paul's advice, and the two men talked together with less constraint than they had hitherto done. De Chauxville had picked up a vast deal of technical matter, and handled his little knowledge with a skill which bade fair to deprive it of its proverbial danger. He presently left Steinmetz and the prince engaged in a controversy with the countess as to a meeting-place ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... Vespasian, Titus). But few men had a head strong enough to resist vertigo when they saw themselves so elevated above other men. The majority of the emperors profited by their tremendous power only to make their names proverbial: Tiberius, Nero, Domitian by their cruelty, Vitellius by his gluttony, Claudius by his imbecility. One of them, Caligula, was a veritable fool; he had his horse made consul and himself worshipped as a god. The emperors persecuted the nobles especially to keep them ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... confined for the most part to dissatisfied glances at the hard cloudless blue sky to windward, as it met their gaze morning after morning when they came on deck, to shrugs of the shoulders whenever the subject happened to be mentioned, and to scornful, sarcastic, or despondent allusions to the proverbial longevity and obstinacy of easterly winds in general. Except Mr Forester Dale, and he, I regret to say, made himself a perfect nuisance to everybody on board by his snappishness and irascibility. The weather was "beastly," the ship was "beastly," and his demeanour was ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... Bran is e a brathair, If it be not Bran, it is Bran's brother,' was the proverbial reply of Maccombich. [Footnote: Bran, the well-known dog of Fingal, is often the theme of Highland proverb as well ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... make them his heirs if they didn't mind being used as a means to convey his final word of defiance to the children who had cast him off. Not that he would ever have a dollar to leave to them, but for the satisfaction it would give him to cut the traitors off with the proverbial shilling. Beset with the notion that this was an ideal way to show his contempt for his offspring, he went to the safety deposit vault and took there from the worthless document known as his last will and testament and in the presence of witnesses destroyed ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... mercy was not strained in the least," he continued. "It fell around me like the proverbial gentle rain. I've quite a lot to be thankful for, don't ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... their common good. The whites said, to quote a negro laborer, "We must just get together." A negro said: "The dominant race is just a bit less dominant at present." "We are getting more consideration and appreciation," said another. From another quarter came the remark that "instead of the old proverbial accusation—shiftless and unreliable—negro labor is being heralded as 'the only dependable labor extant, etc.'"[99] A general review of the results made it clear that there was a disposition on the part of the white population to give some measure of those benefits, the denial of which ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... way of getting the interest, almost the deference, of many people. She and Gertrude were often reduced to the proverbial thirty cents, but they had little difficulty in getting along. For instance, one day, almost broke, they went to a restaurant and ordered two cups of coffee. The negro waiter knew what they were, and offered them a nice steak, at his expense. Nor did he try to ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... it is true, speaks of the expression, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of Roscius, in the same terms that a modern critic would apply to Garrick or Schroder. But I will not lay any stress on the acting of this celebrated player, the excellence of which has become proverbial, because it appears from a passage in Cicero that he frequently played without a mask, and that this was preferred: by his contemporaries. I doubt, however, whether this was ever the case among the Greeks. But the same writer relates, that actors in general, for the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... number of picturesque and expressive words are dropped, all that are crude, gaulois or naifs, all that are local and provincial, or personal and made-up, all familiar and proverbial locutions,[3212] many brusque, familiar and frank turns of thought, every haphazard, telling metaphor, almost every description of impulsive and dexterous utterance throwing a flash of light into the imagination and bringing into view the precise, colored and complete form, but ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians (in Greek)—'crapping Chian.' There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions from the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... The health of the city and suburbs is proverbial, and the profession of a physician is, perhaps, of all others the least lucrative. A worthy and intelligent Scotch doctor, who had come to Manila, while I was there, to exercise his profession, and who lodged in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... "It is the proverbial peace of the city amongst the mountains," Ughtred said. "Yet if you listen you can hear the murmur of voices in the cafes, and there is a band playing in ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... own. But when the mid-watch had been mustered, the lookouts stationed, and the rest of them had settled themselves down for sleep between the guns, out of the way of passing feet, the forecastle of the Congress offered a very decent promenade, magnificent compared to that proverbial of the poops of small vessels—"two steps and overboard." Then began the steady pace to and fro, which to me was natural and inherited, easily maintained and consistent with thought—indeed, productive ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... and Lebrun, the decorator of the apartments. If the Chateau de Vaux possessed a single fault with which it could be reproached, it was its grand, pretentious character. It is even at the present day proverbial to calculate the number of acres of roofing, the restoration of which would, in our age, be the ruin of fortunes cramped and narrowed as the epoch itself. Vaux-le-Vicomte, when its magnificent gates, supported by caryatides, have ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was to find out where Hugh Davidson was likely to be found, if alive. Dr. Hunter felt as though he were beginning to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack; but by Mrs. Forester's advice he entrusted the matter to his lawyers, and in an incredibly short space of time he heard from them that the man he wanted was now the manager of the A1 Shipping and Transportation Company at Skaguay, Alaska, the largest organization of its kind ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... Cyprus, whither he probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet, was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria; he can hardly have ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... reformism is the poorest policy to follow to get it. A proletariat organized for revolutionary ends has no difficulty in securing reforms; it does not need to ask for them, for an awakened and apprehensive bourgeoisie will shower reforms upon them like the proverbial manna. If, indeed, workers want only reforms, why take ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... the button she wanted was sometimes a long task for mother, and father, it must be admitted, had varied the proverbial needle simile for our domestic establishment, to read, "like hunting for a button in your mother's button box." But still the odd buttons continued to go in, and only the ones needed came permanently out. You never could tell, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... from the foot of Mount Atlas, had hitherto been the non plus ultra or impassable limit of European navigation, and had accordingly received its ordinary name from a negative term in the Portuguese language, as implying that there was no navigation beyond; and respecting which a proverbial saying was then current, of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... Notwithstanding the proverbial variety of the climate, there is no nation under the sun so fond of Pic-Nic parties as the English; and yet how seldom are their pleasant dreams of rural repasts in the open air fated ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... they visited the Regent Ville district; and to the "plains of Emu," a government agricultural-station, and a sort of model farm. They went to the theatre, where a grand performance was given in their honour. The delight sailors take in riding is proverbial, and it was on horseback that the French crossed the Emu plains. The noble animals, imported from England, had not degenerated in New South Wales; they were still full of spirit as one of the young officers found to his cost, when, as he was saying in English to Sir John Cox, acting ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... set down his horn after the toast, the Norman's glance happened to encounter a glance from the shield-maiden, who was passing. Taking another horn from the thrall, he bowed again, with proverbial French gallantry; then quaffed off the second measure of ale to the honor of ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... in our great city with its constant removals and changes of population. The individual is like the proverbial needle in the haystack, unless we adopt a method of accounting not only for each family but for each individual down to the latest-born child.* *In order that I may not be as one that beateth the air, I venture to suggest a method of laying the foundation of records that has been helpful in my own ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... the station I took two parting snapshots of my wife and family waving me farewell. It was an insignificant incident over which I merely smiled at the time, but five days later I had every cause to bless those parting snaps. One often hears about life hanging by the proverbial thread, but not many lives have hung upon two snapshot photographs of all that is dearest to one, and a few inches of photographic film. Yet it was so in my case. But for those two tiny parting pictures and the unexposed fraction of film I should have been propped against the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... But as only two years are necessary to prove the desertion—even if you should decide together that it is best to part—isn't it worth while to wait two years more in order to make quite sure? No doubt, you will say that I am shewing the proverbial ignorance of women in legal questions. But I can't help feeling that there must be some way in which it could be arranged. I do beseech you, Colin, not ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... determination, or that ferocious courage, which are the common attributes of our sex. They have, on the other hand, that delicate tact, that intuition, that nervous imagination, that quick perception of character, which have become the proverbial characteristics of cultivated women. They know how to render themselves impenetrable; and if they desire to be perfidious, they wear a mask which few eyes can see through, while at the same time a certain sameness ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Dorian went into action in search of Carlia Duke. He acknowledged to himself that it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, but inaction ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... Liberata, canto xiv, &c. Armida is called Corcereis owing to the beauty and wonder of her enchanted garden. Corcyra was the abode of King Alcinous, of whose court, parks and orchards a famous description is to be found in the seventh Odyssey. Martial (xiii, 37), speaks of 'Corcyraei horti', a proverbial phrase. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... go' was a proverbial expression, and is found, with its obvious rime 'to and fro,' in ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... The proverbial wet-blanket seemed to have fallen over the merry little company gathered round the table. Suzanne looked sad and silent; Sir Andrew fidgeted uneasily with his fork, whilst the Comtesse, encased in the plate-armour of her aristocratic ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... read, well grounded, well educated; enlightened, shrewd, savant, blue, bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, deep-read, book- learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible^, cognizable. Adv. to one's knowledge, to the best of one's knowledge. Phr. one's eyes being opened &c (disclosure) 529; ompredre tout c'est tout pardonner ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the little place which had always been neat even when it was forlorn there was now the stamp of desolation. The beds which had been seeded or planted a month before, and which should now have been weeded, trimmed, and hoed, were growing with an untended recklessness that had all the proverbial resemblance to moral breakdown. In the cucumber-house the vines had become rusty and limp, sagging from the twines on which they climbed in debauched indifference to sightliness. The roof of the hothouse that had contained the flowers had a deep ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... understand what sort of person he is whom we call at one time moderate, at another modest or temperate, at another constant and virtuous; while sometimes we include all these names in the word frugality, as the crown of all. For if that word did not include all virtues, it would never have been proverbial to say, that a frugal man does everything rightly; but when the Stoics apply this saying to their wise man, they seem to exalt him too much, and to speak of him with too ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... de la Bourse in Rouen City, and my friend stepped across each evening to the Cafe Victor to drink creme de menthe and feel that listening to the band was rather wicked and altogether Continental. Indeed, his attachment to the ship is now proverbial, the prevailing feeling having been brilliantly epitomised by himself. "If I wash me face," he snapped to me one day; "If I wash me face, they think I'm goin' ashore!" But now the decent double-breasted ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... Royalist. In 1643 he had refused to subscribe to the fund that was then being raised for regaining Newcastle. He proved a happy exception to the almost proverbial neglect the Royalists received from Charles II. in 1671, for when Charles was at Newmarket, he came over to see Nor- wich, and conferred the honour of knighthood on Browne. His reputation was now very great. Evelyn paid a visit to Norwich for the express purpose of seeing ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... be so often lost was, considering his propensities and the proverbial cunning of his caste, not, perhaps, very remarkable. But the number of times and the variety of ways, in which, in spite of the little trouble taken in searching for him, he was sent back to the place from whence he came, was really ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... contractors. Of course they threw on the government inspector all the blame for the few cattle received, and offered to buy five or six hundred more out of the herd. But the shoe was on the other foot now, the drovers acting as independently as the proverbial hog on ice. The herd never halted, the contractors followed up, and when we went into camp that evening a trade was closed on one thousand steers at two dollars a head advance over those which were received but a few days before. The oxen were even reserved, and after delivering ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... "alarmed by it" as not to be able "to fly from the impending calamity" in the way which your correspondent imagines. I prefer Archbishop Newcome's explanation:—"Let the characters be so legible that one who hastily passeth on may read them. This may have been a proverbial expression." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," and "Grimm's Fairy Tales." There were more, many more, and David devoured them all with eager eyes. The good in them he absorbed as he absorbed the sunshine; the evil he cast aside unconsciously—it rolled off, indeed, like the proverbial ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... developments of the Clayton case have run their course and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton's romantic escape from a shameful death stepped all this region in an enchantment of wonder and joy—during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering process followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: 'But a man was killed, and Clayton killed him.' Others replied: 'That is true: we have been overlooking that important detail; we have been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... worthy of discussion. The original application of the name is not agreed upon. Thompson says, "The term Saturnius seems to have possessed two distinct applications. In both of these, however, it simply meant 'as old as the days of Saturn,' and, like the Greek Ogugios, was a kind of proverbial expression for something antiquated. Hence (1) the rude rhythmical effusions, which contained the early Roman story, might be called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their antiquity; and (2) the term Saturnius was also applied to a ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... is easy to prescribe sacrifices for another, or even for one's self, provided always that they be made before the necessity arises. All parents are models in their treatment of each other's offspring, rivalling, in this regard, even those proverbial patterns who never took the initial step ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... Waterford by train. Military bands in the summer. Exceptionally good place for families. Tramore is a delightful seaside resort, built on a gradual incline, with a southerly aspect, on the shores of the broad Atlantic. The air is almost proverbial for its restorative qualities, not only in popular but also in scientific opinion. It is beyond all doubt that Tramore has as many hours of sunshine, less rainfall, and more even temperature than any other seaside ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... and writing about him. But Mitford overcame one set of prejudices by the force which prejudices of another kind had endowed him with. He saw how party spirit had raged in modern as well as ancient times, but he detected it with that proverbial readiness with which the thief detects the thief; he wrote himself with the energy and penetration, the want of candour and generosity, which at all times will distinguish the advocate. Moreover, the scholarship of Europe has since his time assumed so lofty a port, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... became Mme. Borniche. Hochon's marriage and the change of the political horizon brought him back to his native town where he and his family were long known as the Five Hochons. Mlle. Hochon's marriage and the death of her brothers made the jest still tenable; for M. Hochon, despite a proverbial avarice, adopted their posterity—Francois Hochon, Baruch and Adolphine Borniche. Hochon lived till an advanced age. He was still living at the end of the Restoration, and gave shrewd advice to the Bridaus regarding the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... how it has come about that Job has become proverbial for patience. I suppose that it has arisen out of the verse in the Epistle of St. James about the patience of Job; but, like the passage in the Book of Numbers which attributes an extreme meekness to Moses, it seems to me to be either a very infelicitous description, or else a ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to the man's worldly position, I should pronounce their calling anything but a lucrative one; for a more seedy-looking class is rarely to be met with. Their care-worn faces and rusty and tattered garments testifying that in Valetta, at least, the proverbial easy and jolly life of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... Fielding was an imitator of Cervantes, except his own declaration of such an intention in the title-page of Joseph Andrews, the romantic turn of the character of Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works), and the proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up only for a few pages. Fielding's novels are, in general, thoroughly his own; and they are thoroughly English. What they are most remarkable for, is neither ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be numbered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapability of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from a child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance she so anxiously labours to conceal. 'If such a one be fit to write on Synonimes, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... proverbial "Joe" Miller, an actor by profession (1684-1738), was a man of no education, and is said to have been unable to read. His reputation rests mainly on the book of jests compiled after his death, and attributed ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Poets and all literary men lived by the bounty of the rich and great, and prospered only as they pandered to depraved passions. Many, of great intellectual excellence, died from want and mortification; so that the poverty and distress of literary men became proverbial, and all worldly-wise people shunned contact with them as expensive and degrading. They were hunted from cocklofts to cellars by the minions of the law, and the foulest jails were often their only resting-place. The restoration of Charles proved unfortunate to one great and immortal genius, whom ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... The proverbial misfortunes of Ireland have attended even her coinage, and her troubles in that direction commenced as early as the reign of Henry VII. He coined sixpences for Ireland worth only fourpence in England. Mary issued base shillings and groats for Ireland, and Elizabeth issued ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... drawing-rooms; and by his shrewd remarks upon the cities he has visited, will show that he possesses a fine natural taste for things of beauty. The speech of such men, drawn from the common stock of the Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial sayings, the wisdom of centuries condensed in a few nervous words. When emotion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence, or suggest the motive of a poem ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... booty and concert new depredations. As they brought home with them wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries of the tropics, and the sumptuous spoils of the Spanish provinces, and disposed of them with the proverbial carelessness of freebooters, they were welcome visitors to the thrifty traders of New-York. Crews of these desperadoes, therefore, the runagates of every country and every clime, might be seen swaggering ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... dropped dead, falling upon the body of the friend he had so loved. Thus these two sons of Troy, companions in life, were companions also in death. Their friendship, immortalized by the Roman poet, became proverbial. ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... of the presidential election, Susan hopefully attended the national political conventions. Again the Republicans made their proverbial excuses, explaining that they not only faced a formidable opponent in Grover Cleveland but also the threat of a new People's party. The familiar ring of their alibis, which they had repeated since Reconstruction days, made Susan wonder when and if ever the Republicans ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... places set apart for public rendezvous, where the curious might meet and satisfy their mutual curiosity. Among these, the barbers' shops have justly borne the pre-eminence. Among the Greeks, barbers' news was a proverbial expression; and Horace, in one of his epistles, makes honourable mention of the Roman ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... were the curses in the gun-room, but both "loud and deep" were those in the midshipman's berth, for the denizens thereof were never proverbial for the niceties of their expressions, when the apalling certainty broke on the comminators, of three years' roasting in the West Indies, with accompaniments of misgivings about Yellow Jack, and the palisades, merely because the captain wished to go and see why the niggers did not make ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... gathering place of the clan was at Drochaid Laoidh, and there ten of the twelve tribes promptly answered the Cothionnal "Thigibh a chlann na 'n con 's gheobh sibh feoil." The absentees were, the Camerons of Fassifern, and the Camerons of Glen Nevis; the proverbial caution of the first forbade their adherence, while the influence of the Whig Clan Grant prevailed with the latter. The defection of the Fassiferns gave the place of second in command, or Lieutenant of the clan, to Cameron of Earrachd (Alan's ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... Mrs. Stewart, whose social career had been like that of the proverbial rocket shot up into the zenith. But a life of mere amusement was not the fashion in the circle in which she lived, and her active brain and easily aroused sympathies made her quick to take ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... Carolyn June said as she led the way into the house, "and in a dark corner—no, that would be too near to the walls and their proverbial 'ears,' in the center of the room is better—I will expose the ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... "A proverbial phrase, applied to death, as expressive of indifference with respect to the place where the body ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... little aphorisms which verbal tradition hath delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden hath chronicled ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... as busy as the proverbial beaver, rushing goods outdoors where they could be taken in hand by others, and placed in temporary security. A couple of the local police force had by this time reached the scene, and they could be depended on ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... to xxiv. 22 is a more connected discussion, though in the proverbial form, of the principles of conduct. This is introduced by a brief exhortation to listen to "the words ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... a cuya prudencia y proverbial sabiduria encomendaron los vecinos de Bellver la resolucion de este dificil problema, despues de implorar la misericordia divina por medio de su santo Patrono, que, como ustedes no ignoran, conoce al diablo muy de ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... of it, so characteristic of the excellent but bigoted Omar, is enough to cast suspicion upon it. De Quincey tells us that "if a saying has a proverbial fame, the probability is that it was never said." How many amusing stories stand a chance of going down to posterity as the inventions of President Lincoln, of which, nevertheless, he is doubtless wholly innocent! How characteristic was Caesar's reply to the frightened pilot! Yet in all probability ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... days, while they were making their way, and counting the cost of every step as if it were the proverbial first step, the next step for Lindora was a large boarding-house for the summer. She tried it first in the country, and she tried it next at the seaside, with the same number of feet of piazza in both cases, and with no distinct difference ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of the same cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which his ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... bearable. The publisher of the booklet was like "one Ragozine, a most notorious pirate"; and the method no less than the motive of his rascality in the present instance is palpable and simple enough. Fired by the immediate and instantly proverbial popularity of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, he hired, we may suppose, some ready hack of unclean hand to supply him with three doggrel sonnets on the same subject, noticeable only for their porcine quality of prurience: he procured ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... beyond possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam' awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... in the depth of winter, nightly for six weeks, without whisper of an enemy at any time; whereby the Marechal did save Pisek (if Pisek was ever again in danger), but froze horse and man to the edge of destruction or into it; so that the "Bivouac of Pisek" became proverbial in French Messrooms, for a generation coming. [Guerre de Boheme, ii. 23, &c.] And one hears in the mind a clangorous nasal eloquence from antique gesticulative mustachio-figures, witty and indignant,—who are now ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... both Old and New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from Holinshed's 'Chronicles' and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... the valuable assets of the Norwegian people. Attempts at extortion are so rare that tourists, accustomed to the proverbial dishonesty of the Latin races, find travel in Norway and Sweden a joy. An English traveler relates this typical incident: He had lost his purse shortly after leaving Vossevangen for Stalheim. Altogether unconscious of his loss, he walked on placidly. Suddenly hearing ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... note, in passing, that the women alone are allowed to be seated in the circle: the men, of every age and rank, remain standing. This custom, and especially the position assumed by the bride at that time, has given rise to the proverbial expression of comparison: Pari la zita di lu macadaru, which is said of a woman ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... and feared and suspected the other six with far more than the ordinary and proverbial rich man's jealous dislike of other rich men. There was not one of them that did not bear the ever-smarting scars of vicious wounds, front and back, received from his fellows; there was not one that did not cherish the hope of overthrowing the rule of Seven and establishing ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... his execution (which might be done by running in one direction about five hundred yards), and never returned. Meeting several people that asked if Dinnis was not to be beheaded on that day, his answer was, "I trow not," which, having some humour in it, became a proverbial saying in the district, and is used to this day—"'I trow not,' quoth Dinnis." In the next place, the fact was to be proved in the clearest manner. The offender had to be taken either hand-habend or back-berand, that is, having the stolen goods in his hand, or bearing them on ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... he could not do much himself, he intended instantly to lay their case before a Giant of his acquaintance, whose good-humor and benevolence were proverbial. So he put on his shoes and stockings, which were not quite dry, and hastily descended to the garden by means of a vine which grew upon the wall. The distance to the Giant's castle was too great for him to think of walking; and he hurried around ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... "Your proverbial generosity justifies my new appeal. You will accept, I am sure, the ten tickets which I enclose, when you know that your confreres, the Messieurs Axenstein, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... eighteenth there was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population steadily increased, and New England's unremitting struggle with a not too friendly soil, her hardihood upon the seas, and her keenness in trade, became proverbial throughout the country. Her seaport towns were wealthy. The general standards of living remained frugal, but extreme poverty was rare. Her people still made, as in the earliest days of the colonies, silent and unquestioned sacrifices for education, and her chief seats of learning, Harvard ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... wrongly named. It is his most typical contact with the civic ideals of Europe. All his other tales have been tales of one city. He was in spirit a Cockney; though that title has been quite unreasonably twisted to mean a cad. By the old sound and proverbial test a Cockney was a man born within the sound of Bow bells. That is, he was a man born within the immediate appeal of high civilisation and of eternal religion. Shakespeare, in the heart of his fantastic forest, turns with a splendid suddenness to the Cockney ideal as being the true one after all. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... by observing citizens that just before noon—seven minutes to twelve, in fact—a small cloud no bigger than the proverbial hand crossed the sun hurriedly as if afraid to tarry. At that very instant a stranger drove up to the hitching-rack, bringing his sweat-covered horse to a standstill so abruptly in front of the marshal's nose that that dignitary's hat ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... his hand, and still almost as cool as the proverbial cucumber (though why they should be cool it is hard to say), Tom stopped the motors. Once again the craft was quiet, but now, instead of the occupants being able to see clearly from the thick, glass windows in the forward ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... the innumerable millions who have lived on the earth, it is astonishing how few I can call to mind who have left behind them a proverbial renown for wisdom. There is, indeed, Solomon, but he fell off at the last; and as he belongs to sacred history, we must not take a liberty with his name. Who is there very, very wise, besides ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Proverbial" :   known, proverb



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