"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband.—Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother.[124] Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor?[125] Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for, at your age The hey-day in the blood[126] is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: And what judgment Would step from this to ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... all the owners of slum property, all the grasping shipowners, all those who batten and fatten on other people's welfare in a most favourable light. We have been thinking them almost criminals when they were in reality public benefactors. They lead to many improvements, and even though the improvements come ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... use both hands alike, and with the one spear smote the shield, but pierced it not right through, for the gold stayed it, the gift of a god; and with the other he grazed the elbow of Achilles' right arm, and there leapt forth dark blood, but the point beyond him fixed itself in the earth, eager to batten on flesh. Then in his turn Achilles hurled on Asteropaios his straight-flying ash, fain to have slain him, but missed the man and struck the high bank, and quivering half its length in the bank he left the ashen spear. Then the son of Peleus drew ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats. The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun) met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the dead hand, carried about ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... lady into the sea, living or dead," said Mr. Thompson, with an ominous lift of his eye, "you go with her, Mr. Batten. Remember who brought her here ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the wreckers, whose lair is secure past compare, All who batten on bones with a maw debonair, And the carcase of Poverty torture and tear With ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame, And never burn with one same lust of love, And never in their habits they agree, Nor find the same foods equally delightsome— Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats Batten upon the hemlock which to man Is violent poison. Once again, since flame Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks Of the great lions as much as other kinds Of flesh and blood existing in the lands, How could it be that she, Chimaera lone, With triple body—fore, a lion she; And aft, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... adobe building outside the fortification walls, and like others that were occupied by belated travellers, was the barest and crudest structure imaginable. It had an earthen floor, a thatched roof, a batten door, and an opening in the rear ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... burlap for a distance of 2 feet from the forward end, and pouring boiling water over them, as was done with the snow shoes (page 39). Before bending the boards we had fixed screw eyes in the ends of each batten, except the forward one; a rope had been strung through these screw eyes and the ends were now tied to the head piece and drawn tight so as to bend the boards into a graceful curve. In this way the ropes were of service not only for curving the front end into a hood, but also for side rails, to ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... wrought, The fire has cleft its way each coign into, For wood and stone searching her bosom through. Astonishingly high she took the blue, Yet weeping molten dross shall meet the ground— A sight for grief profound to gaze across. Flame follows flame, each like a giant worm, To feast and batten on her beauteous form. Through gold and silver doors they sinuous swarm And crop the carven flowers with gust enorme; Till all is emptiness. Then with hellish shout The embruted Gentiles in exultant rout Into her ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. He does not want light, because the darkness is more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king, for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of the people, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... insolence," said Thirkle. "We've got to get out of here. Give him lip, Buckrow, so he'll come down, or he'll batten down on us until morning, and ye ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... likely to take unless forcibly coerced into doing so. Any spirit of enterprise which might have been possessed by the founders of the dynasty had long since evaporated, and all that Manchu nobles asked was to be allowed to batten in peace upon ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness, elusive; ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... ardent people over whom he was to rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which, locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage—an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a man.[2] This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? [Sidenote: wholsome brother,] Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore?[3] Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day[4] in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Judgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? [A] What diuell was't, That thus hath cousend you at hoodman-blinde?[5] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... cabin, and, entering my berth, to take thence my best London-made and only remaining tooth-brush; and, after polishing his own diminutive teeth, and committing other pranks with it, such as the scrubbing of the deck, and currying of Sailor's back, left it to batten on the fish-bones in the said Sailor's hutch; and was, moreover, seen by the aforesaid complainant to remove R——'s small ivory box of cold cream from the dressing-case, and, ascending the deck,—not as human creatures do by the companion-stairs, but along the companion-banisters, carrying ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... hard to see. For the sound way of building, I suppose, Is just with cash—the wonder-working paint That round the widow's batten'd forehead throws The aureole of a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bruce's heart (what a lot of hearts there were travelling about then!) and where now the most curiously exciting things are the Bridie Shops. I had to know what a 'bridie' meant, so we stopped to see; but it's only a rolled meat pasty they love in Forfarshire; and brides are supposed to batten on them at their weddings. To please me, Basil would have made a detour to see 'Thrums,' which is really Kerriemuir, you know. And we should have had to pass through Forfar—the 'Witches Har'—and go on the road that leads to mysterious, wonderful Glamis. I was longing to do ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... putrid meat soak a small extent of the sandy floor. That is enough for the maggot's first establishment. These causes of failure are avoided with a layer of sand about an inch thick. Then the Bluebottle, the Flesh-fly, and other Flies whose grubs batten on dead bodies are kept at ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Moonlight, my respected friend, I scorn the title. Doctors are a brood that batten on the ills of others. First day: 'A pain internally, madam? Very serious. I will send you some medicine. Two guineas. Yes, the sum of two guineas.' Next day: 'Ah, the pain is no better, madam? Go on taking the medicine. Fee? Two guineas, if you please.' ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... but she had run away from them to batten on the husks of city life, and had prospered exceedingly. It was her parents who heard of her fame and had journeyed to the city to ask her forgiveness and throw themselves on her neck. Kedzie was now wonderful before the nation under the nom de ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... doth here Dead and undone for ever, while he lived And flourished. Heaven hath turned this turbulence To fall instead upon the harmless flock. Wherefore no strength of man shall once avail To encase his body with a seemly tomb, But outcast on the wide and watery sand, He'll feed the birds that batten on the shore. Nor let thy towering spirit therefore rise In threatening wrath. Wilt thou or not, our hand Shall rule him dead, howe'er he braved us living, And that by force; for never would he yield, Even while he lived, to words ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... to us, I think, with the small spread of canvas that we are showing. But it will be bad enough when it comes, I doubt not; so go below and call Murdock, the cook, and the cabin boy, and say I want them to come on deck, as I am about to batten down the fore scuttle. And when eight bells comes, you will have to go aft and stretch yourselves out on the cabin lockers, for the forecastle will be closed until this breeze ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... high protective duties were for "the people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... given to Colonel Baum, who, with about a thousand Germans, Indians, Canadians, and refugee loyalists, started out from camp on his maraud, on the eleventh, halted at Batten-Kill on the twelfth, and reached Cambridge on the thirteenth. He was furnished with Tory guides, who knew the country well, and with instructions looking to a long ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... still continues to be, properly, yea, delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of snowy lace, as its ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Buddhist birth-story, the "Pancavudha-jataka," No. 55 (see Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 305 ff.), the Philippines may easily have derived it directly from India along with other Buddhistic fables (e.g., "The Monkey and the Crocodile," No. 56, below). Indeed, Batten's ingenious explanation that the Brer Rabbit of Negro lore is a reminiscence of an incarnation of Buddha may be applied equally well to the monkey in our Visayan tales, for the monkey is a much more common form for the Bodhisatta than is the hare. In the five hundred and forty-seven ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... hero. Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St George's, to batten on the spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolized all the good things of the place. I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less reason to complain, but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... back on you the denunciation with which, when we met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and objectless and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame. The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours and enjoy them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour in which he was born. Mark me, man,—I ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the primrose path feels that he ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... willing race, do most of the work about here. A few boats and canoes are drawn up upon the beach. The atmosphere is heavy with the odor of ancient fish. The water-line is strewn with cast-off salmon heads and entrails. Indian dogs and big, fat flies batten there prodigiously. Acres of salmon bellies are rosy in the sun. The blood-red interiors of drying fish—rackfuls of them turned wrong side out—are the only bit of color in all Alaska. Everybody and everything ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Home Rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with those blackguards. We have a right to Home Rule, an abstract right to manage our own affairs, and I believe in the principle. But I want such men as Andrew Jameson, or Jonathan ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... which there are man, wife, young woman, and a daughter of about fourteen years of age; the young woman and daughter sleep in a kind of box under the man and his wife. In another part of the yard is a Gipsy tent, where God's broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a "batten of straw" serves as a bed. There is a woman, two daughters, one of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a youth I should think about sixteen years of age. I should judge that the mother and her two daughters sleep on one bed at one end of the tent and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the fork of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly. The horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs kept the cask from slipping off going uphill. Sandy led the way and carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe straddled the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... relation of the ideal to the present sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers. It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of our ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... Discontented that my wife do not go neater now she has two maids Fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life Have been so long absent that I am ashamed to go I took occasion to be angry with him Justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors Lady Batten to give me a spoonful of honey for my cold My great expense at the Coronacion She hath got her teeth new done by La Roche That I might not seem to be afeared The monkey loose, which did anger me, and so I did strike her ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... some time past had been very unsettled. This afternoon the wind blew fresh from the north-west, which occasioned the sea to break very high across the Dolphin bank; and in the night such a heavy broken sea came into the bay that we were obliged to batten all the hatchways down, and to keep everybody upon deck all night though the rain came down in torrents. The ship rolled in ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so it's better to leave it too long than to ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and much ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... his seal, To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband.—Look you now what follows: Here is your husband, like a milldew'd ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, Else could ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... different sets of warp filaments to form the 'sheds'; second, throwing the shuttle, or performing some operation that amounts to the same thing; third, after inserting the weft thread, driving it home, and adjusting it by means of the batten, be it the needle, the finger, the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... fewer students. The person known as "the general reader" is nowadays fond of literary dram-drinking—he wants small pleasant doses of a stimulant that will act swiftly on his nerves; and, if he can get nothing better, he will contentedly batten on the tiny paragraphs of detached gossip which form the main delight of many fairly intelligent people. Books are cheap and easily procured, and the circulating library renders it almost unnecessary for any one to buy books at all. In myriads of houses in town ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... returned to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin, her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As they turned to pupae he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host of dingy hymenoptera. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... could give an offence to any, and with the great honour he thought it would be to him. Being overtook by the brigantine, my Lord and we went out of our barge into it, and so went on board with Sir W. Batten, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sports of fancy: though ten times told, the tale to them never can be tedious; though dull "as the fat weed that grows on Lethe's bank," the jest for them has all the poignancy of satire: on the very offals, the garbage of wit, they can feed and batten. Happy they who can find in every jester the wit of Sterne or Swift; who else can wade through hundreds of thickly-printed pages to obtain for their reward such ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to send ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the best writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous class of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and batten in their various degrees on the productions of Mr. E.P. Roe, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, or the Sunday War-Whoop. The evolution of democracy in the literary sphere is exactly analogous to its course in the political sphere. In both there is the same ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... from the Home Base McAfee Missions Striking Home McAfee The Church and the New Age Henry Carver American Social and Religious Conditions Charles Stelzle The Church of To-morrow J. II. Crooker The Social Task of Christianity Samuel Zane Batten The Christian ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... no such records as to height, etc., are kept about officers, and my search proved fruitless, more especially as the records at Woolwich for the period required were destroyed by fire some years ago. The best evidence I have obtained is that of General Gordon's tailors, Messrs Batten & Sons, of Southampton, who write: "We consider, by measurements in our books, that General Gordon was 5 ft. 9 in." As he had contracted a slight stoop, or, more correctly speaking, carried his head thrown forward, he looked in later life much less than his real height. The quotations ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... joined to a distinct bent towards the mystic, and to a large amount of credulity, has made Russia for two hundred years the happy hunting-ground of charlatans and impostors of various sorts claiming supernatural powers: clairvoyants, mediums, yogis, and all the rest of the tribe who batten on human weaknesses, and the perpetual desire to tear away the veil from the Unseen. It so happened that my chief at Lisbon had in his youth dabbled in the Black Art. Sir Charles Wyke was a dear old man, who had spent most of his Diplomatic career in Mexico and the South American ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton |
