"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had come to Briar Hills, flattering Jerry, of course, that they could be alone, intriguing meanwhile with Channing Lloyd, a wild fellow, according to Jack Ballard, who at thirty could have unprofitably shared his omniscience with the devil. A fine foil for Jerry! ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... with their committee-men, and sometimes punch was brought, and they drank with their friends. Occasionally they spoke to each other; when they did this, it was with extreme courtesy. Cary used the buttoned foil with polished ease. Rand's manner was less assured; there was something antique and laboured in his determined grasp at the amenities of the occasion. It was the only heaviness. To the other contest between ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the substance is wanting, as potassium nitrate was shown not to give an explosive substance with tin. A thin layer of a mixture of sulphur and potassium nitrate was placed between sheets of tin and copper foil, and allowed to stand, being kept constantly moist. After a time the copper was found to have become coated with sulphide, while the tin was largely converted into the explosive basic nitrate. The conditions are obviously the same as those ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... help acting as she had. She was so sorry for them all that she had really tried to like them all. She had succeeded but once—and even that was a mistake. But she remembered one thing: through it all—far back as it all was—she had never trifled with Crittenden. Before him she had dropped foil and mask and stood frankly face to face always. There was something in him that had always forced that. And he had loved her through it all, and he had suffered—how much, it had really never occurred to her until she thought of a sudden ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... work is. That revelation will be accomplished in terms of the critic's own experience of the beauty of the work, an experience imaged forth in such phrases that the pleasure the work communicates is conveyed to his readers in its true quality and foil intensity. It is not enough to dogmatize as Ruskin dogmatizes, to bully the reader into a terrified acceptance. It is not enough to determine absolute values as Matthew Arnold seeks to do, to fix certain canons of intellectual judgment, and by the application of a formula as a touchstone, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... I take it there is even a limit to the degree of a smile when you are on the official ladder, that it is then seemly, even expedient, to walk with a certain dignity of pace—so you show the sweep of the modern skirt to great advantage. As a foil were one or two blooming girls, "just out," and bound to have a "good time." Their exuberant buoyancy will be toned down, I am told, after two seasons here (I'd have thought one would have been enough), and up north people are ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Lloyd was a "light juvenile," off as well as on the stage. Jesse played father, judge, guardian, prime minister, and old family doctor in turn. Mabel, rouged and befrilled, still made an attractive foil for Wallace as the hero. Martie liked them all; their chatter of the fairyland of the stage, their trunks plastered with labels, their fine voices, their general air of being incompetent children adrift in a puzzling world. Deep ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... ANTONIUS. And may be foil'd like Tarquin, if you follow Not the dry light of Rome's straight-going policy, But the fool-fire of love or lust, which well May make you lose yourself, may even drown you In ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fight or fly, We wallow in trenches like pigs in a sty, We dive under water to foil a foe, We wait in quarters, or rise and go. And staying or going, or near or far, One thought is ever our guiding star: We are the Allies of God to-day, We are ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... (both of which I suppose were Sir Oliver's best of long standing) he may cut a tolerable figure dangling to church with Miss Bell!—The woman, as she observes, should excel the man in features: and where can she match so well for a foil? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "The glare of the silver-foil reflectors is unbearable," she looked up, with a pointed and famous effect. "But ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hero, and so misses an opportunity which would have delighted the heart of Thackeray. I say "appears," because I consider that this sympathy was nothing but a pose which he considered necessary for the popularity of his book. It is important however to observe that the idea of one character as a foil to another, though undeveloped, is here present for the first time in our national ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... can be no jealousies against you. On the contrary, it will bring you followers. None but Lotzen and his circle will resent it, and they, already, are your enemies. The Governorship will make them no more so. Instead, it will keep them careful; for it will give you immense power to detect and foil their plots." ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... "home" whom she guarded, batted balls with ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... he usually charged 11s., remarking that unless he took it from the person affected his incantation would be of no avail. Smith then handed it to his wife, who gave it to the witch doctor, and he returned 1s. to her. He then proceeded to foil the witch's power over his patient by tapping her several times on the palm of her hand with his finger, telling her that every tap was a stab on the witch's heart. This was followed by an incantation. He then gave her a parcel of herbs (which evidently consisted of dried bay leaves and peppermint), ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us; sea ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... solid rice paper, with cross-bars of chop-sticks, was much damaged. It is now under repair, and will be coated entirely with tea-chest lead, to render it perfectly impregnable. The whole of the household troops and body-guard of the emperor have also received new accoutrements of tin-foil and painted isinglass. They have likewise been armed with varnished bladders, containing peas and date stones, which produce a terrific sound upon the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... an excellent foil. He was as silent and secretive as sand. He moved, as it were, in circles, thus always eluding dangerous corners. He was tall, angular, with a thin, immobile countenance, well guarded by his gray eyes and straight lips. He was a born financier, with almost limitless ambition, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Nothing would please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope for the best. Go and ask Angelica to play for you. I have letters to write to leaders ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... have looked with a favorable eye on the wild science of the false religions, and professed to detect in it at least striking analogies with the deductions of both the geologist and the astronomer. When the skeptical wits of the last century wished to produce, by way of foil, a morality vastly superior, as they said, to that of Christianity, they had recourse to the Brahmins and the Chinese. And though we hear less of the ethics of these people since we have come to know them better, we are still occasionally ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... archery defied. Soon, therefore, died huge Eurytus, ere yet Old age he reach'd; him, angry to be call'd To proof of archership, Apollo slew. But if ye name the spear, mine flies a length By no man's arrow reach'd; I fear no foil 280 From the Phaeacians, save in speed alone; For I have suffer'd hardships, dash'd and drench'd By many a wave, nor had I food on board At all times, therefore I am much unstrung. He spake; and silent the Phaeacians sat, Of whom alone Alcinoues thus replied. Since, stranger, not ungraceful ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... romance, with its hero and villain and moral ending. But if you study this or any subsequent work of Dickens, you are apt to find the four elements already noted; namely, an unfortunate child, humorous interludes, a grotesque or horrible creature who serves as a foil to virtue or innocence, and a medley of characters good or bad that might be transferred without change to any other story. The most interesting thing about Dickens's men and women is that they are human enough to make themselves ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lads. Infantry drill; clubs and dumb-bells; singlestick and foil; riding with a military seat; but—use of the gloves! Oh dear no! What do you think ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the eight women to eat pieces of dark meat from a tin set on the top of the sitting-room stove—then cheese and bread. The watery night turned into sleet and rattled like tin-foil on the panes. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... and horrid devices, with which the children of the forest are accustomed, like the more civilised heroes of the moustache, to back their reputation for courage, contenting himself with a broad and deep shadowing of black, that served as a sufficient and an admirable foil to the brighter gleamings of his native swarthiness. His head was as usual shaved to the crown, where a large and gallant scalp-lock seemed to challenge the grasp of his enemies. The ornaments that were ordinarily pendant from the cartilages of his ears had been ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... think we could be much help to them; anyway they didn't hire Pee-wee to foil the bandit the way men do in stories. I'd like to see that kid capturing a bandit. Judging by the way he treats ice cream cones there wouldn't be much left of the bandit. I'm not crazy about bandits, anyway, but some fellows are. Anyway, I'd like a blue one better ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to make someone happy, and her endeavour carries with it a train of incident, solving a mystery which had thrown a shadow over several lives. A charming foil to her grave elder sister is to be found in Miss Babs, a small coquette of five, whose humorous child-talk ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... as a wit. Manly too, a daring rider, who had won many a fox's brush; a famous deer-stalker, and one of the few English gentlemen who still keep up the noble art of fencing,—twice a week to be seen, foil in hand, against all comers in Angelo's rooms. Thin, well-shaped,—not handsome, my dear young lady, far from it, but with an air so thoroughbred that, had you seen him in the day when the opera-house had a crushroom and a fops' alley,—seen him in either ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Ma foil!" exclaimed Mademoiselle. She seized an end of the boa and drew Gwendolyn to her knee. "You make ze head buzz. Come!" She reached for a book on the school-room ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... perhaps the moment when I may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by anything ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that." She clambered into the wagon. Before she came out with her bundle they piled the cairn, a mask of broken rim-rock heavy enough to foil the scratching ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... against her, her surprise gave place to a mingled feeling of impatience and anger. She drew her foot back with a sudden movement, but unfortunately the foot went one way and the slipper another. A fencing-master, who sees his foil carried ten steps away from him by a back stroke, could not feel more astonishment than that felt by Madame de Bergenheim. Her first movement was to place her foot, so singularly undressed, upon the ground; an instinctive ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their devotion dull their vigilance?— Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth work In Brunswick's blood, their chief, as in themselves; It ramifies in streams that intermit And make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slow To foil ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... opened apprised us that we had onlookers at our sport; but the captain's eyes never left mine until with a dexterous turn of the wrist, which I had long envied and sought in vain to copy, he sent my foil flying to the end of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... with surprise. "We are fencing—and I hate it. Once at West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me in the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... have felt, would have been a false note in the whole rosy glow; but what note so false as that of the dingy little presence that she might actually, by a refinement of her perhaps always too visible study of effect, have provided as a positive contrast or foil? whose name and intervention, moreover, she appeared to be no more moved to mention and account for than she might have been to "present"—whether as stretched at her feet or erect upon disciplined haunches—some shaggy old domesticated terrier ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... There is nothing in what I am treating as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. "A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... elsewhere, to equal that piece of workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... mail for Lieutenant Logan to wear in one of the tableaux. Ranald, with a huge sheet of cardboard and the library shears, was manufacturing a pair of giant scissors, half as long as himself, which a blonde in blue was waiting to cover with tin foil. She was singing coon songs while she waited, to the accompaniment of a mandolin, and in such a gay, rollicking way, that every one was keeping time either with ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a somewhat insipid pastoral, betraying the influence of the Lake School, more especially Coleridge, on a belated and irresponsive disciple, and wholly out of place as contrast or foil ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... show how this system is conducted. As a general rule, the wretches are easily disposed of with the aid of the police, but sometimes it requires all the ingenuity of the most experienced detective to ferret out and foil the plot. These wretches know that respectable people dread scandal, and they profit by this knowledge. They are sometimes bold and unscrupulous in their way of conducting their business, and at other times endeavor to palm themselves off as injured innocents. They rarely ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... enough to inform against him, and this with an air of affected secrecy and mysterious importance; and, as if the dishonesty of another constituted a virtue in themselves, they would repeat this information frequently, perhaps for a month afterward, setting up their neighbour's offence as a foil to their own ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which the later ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... basket. Hilda is a capable person; there is no ignoring her militant character; the battles of Saxon kings ring still in her blood. Marjorie has scribbled verses in secret, and Celia is the quietest auditor at the symphony. And you may have observed that there is no button on Elizabeth's foil; you do well not to clash wits with her. Do you say that these ascriptions are not square with your experience? Then verily there must have been a sad mixing of infant candidates for the font in your parish. Shirley, in such case, will mean nothing to you. It is a waste of time to tell ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, is doubtful, but he certainly taught us to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... water upon it. A further washing in hot lye, and a bath in an acid pickle, completely removes every vestige of wax from the shell. The back of the shell is now moistened with soldering fluid and covered with a layer of tin-foil, which acts as a solder between the copper and the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... and Tayoga. He was still glad of the lucky chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... ready remedy, and is Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... inopportune moment, and who will give us because we are His friends, and He ours! The very ugliness of character ascribed to the owner of the loaves, selfish in his enjoyment of his bed, in his refusal to turn out on an errand of neighbourliness, and in his final giving, thus serves as a foil to the character of Him to whom our prayers ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... go to Philadelphia as soon as possible and get the steam yacht ready for the trip. The best way to foil Merrick and his crowd is to find the isle, get possession of the treasure, and get away before they know what we are ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... strength and art were tried, The stately tree all force defied. Well might the elm resist and foil their might, For though his branches were decay'd to sight, As many as his leaves the roots spread round, And in the firm set earth ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... undaunted hearts, immortal mitred Few! For Truth's dear sake, the Tyrant foil'd to whom ye still were true—[37] Rejoice! Who knows what scatter'd thoughts of yours were buried seeds, Slow-springing for th' oppress'd and poor, and ripen'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... distant on both sides some nine hundred to a thousand paces. Vessels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon on this island, and we deemed the location the most advantageous, not only on account of its situation and good foil, but also on account of the intercourse which we proposed with the savages of these coasts and of the interior, as we should be in the midst of them. We hoped to pacify them in the course of time, and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... of du Maurier's art, that which survives in it better than its sometimes scathing commentary upon a passing "craze," is his close representation of the air with which people seek to foil each other in conversation and conceal their own trepidations. His "Social Agonies" are among the best of this series. If he does not lay stress upon individual character, he still remains the master draughtsman of a state of mind. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all, — while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own — 'Come, give me five cards.' 'Well done!' cry the ladies; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good! 25 The pool's very rich — ah! the Doctor is loo'd!' Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplex'd, I ask for advice from the lady that's next: 'Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice; Don't you think the best way is to venture for 't twice?' 30 'I advise,' cries the lady, 'to try ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... back with the painters from the two canvas canoes knotted together. His first toss confirmed the captain's fears, the rope foil ten feet short. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... think he'll get from me? Nothing that isn't false, no information that won't mislead him, no facts save those I shall distort until they may seem so near the truth that he will build and count upon them. Every minute of my time will be spent to foil his schemes. They don't believe me in Whitehall, or Selingman would be at Bow Street to-morrow morning. That's why I am going my own way. Tell him, if you will. There is only one thing strong enough to bring me here, to risk ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... muscle and bone. Jan's knife swept in an upward flash and plunged to the hilt through the flesh of his enemy's forearm. With a cry of pain O'Grady dropped his club, and the two crashed to the stone floor of the trail. This was the attack that Jan had feared and tried to foil, and with a lightning-like squirming movement he swung himself half free, and on his back, with O'Grady's huge hands linking at his throat, he drew back his knife arm for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the danger of deliberately contrasting with her maturity the vividness of youth. To do what she thought of doing would be to run a great risk. When she had married Lord Sellingworth she had provided herself with a foil to her beauty and to her comparative youth. To marry a young man would be to make herself the foil. He would emphasize her age by his lack of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... he clear, and on this he became more settled with every hour: whatever he did he must do with the idea of a fundamental awakening in Maggie. Merely to foil her in this one scheme would be to solve the lesser part of his problem; Maggie would be left unchanged, or if changed at all the change would be toward a greater hardness, and his major problem would be made more ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... them to be inured to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when young, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... put his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Bravo! performed with perfect precision." And so he went on. Each time, however, that Jones's division had to assault, he saw that Blackall endeavoured to take some undue advantage of Ernest, who with equal regularity contrived quietly to foil him. Ernest kept his eye on his opponent's, but said nothing, and in no other way showed that he was aware of his evil intentions. Blackall at length began to lose his temper at his own failures: he ground his teeth and turned savage glances towards Bracebridge, who met them ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... have a look at it, and what do you suppose he found? My foot had become gangrenous! An accident which had occurred many years ago was the cause of this. While I was at Sorze, my right foot had been pierced by the foil of a fencing opponent, which had lost its button. It seems that this injury had made my foot more sensitive to cold, and while I was lying on the snow it had become frostbitten, and not having been treated in time, gangrene had set in at the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Teutonic poet's shock of hair. So he came to himself, and for the rest of our walk he kept to himself as the thread of his discourse, and went over himself from top to toe, and strung thereon all topics under the sun by way of illustrating his splendours. But especially his foil was the relative folly, the unnaturalness and want of logic in his fellow men. He held strong views about the extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle-headedness, had confounded it all. "Hence, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... landscape by Corot the letter L is plainly shown. In the diagram of Fundamental Forms also, the tree-mass, cow and river bank in shadow serve as a sombre foil for the clump of trees upon the opposite shore which are bathed in the soft luminous haze of early morning. This is the real attraction which, grafted upon the heavy structure of the foreground affects us the more through the contrast. In Mr. Pettie's ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's wall already described, and a second wall, part ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... the foil that time, because the thrust brought blood—a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn't followed the thing ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... her word, and I am lost; Yet let not my ambition shew it to her; For, after all, she does it but to try me, And foil my vowed design.—Madam, I see You're come to court; the robes you wear become you; Your air, your mien, your charms, your every grace, Will kill at least ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... am mortal: and I cannot write Aught that may foil the fatal wing of Time. Silent, I look at Fame: I cannot climb To where her Temple is—Not mine the might:— I have some glimmering of what is sublime— But, ah! it ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... word, being resolved to cheat her again as he had done before. He went to find little Day, and saw him with a foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a great monkey: the child was then only three years of age. He took him up in his arms and carried him to his wife, that she might conceal him in her chamber along with his sister, and instead ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... Hissing and seething at the opposition she offered, the larger waves burst over her bows, and swept the deck from stem to stern; but her ample scuppers discharged it quickly, and up she rose again, dripping from the flood, to face and fight and foil ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... and produced a ring, enclosing a piece of coloured glass set over foil. This he presented to the child, who ran off delighted to show ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... you. You know I tried to mark Merriwell for life by punching my foil through the mask that protected his face while we were engaged in a fencing bout. I had prepared my foil for that in advance by fixing the button so I could remove it, and by sharpening the point of the foil. I wanted to spoil the fellow's ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... had been busy for hours with pasteboard and glue, tin-foil and scissors, held up the suit of mail which she had ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... took the diamond from its setting, and left me nothing but the foil," says he. "Oh, I would order it another way: give me the gem, and let who will take what remains. Unless these little hands are mine to hold for ever, I will take ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... yourself about Mr. Merwyn, Arthur. I have my own personal score to settle with him. He has made a good foil for you and my other friends, and I have learned to appreciate you the more. YOU have won my entire esteem and respect, and have taught me how quickly a noble, self-sacrificing purpose can develop manhood. O Arthur, Heaven grant that we may all meet again! How ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... very coach side, and threaten your letters. Is the poison [and dagger] you boast in your jaws, trow? Are you still in your cart with convitia ex plaustro? But to scold is your trade, which I soon should be foil'd in, For scolding is just quasi diceres—school-din: And I think I may say, you could many good shillings get, Were you drest like a bawd, and sold oysters at Billingsgate; But coach it or cart it, I'd have you ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sender or funnel-shaped tube, with its open mouth-piece standing toward the operator; the diaphragm and stylus connected therewith, which receives the sound spoken into the tube; and thirdly, the revolving cylinder, with its sheet-coating of tin-foil laid over the surface of a spiral groove to receive the indentations of the point of the stylus. The mode of operation is very simple. The cylinder is revolved; and the point of the stylus, when there is no sound agitation in the funnel or mouth-piece, makes a smooth, continuous depression ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... of curious fruit—sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Francis Drake came near involving him in serious trouble, but ultimately ended by procuring him the commission he had so long desired. Tired of a life of inactivity, anxious to foil the Spanish in the New World, and sick to death of the busy idleness of the court, Sidney at length determined to go with Drake to a new world and a new career. Accordingly, he made ready, and actually went as far as Plymouth, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... bring some pressure to bear upon Greece," said the younger man. "We cannot permit that. Bulgaria must get in the game sooner and thus foil such ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Evil, Virtue the offspring of Vice. You know how virtuous a man feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the good ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... winter quarters, and the equinox was on us, with an east wind that parched the blood in the trees, so that their leaves for once knew no gradations of red and yellow, but turned at a stroke to brown, and crackled like tin-foil. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... father did not object. For that man's condition was an excellent foil to his own success and prosperity and thus he was permitted, at times, to stay a week in the house where, otherwise, charity was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... declare that when I speak thereof Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me That if my courage failed not, certainly To him my listeners must be all resign'd. Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind That mine own speech should foil me, which were base; But only will discourse of her high grace In these poor words, the best that I can find, With you alone dear dames and damozels: 'Twere ill to speak thereof with any else. . . . . . . . . My lady is desired in ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... his position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... no less wilt be my life, And I shall know it better than before, Praying and trusting, hoping, claiming more. From effort vain, sick foil, and bootless strife, I shall, with childness fresh, look up to thee; Thou, seeing thy child with age encumbered sore, Wilt round him bend thine ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... chaperones. And here was Thorny, very pretty in her best gown, with a little unusual and unnatural color on her cheeks, and Billy Oliver, who would watch the game from the "dollar section," providentially on hand to help them through the crowd, and buy Susan a chrysanthemum as a foil to Thorny's red ribbons. The damp cool air was sweet with violets; a delightful stir and excitement thrilled the moving crowd. Here was the gate. Tickets? And what a satisfaction to produce them, and enter unchallenged into the rising roadway, leaving behind ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Mrs. Bennet—her archness, her querulousness, and above all her talkativeness. Was it Sally May or Mrs. Bennet? Molly Seaton, as Mr. Bennet, proved an excellent foil—reserved, quiet, full ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... this day hath foil'd the many Fallacies of GEORGE their King, Let the echo reach Britan'y, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... Wagner. The Hallelujah Chorus in particular is a magnificent piece of work. As is the case with the Messiah, its beauties as well as its defects are so apparent, so pronounced, that the latter serve as a foil to bring out its good qualities in the strongest relief. It was first performed in the spring of 1803, in Vienna, on which occasion Beethoven played some of his other compositions. It was repeated ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... it is, is often alluded to still, and remains as a foil to those flattering and courtly anecdotes which I have been repeating of royal and imperial homage paid to Duerer, Titian, and Holbein. I fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small beginnings, and circulated ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... is brought into the bell-jar, and held there four or five seconds; it is then found entirely discharged. That the real cause of this, however, is condensation of the vapor on the part of the glass that is not coated with tin foil (the liquid layer acting by conduction) can be proved; for if that part of the jar be passed several times rapidly through the flame, so as to heat it to near 100 C., before inserting in the bell-jar, a different effect will be had; the Leyden jar will give out long sparks after withdrawal. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... not yet learned the difference between man and woman. It does not take the difficult right way, but quite intelligibly, the left. The wanderer himself turns back to his childish irresponsibility; he takes the left path. The many people that fall down may be a foil to illustrate the dangers of the path, for the purpose of deepening the impression of improvement. Phantasies of extraordinary abilities, special powers; contrasts to the anxiety of examinations; all these in the case of the wanderer mark ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... in very suddenly to explain about the Christmas tree. There were lots of little pencils on the table. And blocks of paper. And nice cold, shining sheets of tin-foil. There was violet-colored tin-foil, and red-colored tin-foil—and green and ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... dhows, lookout-man!" he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain's carefully arranged ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... As a foil for his royal clemency, there should be humble gratitude. Maximilian often mistook ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, revolver contest and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till one or ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the sunshine loves to coil. And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's glow, As a played-out, broken chum, who has gone to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... unwariness of the Legislature, and closed the doors of the medical schools to female applicants. Against unqualified female practitioners they never acted with such zeal and consent; and why? The female quack is a public pest, and a good foil to the union; the qualified doctress is a public good, and a blow to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a dog, old, lame, and lean; He once had been a noble hound; And day by day he lay and starv'd, Or gnaw'd some bone that he had found. They shar'd with him the scanty crust, That barely foil'd starvation's pain; He'd wag his feeble tail and turn To gnaw that polish'd bone again. Vogue la galere! why don't ye greet My tale ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... The play of fancy and invention of Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that could ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... tent, but does not bow to the audience. In one hand he carries a fencing foil, well constructed, of European workmanship; in his other hand he holds a number of pretty toy balloons which he ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... similar compounds should be potted as quickly as made, and the lids of the pots banded either with strips of tin-foil or paper, to exclude air. When the amandine is filled into the jars, the top or face of it is marked or ornamented with a tool made to the size of half the diameter of the interior of the jar, in a similar ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... hand, the rationalist movement had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. Rationalism ran a much soberer course than in France. It was never a revolutionary and destructive movement as in France. It was not a dilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in England. It was far more creative ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to supper, and so closely cover The rusty canker of mine iron spite With golden foil of goodly semblances. But if I do not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... contraries should also be set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount of heat in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin |
