"Millstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sullivan cried, intolerable pain in his voice. "You win! You have a heart harder than the millstone, more set than ice! I call you to witness I have struggled hard, I have ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... can read the above without shuddering, and experiencing alternate emotions of horror and indignation, his heart must be harder than a millstone and colder than the ice of the poles. We know not the particular circumstances of the crime for which this poor wretch suffered, but as far as we can learn from the public prints, it was for the murder of his Master. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... would not like to bring a soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something like a dead hand would fall on me—'You did it, you, for your own pleasure you created this thing! See your work!' If it lived to be eighty it would always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God—if his work turns out bad, so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands of it. Time and years can never bring the day when you can say to your child: ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... the motive powers of the heart. With Jacques invention was really the daughter of sentiment, and he put something of himself into the smallest things he did. He perceived that souvenirs no longer sufficed him, and that, like the millstone which wears itself away when corn runs short, his heart was wearing away for want of emotion. Work had no longer any charm for him, his power of invention, of yore feverish and spontaneous, now only awoke after much patient effort. Jacques was discontented, and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... I heard that there were some who had become peasant proprietors by purchasing out and out their holdings, and that they had bitterly repented of so doing; for they had tied a millstone about their necks. I was advised to go to Limavady and see the Rev. Mr. Brown, who had made the purchase for these people, and knew how the bargain was ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5. And whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me. 6. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! 8. Wherefore ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Christian than the Minister o' Kirkintulloch wi' twa hunder and fifty—or if folk should aye be readin' sermons or fishin' for sawmon—or if it's best to marry or best to burn—or if the national debt hangs like a millstone round the neck o' the kintra or like a chain o' blae-berries—or if the Millennium be really close at haun'—or the present Solar System be calculated to last to a' eternity—or whether the people should be edicated up to the highest pitch ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... a compromise, which should secure everything except Privy Council and Parliament; professing willingness himself, if that was conceded, to oppose any agitation of the question for a considerable time, that I am myself convinced that he is disposed to consider it as a millstone, to which he is not absolutely pledged, and which he will for his own interest shake from off his neck. We have begun on Wellesley's plan, but as yet made no progress. Indeed it is so defective, that though it ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... composition as his "Martyrdom of St. Cristina," in S. Maria Mater Domini, in which the saint, a solid, Bellinesque figure, kneels upon the water, in which she met her death, and is surrounded by little angels, holding up the millstone tied round her neck, and laden with other instruments of her martyrdom. Catena borrows right and left, and tries to follow every new indication of contemporary taste. For instance, he remarks the growing ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... live that be worthy to command ye; spite that you could rush on, marshal the troops to victory, as I may say; but then—what of it? there's the unhappy fate of being smit with the eyes of a woman, and you are unmanned! Maister Derriman, who is himself, when he's got a woman round his neck like a millstone?' ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... most remarkable to us as being the Thebez of Judges ix. 50, where Abimelech was slain by the women hurling a millstone on his head from the wall. The more I become acquainted with the peculiar population of Jebel Nabloos, (i.e. the territory of which Nabloos is the metropolis,) a brutish people "waxing fat and kicking," the more does the history of the book of Judges, especially ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the bird, "I do not sing twice for nothing; give me the millstone, and I will sing ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... me his without losing the benefit of an alliance with Miss Dudleigh. And I thought I saw also, and entered into his plans, though they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of dissimulation and crime which had been marked out for me, till we came to this inn. Then, owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of physical fear and such harrowing mental ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... burst out at him passionately. "Suppose you trouble YOUR head about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... would not be so prodigal of contempt for other people when he stood in the criminal dock. He had been brutally unkind to her. Was she to blame because he was too poor to support her properly? He ought to thank her for having the good sense not to tie herself like a millstone about his neck. They could not live on love just because for the moment passion had swept them from their feet. Instead of being angry at her, he should sympathize with her for being the victim of a pressure which had driven her to ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... precisely the same way, only they have been engulfed by crevasses, or between the sides of the glacier and the bounding wall, and thus carried between the moving ice and its rocky bed, as between the upper and nether millstone. In a word, all bowlders, whether angular or rounded, are supposed to owe their origin or separation ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Sagensch.) mentions a Little Linden Spring on a road in Schweinfurt near Koenigshofen. The nurses dip the babies out of it with silver pails, and it flows not with water but with milk. If the little ones come to this baby fountain they look through the holes of the millstone (specially mentioned on account of what follows) at its still water, that mirrors their features, and think they have seen a little brother or sister that looks just like them. (Nork. Myth d. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... fragrance. See! here is the old mill itself, now disused and falling to decay. Here the path becomes a little precipice, and you must scramble as best you can down two or three rough steps, and round the corner of the ruined mill. This is a millstone, this great round thing like a granite cheese, half buried in the ground; and here is another, which makes a comfortable seat, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... would fall off the old tree as soon as it was ripe was the favourite metaphor employed to convey what nearly all publicists took to be an obvious truth. No one stated it so trenchantly as Disraeli when he wrote: "These wretched Colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks;" but the dogma was generally accepted by politicians belonging to both the great parties in the state. Those, moreover, were days in which economy and retrenchment were popular cries in England, and when it was deemed ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... in the generosity of her heart she had not spared the dripping. The tea was brewed, hot and strong, the teapot, singed by long use, standing on the hob. There was a crusty loaf, a pat of butter indented in the middle with one of Dick's regimental buttons, and a plate of cakes, hard as the nether—millstone and very crumbly, having been purchased from the distant town at the beginning of the week in expectation ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... through the pathless wilderness is a slow, grinding misery. The lightest pack soon becomes a burden. At the beginning of a march it may seem a mere nothing, in an hour it is an oppression; in three a millstone is a feather compared with it; and before night the inexperienced packer feels that, like Atlas, he bears the world upon his shoulders. It was therefore little wonder that Helen Yardely ceased to sing after ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... served him—as such women will serve men. He offered to send his children to school in Yorkshire—rather a cheap school—but she would not part with them. She made a scandal in order to get good terms, and she succeeded. He was anxious to break the connexion: he owned it had hung like a millstone round his neck and caused him a great deal of remorse—annoyance you may call it. He was immensely cut up about it. I remember, when that fellow was hanged for murdering a woman, Barnes said he did not wonder at his having done it. Young men make those connexions in their early lives and rue ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... generous indignations and of extreme sentiments, too poignant, perhaps, for a non-Russian mind to conceive. I saw these two, escaped out of four score of millions of human beings ground between the upper and nether millstone, walking under these trees, their young heads close together. Yes, an excellent place to stroll and talk in. It even occurred to me, while we turned once more away from the wide iron gates, that when tired they would have plenty of accommodation to rest themselves. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... opening of which they were making a great noise. Many thought it would succeed, though an Egyptian Commodore had said to him, "It is hombog." The Red Sea was fearfully hot and steamy. The "Lady Nyassa" hung like a millstone around his neck, and he was prepared to sell her for whatever she might bring. Bombay ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Hense a wise physician was accustomed to regard occupation as one of his most valuable remedial measures. "Nothing is so injurious," said Dr. Marshall Hall, "as unoccupied time." An archbishop of Mayence used to say that "the human heart is like a millstone: if you put wheat under it, it grinds the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat, it grinds on, but then 'tis itself ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... there is a large variety, portraying many different types of character, but we shall name only a few. "Andrea del Sarto" is a study of the great Italian painter, "the perfect painter," whose love for a pretty but shallow woman was as a millstone about his neck. "My Last Duchess" is a powerfully drawn outline of a vain and selfish nobleman. "Abt Vogler" is a study of the soul of a musician. "Rabbi ben Ezra," one of the most typical of Browning's works, is the word of an old man who faces death, as he had ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... it, Becky? I was only a little boy, but I told myself then that I would never kiss any other girl. I thought then that—that some day I might ask you to marry me. I—I had a wild dream that I might try to make you love me. I didn't know then that poverty is a millstone about a man's neck." He gave a ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... work of reconstruction. The "Scalawag," the "Carpet-bagger," and the Negro. Who were this trio? The scalawag was the native white man who made up the middle class of the South; the planter above, the Negro below. And between this upper and nether millstone he was destined to be ground to powder, under the old regime. A "nigger-driver," without schools, social position, or money, he was "the poor white trash" of the South. He was loyal during the war, because ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals—when it came to delicate chicane, and scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered comfort ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a very simple nature. It is disintegrated rock, worn small by the enormous millstone of ice that rolls slowly over the bed, and deposited in part as 'terminal moraine' near the summer melting-point. It is the quantity of mud thus produced, and borne down by mountain torrents, that makes the alluvial plains ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... in a way to make her see for whom the carriage door was being held open. Such was her entrance into wealth and love and alas! into trouble. For the latter followed hard upon the two first. Mr. Ocumpaugh's mother, who had held sway at Homewood for thirty years or more, was hard as the nether millstone. She was a Rathbone and had brought both wealth and aristocratic connections into the family. She had no sympathy for penniless beauties (she was a very plain woman herself) and made those first few ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... you think so?" said I. Taking the Bible in my hands, I wiped off the dust, and opening it hastily, my eyes fell upon the following words: —"And he said unto his disciples, it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto him by whom they come; for better had it been for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... deny it. I practically do," he admitted. "It has been a millstone round my neck. But I think she is grateful. You ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flat-roofed house, situated in a very secluded spot amongst the hills, not a mile from Jerusalem. They sat opposite to each other, engaged—after the manner of the East—in grinding corn, by moving round, by means of handles, the upper millstone upon the nether one. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... in them, were all dragooned down about her heels. On the whole, she was rather, I must confess, an out-of-the-way creature; and though I had not muckle faith in these bodies that pretend to see further through a millstone than their neighbours, I somehow or other, taking pity on her miserable condition, being still a fellow-creature, though plain in the lugs, had not the heart to huff her out; more by token, as Nanse, Benjie, and the new prentice Mungo, had by this time got round me, all dying to know what grand ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... you put a millstone in my knapsack?" inquired Bland suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across his forehead. "If you did, it was a dirty joke," he added irritably. Dan laughed. "Now that's ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... miles of the present continental surface of Europe and America were covered with a shallow sea. In the deeper and clearer of these waters the earliest Carboniferous rocks, of limestone, were deposited. The "millstone grit," which succeeds the "limestone," indicates shallower water, which is being rapidly filled up with the debris of the land. In a word, all the indications suggest the early and middle Carboniferous as an age of vast ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... are cast out of metal taken from guns captured by the British Army from enemies in the past, and suspended over the keystone there will be an interesting trophy consisting of the Crest and Arms of the regiment. In front a large millstone ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... you would have been forced into some kind of paltry work just to support me—and where would be the good of our marriage? You know perfectly well that lots of men have been degraded in this way. They take a wife to be their Muse, and she becomes the millstone about their neck; then they hate her—and I don't blame them. What's the good of saying one moment that you know your work can never appeal to the multitude, and the next, affecting to believe that our marriage would make you ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... profit. My heart was very hard, and it rose up in rebellion against the Lord. Then it pleased Him (blessed be His holy name) to bray me in the mortar of affliction, and to crush me between the upper and the nether millstone. Yet I heeded not; and, like Nebuchadnezzar, my mind was hardened in pride, continually. Then, as the King of Babylon was driven forth from the sons of men, and his heart made like the beasts', and his dwelling was with the wild asses, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... individual ought to know that the habit of measuring herself by others, in this way, will hang like a millstone about her neck; and if it do not drown her in the depths of ignorance and imbecility, will at least make her forever a child, in comparison with what she should be. It will keep her grovelling on the earth's surface, when she ought to be exploring the highest ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... so much as that?" she said with a long breath. "Well," frankly, "it must be intolerable to carry such a millstone about your neck as I am to you. You know I could pull you down any minute I chose," tossing her head and laughing maliciously. "No matter how high you had climbed. I often wonder, Pliny, why you do not rid yourself of me. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... accepting necessities of life in security; and by prescribing that when this had been done they should be restored at once. For it is written (Deut. 23:19): "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury": and (Deut. 24:6): "Thou shalt not take the nether nor the upper millstone to pledge; for he hath pledged his life to thee": and (Ex. 22:26): "If thou take of thy neighbor a garment in pledge, thou shalt give it him again before sunset." Thirdly, by forbidding them to be importunate ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... made a remark that produced no effect at the time. He said, "People don't go to Australia to die—they go to Australia to make money, and come home and marry—and it is what you must do—this "Grove" is a millstone round your neck. Will you have a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mansion," interposed Ming Yen from outside the window. "What a determined and self-confident fellow he must be to even come and bully us; Mrs. Huang is his paternal aunt! That mother of yours is only good for tossing about like a millstone, for kneeling before our lady Lien, and begging for something to pawn. I've no eye for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... exhume them, since they would "smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days." Apparently he ranked Seward among these defunct and decaying Conservatives; certainly he regarded the secretary as a "millstone about the neck" of the President.[52] Still, in spite of such denunciations, times were not in this respect so bad as they had been, and the danger that the uncompromising Radicals would make wreck of the war ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... they'd make a carpenter's plumb-bob of him, and hang him outside the church steeple, to try if it was perpendicular. He almost always gives judgment for plaintiff, and if the poor defendant has an offset, he makes him sue it, so that it grinds a grist both ways for him, like the upper and lower millstone." ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... said unto his disciples, It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity." This creature half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience," together with the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise above it—to soar—is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... been trained; the school of those who would stab their enemy to the heart with sarcasm or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse—of those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and the savate ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... might recently be seen in its original, still more in modified form, in certain back-quarters of civilisation. A stream, guided by a sluice, was made to play upon four vertical paddle-blades, attached to a shaft which they caused to revolve, and which moved a millstone, resting upon another through which it passed. It was a primitive mill, which superseded the still more primitive hand-mill, or quern; and I myself have seen it at work in the Shetland Islands, and even the north of Scotland, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... Indian maiden Pocahontas. After a captivity of seven weeks he returned to Jamestown, with increased knowledge of savage life and manners. He treated his Indian guides with great kindness and gave them two heavy guns and a millstone for the monarch. But the present was too heavy for his strength, and when one of the cannons was discharged among the boughs of a tree, and crashing of wood and ice was heard, the timid natives declined any further interference ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... "such airy talk as there is upon the matter is utterly unworthy of acceptance as being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant with me. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs, she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whose bed she was to share. She thought almost with envy of her own patroness, who was cast into the lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck—a better fate, thought she, than to live on in such an ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see whatsoever is to be seen, and not green things only. For that is proper to sore eyes. So must a good ear, and a good smell be ready for whatsoever is either to be heard, or smelt: and a good stomach as indifferent to all kinds of food, as a millstone is, to whatsoever she was made for to grind. As ready therefore must a sound understanding be for whatsoever shall happen. But he that saith, O that my children might live! and, O that all men might commend me for whatsoever I do! ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... industry. Its position makes it a market of importance, and it has a very large trade in the early vegetables and fruit of the valley of the Correze, and in grain, live-stock and truffles. Table-delicacies, paper, wooden shoes, hats, wax and earthenware are manufactured, and there are slate and millstone ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... spiritualistic with Descartes, theistic with Leibnitz, materialistic with the men of the Encyclopaedia. It was orthodox with nobody. The miracle as traditionally defined became impossible. At all events it became the millstone around the neck of the apologists. The movement went to an extreme. All the evils of excess upon this side from which we since have suffered were forecast. They were in a measure called out by the evils and errors which had so long reigned upon the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... suffered bouts of depression over thoughts like these, and had many acute illnesses like colds that hung on interminably and would not go away. She had a constant post-nasal drip. Though she enjoyed life, her body was a millstone ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Corrie only rushed away to hide from Alice the irrepressible emotions that nearly burst his heart. Yes, Corrie was thoroughly subdued by grief. But the spring was not broken, it was only crushed flat by the weight of sorrow that lay like a millstone on his ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand man to the left hand said, As down in the vale we went, "Harden your heart like a millstone, Ned, And set your face as flint; Solid and tall is the rasping wall That stretches before us yonder; You must have it at speed or not at all, 'Twere better to halt than to ponder, For the stream runs wide on the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... not till after marriage,—so far, so well; it saved my reputation from the charge of fortune-hunting. But, I tell you fairly, that if it had never come at all, I should be a prouder and a greater and a happier man than I have ever been, or ever can be, with all its advantages: it has been a millstone round my neck. And yet Ellinor has never breathed a word that could wound my pride. Would her daughter be as forbearing? Much as I love Fanny, I doubt if she has the great heart of her mother. You look incredulous,—naturally. Oh, you think I shall sacrifice my child's happiness to a politician's ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that her correspondence became greater at last than she could manage. The pile of unanswered communications was like a millstone round her neck, and in these latter days she began to violate an old rule and snatch time from the hours of night. Headings such as "10 P.M.," "Midnight," "8.45 A.M.," became frequent, yet she would give love's full measure to every correspondent, and there was seldom sign of undue strain. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... exclaimed Don Quixote, "for I would rather they had deprived me of my arm, as long as it were not my sword arm. Know, Sancho, that a mouth without teeth is like a mill without a grindstone, and a tooth is more to be prized than a millstone. But all this must we suffer who profess the stern rule of knights-errant. Mount, friend, and lead the way, for I will follow thee ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... agony of observation all these things I heeded, but only knew that I had done so when I thought long afterward. At the moment I was in such a fright that my eyes worked better than my mind. However, even so, I thought of my golden millstone, and was aware that they crossed below, and could not ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... almost as far into a millstone as the average 'varsity president, was of the opinion that the tendency to ever more compact organization was transforming both education and religion into farces, blighting the spiritual and intellectual life of man and precipitating in the world of industry the most important ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Weel-hained, carefully saved. Ween, believe. Weet, wet. Weir, war. Wha, who. Wham, whom. Whang, large piece, slice. Whare, where. Whase, whose. Whestling, whistling. Whig-mig-morum, talking politics. Whinging, whining. Whunstane, hard rock, millstone. Whyles, sometimes. Winna, will not. Winnock-bunker, window-seat. Woddie, woody. Wonner, wonder. Woo, wool. Wood, mad Wordy, worthy. Wrack, wreck. Wraith, spectre. Wrang, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... not long since, in that authentic record called the Percy Anecdotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school, where I had been distinguished as an absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into the millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr. Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had the good fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an incorrigibly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... can to beat him; 'tis not easy to soften me if you do not talk on my side, and if you have nothing but nonsense to spout, 'tis time to buy a good millstone, freshly cut withal, to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the woods to John Helme's house carrying in his hand a stout birchen staff or small tree-trunk, which he laid down on the flat millstone imbedded in the grass at the back door, while he displayed and sold his wares and had his dinner. He then went out to the dooryard with little Johnny Helme, sat down on the millstone, lighted his pipe, opened his jack-knife, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... carpet—giving way at every step, yielding the more the harder you press,—you'll find it rather wearisome work, and be glad enough to come to a bit of good, firm rock, that won't budge an inch whether you stand, walk, or stamp upon it; and, though it be hard as the nether millstone, you'll find it the easier ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a world-wide judgment; and my text is purely ideal, imaginative, and apocalyptic. Its nearest ally is the similar vision of the Book of the Revelation, where, when Babylon sank with a splash like a millstone in the stream, the ransomed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... divine providence) had mollified the hearts of those sterne Barbarians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, where Smith having used the salvages with what kindnesse he could, he shewed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demiculverings and a millstone to carry Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavie; but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with Isickles, the yce and branches came so tumbling downe, that the poore ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... When they turned away to depart, I came down from the tree and, going to the place I had seen them fill up, scraped off and removed the earth; and in patience possessed my soul till I had cleared the whole of it away. Then appeared the trap door which was of wood, in shape and size like a millstone; and when I lifted it up it disclosed a winding staircase of stone. At this I marvelled and, descending the steps till I reached the last, found a fair hall, spread with various kinds of carpets and silk stuffs, wherein was a youth sitting upon a raised couch and leaning back ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... he said, in great excitement, 'you have taken a millstone from my neck. I have been sitting wondering whether I shouldn't cut my throat at once, or make ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... agony as he spoke, and looked utterly crushed. It was an awful memory. Le Neve hardly knew what to say, the man's remorse was so poignant. After all those years the boy's thoughtless act seemed to weigh like a millstone round the grown man's neck. Eustace held his peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel went on again, rocking himself to and fro on his rough seat as he spoke. "For fifteen years," he said, piteously, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... tropic of Cancer, and the other is the tropic of Capricorn; therefore it must be that Maria in the sign of Aries can see, when the Sun sinks below the mid-circle of the first Poles, this Sun to revolve round the Earth below, or rather the sea, like a millstone, of which only one half of its body appears, and can see this come rising up after the manner of the screw of a vine-press, so much so that it completes ninety-one rotations, or a little more. When these rotations are completed, its ascension ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... you can't see into a millstone. I tell you that Harry knows more about this Captain Scarborough than any one else. They were very ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... tarnishing their family name, of which they were so proud; her mother's head was bowed with agony and shame. The father of Lucy's child had deserted her in her hour of trial and left her to bear her burden alone with the child like a millstone around her neck. Poor Lucy; I seldom saw her after that, but one day I met her in the Park. I went up to her and kissed her, she threw her arms around me and burst into a flood of tears. I tried to restrain her from giving such vent to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Well" He paused, surveying the pair of them, the old man, the initiate and communicant of the inmost heart of the machine through which his soul had gone like grain through a mill, and the tall Prussian officer, at once the motor and millstone of that machine. And he smiled. "Well," he repeated, "there's ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... from what he knew of Haden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go to England. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whether Meryon's words were meant as a compliment or the reverse is doubtful. He was half crazy, but he may have seen through a hole in the millstone. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... they were quite two. The fact is that they are in a huge difficulty with this appropriation clause, which served their turn for a while (when it turned out Peel and cemented their alliance with the Radicals), and now it hangs like a millstone round their necks, and is not unlikely to produce the dissolution of the Government. Strange that this Irish Church in one way or another is the insuperable obstacle to peace and tranquillity in Ireland, and to the stability of any Administration here; and yet it is fought for as if the prosperity ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Magda would bring that look of concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying heavily, for all the harm ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... room, then with two backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two more assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches were rattling in the throat beneath this pressure as under a granite millstone; but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both arms and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the two ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a millstone around your neck!" she sobbed. "It is breaking my heart—I shall die, if I see you ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... every fibre. He almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo. It seemed a burden just then—a millstone round his neck. He hated the scene he had left—and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... villages with their clustered farmsteads and their square-towered churches of Norman foundation. Round about his steading, which was screened by sycamores from the westerly gales, lay the mountain pastures, broken by terraces of limestone rock. Above, where the limestone yields place to the millstone, were the high moors and fells, where grouse, curlews and merlins nested among the heather, and hardy, blue-faced sheep browsed on the ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... she stood there, tempted, with the weight of Martin's discarded armor on her shoulders and the sense of failure hanging like a millstone round her neck, she saw the creeper bursting into buds on the wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... misplaced will make us enemies; a millstone of benefits hung about his neck may fail to anchor down by us a single friend. We may lavish what we will—kindly thought, loyal service, untiring aid, and generous deed—and they are all but as oil to the burning, as fuel to the flame, when spent ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... excelled, I might almost say redeemed, by her love for myself. How she manages to separate between myself and my intellect I have never been able to understand; but then she is strong-minded, which perhaps accounts for her seeing farther into this millstone than I can. She tells me, not unfrequently, that I am weak-minded. She even goes the length at times of calling me imbecile; but she is a dear good affectionate woman, and I have no sympathy with the insolent remark I once overheard made by an acquaintance ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... would as soon wish my hand to be as callous as horn, that it might escape an occasional cut or scratch, as I would be ambitious of the stoicism which should render my heart like a piece of the nether millstone." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... exposed him to the persecutions of prelacy and the taunts and abuse of the sentries, standing as he did between these extremes, and pleading for a moderate Episcopacy. He was between the upper millstone of High Church and the nether one of Dissent. To use his own simile, he was like one who seeks to fill with his hand a cleft in a log, and feels both sides close upon him with pain. All parties and sects ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... out, Pop. I know all that. You needn't come any stern parent business over me. I'm on. I know my way about. I ain't going to run my head into any noose, or tie any millstone round my neck. Don't you think by this time you can ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... smote Aias' dread shield of sevenfold ox-hide in the midst upon the boss, and the bronze resounded. Next Aias lifted a far greater stone, and swung and hurled it, putting might immeasurable therein. So smote he the buckler and burst it inwards with the rock like unto a millstone, and beat down his knees; and he was stretched upon his back, pressed into his shield; but Apollo straightway raised him up. And now had they been smiting hand to hand with swords, but that the heralds, messengers ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... (See Fig. 558.) In explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic I will quote a passage from the "creation myth" as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on "Zuni Breadstuff," published this year in the "Millstone" of Indianapolis, Indiana. "Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth, our mother? For from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with mountains whence ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... but not before he had encountered and overcome great difficulties in life. At his outset, while carrying on a small business as a bookseller, he found himself weighed down with a debt of only twenty pounds, which he said he felt "weighing like a millstone round his neck," and that, "if he had it paid he never would borrow again from mortal man." Writing to his mother at the time he said, "Fear not for me, dear mother, for I feel myself daily growing firmer and more hopeful in spirit. The more ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... flint becoming the birthplace of a spring! And yet this is happening every day. Men who are as "hard as flint," whose hearts are "like the nether millstone," become springs of gentleness and fountains of exquisite compassion. Beautiful graces, like lovely ferns, grow in the home of severities, and transform the grim, stern soul into a garden of fragrant friendships. This is what ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... suff., 454; conversation with Pres. Grant, 455; tour of Conn. with Mrs. Hooker, Sumner's death, helps women organize temp. crusade, 456; tells them they can not succeed without ballot, anecdote of Douglass, writes to Leavenworth Times on this subject, tells Industrial Cong. women are a millstone around their necks, criticises Dio Lewis, 457; writes one hundred lets. for May meet., telegram saying she smoked on platform, etc., 458; slips home often to see mother, writes fiftieth anniversary let. to brother D. R., honesty best policy in home ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... disappearing coins hung about his neck like a millstone, nor could he ever know peace again until in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... after a moment. "You are young and lucky. If you were flung in the broad water there with a millstone tied to your neck, I should not be surprised to see you turn up again. My young friend, to start off with no destination but Canada is too much even for you. We have no men to waste. Wait; a rusting sabre is better than a hole in the heart. ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... I am only talking about myself: and yet I think only of you. If you knew how importunate is my ego! It is oppressive and absorbing. It is like a millstone that God has tied round my neck. How I should have loved to lay it at your feet! But what would you have done with it? It is a poor kind of present.... Your feet were made to tread the soft earth and the sand sinking beneath the tread. I see your feet carelessly passing over the lawns ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... about it. I hate a hushing-up policy. But there was the fellow's future to consider. The world never lets a thing of that sort drop. He would always have been pointed out as 'The chap who killed Ingleby'—just as if he had done it on purpose; and every man of us knew that would be a millstone round the neck of any career. And then the whole business had been somewhat irregular; and 'the powers that be' have a way of taking all the kudos, if experiments are successful; and making a what-on-earth-were-you-dreaming-of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... ruins of your past, rear a stately palace, whose top shall reach unto heaven, whose beauty shall gladden the eyes of all beholders, whose doors shall stand wide open to receive the way-worn and weary. Life is a burden, but it is imposed by God. What you make of it, it will be to you, whether a millstone about your neck, or a diadem upon your brow. Take it up bravely, bear it on joyfully, lay ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... think there will be no hard work in building your mill?" said Jack. "I am curious to see how you will contrive to form that huge stone, which is called the millstone." ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... plain. With it he struck the mighty seven-hided shield of Ajax, in the midst of the boss, and the brass rang around. Ajax next taking up a much larger stone, whirling, discharged it, and applied immense strength. And he broke through the shield, having struck with a rock like unto a millstone, and he wounded him in the knee; and he was stretched supine, having come into violent contact with his shield; but Apollo quickly raised him. And now in close combat hand to hand, they would have wounded ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Imagine this trustful woman for instance—she would suffer anguish at the thoughts of such a sin, though another were the sinner. "If anyone offend one of these little ones it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he be cast into the sea." Yet truth is truth, and should be spoken—should it not, malignant monitor, who remindest me how often I fail to speak it? Surely among all his army of black-coats our worthy Bishop must have some men like me, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Aylward, whom anxiety had made confidential; "for I own I was prejudiced against her from the first, as, if you'll excuse me, ma'am, all we Bowstead people are apt to be set against whatever comes from my Lady's side. However, one must have been made of the nether millstone not to feel the difference she made in the house. She was the very life of it with her pretty ways, singing and playing with the children, and rousing up the poor gentleman too that had lived just like a mere heathen in a dungeon, and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any sympathy from you," said John, drearily, pulling himself up from the steps and leaning against the honeysuckle trellis. "Susanna's just the same. Women are all as hard as the nether millstone. They're hard if they're angels, and hard if they're devils; it does n't make ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... abrasive materials, the most important of these being garnet, which is found in great quantities in the Adirondacks. Crude garnet from several mines, the ground and cleaned garnet, and grades of garnet paper were shown. A small millstone to represent the celebrated Esopus grit, emery ore from Peekskill, and quartz and sand from many localities were also exhibited in this case. Another case was filled with feldspar, mica and quartz, which usually occur associated with each other ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree, trifling with his own impatience as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling—its windows brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway with the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood's friend—the old tree against which he leaned—and, glancing his eye down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half-obliterated ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it happened that almost in spite of herself Gwen became Netta's ally, pledged to support her on all occasions. She was afraid to risk a quarrel lest Netta should press for the return of the ten shillings she had lent. The debt felt a millstone round her neck, from which there was no immediate chance of relief. Netta's particular clique of friends, proving Gwen safe, included her in their special set, a compromising arrangement which seemed nevertheless inevitable. The girls did not really mean much ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... — N. gravity, gravitation; weight; heaviness &c adj.; specific gravity; pondorosity^, pressure, load; burden, burthen^; ballast, counterpoise; lump of, mass of, weight of. lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion. weighing, ponderation^, trutination^; weights; avoirdupois weight, troy weight, apothecaries' weight; grain, scruple, drachma^, ounce, pound, lb, arroba^, load, stone, hundredweight, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on—and ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... against the bloody one. "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my sober eye for a minute—'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a millstone round the neck of their common-sense." Credit me, Richie, the proposition kindled. We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us, and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young nobleman. And let me add, one that I, that we, must impose it upon an old son to accept. He does! Come, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... J.S. Polhemus, East Millstone, N.J., 16 books by Dickens, and others by Verne and Opper, for a pair of opera glasses or a field-glass or a jointed fishing ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... she said, "has your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember that my husband was your early friend—your schoolfellow—your playmate. Remember ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life. The Caid's little black slaves are well-known in Morocco, and behind the sad child leaning in the archway stood all the shadowy evils of the social system that hangs like a millstone about the neck ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... terrible—terrible! And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were—not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work—the workers cut each other's throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies! Robbing! Darkness! Such a thing hasn't been this ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... usual civilities, I reinforced my provant by a pannikin of tea, some fried fish, and a slice off the edge of a damper which rivalled the nether millstone in more than one respect; thus assuring myself that I had attained Carlyle's definition of a man: "An omnivorous biped that wears ——." Meanwhile, in response to my host's invitation to tell him what I was lagged for, I explained that I was travelling; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... State of South Carolina, for example, where nearly two-thirds of the population are Negroes. Unless these Negroes are encouraged by just election laws to become tax-payers and intelligent producers, the white people of South Carolina will have an eternal millstone about their necks. ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... sound of far-off, invisible machinery, turning with a constant motion, not the sharp, shrill whistle of a rifled-bolt, but a whirr and roll, like that which you may sometimes hear above the clouds in a thunder-storm. One shell fell like a millstone into the river. The water did not extinguish the fuse, and a great column was thrown up fifty feet high. Another buried itself deep in the ground before it burst, and excavated a great hole. I learned, after the place surrendered, that one fell through a tent where several officers ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands to the mill, O women that turn the millstone! sleep sound though the cock's crow announce the dawn, for Ceres has charged the nymphs with the labors which employed your arms. These, dashing from the summit of a wheel, make its axle revolve, which, by the help of moving radii, sets in action the weight of four ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... They is the only perfession that the Bible is agin, for you know they jawed our Lord hisself, and he said, 'Woe! woe! to you lie-yers.' Now, Marse Alfred, if you have made up your mind you are gwine to have that hankcher, it will be bound to come; for if it was tied to a millstone and drapped in the sea, you lie-yers would float it into court; so Bedney, jest perduce ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... walked with the men, leading the animal, through the smouldering clouds of dust. It was a hot, still night, and Morgan marched us swiftly, with few pauses for rest. By daylight we came up with the New Jersey militia, lying at rest along the bank of the Millstone River, waiting their turn to ford that stream, and join Maxwell on the opposite shore. From where I stood I could see the thin lines of Continentals spreading out like a fan, as the skirmishers advanced up the opposite bluffs. Down the trampled bank, men were struggling ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... sweet bird," asked the watchmaker. "If you will give me first that gold watch and chain in your hand." The jeweller gave the watch and chain. The bird took it in one foot, the shoes in the other, and, after having repeated the song, flew away to where three millers were picking a millstone. The bird perched on a ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... the back country, two hundred miles from Charleston, where we would live for months without seeing a white face outside of the home circle. It was often lonely, but we had many out-door enjoyments, and were very happy. I, however, always had one terrible drawback. Slavery was a millstone about my neck, and marred my comfort from the time I can remember myself. My chief pleasure was riding on horseback daily. 'Hiram' was a gentle, spirited, beautiful creature. He was neither slave nor slave owner, and I loved ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... evidently had not in their PRESENT form been aggregated in any previously existing rock. (I have lately seen, in a paper by Smith (the father of English geologists), in the "Magazine of Natural History," that the grains of quartz in the millstone grit of England are often crystallised. Sir David Brewster, in a paper read before the British Association, 1840, states, that in old decomposed glass, the silex and metals separate into concentric rings, and that ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... flint. His request was granted. Throughout the night the boy, on his knees beside the little bed, wrestled with the emotions which were tearing his soul. Despondency lay over him like a pall. A vague presentiment of impending disaster pressed upon him like a millstone. Ceaselessly he weighed and reviewed the forces which had combined to drive him into the inconsistent position which he now occupied. Inconsistent, for his highest ideal had been truth. He was by nature consecrated to it. He had sought it diligently ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years in that house should Austen leave ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... made a little comparison between Madeline and Mary. Was it really the case that for the last three years he had contemplated making that poor child his wife? Would it not be better for him to tie a millstone round his neck and cast himself into the sea? That was now ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... going away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the District demand of Congress relief in this respect, it has power, as their local legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of the thirty-six have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O no, not a modicum, to help the slaveholders of the District, however loudly they may clamor for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... less proper to give it to her," said Mrs. Bluestone, whose heart was all softness towards Lady Anna, but as hard as a millstone towards the tailor. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... trust, the reign of political protestantism will commence. We have explored the temple of royalty, and found that the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone. We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds his subjects assuming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which he bestowed on them. From the rising to the setting ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... imitation, still remaining in their place, and a weird-looking demon at the wheel steering it on to some invisible destruction. This naval statue (if its bulk forbid not the name) was carved out of a coarse millstone-grit by the chisel of the wind, with but slight assistance from the infrequent rain-storms of this region. In Colorado I first began to perceive how vast an omission geologists had been guilty of in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... was the apple of the old man's eye. He hailed me as an old friend. He welcomed me back into his life as if I were only associated with pleasant things. But I soon saw that he was not happy. The memory of that tragedy was hanging on him like a millstone. He was trying to drag himself free. But he was like a dog on a chain. He could see his liberty, but he could not reach it. And the fact that he loved a woman, and believed that he had won her love made the burden even heavier. So I gathered, though he had his intervals of reckless happiness ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... from the ground. He was quite dead, and from the position in which they had found him, both men concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window, when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... not be used to express the manner of action. "The higher the river, the swifter it flows;" "James learns easier than Juliet; he sees deeper into the millstone than she:"—"the more swiftly it flows;" "learns more easily; farther into the millstone." "He conducted the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Hasdrubal, dashing Phormio aside with the flat of his blade. "I have him at last!" But just as Hiram was leading down a dozen more, the athlete's axe swept past the sword, and fell like a millstone on the master's skull. He never screamed as he crashed upon ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... it is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain's whistle again, if you 'ar'n't, some how or other, in the wrong box. That 'ere Ingian's one ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the part of the Sikh sentry; and for the rest to await quietly their opportunity till near dawn of day. This they did, and when the appointed hour had arrived the double sentry of the Guides fell like the upper millstone on that heedless Sikh sentry, and hewed him to the ground; at the same moment the rest of the guard was silently overpowered, gagged, and bound. Then, arming the three prisoners with the captured weapons, the Guides' sentries quickly and quietly lowered the drawbridge and ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... come to THAT by and by. As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM ten years ago. To me they meant only the old thing—the life of a country gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly business that the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round your neck. They meant all this to me, who loved adventure and the sea from my cradle. I cut the property, for I hated it, and I hate it still. If I went back I should hear the sea calling me ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"—the originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public men did—that hung a millstone about England's neck. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... lost devils, both! And now we clash about a girl! As if there were not several millions in the United Kingdom! Ah, Frank, Frank, the one who loses his throw, be it you or me, he has my pity! It were better for him—how does the Bible say?—that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depth of the sea. Let us take a drink," he concluded suddenly, but without any levity ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... to you. 'Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... undergone other dismemberment, when a slice of its territory was given to Westford. It was a long and narrow tract of land, triangular in shape, with its base resting on Stony Brook Pond, now known as Forge Pond, and coming to a point near Millstone Hill, where the boundary lines of Groton, Westford, and Tyngsborough intersect. The Reverend Edwin R. Hodgman, in his History of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Molesworth's speeches,[220] and neither of them sympathised with the opinion expressed by Mr. Disraeli in those days, 'These wretched colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks.'[221] Nor did Mr. Gladstone share any such sentiments as those of Molesworth who, in the Canadian revolt of the winter of 1837, actually invoked disaster upon ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... unavoidable publication of a fact previously known only to a living few—namely, that the father and mother of Alice Hopwood had never been married, which fact deprived them of the smallest claim on the legacy, and fell like a millstone upon Alice and her pride. From the height of her miserable arrogance she fell prone—not merely hurled back into the lowly condition from which she had raised her head only to despise it with base unrighteousness, and to adopt and reassert ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... supper, for they never could become accustomed to the terrible skeleton in their household. When Mr. Jocelyn confined himself solely to opium he was not so revolting, but common, beastly intoxication was unendurable. They felt that it was brutalizing his very soul, and becoming a millstone around their necks which must drag them down to some unknown abyss of infamy. Mechanically they went through the motions of eating, the mother and daughters forcing down the little food they could afford, and the children ravenously devouring all that was given to them. As Mildred saw the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... interesting old church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone. It is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient theatres. In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... that lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, their tears,—will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself; and put the knife to your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns. Failure ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... however) is deplorable: a shower of gold falling continuously upon any body (or soul) is as the waters of a petrifying spring. But, on the other hand, the occasional and precarious dripping of coppers has by no means a genial effect. If the one recipient becomes hard as the nether millstone, the other (just as after constant 'pinching' a limb becomes insensible) grows callous, and also (though it seems like a contradiction in terms) sometimes acquires a certain dreadful suppleness. Nothing is more ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... To the west, somewhat near at hand in the darkness, would be lying Fremont. Somewhere in the darkness to the east was Shields. Their junction was unmade, Stonewall Jackson and his army passing between the upper and the nether millstone which should have ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston |
