"Piecemeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously; making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic affection in the last gasping throes of separation,—to the doleful tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the personification of legalized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... exhibiting an humble copy of the conjugal affection of those whose memorials her husband had so loyally preserved. Whether to give full credit or not to the old sacristan's narration, I do not know; but it appears more probable that even so large a monument was removed piecemeal at short notice, than that the malice of the brigands would have allowed it to stand unhurt; and there is besides an ingenuity and presence of mind shown in the preservation of St. Nicholas, quite consistent with the character of M. Menestrier, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of the triumphant youth above him, finally in his completed torso. But each stage is finished relatively. Completion is relative to distance; the Brutus is finished or unfinished according to our standpoint, physical or aesthetic. Moreover, the treatment is not partial or piecemeal; the statue was in the marble from the beginning, and is an entity from its initial stage: in many ways each stage is equally fine. The paradox of Michael Angelo's technique is that his abozzo is really a finished study. The Victory also shows how the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... should have stooped to write the JOLLY BEGGARS. The SATURDAY NIGHT may or may not be an admirable poem; but its significance is trebled, and the power and range of the poet first appears, when it is set beside the JOLLY BEGGARS. To take a man's work piecemeal, except with the design of elegant extracts, is the way to avoid, and not to perform, the critic's duty. The same defect is displayed in the treatment of Burns as a man, which is broken, apologetical, and confused. The man here presented to us is not that Burns, TERES ATQUE ROTUNDUS - a ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have hunted him with bloodhounds, and so brought him back; and if he sickened under his torture, they would have left him, naked and unsheltered, to languish with wasting disease and devouring vermin,—to die, or to rot and drop away piecemeal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the civilizations of the past, based on a quagmire of pauperism and ignorance, or overhung by an avalanche of revolution. Other peoples, emerging from, a condition of serfdom, retaining many of the instincts of a conquered race, get what liberty they have by extorting it piecemeal from their masters. Magna Charta was forced from a weak monarch by a conspiracy of nobles, acting from purely selfish motives, in behalf of their own order. The Habeas Corpus Act was unpalatable to the Lords, and was passed only by a trick ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... The 2d Wisconsin came up the hill, then the 79th and 69th New York. An impact followed that seemed to rock the globe. Wisconsin and New York retired whence they came, and it was all done in a moment. Other regiments took their places. McDowell was making a frontal attack and sending in his brigades piecemeal. The plateau was uneven; low ridges, shallow hollows, with clumps of pine and oak; one saw at a time but a segment of the field. The nature of the ground split the troops as with wedges; over all the Henry Hill the fighting now became from hand to hand, in the woods and in the open, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... and pitiful flotsam that reluctant seas have washed to us piecemeal from a remote past, there are, as will be shown later, many things which, although proceeding from a culture and modes of thought as far removed from our own as they may well be,[1] are worth the reading, which do not require any special knowledge for their understanding; and of these are ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of Heaven, and with ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... godlike in presence: "Be'st thou indeed of the train of the Peleiades Achilles? Come then, discover the truth: be there nothing, I pray, of concealment. Is my son still at the galleys, or has he already been flung forth, Piecemeal torn, for a feast to the dogs, by the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Earl of Chatham, saw that the British Empire had reached a crisis in its development. Incompetence, inertia, had blurred its prestige, and the little victories which France, its chief enemy, had been winning against it piecemeal, were coming to be regarded as signs that the grandeur of Britain was passing. Pitt saw the gloomy situation, and the still gloomier future which it seemed to prophesy, but he saw also the remedy. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage-train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of mules and lamas, whose keel shall plough its waves, and bear me to the Indies. Day would not dawn ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pause was hardly noticeable. He walked on at once. But years could not have instructed him more thoroughly than that one second. He had received a revelation. Like all revelations, he received it in its entirety and realized it piecemeal. His thoughts stumbled over each other in confusion.... Desire at John's office at this unusual hour? ... Desire in her prettiest frock and smiling ... smiling, and so lost in her own thoughts that she saw no one ... Desire ... ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... otherwise, I should have purchased the ticket piecemeal. I cannot endure to travel all night. It fatigues me ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... "for your Bible is no other than an imperfect, mutilated Bible, corrupted by the men who made your religion. The Catholic church, from which the Protestants stole their piecemeal Bible, always regarded the book of Machabeus as ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... have a powerful reality and relevance for planners. They impose a need for breadth of view, for leaving many future options open, and by the same token they present a danger of piecemeal action, excessive compromise ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... lips, and a disposition to glandular swelling; dyspnoea and difficulty of breathing; the voice hoarse and barking; the aspect of the face frightful, and of a dark colour; the pulse small, almost imperceptible." Sometimes the limbs drop off, piecemeal ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... sheets are alone no light burden. Between his teeth—both his hands being occupied with the balancing of the bundle—he carries his chit: that indispensable list. Arrived at the store he dumps the bundle on the ground, opens it, and pitches its contents piecemeal over a counter to one of the staff of the store. One by one the objects are named and counted aloud, as they fly across the counter, the staff orderly simultaneously checking the list and keeping an eye on what he is receiving. For we may, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... placed the traitor on my throne. Behold the faith of him who saved from fire His honour'd household gods, his aged sire His pious shoulders from Troy's flames did bear; Why did I not his carcase piecemeal tear, 180 And cast it in the sea? why not destroy All his companions, and beloved boy Ascanius? and his tender limbs have dress'd, And made the father on the son to feast? Thou Sun! whose lustre all things here below Surveys; and Juno! conscious of my woe; Revengeful Furies! and Queen Hecate! Receive ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... far away from everyone one knows. Old Kesterton, choleric-looking individual nearly opposite, will curse the cooking till he's black in the face, but he never misses a dinner. The Semitic looking young man opposite, who seems to have been committing you to memory piecemeal, will tell you that he was never so bored in all his life as he has been here. Yet ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... can't say. They were once in Middlesex. Probably much of the land, as it was sold piecemeal, fell into small allotments, constantly changing hands. But the last relics of the property were, I know, bought on speculation by Cox the distiller; for, when we were in London, by Mr. Darrell's desire I went to look after them, and inquire if they could ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those dark and swollen waters? what use to demand of them the bright form, that, it might be, slept beneath them?-it might be, had been washed piecemeal to the ocean? ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... which they had started, the two that Lewis had taken on to the station were the only survivors; and all their equipment had been abandoned piecemeal in the desert. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... about Space vagrantly onward; - I shall unfold: thou simply give all thyself to my teaching. Matter mingled and massed into indissoluble union Does not exist. For we see how wastes each separate substance; So flow piecemeal away, with the length'ning centuries, all things, Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes, and is not. Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime. Whereof this is the cause. When the atoms part from a substance, That ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... their lines in summer and in winter. Possibly the same condition applies to the west, though I cannot speak with any authority on that subject. Apparently this obvious action of the Germans is exactly what happened. When their northern front had been combed, we find forces subtracted piecemeal from the north, reaching an aggregate of thirty divisions, or at least nearly fifteen divisions more than had been anticipated. The doom ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... that he would see to it that his friend Daniel should not be robbed. He intended, therefore, to go himself to Anjou to call upon those who were likely to purchase, and to be present at the sale. In his opinion, it would be wiser to sell piecemeal, without hurry. If money was needed, why, one could always get ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... as an instinctive expectation, and which the advance of knowledge will confirm and explain. For in that pellucid atmosphere of the Greek mind, untroubled as yet by theoretic mists, there may have been visible the very things which our scientific instruments are enabling us to see and reconstruct piecemeal, great groupings of reality metamorphosed into Fata Morgana cities seemingly ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... on this matter, and have figured to myself what may be the fate of our current literature, when retrieved piecemeal by future antiquaries, from among the rubbish of ages. What a Magnus Apollo, for instance, will Moore become among sober divines and dusty schoolmen! Even his festive and amatory songs, which are now the mere quickeners of our ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... a Christian device; search the temple till the accursed Nazarene be found, and hew him piecemeal—' More he would have said, but, at the instant, a bolt of lightning shot from the heavens, and, lighting upon a large sycamore which shaded a part of the temple court, clove it in twain. The swollen cloud, at the same moment, burst, and a deluge of rain poured ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... speech in Great Britain, but it was delivered piecemeal in different places. Its exordium was uttered on the ninth of October at Manchester, and its peroration was pronounced on the twentieth of the same month in Exeter Hall. He has himself furnished us an analysis of the train of representations and arguments of which this protracted and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... tower, whose graceful base the honeysuckle and eglantine no longer encircle, and whose winding access, once decorated with flowers of the richest beauty and perfume, is now overgrown with moss, decayed, and falling piecemeal to ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... years and spreads the cost over the period during which the public is being benefited. Better prices are obtained on contracts for a large mileage than for smaller jobs, and the community can receive the benefit more quickly than where construction proceeds piecemeal with current funds. The vital consideration is to insure that the term of the bonds is well within the useful life of the road, and that ample provision is made to maintain the roads during that period. ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... the way to the staircase, and hurried on to the drawing-room, with the massive front door being broken piecemeal by the heavy sledge-hammer; but each chain and bolt still held, and there was no way in yet but for light and noise, so that, before they gave way, Frank had time to get a light and ignite the candles in two sets ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... the jetty, seeing nothing, doing nothing, and being very much in the way—and then wonder, as we wondered, at the marvellous dexterity of our three valiant sailors, who succeeded in transporting piecemeal the crockery, cookery, and general contents of the cart into the vessel, on that pitchy night, without breaking, dropping, or forgetting anything. When I hear of professional conjurors performing remarkable feats, I think of the brothers Dobbs, and the loading of the Tomtit in the darkness; and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... well he him did guard That piecemeal lay his armour scattered; And still fought hard that stalwart lord Until his beamy shield ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... indignation, and gnasheth with his teeth, and namely when he hungreth, and spieth and lieth in wait, to take beasts which pass by the way. He hideth himself in privy caves, and reseth on beasts unawares, and slayeth them with his teeth and claws, and breaketh all their members, and eateth them piecemeal: and if he see any come against him to take away his prey, then he beclippeth the prey, and grunteth and smiteth the earth with his tail, and if he nigheth him he leapeth on him, and overcometh him, and turneth to the prey. First he drinketh and licketh the blood of the beast that he slayeth, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... thought of and perpetrated by these monsters under human form. The sufferings of Jesus from thirst, caused by the fever which his wounds and sufferings had brought on, were intense.11 He trembled all over, his flesh was torn piecemeal, his tongue contracted, and the only refreshment he received was the blood which trickled from his head on to his parched lips. This shameful scene was protracted a full half-hour, and the Roman soldiers continued during the whole time to applaud and encourage the ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... law was no mean achievement; and the law of association by contiguity in experience holds good. If one thing recalls another to your mind, you can be sure that the two {397} have been contiguous in your experience, either as wholes or piecemeal. For two things to become associated, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... his saddle in pawn to the white professional gambler for his $5.00, and it was not five minutes before the white gambler had the saddle and $5.00 both. Then, when they had nothing else left to bet, so intense was their love for gambling, they began to put themselves in pawn, piecemeal, saying: 'I'll bet you my whole body.' That means 'I'll put myself in pawn to you as your slave to serve you as you will for a ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath. But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside of his soul and burned. She goaded him out of his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them. That great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up, probably fought among themselves—certainly parted company, and either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites—who were ready enough for slaughter and plunder. They would never have reached Canaan. They would never have become a great nation. So they had to be, by necessity, under martial law. The word must be, Obey or die. As for any cruelty ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... features. This showed that the second scene came long after the first: my father must by that time have begun to resemble his later self. A weird feeling stole over me. Was I going to relive my previous life, piecemeal? Was the past going to unroll itself in slow but regular panorama to my sleeping vision? Was my First State to become known like this in ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... on the Zambesi, were rejoicing in the prospect of securing captives to carry the tusks for them. "We shall now," said they, "get both corn and clothes in plenty." They were in a sad state, poor fellows; for the rains we had encountered had made their skin-clothing drop off piecemeal, and they were looked upon with disgust by the well-fed and well-clothed Zambesians. They were, however, veterans in marauding, and the head men, instead of being depressed by fear, as the people of Mpende intended should be the case in using their charms, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... their religion among the natives of Luzon, and were giving them instructions, ceremonies, and the form of observing their religion, by means of certain gazizes [333] whom they brought with them. Already a considerable number, and those the chiefest men, were commencing, although by piecemeal, to become Moros, and were being circumcised [334] and taking the names of Moros. Had the Spaniards' coming been delayed longer, that religion would have spread throughout the island, and even through the others, and it would have been difficult to extirpate it. The mercy of God checked it ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... attempt to abolish the slave-trade] which has just sprung up, and which has slept for twenty years together, were allowed to sleep one summer longer, it would appear to me rather more wise than thus to take up a subject piecemeal, which it has been publicly declared ought not to be agitated at all till next session of Parliament. Perhaps, by such imprudence, the slaves themselves may be prompted by their own authority, to proceed at once ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... established himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... or generally: I speak of literal facts. Giotto's frescoes at Assisi are perishing at this moment for want of decent care; Tintoret's pictures in San Sebastian, at Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey rags; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying in shattered fragments in the market-place. And here we are all cawing and crowing, poor little half-fledged daws as we are, about the pretty sticks and wool in our own nests. There's ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... through the rushes, when suddenly he stopped as if rooted to the ground, with hands thrown up and eyes bulging from his head. At his feet lay the corpses of his morning comrades,—scalped, stripped, hacked almost piecemeal! Then the instinct of the hunted thing, of flight, of self-protection, eclipsed momentary terror, and the boy was ducking into the rushes to hide when, with a crash of musketry from the woods, the Iroquois ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... so sprinkled and dropped about in all directions, without seeming to have any root at all in the ground; and the small churches and chapels are so prim, and bright, and highly varnished; that I almost believed the whole affair could be taken up piecemeal like a child's toy, and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the most part, in rapt silence—perhaps the model's silence was contagious—but gradually through the days I grew to communion with his shy soul, and piecemeal I learnt his sufferings. I give his story, so far as I can, in his own words, which I often paused to take down, when ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... coming out of the drawing-room window to meet the travellers—a lady whose presence diffused that sense of refinement and peace into the atmosphere which has done as much towards the expansion of our piecemeal empire as ever did the strong right arm of Thomas Atkins. It is because—sooner or later—these ladies come with us that we have learnt to mingle peace with war—to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the sun) till I changed my position, when behold! the vireo was a linnet. A strange performance, indeed! What could have set this fluent vocalist to practicing exercises of such an inferior, disconnected, piecemeal sort? Within the next week or two, however, the same game was played upon me several times, and in different places. No doubt the trick is an old one, familiar to many observers, but to me it had all the charm ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... perfectly secure from sudden attack. And space, especially when means of communication are scanty, and the country affords few supplies, is the greatest of all obstacles. The hostile territory must be subjugated piecemeal, state by state, province by province, as was Asia by Alexander; and after each victory a new base of supply must be provisioned and secured, no matter at what cost of time, before a further advance can be attempted. Had Napoleon in the campaign against Russia remained ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Women were handicapped; they had to fight much harder to achieve equal results. People didn't give them jobs in the same way. Young men possessed the earth; young women had to wrest what they wanted out of it piecemeal. Johnny might end a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour leader, anything.... Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with this sex business; it wasn't fair. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... We pumped all night, all day, all the week,—watch and watch. She was working herself loose, and leaked badly—not enough to drown us at once, but enough to kill us with the work at the pumps. And while we pumped the ship was going from us piecemeal: the bulwarks went, the stanchions were torn out, the ventilators smashed, the cabin-door burst in. There was not a dry spot in the ship. She was being gutted bit by bit. The long-boat changed, as if by magic, into matchwood where she stood in her gripes. I had lashed her myself, and was ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... been wrung from her piecemeal, but was finally told in full, and in the presence of the officers and civilians indicated. She had married in April, '65, to the scorn of her people, a young Yankee officer attached to the commissary department. She had starved all through the war. She longed ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... breadwinners have furnished the money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... That machinery of life for the use of people who didn't know what they wanted of it, and which was known at the time as State Socialism, was partly put in motion, though in a very piecemeal way. But it did not work smoothly; it was, of course, resisted at every turn by the capitalists; and no wonder, for it tended more and more to upset the commercial system I have told you of; without providing anything really ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... learned of the science of the invisible realm was perforce picked piecemeal by us from all that we saw, experienced, and what several different times Tako was willing to explain to us. And it was later studied by the scientists of our world, whose additional theories I can incorporate into my own knowledge. Yet much of it remains obscure. And it is so intricate ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... with intent to copy or dissect! Here is grammar done without deliberation: the phrases carry their meaning simply and by a sort of limpid reflection; the thought is a living thing, not an image ingeniously contrived and wrought. Pray leave the text whole: it has no meaning piecemeal; at any rate, not that best, wholesome meaning, as of a frank and genial friend who talks, not for himself or for his phrase, but for you. It is questionable morals to dismember a living frame to seek for its ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... malign gray slopes. And I, who stood intent to gaze, saw muddy people in that swamp, all naked and with look of hurt. They were smiting each other, not only with hands, but with head, and with chest, and with feet, mangling one another piecemeal with their teeth. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... estates of the nobles were divided, either deliberately or because the land was conquered piecemeal and parcelled out as it was conquered. (For example, Odo had 473 ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... thunderbolts are a sovereign remedy for rheumatism; and in the popular pharmacopoeia of Ireland they have been employed with success for ophthalmia, pleurisy, and many other painful diseases. If finely powdered and swallowed piecemeal, they render the person who swallows them invulnerable for the rest of his lifetime. But they cannot conscientiously be recommended for dyspepsia and other forms ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... to move in the dense mass, he pressed his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those shrieks! When would they end? What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang on, and still the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm, intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over his head was written in the rainbow, "I ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Wilton grew up together friends, though not bound by common sympathies. The latter has known life early, and "earned experience piecemeal:" with the former, thought has already ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... it could only be dealt with piecemeal," said Mr. Britling. "And that is just where the tremendous opportunity of this war comes in. Now everything becomes fluid. We can redraw the map of the world. A week ago we were all quarrelling bitterly about things too little for human impatience. Now suddenly we face an ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Monsieur, two mortal hours in this inn, fried by the sun, bored to death, murdered piecemeal by flies, and infuriated by the want of hospitality in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... severed heads, Sylla sits before the temple of Castor and sells the lands of his dead enemies; and Catiline is first known to history as the executioner of Caius Gratidianus, whom he slices to death, piecemeal, beyond the Tiber. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... regard for their own safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the peninsula, and began hastily to build a wall across the isthmus of Corinth with the hope of keeping back the invading army. Athens was left to care for itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself be devoured piecemeal. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... indeed, is that it is in something of this piecemeal way that their object will ultimately be obtained; and I should not be without considerable hope of seeing Canning's measure carried, even in this year, if I felt quite sure that it would have ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... and harmonium—a small bellows organ without legs—were easier to carry than the dulcimer, he left it and trudged eastward. And no one at that tavern could tell whether he and his instruments had perished piecemeal along the way, or whether he had found crowded houses and forgotten the old dulcimer ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... world. I expect to hear you scream hither: if you don't I shall be disappointed, for I have kept it as a most profound secret from you, till I was ready to surprise you with it: I knew your impatience, and would not let you have it piecemeal. It is the Life of the great philosopher, Lord Herbert, written by himself.(631) Now are you disappointed? Well, read it—not the first forty pages, of which you will be sick—I will not anticipate it, but I will tell you the history. I found it a year ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 'Behind me piecemeal gifts I cast, My fleeing self to save; And that's the thing must go at last, For that's the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... no common face, none of those willow-pattern ones which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries, but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware,—one to the set; unique, antique, quaint, you might have sworn to it piecemeal,—a separate affidavit to ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... union of well-ordered husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by the fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may be studied piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in Parma has a fulness, largeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all the supreme ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... a good deal of information during the last few days," Brand said. "Some of it has come through a source which I may not reveal—piecemeal, and in disconnected fragments. You will have to take a good deal ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... minor pulses we can indeed go on to ascertain or to compute indefinitely if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually counted themselves out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of structure. The datum after it has made itself must be decomposable ad infinitum ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... "Never would you have been whole save by the blood of this Black Knight. And for this carried they off the body piecemeal and the head, for that they well knew you were wounded; and of the head shall I have right sore need, for thereby shall a castle be yielded up to me that was reft from me by treason, so I may find the knight that I go seek, through whom it ought to ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... a claim with which to harass others; the Maori signed a worthless document on receipt of a few goods. By 1840 it was estimated that, outside the sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000 acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks. The claims arising out of these transactions were certain at the best to cause confusion, ill-feeling, and trouble, and indeed did so. Some legally-constituted authority was clearly wanted ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... sworn men were not to judge testimony truly, but to bear witness truly. They were to bring into court their own knowledge of the case, and of any circumstances that threw light upon it, including the general opinion and persuasion of the neighbourhood. There was no attempt to collect evidence piecemeal, and to rise above the level of local rumour, by a patient judicial investigation. This provides us with something like a measure of the intellectual stage of the public mind in Saxon times, and will perhaps justify these remarks if they have ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... ribbons, and all joined with the soldiers in moving directly toward the place where the white flag was flapping its misplaced triumph over eyes which glared at it in hatred and hands which quivered to rend it piecemeal. Their wishes were anticipated; for the foremost rank had scarcely reached the threshold of the palace, when down went the ensign of the Bourbons, and the much-loved tricolor streamed out amidst thunder shouts which seemed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Manganja on which to work. It was possible that the Ajawa might be persuaded to something better, though, from having long been in the habit of slaving for the Quillimane market, it was not very probable. But the Manganja could easily be overcome piecemeal by any enemy; old feuds made them glad to see calamities befall their next neighbours. We counselled them to unite against the common enemies of their country, and added distinctly that we English would on no account enter into their quarrels. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... it may be cast off entire or piecemeal. The embryo (child) alone may escape, the neck of the womb contracts and shuts; bleeding persists for an indefinite period, for weeks and weeks, until the health of the poor woman is seriously affected. Persistent ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... which the author had yet published and from most of his subsequent work. It is not unnoteworthy that the batch of poems called in the later collected editions Switzerland, and completed at last by the piece called On the Terrace at Berne, appeared originally piecemeal, and with no indication of connection. The first of its numbers is here, To my Friends who Ridiculed a Tender Leave-taking. It applies both the note of thought which has been indicated, and the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... was sinking into the depths of the sea.... Not as a ship sinks, but piecemeal, her walls and towers crumbling and toppling as a child's sand-castle crumbles under the attack of the lapping waves. Down they crashed, carrying their freight of black, clinging, human ants, while from the sea's depths a wave, a mile ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Except for all these wounded men, and the uniforms, I'd never think of it. No guns, no action, no—no dawn patrols. I feel like a fish out of water. But there must be some little old war going on up there. I've heard about Chateau-Thierry, by piecemeal. Boy! It was the big show starting the very morning I got it, and we didn't even know it. Just my luck to get forced down at a ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... villain, vassal, slave to Tamburlaine, Unworthy to embrace or touch the ground That bears the honour of my royal weight; Stoop, villain, stoop! stoop; [198] for so he bids That may command thee piecemeal to be torn, Or scatter'd like the lofty cedar-trees Struck with the ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... namely, that a vast store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man (and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and harmonious plane—something like the present ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... within three or four leagues of Hesdin. The Emperor's soldiers were in garrison there, with a number of peasants from the country road. M. de Vendosme called on them to surrender; they made answer that he should never take them, unless it were piecemeal; let him do his worst, and they would do their best to defend themselves. They trusted in their moats, which were full of water; but in two hours, with plenty of faggots and casks, we made a way for our infantry to pass over, when they had to advance to the assault; and the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... think, Captain,' said Rob, looking round the room, 'that when Mr Gills was going in and out so often, these last few days, he was taking little things away, piecemeal, not ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... alcohol, while his stomach is inflamed, blood vitiated, brain hardened, nerves exhausted, senses perverted, and all his feelings changed by the accursed stuff with which he has been poisoning himself to death, piecemeal, for years, and which suddenly, and all at once, manifests its accumulated strength over him. In sixteen months I have fought a thousand battles, every one more fearful than the soldier faces upon the field of conflict, where it rains lead and hails shot ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... thus The shade of his Patroclus, sad, bespake. Hail, oh Patroclus, even in Ades hail! For I will now accomplish to the full My promise pledged to thee, that I would give 25 Hector dragg'd hither to be torn by dogs Piecemeal, and would before thy funeral pile The necks dissever of twelve Trojan youths Of noblest rank, resentful of thy death. He said, and meditating foul disgrace 30 To noble Hector, stretch'd him prone in dust Beside the bier of Menoetiades. Then all the Myrmidons their radiant arms ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... your spouse Hath sent defiance to the king your husband, And, like a tried tall soldier, fled his holds In Marchland, where he knows, despite of him And all the men that he therein can raise, King John could have sent dogs enou' to tear Their ill-arm'd bodies piecemeal, ere his bands Should with base blood have stain'd their noble hands. And whither is this worshipful good earl (This first love, old love, new love, if you will) Gone, thinks your ladyship? forsooth, good man, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... silence, friend and foe falling one upon another. But it is always the easier to destroy; and when a single note upon the tucket recalled the attacking party from this desperate service, much of the barricade had been removed piecemeal, and the whole fabric had sunk to half its height, and tottered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foundation of a diversified banking system, the development of stock markets, the rapid growth of the non-state sector, and the opening to foreign trade and investment. China has generally implemented reforms in a gradualist or piecemeal fashion, including the sale of equity in China's largest state banks to foreign investors and refinements in foreign exchange and bond markets in 2005. The restructuring of the economy and resulting efficiency gains have contributed to a more than tenfold ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... with time and space; it is not surprising, therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardly paid to her, is told to stand aside when people come to practice. In practice identity is generally held to exist where continuity is only broken slowly and piecemeal; nevertheless, that occasional periods of even rapid change are not held to bar identity, appears from the fact that no one denies this to hold between the microscopically small impregnate ovum and the born child that springs ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... wrought to great advantage, supplying nearly all the coined currency of the world. A little further onward was the spot where Lot's wife had stood forever under the semblance of a pillar of salt. Curious travellers have long since carried it away piecemeal. Had all regrets been punished as rigorously as this poor dame's were, my yearning for the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a similar change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a warning ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... extended to the wing, and was solid and permanent, and bade fair to overflow into the courtyard, and through the entrance-gates, and across the street, and to the very kitchen-garden and flower-garden themselves. Also, it seemed to have been stolen piecemeal from somewhere, and at different periods, and from different localities, and tacked at haphazard on to the walls of the parent erection. Moreover, all the windows of the latter were small, and in their ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... was no easy one, and it tested to the full the tact and ingenuity of the Chairman. Mr. Dodson, Sir Charles Dilke's immediate predecessor at the Local Government Board, and Lord Carlingford represented the views which had hitherto prevailed in favour of piecemeal and gradual reform. Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Kimberley, and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice were, on the contrary, supporters of the large Bill which the Chairman had prepared; while Mr. Childers, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was there mainly to keep a vigilant ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... early restorers, who cut into them freely, and dug graves in such manner as to imperil their foundations. The most arduous work of Sir Gilbert Scott was the strengthening of these piers, effected piecemeal by partial reconstruction of the piers themselves and by laying a durable substratum of cement right down to the chalk. The fine ring of eight bells was rehung. Visitors will find the ascent of the spiral staircase long and arduous, but will be rewarded by the almost unrivalled view ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... before his time Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born Deliver'd at a secret postern-gate To Merlin, to be holden far apart Until his hour should come; because the lords Of that fierce day were as the lords of this, Wild beasts, and surely would have torn the child Piecemeal among them, had they known; for each But sought to rule for his own self and hand, And many hated Uther for the sake Of Gorlois. Wherefore Merlin took the child, And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife Nursed the young prince, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... sprawling rail fence had lain for nearly forty years, renewed piecemeal from time to time as it rotted away, its corners full of brambles, its stakes and riders overrun with poison-vine; where this brown, jointed structure had stretched, like a fossil worm, a great transformation had come. The rails were gone, the brambles were cleared away, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... urged him to fly into the city. "Why should I fly?" said the Moor—"to be reserved for hunger and slavery? I tell you, wife, I will await the foe here, for better is it to die quickly by the steel than to perish piecemeal in chains and dungeons." He said no more, but resumed his occupation of weaving, and in the indiscriminate fury of the assault was ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... nature's wane in art a cure. These dames, amidst their joking and caressing The man they long'd to wed, Would sometimes set themselves to dressing His party-colour'd head. Each aiming to assimilate Her lover to her own estate, The older piecemeal stole The black hair from his poll, While eke, with fingers light, The young one stole the white. Between them both, as if by scald, His head was changed from grey to bald. 'For these,' he said, 'your gentle pranks, I owe you, ladies, many thanks. By being thus well shaved, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... know in whose presence you stand, infidel?" he shrieked. "Do you know that I am lord and Subhadar of Bengal, of Behar, and Orissa; and that I have a million men who would die at my bidding? I will have you torn piecemeal, I will have your eyes picked out with knives and your flesh torn by hot pincers! I will plunge this knife into you, I will rip you up as I would a wild boar, I will strew your entrails on the earth, I will give your ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... "environment," this patched up and piecemeal panorama of mad chaotic blunderings, which pushes us hither and thither; and they call it our "heredity," this confused and twisted amalgam of greeds and lusts and conscience-stricken reactions, which drives us backward and forward ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... lawful and right. I fall certainly by my own sword, but honourably. I go about and am dying piecemeal, like Athens. Did we know that we adorned our statues for a funeral procession? that we were weaving our own shrouds? that the choruses of ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the end of November Spalatin had completed his task (one marvels at the leisureliness of this, in view of the serious condition of the Elector; or was the manuscript translated and administered piecemeal to the noble patient?), and early in December he returned the original, doubtless together with his own translation, to Luther, who had requested its return, "in order to comfort ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Orleans, under a heavy but unwary guard, on a "tin-clad" steamer, to wear out the rest of the war in a Northern prison. Forbidden to gather even in pairs, they had yet moved freely about, often passing each other closely enough to exchange piecemeal counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat's bell had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and instantly were masters of them, of them, of their arms stacked on the boiler-deck and of the steamboat, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... acquainted them with what had occurred and read to them the letter, whereat they were affrighted with the sorest affright and sought to soothe the King's terror with words that were only from the tongue, whilst their hearts were torn piecemeal with palpitations of alarm. But Badi'a (the Chief Wazir) presently said, "Know, O King, that there is no profit in that which my brother Wazirs have proffered, and it is my rede that thou write this King a writ and excuse thyself to him therein, saying, 'I love thee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... knew how to tempt him, sacrificing everything in the desperate straits to which she was reduced. Though he had loved her well, and sinfully, but truly, for so many years, his love had sometimes seemed an unbearable thraldom, to escape from which he would have given his heart piecemeal, though he should lose all the happiness life held for him, for the sake of a momentary freedom. Possibly, too, she knew that he never longed for that freedom so much as when she had just been most violent and despotic. She was prepared for the feeble dissent with ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... not disdain to labour in stone with various planes of relief which should produce the effect of chiaroscuro. Furthermore, they illustrate what Cellini and Vasari have already taught us about his method. He refused to work by piecemeal, but began by disengaging the first, the second, then the third surfaces, following a model and a drawing which controlled the cutting. Whether he preferred to leave off when his idea was sufficiently ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... condense into a connected story the facts learnt piecemeal from Sir John in conversation. To a certain extent they supplied, if not an explanation, at least an account of the change that had come over my friend. But only to a certain extent; there the explanation broke down and I was left baffled. I could imagine that a life of unwholesome surroundings ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... to say; and it is for the War-leader to see to this closely and piecemeal. I deem, as we all deem, that there should be no delay; yet were it best to wend not all together to Shadowy Vale, but in divers bands, as soon as ye may after the Folk-mote, by the sure and nigh ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... debating in Parliament; the conqueror changing the fate of nations on bloody battle-fields; these all do their work; and are needful, doubtless, in a sinful, piecemeal world like this. But there are those of whom the noisy world never hears, who have chosen the better part which shall not be taken from them; who enter into a higher glory than that of statesmen, or conquerors, or the successful and famous of the ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to say something of the sort," his mother said; "but he had only heard it piecemeal from old people, and never heard enough to put the pieces together as you have done. 'What does it matter either?' he used to say; and he said those great lords had been cut-throats on the land and robbers on the river. For your father's father had worn the red ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... whom I had taken on board, and who landed with me, broke the egg with hatchets, and having made a hole in it, pulled out the young roc piecemeal and roasted it. I had earnestly entreated them not to meddle with the egg, but they ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... for his plays from the manager were therefore very disproportionate and uncertain. His letters to Henslowe are urgent in solicitations for payment on account of work in hand; he was often obliged to send his manuscripts piecemeal to the manager, and on one occasion supplied a rough draft of the last scene of a play in order to obtain a few shillings in advance. The amounts paid for new plays at this time were very low. Before 1600 Henslowe never gave more than L8 for a play, but after that date there was ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... circumstances, and solemn surroundings, the labor which has been bestowed, and the character of the men that have presented this paper, we should consider it as an entirety, or attempt to cut it up by piecemeal, by which neither they, nor the public, will ever ascertain what the judgment of Congress was on the results of their labor. That is ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... it looks," commented Barry as he explained the tactics to the midshipmen. "You see, they can torpedo us as much as they like, and blow the dummy sides of the ship to bits piecemeal. We can't sink, since we'll be hard aground. We can't take fire—at least, it would be quite a job to get any part of her to burn without being able to keep the flames under control. Gunnery, of course, puts a different aspect on the subject. If the enemy start shelling ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... magnificent remains of the fortress or citadel, the traditional camp of Caesar. Silchester again has the great advantage of being systematically and skilfully dug out, while Jublains has been examined only piecemeal. This again illustrates the difference between the state of ownership in England and in France. Silchester is at the command of a single will, which happily is in the present generation wisely guided. Jublains must fare as may seem good to a multitude of separate wills, of which it is too ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... friar, a word. Wouldst thou have the old man burned, drowned, or torn piecemeal? He hath a daughter too, who once sought to mar our trade with her gittern; a daughter, then in a kirtle that I would not have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet and lawn, with a great ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expenditure in this proportion would be disagreeable; but if this was the inevitable and only price, Grant was willing to pay it, justly regarding it as cheaper than a continuation of the process of purchase by piecemeal. In a few hours the frightful struggle in the Wilderness was in progress. All day on the 5th, all day on the 6th, the terrible slaughter continued in those darksome woods and swamps. "More desperate fighting has not been witnessed on this continent," ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse |
