"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them,—a short, stout, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... declared, whispering now, treasuring her plot. "The old one is upstairs, sleeping, and she will not wake until I shake her. Outside the soldiers make their fires and cook, and Alvino in the barn sings 'La Golondrina'—you hear him?—for that is sad ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... gingerbeer men and the newsboys cease not from troubling. Such a volume of uproar, such a complete organ of discord I mean a whole organful cannot be found anywhere else on the face of the earth in so comparatively small a space. It is a sort of triangular plot of beach crammed with everything that ordinarily annoys the ears and offends ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... practice soon betrayed to those he had so provoked the chinks in the monster's armour. He was assailable and punishable at last, then, this potent tyrant—but the attack must be made warily and cautiously. Accordingly, impartial bystanders, ignorant of the plot, began to observe that he was degenerating by degrees in the rank of his purchases, and at last becoming utterly reckless, buying, at the prices of the sublimest rarities, common works of ordinary literature to be found in every book-shop. Such was the result of judiciously ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis being still obdurate, Elzbieta went in tears and begged the money from the neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a mass and a hearse with white plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to mark the place. The poor mother was not the same for months after that; the mere sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled about would make her weep. He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow, she would say. He had been handicapped ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... door was slowly opened, and the portly butler appeared, bearing in his own hands a fine dish of potatoes; from the same plot, he remarked to John, with those that had obtained the prize. The butler ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... do display!" whispered the Frenchman, who had returned with the author of the plot to watch the issue from a point of vantage. "My faith, they march slowly for their native land! Not less than six bottles of great French wine did I anticipate to steal through the window, while they fell out precipitous. But there sits a man big ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... single one, upon whom I can depend, and now they want to conspire and carry her off!" Noticing then Madame Wang standing close to her, she turned herself towards her. "All you people really know is to impose upon me!" she resumed. "Outwardly, you display filial devotion; but, secretly, you plot and scheme against me. If I have aught that's worth having, you come and dun me for it. If I have any one who's nice, you come and ask for her. What's left to me is this low waiting-maid, but as you see that she serves me faithfully, you naturally can't stand ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Sylvia. She turned, from him and went to her father. "Have you nothing to say," she asked, "about this vile and hateful plot? But I suppose you can't. She is your wife. However much you despise her, you have got to endure her. But I have not. And ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... see why such things should come to you. The rest of us probably deserve what we get. But you—I should like to think of you always as in a garden—you have the power to make things bloom. You have even quickened the dry dust of my own dead life, so that now in it there's a little plot of the pansies of my thoughts of you, and there's rosemary, for remembrance, and there's the little bed of my interest in that boy—what seeds did you ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... he; "so should I, if I saw any advantage, such as indeed I hoped for to-day. But if I be not mistaken, our Princess is deep in this plot." ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... fate in this," he observed, when I had done. "Every step, it's you that saves our lives; and do you suppose by any chance that we are going to let you lose yours? That would be a poor return, my boy. You found out the plot; you found Ben Gunn—the best deed that ever you did, or will do, though you live to ninety. Oh, by Jupiter, and talking of Ben Gunn! why, this is the mischief in person. Silver!" he cried, "Silver!—I'll give you a piece of advice," he continued, as the cook drew near again; "don't you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, come out in evidence that the fish retailers, if they find a quantity of their perishable wares entering into decomposition, send out late in the evening a messenger, who, watching his opportunity, throws his burden down in some plot of building land, or over a fence. When I say that I have seen in one place, close alongside a public thoroughfare, a heap of about fifty herrings, in most active putrefaction and buzzing with flies, and some days afterward, in another place, some twenty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... know all—your entire connection with this plot. If you have a spark of honor or manhood left you will do what little you can to retrieve the terrible wrong you have done me, and my father. You can never marry me. I give you my word of honor that I shall ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... met at Bayeux, the day before their intended treachery, and, whilst dining there, called in to amuse them a half-witted man named Gillos, and the plot was, inadvertently, mentioned in his presence. The duke, when passing through the town, had shown the poor man some kindness, and no sooner did he understand the intended treachery, than he left the hall, and set ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of "hobgoblin lore," it may not be incurious to add, that Woodstock is distinguished in Dr. Plot's History of Oxfordshire (the title of which is well known to all readers of the marvellous) as the scene of a series of hoax and disturbance played off upon the commissioners of the Long Parliament, who were sent down to dispark and destroy Woodstock, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... plot of Mr. Warrington's tragedy was quite full indeed of battle and murder. A favourite book of his grandfather had been the life of old George Frundsberg of Mindelheim, a colonel of foot-folk in the Imperial service at Pavia fight, and during the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Bethlehem and the like, filled the borders; May thorns were in full sweet blossom; and near one another were the two rose- bushes, one damask and one white provence, whence Somerset and Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the union of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he told me of his design of the story as it existed in his mind, I thought it would have been the greatest of his books. An enchanting memory is left of that morning when he laid out the whole story before me as he intended to write it. The plot was a grand one, and I tried to tell him how much I was impressed by it. Very soon after our interview, he ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... setting. The sun was warm and came filtering through the shade to splotch the uneven brick pavement, bringing out its homely roughness in minute detail. She felt as if she recognized each upturned brick, and the worn patch of yellow earth where a grass plot was meant to be, up to the edge of the gnarled root of the oak stump that had been struck by lightning, was just as it had always been. She and Joe Hooper had played marbles there until he had grown too big to be playing marbles with girls. Queer ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... respect I am unable to help you," he replied. "And in case I have not made myself sufficiently clear upon the subject, let me tell you that I deeply resent the plot by which you endeavoured to foist such an indignity ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spit thy gall; Plot, work, contrive; create new fallacies, Teem from thy Womb each minute a black Traitor, Whose blood and thoughts have twins conception: Study to act deeds yet unchronicled, Cast native Monsters in the molds of Men, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... The plot of the story before us, without being intricate, is ingenious and the interest in the characters is fully sustained throughout. The trying experiences of Kitty DeWitt were those of a multitude of girls and women, and their decision for patriotism was a power in shaping the great national ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Dolores' person, as a means of strongly influencing Don John's actions, in order thus to lead him into a false position from which he should not be able to escape without a serious quarrel with King Philip, which would be the first step towards the execution of the plot elaborated by Dona Ana and Perez together. Anything which could produce an open difference between the brothers would serve to produce two parties in Spain, of which the one that would take Don John's ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... "The plot is ingeniously cast and most skillfully worked out, and the strong interest of the reader is not allowed to flag for a ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... resist the instinct of carnage. And was it right to do so? Which of the felons whom he had cut of prematurely could pretend that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence? But the consequences were distressing. A new set of characters in every act brought with it the necessity of a new plot; for people could not succeed to the arrears of old actions, or inherit ancient motives, like a landed estate. Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground in each separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... presumably of the earliest men, a black skin protects against sunlight. A white skin, on the other hand—though this is more doubtful—perhaps economizes sun-heat in colder latitudes. Brown, yellow and the so-called red are intermediate tints suitable to intermediate regions. It is not hard to plot out in the pre-historic map of the world geographical provinces, or "areas of characterization," where races of different shades corresponding to differences in the climate might develop, in an isolation more or less complete, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... his embrace with a sudden start. Wrayson turned his head. Within a yard or two of them, Madame de Melbain had paused in the centre of the little plot of grass. She was looking at them from underneath her lace parasol, with faintly uplifted eyebrows, and the dawn of a smile upon her beautiful lips. Louise sprang to her feet, and Wrayson followed her example. Madame de Melbain lowered her parasol as ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fabulous ages, we cannot refrain from indulging a momentary smile; nor can we seriously accompany him in the learned architectural detail by which he endeavours to give us, from the Odyssey, the ground-plot of the house of Ulysses.—of which he actually offers a plan in drawing! "showing how the description of the house of Ulysses in the Odyssey may be supposed to correspond with the foundations yet visible ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... or to hedge flippantly, he is talking insincerely. And when a good converser runs against this sort of talker, his heart calls out, with Carlyle, for an empty room, his tobacco, and his pipe. It is maintained by some one that there are three kinds of a bore: the person who tells the plot of a play, the one who tells the story of a novel, and the one who tells his dreams. This may be going too far with regard to dreams; for dreams, if handled in the right way, are easily made a part of interesting talk. But in sophisticated society books and plays ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... sincerely devoted, though knowing him for an indulgent man whose indulgences were chiefly of himself. But when, responding to his excited summons that night, he had sat and listened while Mr. Carstairs unfolded his mad little domestic plot, he had been first utterly amazed and then utterly repelled. And it was not until a final sense of the old man's genuine need was borne in upon him, of his loneliness, his helplessness, and his entire dependence upon him, Varney, that he ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... farm, where tremendous precipices of naked rock towered all round, so as to leave barely sufficient space on the bank of the river for the houses and cattle-folds, with a well-stocked garden and orchard. There was also a small plot of corn-land on ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... she would show herself to the suitors. She knew of the plot against Telemachus, for the servant Medon had overheard their counsels and had told her; she went down therefore to the court attended by her maidens, and when she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing-posts supporting the roof of the cloister holding ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... for a convenient spot. I led them up the hill, and we found a plot of grass enamelled with daisies, and shaded by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to carry a secret as to carry an elephant, had betrayed by a hundred indications that a plot of some kind was being hatched between her and De Malfort. And to-night, before going out, she had made too much fuss about so simple a matter as a basset-party at Lady Sarah's, who had her basset-table ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... those delightful and charming strains of nature's choristers. On his way he beheld a very delightful and level spot of land covered with golden sands and resembling heaven itself, O king, for its beauty. On that plot stood a large and beautiful banian with a spherical top. Possessed of many branches that corresponded with the parent tree in beauty and size, that banian looked like an umbrella set over the plain. The spot underneath that magnificent tree was drenched with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... composed are full of personal and political allusion. Sidney's story carries no politics and he depends for its interest solely on the wealth of differing episodes and the stories and arguments of love which it contains. The story would furnish plot enough for twenty ordinary novels, but probably those who read it when it was published were attracted by other things than the march of its incidents. Certainly no one could read it for the plot now. Its attraction is mainly one of style. It goes, you feel, one degree beyond Euphues ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... nervous collapse as the result of threats from kidnappers who boldly called her up on the phone and demanded a king's ransom, threatening death to the son if the plot was revealed before ten o'clock this morning. The faithful mother gathered her treasures which included the famous Shafton Emeralds, and a string of pearls worth a hundred thousand dollars, and let them down from her window as directed, and then fainted, knowing nothing more till her ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary — For the plot was void of interest — 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact, There I learnt the true location, distance, size, and population Of each township, town, and village in ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of thirty-two, who had been married ten years, who acquired a strong ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... an enterprise little to their credit. They employed the two deserters, joined with two Acadian prisoners, to kidnap Saint-Castin, whom, next to the priest Thury, they regarded as their most insidious enemy. The Acadians revealed the plot, and the two soldiers were shot at Mount Desert. Nelson was sent to France, imprisoned two years in a dungeon of the Chateau of Angouleme, and then placed in the Bastile. Ten years passed before he was allowed to return to his family at Boston. [4] The French failure ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the business, and after three years he was sole owner of it. He increased it continually, and on the plot of ground he had inherited from his father he built a pretty house and moved into it. In the same year God gave him a daughter, whom he named Takusch, and four years later his son Toros came ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... in a snug little cot, An' tho' poor, yet aw keep aght o' debt, Cloise by, in a big garden plot, Stands a mansion, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... disappearance of the ship that bore their protector towards Hispaniola. A general massacre of the colony was concerted to take place about fifteen days after Las Casas left. The Franciscans got wind of it three days before the date fixed and though the Indian woman Maria, when asked, denied the plot in words, she conveyed to the friars by gestures that she had lied because the presence of other Indians intimidated her from telling the truth. A Spanish trading ship arrived in these days, but ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... almshouses and ground were sold, and the proceeds devoted to Vandon's Charity Account. Part of the funds was used to purchase a plot of ground in Lambeth, where new almshouses were erected, and after the death of the recipients of the charity these were let to tenants, and the proceeds devoted to ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... a plot to assassinate the man who, besides being clothed with the sanctions of law as the highest representative of the state, has been his personal friend and benefactor; all this, too, not on any ground of fact, but on an assumed probability that the crown ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... escape and union of Archie and Christina would have proved equally essential to the plot may perhaps to most readers seem questionable. They may rather feel that a tragic destiny is foreshadowed from the beginning for all concerned, and is inherent in the very conditions of the tale. But on this point, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orders a prosecution, and fails, (as fail it will,) it will be treated to its face as guilty of a conspiracy maliciously to prosecute. Its care in discovering a conspiracy against the state will be treated as a forged plot to destroy the liberty of the subject: every such discovery, instead of strengthening government, will weaken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... attend the Envoy during his conference with Mahomed Akber Khan. I found him alone, when, for the first time, he disclosed to me the nature of the transaction he was engaged in. I immediately warned him that it was a plot against him. He replied hastily, 'A plot! let me alone for that—trust me for that!' and I consequently offered no further remonstrance. Sir William then arranged with General Elphinstone that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... This happy breed of men this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... first supposed that the Jacobins were the authors of this infamous plot. It was afterwards proved to be a conspiracy of the Royalists. Josephine, whose husband had bled beneath the slide of the guillotine, and who had narrowly escaped the axe herself, with characteristic humanity forgot the peril to which she and her friends had been exposed, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... thirteenth centuries there arose into general notoriety in Europe, a body of "Romance," which in various forms retained its popularity till the Reformation. In it the plot, the incidents, the characters, were almost wholly those of Chivalry, that bond which united the warriors of France, Spain, and Italy, with those of pure Teutonic descent, and embraced more or less firmly all the nations of Europe, excepting only the Slavonic races, not yet risen to power, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... trade that formerly existed between these nations seemed as absurd as a farmer dividing his farm into little plots and trying to cultivate all kinds of plants on each plot instead of putting only wheat in wheat land and ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... little boys and girls which sprung into immediate popularity. To know the six little Bunkers is to take them at once to your heart, they are so intensely human, so full of fun and cute sayings. Each story has a little plot of its own—one that can be easily followed—and all are written in Miss Hope's most entertaining manner. Clean, wholesome volumes which ought to be on the bookshelf of every ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... these casual questions. But it was not for him to know that Viola had repeated Mrs. Gwyn's threat to her impatient, arrogant lover, nor was it for him to connect a simple question of law with the ugly plot that had been revealed to Isaac ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... general character of the thing." The next night, after rustling energetically through me, he wrote out his report, and, passing it to his wife, said: "There are no outright mis-statements of fact as to the plot ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... gossiping fool, but I don't believe he'd plot to ruin a girl in this way. Still, I'm quite sure the story 'll have got about, and it comes to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... not support the earth by timber or pillars, as they should; the result is that the whole plot of about two hundred acres is gradually sinking, and this will eventually ruin the industry in that part of the deposit. In another part of the same field, a French company has purchased forty acres, and it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... had formed a plot to throw us all into the sea. The negroes had told them that they were very near the shore, and that, when there, they would enable them to traverse Africa without danger. We had to take to our arms again, the sailors, who ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Elizabeth's time, when Shakespeare wrote "The Merchant of Venice," he was taking advantage of the popular sentiment aroused by the execution of Lopez, the Queen's physician, for a real or supposed participation in a plot against her Majesty's life. Shylock was presented the next season for the sake of adventitious popularity that would thus accrue to the piece. The character was played so as to depict all the worst traits of the Jew, and was scornfully laughed at at every representation. This is an index of the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... nearly the summit of the hill, which is ascended by superb stone steps. On the castle are mounted seven small pieces of cannon, which were presented to the Duke of Rutland by George the Third; from these pieces 21 rounds were fired Nov. 5, 1808, in commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot. The view from the terraces and towers comprehends the whole vale of Belvoir, and the adjoining country as far as Lincoln, including twenty-two of the Duke of Rutland's manors. On the southern slope of the hill are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... himself. [36] And because he is a villain, he will always find, I know, worse villains that himself to aid him, but if one day a nobler rival should appear—have no concern, Cyrus, you will never need to do battle with such an one, yonder fiend would deal with him and never cease to plot against him until he had dragged him in the dust, only because he was the better man. And to work me trouble and disaster, he and his wicked tools will, I fear me, have strength ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the hop of the rottenest mould, Well dunged and wrought as a garden plot should: Not far from the water (but not overflown), This lesson well noted is meet to ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... request (credit is given in the front of the book for the use of this poem, and only rightly too, for without it the story could never have been written), he goes out into the ocean. But there—we mustn't give too much of the plot away. All that one need know is that Luke or Sir Nigel, as you wish (and what reader of Florence Barclay wouldn't prefer Sir Nigel?), was so cultured that he said, "Nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I," and referred to "flotsam and jetson" as he was swimming out into the path of the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Rohan's desire to get into court favor. This sharp-witted female swindler now came in among the elements I have thus far been describing, to frame necklace, jeweller, cardinal, queen, and swindler, all together into her plot, just as the key-stone drops into an arch and locks it ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... are in the same box, and both are friends or customers of the workin' geologist. I believe it's whiskey goes between the grindstones, and that it's smuggled in from the States, somewhere up on the Georgian Bay between Collingwood and Owen Sound. The plot ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Aymar Mathews. This book has few equals in late fiction as an example of a wisely chosen, well-balanced plot, and a keen analysis and picturesque presentment of some impressive types of human ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a commission to write a volume of model "familiar letters" as an aid to persons too illiterate to compose their own. The notion of connecting these letters by a story which had interested him suggested the plot of "Pamela" and determined its epistolary form—a form which was retained in his ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... which saved the colony, took place. The secret was of the greatest importance; it is not to be wondered at if Champlain's trusty pilot, Captain Testu, deemed it proper to draw the founder of Quebec aside into the neighbouring wood and make known to him the villanous plot which one of the accomplices, Antoine Natel, lock-smith, had first disclosed to him under the greatest secrecy. The chief of the conspiracy was one Jean du Val, who had come to the country ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... still for a long time, and never moved. 'The play is over!' said the showman, disgusted and angry at the wreck of his plot. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... that they were not only enjoying the music for itself, but because it was characteristic of all that they had left behind them. It was pathetic to hear them boast of having read of a certain song in such a paper, and of the fact that they knew the plot of a late comic opera and the names of those who had played in it, and that it had or had not been acceptable ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Reader begin Dickens' wonderful 'Great Expectations': not considered one of his best, you know, but full of wonderful things, and even with a Plot which, I think, only needed less intricacy to be admirable. I had only just read the Book myself: but I wanted to see what my Reader would make of it: and he was so interested that he re-interested me too. Here is another ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... mother stain'd, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain?—O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... old man answered him and said: 'My son, it is hard to tell all that one's eyes see; for many wayfarers pass to and fro this way, some bent on much evil, and some on good: it is difficult to know each one. However, I was digging about my plot of vineyard all day long until the sun went down, and I thought, good sir, but I do not know for certain, that I marked a child, whoever the child was, that followed long-horned cattle—an infant who had a staff and kept walking from side to side: he was driving them ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... and harsh voices. Their dress indicated that they belonged to the poorer class, but were not bourgeois; in short, they belonged to that ambiguous class, the vilest of all, which has neither fortune nor occupation, which never works except at some criminal plot, a class which, neither poor nor rich, combines the vices of one with the misery ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... stream beside the road. Then he turned back to the machine,—only to stop suddenly and blink with surprise. The road was not level! The illusion which comes to one at the first effort to conquer a mountain grade had faded now. A few feet away was a deserted cabin, built upon a level plot of ground and giving to Barry a chance for comparison, and he could see that his motor had not been at fault. Now the road, to his suddenly comprehending eyes, rose before him in a long, steady sweep of difficult grades, upward, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... spirit would have sacrificed his life for.' 'There are,' wrote Hume, 'three events in our history which may be regarded as touchstones of party-men. An English Whig who asserts the reality of the popish plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.' History of England, ed. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the old paperback novels used to say at the end of the first instalment, 'The Plot thickens!' At first I thought this case ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... me half ashamed of the plot I had underneath my submission about the coal mines—a plot to get into the coal combine in order to gather the means to destroy it, and perhaps reconstruct it with myself in control. I made up my mind that, if he continued to act squarely, I would ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... delivered to the Queen, who slept with them under her pillow. Sir William Montacute, with the sanction of the young king, summoned to his aid several nobles on whose fidelity he could depend, and obtained Edward's warrant for the apprehension of the Earl of March. The plot was now ripe for execution. For a time, however, the inaccessible nature of the castle rock, and the vigilance with which the gates were guarded, appeared to present an insuperable obstacle to the accomplishment of their designs. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... numerous variants of the story in which a prince is exposed to various dangers by his sister—who is induced to plot against his life by her demon lover, the Snake—the hero is sent in search of "a healing and a vivifying water," preserved between two lofty mountains which cleave closely together, except during "two or ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... verbatim, to prove their space vehicle was knocked from the sky by a capitalistic plot. Motion pictures clearly showed an American automobile coming toward the Russian satellite. Russian astronomers ordered to seek other strange orbiting devices reported: "We've observed cars for weeks. Have been exiling technicians and photographers to Siberia for making jokes of Soviet ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll
... to bring about a count-out. If it is a private members' night the Whips have no responsibility in the matter of keeping a House, and have even been suspected of occasionally conniving in the beneficent plot of dispersing it. But just now private members' nights stand in the same relation to the Session as the sententious traveller found to be the case with snakes in Iceland. There are none. Every night is a Government night, and weariness of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... presented to his view. There was something so iniquitous and unmanly in betraying the unsuspecting and lovely victim, that the feelings of the valet, though far from being refined, revolted from the participation: once or twice he had even resolved to acquaint Theodora with the premeditated plot, but these momentary impulses of his better feelings were soon checked for want of strength to follow up the generous suggestion. The awe with which Roque beheld his master, and the dread of the results which his disclosure might produce in the mind of the victim, powerfully contributed ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... clever general took no visible action; and yet only a few of the minor newspapers abused him; thoughtful men gathered from this that a plot was hatching. As for the Committee of Public Safety, whatever they thought of their position, they had now gone too far to draw back; and many of them, it seems, thought that the government would not act. They went on quietly organising their food supply, which was a miserable driblet ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... that they made a plot to seize us all and hale us off to be sacrificed to a substituted image of Oro, which by now they had set up. They knew exactly where we slept upon the rock; indeed, our fire showed it to them and ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... 1863. The vote has always stood against license by overwhelming majorities, there being generally only from two to nine votes in favor of liquor-selling. The population of the Vineland tract is about ten thousand five hundred people, consisting of manufacturers and business people upon the town plot in the centre, and, around this centre, of farmers and fruit-growers. The most of the tract is in Landis Township. I will now give statistics of police and poor expenses of this township for the past ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... parts of this book, at least the finest, are the truest,—that magnificent search for the body, which is as perfect as the search for the exciseman in Guy Mannering, and the burst of passion in Eliot's pulpit. The plot, too, is very finely constructed, and doubtless I have been a too critical reader, because, from the moment you and I parted, I have been suffering from fever, and have never left the bed, in which I am now writing. Don't fancy, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... these were three great subjects on which the representation of England induced Denmark to adopt a course against her will, and, as the Danes believed, against their policy. The plot begins to thicken. Notwithstanding the revocation of the patent, the federal execution, and the repeal of the constitution, one thing more is wanted, and Schleswig is about to be invaded. Affairs now become most critical. No sooner ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... COUNTESS. The plot is laid: if all things fall out right, I shall as famous be by this exploit As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death. Great is the rumor of this dreadful knight, And his achievements of no less account: Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears, To give their censure of ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... Why did God permit the Nihilists to assassinate the late Czar of Russia? All their previous plots had failed. Why was the last plot allowed to succeed? There is only one answer. God had nothing to do with any of them, and the last succeeded because it was better devised and more carefully executed. If God protected the Czar against their former attempts, they were too many for him in the end; ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... departure of our agents, a plot was discovered which had been concerted among the enemies of Cortes, for seizing a vessel to carry over intelligence to Velasquez of the departure of our agents, and of the measures which had been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Maid fought and took one Franquet d'Arras, a Burgundian "routier," or knight of the road, who plundered that country without mercy. Him the Maid would have exchanged for an Armagnac of Paris, the host of the Bear Inn, then held in duresse by the English, for his share in a plot to yield Paris to the King. But this burgess died in the hands of the English, and the echevins {34} of Lagny, claiming Franquet d'Arras as a common thief, traitor, and murderer, tried him, and, on his confession, put him to death. This was counted a crime in the Maid by the English ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... of the plot (Mr. Kerensky took personal care to make it scandalous)—perhaps it was not a plot, but just a few letters of the Gr. Duchess M.P., Tsarskoye Selo has become very difficult to reach and to visit. A few days ago ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... out, but nevertheless persisted in his story, adding desperately, "It is a plot, my lord, to assassinate you and the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... poles apart: that of Mr. Blakeborough is pure romance, whereas Mr. Fletcher never steps aside from the strait path of realism. T' Hunt o' Yatton Brigg is steeped in all the eerie witch-lore of the Cleveland moors. The plot is laid in the district round the famous Roseberry Topping, and deals with the adventures which befall a certain Johnny Simpson, who, when crossed in love, seeks the aid of the witches to aid him in his work of vengeance on the woman who has cast him off. ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... Bourbon and Bonaparte sacrificed so much to effect, is the heir of Bonaparte, and the expounder and illustrator of Napoleon's ideas; and the power that places herself resolutely across his path, and will not join in his plot to erase us from the list of nations is—England! In a romance such a state of things would be pronounced too absurd for invention; but in this every-day world it is nothing but a commonplace incident, extraordinary as it may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... trade: then came what is called Bacon's rebellion—an effective protest against oppressive prohibitions. Nor did these civil discords end with the Restoration; many old soldiers of Cromwell emigrated to Virginia, and, under their auspices, an insurrection 'against the tobacco plot' was organized; and this was followed by numerous difficulties in home legislation, by violent controversies with royal governors; deputies continually were sent to England to remonstrate with the king ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Hombre! I knew when I saw you on the river boat that you were none. But," his voice dropping to a whisper, "there is a soldier in the road below. It would be well to leave. He might think we were here to plot." ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... revelations of the extent of the plot were made, the court in consternation shut itself up in the defences of Amboise. Catharine de' Medici, recalling the warning of the Church of Paris, declared that now she saw that the Protestants were men ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... dragnet; heap Ossa upon Pelion. Adj. assembled &c. v.; closely packed, dense, serried, crowded to suffocation, teeming, swarming, populous; as thick as hops; all of a heap, fasciculated, cumulative. Phr. the plot thickens; acervatim[Lat]; tibi seris ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... (after a little thought).—"You remember the story which Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) told us the other night? That gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot, puts you chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you with characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the time of Fielding. You can give us the country Squire, as you remember him in your youth; it is a specimen ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... topped a rise a short distance away and stopped instantly, regarding the sleeping man with grave curiosity and strong suspicion. Deciding that there was nothing good to eat in that vicinity and that the man was carrying out a fell plot for the death of coyotes, it backed away out of sight and loped on to ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... the truth: how young Arthur had had frequent quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he had begun to suspect Captain Stewart, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... camp-fire, was no sense of elation—and in the heart of him was a great fear. For, despite the utmost secrecy among the conspirators, the half-breed knew that even at that moment, somewhere to the northward, Pierre Lapierre had learned of his plot. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... wasp-waisted, self-sufficient Prussian subaltern. They're everywhere. Imperial arrogance seems to pervade even their beer gardens." His voice trailed off into silence again, as in a preoccupied manner his finger wandered over the map. It stopped suddenly as he leaned closer to study the pink plot on which it rested. "Krovitch; Krovitch!" he muttered, "now where the devil have I heard of Krovitch? Russian province it seems but that doesn't give me any clue. I'm stuck, Carrick," he said with a frank laugh as he looked up to meet the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... 'who have never known what it is to have an honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when children play; and married in my youth—an old age of design—to one for whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a widow, dying before his inheritance descended to him—a judgment on you! well deserved!—and tell me what ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... party that was not his, and upon some slur and insolence took from a man his office. Followed a week of glassy smoothness. Then suddenly, by chance, was discovered the plot of Bernal Diaz de Pisa—the first of many Spanish conspiracies. It involved several hundred men and was no less a thing than the seizure in the dark night of the ships and the setting sail for Spain, there to wreck the fame of Christopherus Columbus and if ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... family, but most infamous character. He formerly was at Paris with a Mrs. Penn, a Quaker's wife, whom he there bequeathed to the public, and was afterwards a sharper at Brussels, and lately came to England to discover a plot for poisoning the Prince of Orange, in which I believe he was poisoner, poison, and informer all himself. In short, to give you his character at once, there is a wager entered in the bet-book at White's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... and that no man may win great honor or show forth singular virtue unless he be well furnished with wealth. For here in this great peril of the Roman people there was no hope of safety but in one who was cultivating with his own hand a little plot of scarcely three acres of ground. For when the messengers of the people came to him they found him ploughing, or, as some say, digging a ditch. When they had greeted each the other, the messengers said, "May the Gods prosper this thing to the Roman people and to thee. Put on thy ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... their own feebler weapons of assault; but the more permanent effect, and, indeed, the more disastrous, was the doubt it left on the minds of thousands of the best Irishmen whether there was not some malign plot in which the Church was associated with the ban-dogs of the Liberal Party for dishing Home Rule by overthrowing Parnell. It was recalled that the Catholic priesthood, with a few glorious exceptions, stood apart from Parnell when he was struggling ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... are scattered 5 At dead of still noon on the grass-plot, What means this passionate grief,— This infinite ache ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... secrets it knew? Weavings of plot and of plan? But where is the Pompadour, too? This was ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... home; whereupon, after inviting them to come over and drink, he returned to Baker's, which was a tavern, and desired that when any of them should come to his house, he would give them as much rum as they could drink. When this plot was ripe, and a sufficient number of them had collected at Baker's and become intoxicated, he and his party fell on them and massacred the whole except a little girl, whom they preserved as a prisoner. Among them was the very woman who had saved his life by pressing him to retire from ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... and 1745, arrived at the same bad eminence. In many a royal procession and many a City riot, this gate has figured as a halting-place and a point of defence. The last rebel's head blew down in 1772; and the last spike was not removed till the beginning of the present century. In the Popish Plot days of Charles II. vast processions used to come to Temple Bar to illuminate the supposed statue of Queen Elizabeth, in the south-east niche (though it probably really represents Anne of Denmark); and at great bonfires at the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... not depend for its success" upon its plot, its theme, its school or its master, for it has very little if any of them, but upon its soul-subduing, all-absorbing, high-faluting effect upon the audience, every member of which it causes to experience the most singular and exquisite sensations. Its strains at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... governments and enslaved races. In republics, the ambitions of aspirants for office have caused revolutions and corrupted politics. No form of government is immune to the evils that flow from ambition, or proof against those who plot for their own political advancement. For this evil, too, Christ has a remedy. He changes the point of view. It seems a simple thing, but behold the transformation! "Let him who would be chiefest among you be servant of all." He makes service the measure ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... a piteous groan; "hark at him, West! I wouldn't have believed that a man could have been so base as to hatch up such a plot as this to ruin his brother-employe. West, I assure you that I never set eyes upon those diamonds before in my life. It's all a cruel, dastardly plot, and I—Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! Is it possible that a ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... announced to appear at the Avenue Theatre. They start with A White Lie. This is the truth. Free admissions will not be heard of, except when they give A Scrap of Paper. They are also going to produce a new play entitled, Prince Karatoff. The plot, to judge by the name, will be of interest to Vegetarians, as it is whispered that the hero, Prince Karatoff, falls in love with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... if you, or he, Your Byrrhia here, can do or think of aught; Act, plot, devise, invent, strive all you can To make her yours; and I'll do all I can That she ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... plot was in hatching I was sure, and in another minute I might have heard something that would have enabled us to be upon our guard; but the opportunity had passed, for the men were working ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the form which it had so far assumed, was rather an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of the deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest which was stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which it would not have ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... enemies, who were jealous because of his success, time to carry out a plot against him. They accused him of plotting to set up an independent government of his own, and caused him to be arrested for treason. In less than twenty-four hours this brave and high-spirited leader was tried, found guilty, and beheaded. So ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... abettor of two vile ballads written on her dying adventure, which I am so innocent of that I never saw [them]. A propos of ballads, a most delightful one is said or sung in most houses about our dear beloved plot, which has been laid firstly to Pope, and secondly to me, when God knows we have neither of us wit enough to make it. Mrs. Hervey lies-in of a female child. Lady Rich is happy in dear Sir Robert's absence, and the polite Mr. Holt's return to his allegiance, who, though ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... (Allerdyce Nicoll, A History of Restoration Drama, 1923, p. 309). Payne's third and last play, The Siege of Constantinople, which reached the stage in November 1674, is of particular interest in view of his long association with the cause of James, Duke of York. Payne found his plot in the General Historie of the Turkes by Knolles, but he altered history to produce a work which would compliment James. It is significant that there is no prototype in Knolles for Thomazo (James), the brother of the last Christian emperor of Constantinople (Charles). At ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to make a ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... I am fond of Peak; I wish him well. But I can't join him in a dishonourable plot.—Then, we mustn't endanger our ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... as a joke which had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her husband's subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession of politics. The practice of it destroys a man's faith ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... front, however, showing me nothing but what I had descried from a distance, I turned to the left, and passed round to the back of the building, where I found the remains of what had been a small flower-garden, with a grass-plot; and beyond it, divided by a wall, a court surrounded by mouldy-looking stabling: but, what was much more interesting, I discovered an open door leading into the house. Somebody, therefore, must surely be within; so I knocked with my parasol against the panel, but nobody came; and having ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a case of the proof of the pudding. If this scheme for a general rising existed, why is not the Colony in arms now? What do you think the answer to that is? Why, that the plot did indeed exist and had been carefully matured, and that it would have come off all right if the Boers had marched boldly south; but that, for some unknown reason, their hearts failed them at the last moment, and they didn't dare go on and reap what they ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... all day long, or paddle in the fountains, warmed with steam-pipes in the winter, and cooled to an agreeable temperature in a summer which has almost lost its terrors for the stay-at-home New-Yorker. Each child has his or her little plot of ground in the roof-garden, where they are taught the once wellnigh forgotten ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been truthfully followed. The actors were professionals who had been well drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue between Madeleine, the erring wife, and Aristide, the recreant husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road and joined this troupe of Caravaners that they might taste life together in rural simplicity and security. The dialogue was ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... school story for girls full of vitality and enthusiasm. There is a real plot and the girls introduced are sure to ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... before they could join forces with those in Caxamalca[7] ... of which there was much information from many caciques and from their chiefs themselves, that all, without fear of torments or menaces, voluntarily confessed this plot: [telling] how fifty thousand men of Quito and many Caribes[8] came to the land, and that all the confines contained armed men in great numbers; that, not finding supplies for them all thus united, he had divided them into three or four divisions, and that, though scattered in this fashion, there ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... penny-post first established in London, by a private individual. Execution in England of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, for participation in the Rye House Plot. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Christ cometh to Jerusalem, "meek, and sitting upon an ass" (as the Prophet said), all the city is troubled at his coming, Matt. xxi. 5,10; when he had but cast out the buyers and sellers out of the temple, the priests and scribes begin to plot his death, Luke xix. 45, 47; nay, where Christ and the gospel cometh, there is a shaking of heaven and earth, Hag. ii. 6. The less wonder if I call reformation like a refiner's fire. The dross of a church is not purged away without ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie |
