"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pop complacently, taking a long twist of tobacco from his pocket. "Sal don't need no larnin'. She's pearter then most gals thet's got book sense. You show me ary one of these gals round here thet kin spin an' weave the cloth to mek ther own dresses, thet kin mold candles, an' mek soap, an' hoe terbaccy, an' handle a rifle ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... I had for disquiet on this passage was the want of society. The captain and mate could spin their yarns and discuss subjects of nautical philosophy; but the mate, naturally unsocial and taciturn, seldom spoke to me, and the captain never honored me by entering into familiar conversation, excepting when he had indulged in an extra glass, and Mr. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... returned was the London of Shakespeare. We should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town. Did he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself at the Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leap across the intervening space and stand beside his father. Coiloo's hand was at Sax's neck. He unfastened the string of the luringa and stood up, still hidden from sight. Slowly he whirled the thin slab of wood round his head, hitting it on the ground once or twice to make it spin. The thing gave out a droning sound. The crowd of yelling fiends around the corpse became suddenly quiet. The droning increased to a loud humming. Every ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... she ride among us for a man, Sit thou for her and spin; a man grown girl Is worth a ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... I sit to spin; My Love passed by, and he didn't come in; He passes by me, both day and night, And carries off ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... I found that Chateau-Renard's two supporters were both polite men of the world. They were as indifferent as Louis was to the choice of weapons, and by a spin of a coin it was decided that pistols were to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the turnpike-keeper had managed to find his way to the court-house of the army-corps. He had been wandering through street after street; the busy traffic of the capital had made his head spin, and he was tired to death with this unwonted tramping over ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... things turned out all for my good—the mare and the colt in the snow, the dingo running after her through hunger, and my dog barking at it, showed me where my house was, when I was fairly lost, and thus saved my life, and enabled me to spin you this yarn, which I must now finish by saying that since that time I am always glad to have a warm house to shelter me in such weather as this, and cannot help thinking that if any boys had ever been placed in my predicament, they would only be too thankful ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... fellows!" shouted the driver, a bareheaded youth in white flannels, "and I'll take you on a little spin." ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... environment which the novelist calls local color, often containing in the name alone a comprehensive suggestiveness as great as that of an Homeric epithet. Thus our familiar Cat and Mouse appears in modern Greece as Lamb and Wolf; and the French version of Spin the Platter is My Lady's Toilet, concerned with laces, jewels, and other ballroom accessories instead of our prosaic numbering of players. These changes that a game takes on in different environments are of the very essence of folklore, and some amusing examples are to be found in our ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... trees in the Smith neighborhood, and spun their tops there. A fellow launched his top into the ring, and the rest waited till it began to go to sleep—that is, to settle in one place, and straighten up and spin silently, as if standing still. Then any fellow had a right to peg at it with his top, and if he hit it, he won it; and if he split it, as sometimes happened, the fellow that owned it had to give him a top. The boys came with their pockets bulged out with tops, but before long they had ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... at command to supply the considerations required in dealing with the specific difficulty which has presented itself. Teachers following a "developing" method sometimes tell children to think things out for themselves as if they could spin them out of their own heads. The material of thinking is not thoughts, but actions, facts, events, and the relations of things. In other words, to think effectively one must have had, or now have, experiences which will furnish ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... self had assumed was new, it yet seemed somehow familiar. The speed and weight and power caused him no distress, there was no detail that he could not manage easily. To race thus o'er the world, keeping pace with an eternal dawn, was as simple as for the Earth herself to spin through space. His union with her was as complete as that. In every item of her being lay the wonder of her perfect form—a sphere. It was complete. Nothing could add ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... and to spin." Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay, conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's crown, commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straightened herself proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive complacency, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as to spin.—SWIFT. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... beating with his horsewhip. He said it was necessary, in order to keep her in subjection, and because she scolded so much. Now this wife, surrounded by six or seven little children, whom she must wash, dress, feed, and attend to day and night, was obliged to spin and weave cloth for all the garments of the family. She had to milk the cows, make butter and cheese, do all the cooking, washing, making, and mending for the family, and, with the pains of maternity forced upon her every eighteen months, was whipped by her pious husband, "because she scolded." And ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hooked to the vehicle. They were being very well fed, and though once a week they had the hardest of work, for the rest of the time they had never more than enough to limber them up, for on schooldays I used to take them out for a spin of three or four miles only, after four. At home, when I left, my wife and I would get them ready in the stable; then I took them out and lined them up in front of the buggy. My wife quickly took the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed for the lines and ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... top; he would make an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion of the human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, of course, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis—perhaps he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at "those scoundrels, the flies," that never improved in their pretended art, nor made any thing of it. The principle was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... child; Summer smiles beyond the door-way, but stern poverty is here; We must give her faithful service, if her frown we would not fear. Spin on cheerly, little daughter, till your needful task is done, Then go forth with bird and blossom, at the setting ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a hint two days before, hoping that the dullness of his visit might be lightened by his being invited to take the car out for a spin. The statement had fallen on quite unheeding ears in Cousin Jasper's case, but had been treasured up ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... is 'most gone," said Ruth, pointing, as she spoke, to a little twinkle of light so far astern that it seemed to rest on the very waters. Half an hour later the captain said, "Now let's go below, where it is warmer; and if you care to hear it, I will spin you ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... dry the dishes that Walter was piling in front of him. First he patted and rubbed the towel on one side of the dish that lay before him; then he turned the same dish over with a bang and repeated the patting and rubbing on the other side. After that he gave the plate a spin. If it landed right side up he left it so; if the trade-mark showed he counted it a "foul," and tried the trick again. How boys can get work done that way is always a mystery to girls, who find the same ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him. "Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must know what is going ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... or dight to pleasant sin; And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, All in a veil of silk and silver thin, That hid no whit her alabaster skin, But rather shewed more white, if more might be: More subtle web Arachne cannot spin; Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the next moment the world seemed to spin upside down, and when it was right way up again and they were ungiddy enough to look about them, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she's grown up to be. Now Sally's learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was a-showin' on me a blue-jay she painted, and I was a-thinkin' whether she could brile a bird fit to be eat if she tried; and she don't know the price ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a hamlet, hidden in a hollow; and beneath weeping willows saw many mournful maidens seated on a bank; beside each, a wheel that was broken. "Lo, we starve," they cried, "our distaffs are snapped; no more may we weave and spin!" ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... it," her companion reminded. "He would be very angry if he came home and found that you had left Glen West. Why not take a spin on the lake this evening? You once were very ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... the opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies, neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of many a heroine of Kansas—whatever they may say in reference to this question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... positive atom of electricity rotates in one direction while a negative atom rotates in the opposite direction. In any electric field these atoms are so associated with each other, that when one atom revolves, it makes the other to revolve in the opposite direction, with the result, that the spin or rotation is transmitted through the medium at a speed dependent upon ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... calling, as it were, and always excited the admiration of Bill Jordan. After dinner that evening Whitey went to the bunk house. Some of the cowpunchers were in from the range, and Whitey loved to hear the yarns they would spin. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... curtains on darkness and night! She sat down to spin by the cheery fire-light, While before it, so cozy and warm, Slept the kitten,—a snowy white ball of content— And her wheel, with its humming activity, lent To ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... morning after breakfast and reach Wellsley in time for classes. We have only thirty minutes in school in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon. Our teachers are in telepathic touch with all knowledge and we get it in condensed form. A few days ago, just after lunch at noon I took a spin up into Canada; the machine got a little out of fix, so I jumped on a gyroscope and returned in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... all kinds of provisions, and manna is here found in great abundance. Four partridges are sold here for less than an Italian groat; and the mountains have excellent pastures for cattle. In this country the men card and spin, and not the women; and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... sudden thunderous silence as the jets cut out; there was the dizzying moment of free fall, followed by the sound of the lateral jets imparting longitudinal spin to the small ship. Artificial gravity took over. It had been a perfect takeoff. Now there was nothing to do but wait ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... manage to shake off his ride, the latter is on the creature's back again before he gets fairly on his feet, and then the kicking and jumping are renewed. The rider keeps at the horse until he has subdued him and ridden him several times around the yard; possibly he may take a spin out into the paddock and back again, but he does not always do so. The great point is to conquer at the first riding, and a good horse-breaker never stops until he has ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... from filare, to spin, or, filum, a thread; and the botanical title, linum, is got from the Celtic lin also signifying thread. The fibres of the bark are separated from the woody matter by soaking it in water, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... cried the soldiers, acquainted with the manners of these wandering enthusiasts, "dance, or we will scourge thee with our bow-strings till thou spin as never top did under schoolboy's lash." Thus shouted the reckless warders, as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a child when he catches a butterfly, or a schoolboy ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... rainy days in summer, the women of the field had to card the wool and spin it into yarn. They generally worked in pairs, a spinning wheel and cards being assigned to each pair, and while one carded the wool into rolls, the other spun it into yarn suitable for weaving into cloth, or a coarse, heavy thread ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... husband of a she-goat? No, no, my heart shall not break for such a goat-face!" So saying, as soon as they reached his palace, he put Renzolla into a kitchen, along with a chambermaid; and gave to each of them ten bundles of flax to spin, commanding them to have the thread ready at ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... village there once lived a man and his wife, and the wife was so idle that she would never work at anything; whatever her husband gave her to spin, she did not get done, and what she did spin she did not wind, but let it all remain entangled in a heap. If the man scolded her, she was always ready with her tongue, and said, "Well, how should I wind it, when I have no reel? Just you go into the forest and get me one." ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... I have heard, an ancient law, forbidding those, who followed any noisy handicraft, from living near literary men. Should not then musical composers, poor, and hard beset, and who, moreover, are forced to coin their inspiration into gold, to spin out the thread of life withal, be allowed to apply this law to themselves, and banish out of the neighbourhood all ballad-singers and bagpipers? What would a painter say, while transferring to his canvass a form of ideal beauty, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... converse with any, save as I shall tell thee presently: though now and again a man or a woman passed by; what they were I knew not, nor their whence and whither, but by seeing them I came to know that there were other folk in the world besides us two. Nought else I knew save how to spin, and to tend our goats and milk them, and to set snares for birds and small deer: though when I had caught them, it irked me sore to kill them, and I had let them go again had I not feared the carline. Every day early I was put forth from the house and garth, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... inner room to make it. She was afraid of him; afraid of what she might have to hear. She had the sense of things approaching, of separation, of the snapping of the tense thread of time that bound them for her moment. It was as if she could spin it out by interposing between the moment and its end ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... any such thing, and you know he wouldn't. He would yell Fire! Fire! with all his might. Not much rhyming for him just yet! Wait until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat while he ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... who was lazy and would not spin, and her mother could not persuade her to it, do what she would. At last the mother became angry and out of patience, and gave her a good beating, so that she cried out loudly. At that moment the Queen was going by; as she heard the crying, she stopped; ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Mother smiles (but not too brightly) - Doctor mumbles like a dumb thing - Nurse is busy mixing something. - Every symptom tends to show You're decidedly DE TROP - Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! he! ho! ho! Time's teetotum, If you spin it, Give its quotum Once a minute: I'll go bail You hit the nail, And if you fail ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... barley by the road Do hang upon the bough, O, A-pull'd by branches off the lwoad A-riden hwome to mow, O; While spiders roun' the flower-stalks Ha' cobwebs yet to spin, O, We'll cool ourzelves in out-door walks, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... they always do, and always must till the power of tailors shall have waned, and the daughters of Eve shall toil and spin no more? Like to like is true, and should be held to be true, of all societies and of all compacts for co-operation and mutual living. Here, where, if I may venture to say so, you and I are like to like;—for the new gloss of your coat;"—the dean, as it happened, had on at the moment a very old ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... delicate little girl, and had never associated much with the village children in their rude sports. Once, when her mother spent a week at Mrs. Murray's, assisting her to spin, she had taken Annie, and thus a friendship commenced between herself ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... something ten thousand miles away. I tell you I nearly jumped out of my skin with astonishment, thought there couldn't be two men with the same face and build, so smacked you on the back, discovered I was right, and here we are. Now spin your yarn. But stay, let's first find a more convenient place ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... exclaimed in accents of satisfaction, as he exhibited the balls to Dick. "These are the cocoons of a certain caterpillar, the name of which I forget, but they spin a kind of silk which is admirably adapted for the making of bowstrings, for it is incredibly strong, does not fray, and is not ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... of the tops with which the Chinese amuse themselves are as large as barrels. It takes three men to spin one, and it gives off a sound that may be heard several ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... as far as I have to go, Joan, and take it from me, I'm not keen for a prolonged trip. It's too much trouble to keep yourself alive to want to spin it out." ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... focus what she saw, everything began to whirl and to spin around her, to dance a wild and idiotic saraband, which caused her to laugh, and to laugh, until her throat felt choked and her eyes hot; after ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... keeper of the khan by the Capuchin monastery. My dear boys, he was only humbugging you. I saw the old rascal this very morning hauled up before the cadi, for being drunk and kicking up a row. He must be able to spin a fine yarn when he has a mind to. There are no pirates nowadays in the Mediterranean; and if we do come across any, I believe the Muscadine will be able to give a good account of them. Pirates! bless my soul, what a tremendous liar that old Turk must be! Those Greeks ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... my spinnin'-wheel, [Blessings on] O leeze me on my rock and reel; [distaff] Frae tap to tae that deeds me bien, [top to toe, clothes, comfortably] And haps me fiel and warm at e'en! [wraps, well] I'll set me down and sing and spin, While laigh descends the simmer sun, [low] Blest wi' content, and milk and meal— O leeze me ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... shall Rachel serve: and I'll work the cost of my keep and more, you shall see. I can spin with the best, and weave too; you'll never come short of linen nor linsey while I'm with you—and Lettice can run about and save steps to us all. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... manufacturer of machines to weave, to spin, to spool, and to wind the silk—was not sufficiently smitten to believe in the innocence of the dyer's wife, and swore a devilish hate against her. But some days afterwards, when he had recovered from his wetting in the dyer's drain he came up to sup with his old comrade. Then the dyer's wife ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... queer chap," Frank said, at the conclusion of one of French's stories of the grandeur of the coming empire, "and I'd like to hear you spin yarns all night, but, if you don't mind, I'll go ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of the field, They toil not neither do they spin; (So doth the ancient text begin,— Not of such rest as one of these Can share.) Another rest and ease Along each summer-sated path From its new lord the garden hath, Than that whose spring in blessings ran ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the bodily condition of thousands whose occupations confine them all day to sedentary work. Dependent upon no one but himself, the cyclist has his means of exercise always at hand. No preparation is necessary to take a spin of ten miles or so on the road, during a summer evening or ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... mercy spin the thread To weave injustice' loom? Wert then a father to conclude With dreadful ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... announced Jimsy, in his most pompous tones, "it would be impossible for you to guide her home this evening. Your nerves would not stand it. See, it's come out quite fine, now, after the storm, and Roy will spin you home in ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... Chief" (Colonel). But they found much to interest them in the Sioux camp, and at length, were rewarded by seeing the war chief come forth, mount his horse, and ride, with others, toward the Fort. Turning aside, at the racetrack, Belle and Jim saw Red Rover come forth for his morning spin. The Red men drifted to the starting point, and just as the racer went away an Indian boy on a buckskin broncho dashed alongside and kept there round the track. Whether it was a race or not no one could say, for each rider was jockeying, not willing to win or lose, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... those crowded rooms Of old yclept "The Argyle," Where to the deep Drum-polka's booms We hopped in standard style? Whither have danced those damsels now! Is Death the partner who doth moue Their wormy chaps and bare? Do their spectres spin like sparks within The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin To a ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... beginning to think that you were never going to ask me again, John; and, only I should punish myself, I would say you nay. There have you been, going out fishing every afternoon, and leaving me at home to spin; and it is all the worse because your mother has said that the time is fast coming when I must give up wandering about like a child, and must behave myself like ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... been in their hands from time immemorial. And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders, from the masses of flax or ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... America. On the other hand we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen imprisoned; and men, women, and children in promiscuous and unmerited misery—when we found all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was hardly twenty years old when I married her, and up to that time she had been subjected to an exacting surveillance; they had no desire that she should live, and she learned almost nothing. Was it not enough that one should find in her a woman who could spin the flax to make garments, and who had learned how to distribute duties to the slaves?" When her husband proposed that she become his assistant, she replied with great surprise, "In what can I aid you? Of what am I capable? My mother has always taught ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... is new, whilst old age is still straight shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon." —Juvenal, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... inward thoughts and woes Interpreting by Shapes and outward shews: { Where daily nearer me with magic Ties, { What time and where, (wove close with magic Ties Line over line, and thickning as they rise) The World her spidery threads on all sides spin Side answ'ring side with narrow interspace, My Faith (say I; I and my Faith are one) Hung, as a Mirror, there! And face to face (For nothing else there was between or near) One Sister Mirror hid the dreary Wall, { bright compeer But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... heights must be thy home. Thou sweetest lover! love shall climb to thee, Like incense curling some cathedral dome From many distant vales. Yet thou shalt be, O grand, sweet singer, to the end alone. But murmur not. The moon, the mighty spheres, Spin on alone through all the soundless years; Alone man comes on earth; he lives alone; Alone he turns to front the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... home he recovered his cheerfulness with an almost boyish resiliency. The flight of the car up the long hill which used to be such a terror to his sweating team, gave a satisfaction which broke out in speech. "It beats all how a motor can spin right along up a grade like this—and the flies can't sting it either," he added in remembering the tortured cattle of the past. When I told him of an invitation to attend a "Home Coming of Iowa Authors" which I was considering, he expressed his pleasure and urged me to accept. Des Moines ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... by no means a slave in the frontier household. She did not spin, or draw water, or tend the oven. Her mother-in-law, Madame Cadotte, had a hold on perennially destitute Chippewa women who could be made to work for longer or shorter periods in a Frenchman's kitchen or loom-house instead of with savage implements. Archange's bed had ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... resisted with difficulty and alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave. Love had never chosen a more appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly—perhaps human genius—was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... not point our love to earth's frail treasure, But to these lilies, beautiful and pure; They toil nor spin not, yet their life's full measure Thou metest, and their day ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... We toil, we spin, we delve the mine, Sustaining each his neighbor; And who can hold a right divine To rob us of our labor? We rush to battle—bear our lot In every ill and danger— And who shall make the peaceful cot To ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... a piece of counsel. You sit too close to your books. You read and read,—you spin yourself into your own views like a cocoon. Travel—hear what others say—above all, go into retreat! No one need know. It ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... French by 'In possession and out of possession.' Now, whatever right anybody may have to any property, if he be out of possession he is in a hobble; while he who happens to be in possession, let him be the biggest usurper in the world, may laugh at the other fellow, and spin the case out indefinitely. Now, here am I, for instance. Just fancy, the inheritance, the rich property, was almost in my hands; I hasten to the spot in order to enter into my rights, and I find that some one has been before me, and sits ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... if I'd come to say good-bye, and could stay only twenty-four hours? I should say she didn't. Kissed me, with her hand on my shoulder—glove off—and then said: "Want to spin round the Circle, Jack, before we go home? By that time ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... said the mother herself, "when I remember how we used to sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won't bring back those who sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and our goods get into each other's way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it in the back drawing-room and bring in your whole generation ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (and I think they will), that out of the offers which these sixteen deputies of the Netherlands are bringing me—and I believe it to be carte blanche—I shall be able to pay myself. 'Twill be better to come promptly to a good bargain and a brief conclusion, than to spin ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... curiosity; though a million times had it been done in the past ages, set the compass before us, having it from the Great Museum. But, as ever in that age, it did spin if we but stirred the needle, and would stop nowheres with surety, for the flow of the Earth-Current from the "Crack" beneath the Pyramid had a power to affect it away from the North, and to set it wandering. And this may seem very strange to this present Age; yet to that, it was most ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall. I have lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already past, and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the Slaves and drudges of the world! its inhabitants are a vast cotton-web of spin spin spinners. O the carking cares! O ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... themselves. I saw they were robbers, so I caught a few of them, and ate them of course, and then that scoundrel of a Noman, or Odysseus, whichever it is, gave me something to drink, with a drug in it; it tasted and smelt very good, but it was villanously heady stuff; it made everything spin round; even the cave seemed to be turning upside down, and I simply didn't know where I was; and finally I fell off to sleep. And then he sharpened that stake, and made it hot in the fire, and blinded me in my sleep; and blind I have been ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... armies drew nearer to each other, the princes began to spin the web of their treason; and for this purpose a messenger was sent by them to Tarik, informing him how Roderic, who had been a mere menial and servant to their father, had, after his death, usurped the throne; that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... it is customary for peasant girls to keep for themselves all the yarn they spin on St. Andrew's Eve, and the Hausfrau gives them also some flax and a little money. With this they buy coffee and other refreshments for the lads who come to visit the parlours where in the long winter evenings the women sit spinning. These evenings, when ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... untrue it was! He had not commenced this term as usual; how differently he had tried to commence it, only he and God knew. And now to fail thus early in the day! His head seemed to spin and his brain reel; he bowed himself on the seat again, but Bob's head went down promptly, and ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... though I found duly entered therein the usual brief, pithy, log-book entries of both actions with the Spanish ships, not a word was there which even remotely hinted at the existence of the treasure, or any record relating to it. And—not to spin out this portion of my yarn to an unnecessary length—I may as well say, in so many words, that when I had worked my way steadily through every relic left to us of Richard Saint Leger, until nothing remained ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... position to approach across the ravine. But this time, with a carry of some 160 yards ahead of me, I picked my mid-iron from the bag, took a three-quarter swing, bit a small divot from the turf as I went through, and landed the ball fairly on the green with a back-spin that held it as though I'd had a string tied to it. And when the others had climbed out of the ravine or otherwise reached the green I putted in my four. A par four, mind you, on a 420-yard hole that I'd never had better than ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... Ohio. The girl remained at the old homestead, keeping house for the only brother, and so well did she do the work, that he gave her a dollar a week for her services. This she used in buying books and clothes for school. Besides, she found opportunities to spin and weave for some of the neighbors, and thus added a little ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... minar-monument in the world, and ranks with the Taj Mahal at Agra as one of the beautiful architectural triumphs peculiar to the splendid era of Mohammedan rule in India, and which are not to be matched elsewhere. The day following my arrival I conclude to take a spin out on my bicycle as far as the Kootub, and see something of it, the ruins amid which it stands, and the Hindoos in holiday attire. I choose the comparative coolness of early morning for the ride out; but early though it be, the road thither is already swarming with gayly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... careful to put social service on its true basis. "One can spin," he says, "another can make shoes; and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all." In a later Lecture I shall revert to the charge ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... what a world it is— Where full-grown men cut capers in the German, Cotillion, waltz, or what you will, and whizz And spin and hop and sprawl about like mermen! I wonder if our future Grant or Sherman, As these youths pass their time, is passing his— If eagles ever come from painted eggs, Or deeds of arms succeed ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... had gone back to the lathe, and the pleasantly soothing whir of the wheels was heard again, while a fountain of the finest possible shavings began to spin in the air. For a few moments Dale watched him at his work. His gray hair flopped about queerly; he made rapid precise movements; and he talked as though he still had his eyes on one, although his back ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... radar was picking up. All I could see was the screen and the window; water lighted for about fifty feet in front and behind. I saw a cloud of screwfish pass over and around us, spinning rapidly as they swam as though on lengthwise axis—they always spin counterclockwise, never clockwise. A couple of funnelmouths were swimming after them, overtaking and ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... and with leisure, were then usually disposed, as on this occasion, to make fast their roaming thoughts by help of a good yarn, when it could be got. There were plenty of individuals, amongst a crew of forty, calculated by their experience, or else by their flow of spirits, and fancy, to spin it. Each watch into which they were divided had its especial story-teller, with whose merits it twitted the other, and on opportunity of a general reunion, they were pitted against one another like two fighting-cocks, or a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... open, save for the fact that his forefinger was crooked and thrust through the trigger-guard; then, with the slightest jerk of the wrist, the gun spun about, the handle jumped into his palm, and instantly there was a click as his thumb flipped the hammer. It was the old "road-agent spin," which Gale as a boy had practised hours at a time; but that this man was in earnest he showed by glancing upward sharply when ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... ugly word, Mr. Skinner. Please do not use it again to describe my legitimate business—and don't ask any sympathy of me. You two are old enough and experienced enough in the shipping game to spin your own tops. You didn't give me any the best of it; you crowded my hand and joggled my elbow, and it would have been the signal for a half holiday in the office if I had ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... anything—only sing. They sing so slowly that, although I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, I could almost sing and look out the words in the dictionary at the same time! I talk German with every one who will talk with me. So well did I spin yarns when I had been in the country three or four days, that with a mixture of Latin and German I managed to make a German use strong language at some of my tales, which he was pleased to think were not exactly true. Reflecting ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... many to be told just now,—trust me, and be sure you get everything as good as can be: and if, in the villainous state of modern trade, you cannot get it good at any price, buy its raw material, and set some of the poor women about you to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be trusted: and then, every day, make some little piece of useful clothing, sewn with your own fingers as strongly as it can be stitched; and embroider it or otherwise ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... it off the sheep's back. He will pay you for it, more or less, according to the amount of trouble you have taken with your sheep. This is the way the younger generation likes to treat its wool. If you are older, and are blessed with a wife able to card and spin, you deal differently with Mr. Quinn. For many evenings after the shearing your wife sits by the fireside with two carding-combs in her hands, and wipes off them wonderfully soft rolls of wool. Afterwards she fetches the great wheel from its ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... supplies—"Two eggs, pat of butter, and the 'Times'"—we inspect the Royal Engineers as they are engaged alongside at pontooning, and are frequently pulled up by the command of a smart sergeant—"Eyes—right," for they will take furtive glances at my dingey gyrating so as they had never seen boat spin round before. This comment on the dingey's shape was ventured, too, "It's for hall the world ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan of Arc she should be at home minding women's work, she answered there were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare gifts! When nature is "so careless of the single life," why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional importance? Suppose Shakespeare ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been thought that so important a physiological difference would not have arisen under domestication; but M. Robinet (8/74. Robinet ibid page 317.) states that, on the one hand, ordinary caterpillars occasionally spin their cocoons after only three moults, and, on the other hand, "presque toutes les races a trois mues, que nous avons experimentees, ont fait quatre mues a la seconde ou a la troisieme annee, ce qui semble prouver qu'il a suffi de les placer dans des conditions favorables pour ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... silk-worm, as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper; the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour! And I, when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... gun off the floor and came to one knee. He got off one shot as the elevator door was closing and saw the android spin away from the controls as the impact of the slug smashed ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman |
