"Touchstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctrine: [Greek text]. The breakfast is the [Greek text] of the great work of the day. Chocolate, coffee, tea, cream, eggs, ham, tongue, cold fowl, all these are good, and bespeak good knowledge in him who sets them forth: but the touchstone is fish: anchovy is the first step, prawns and shrimps the second; and I laud him who reaches even to these: potted char and lampreys are the third, and a fine stretch of progression; but lobster is, indeed, matter for a May morning, and demands a ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was deputy Grecian; and the same subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In him was disproved that ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... and take breath for a little ere I speak. For much and in many ways hath been said ere now; and the contriving of new things and putting them to the touchstone to be tried is ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... good time, sir, for a palpable Touchstone of truth and rightful vengeance too, Here ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and Glambe, professed themselves to be entirely satisfied as to their bona fides, and exhibited an eagerness to be of immediate service to the ladies in whatever capacity might be conceived. Mrs. Makebelieve instantly invoked the Pragmatic Sanction; she put the entire matter to the touchstone of absolute verity by demanding an advance of fifty pounds. Her mind reeled as she said the astounding amount, but her voice did not. A check was signed and a clerk dispatched, who returned with eight five-pound notes ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... forceth him, the dread Child of fore-scheming Woe! And help is vain; the fell desire within Is veiled not, but shineth bright like Sin: And as false gold will show Black where the touchstone trieth, so doth fade His honour in God's ordeal. Like a child, Forgetting all, he hath chased his winged bird, And planted amid his people a sharp thorn. And no God hears his prayer, or, have they heard, The man so ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... "is the touchstone of good breeding." Your good sense will teach you that it should vary in style with persons, times, places, and circumstances. You will meet an intimate friend with a hearty shake of the hand and an inquiry indicative ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants," or "merveilleux semblants," as Rutebeuf said, fill him with inextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the true source of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the main difference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs to the subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits, caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures and his precepts, so as ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... John Suckling Song, "Why so pale and wan, fond Lover" John Suckling Wishes to His Supposed Mistress Richard Crashaw Song, "Love in fantastic Triumph sate" Aphra Behn Les Amours Charles Cotton Rivals William Walsh I Lately Vowed, but 'Twas in Haste John Oldmixon The Touchstone Samuel Bishop Air, "I ne'er could any luster see" Richard Brinsley Sheridan "I Took a Hansom on Today" William Ernest Henley Da Capo Henry Cuyler Bunner Song Against Women Willard Huntington Wright Song of Thyrsis Philip Freneau The Test ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... (for empiricism is based on a necessity felt, rationalism on a necessity seen). And thus universal empiricism reveals itself as absolute scepticism. It is erroneous to attribute this in such an unqualified sense to Hume, * since he left at least one certain touchstone (which can only be found in a priori principles), although experience consists not only of feelings, but ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... touchstone of the men it has broken this war is judged, and the makers of this war. And more than ruined villages and desecrated churches these soldiers pronounce condemnation. They, who have given so much, are, in a sense, without joy and without enthusiasm; rather they shun recollection. There is no zest ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... the thick-skinned man, the man who has no sensitiveness, or who does not care for what others think of him. Nothing else so thoroughly discloses a man's weaknesses or shows up his limitations of thought, his poverty of speech, his narrow vocabulary. Nothing else is such a touchstone of the character and the extent of one's reading, the carefulness or ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to the cause of Labour led him to make the Factory Acts a touchstone of character. To the end of his days his view of public men was largely governed by the part which they had played in that great controversy. "Gladstone voted against me," was a stern sentence not seldom on his lips. "Bright was ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... even though he might be perverse in nature, he learns to be tractable, amiable, and patient, with much greater ease than he would have done by remaining in his own country. And in truth, he who desires to refine men in the life of the world need seek no other fire and no better touchstone than this, seeing that those who are rough by nature are made gentle, and the gentle become more gracious. Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina, painter of Florence, being nobler in blood than in nature, and very harsh and rough in his manners, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... Schell; "but the rest of the ticket will receive its warm and hearty support." Then he paused. Kelly, standing in the background of the little group, seemed to shrink from the next step. Regularity was the touchstone of Tammany's creed. Indifference to ways and means gave no offence, but disobedience to the will of a caucus or convention admitted of no forgiveness. Would Kelly himself be the first to commit this unpardonable sin? He could invoke no precedent to shield him. In 1847 the Wilmot Proviso ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... made two years previously when playing the part of Orlando in a production of "As You Like It" in Manchester, the Calvert Memorial performance; Miss Helen Faucit (Lady Martin), Rosalind; Herman Merivale, Touchstone; Tom Taylor, Adam; and other well-known celebrities assisting). Then he describes me: "A muffled creature of sinister aspect. Short, auburn-locked, extinguished by a portentous hat, tripping and stumbling over a cloak, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... reformation in the outward man of Davie Gellatley, who met them, every now and then stopping to admire the new suit which graced his person, in the same colours as formerly, but bedizened fine enough to have served Touchstone himself. He danced up with his usual ungainly frolics, first to the Baron and then to Rose, passing his hands over his clothes, crying, 'Bra', bra' Davie,' and scarce able to sing a bar to an end of his thousand-and-one songs for the breathless extravagance of his joy. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... gorgeous place-names such as Rosenberg, Blumenthal, Goldberg, Lilienfeld. The oriental fancy also showed itself in such names as Edelstein, jewel, Glueckstein, luck stone, Rubinstein, ruby, Goldenkranz, golden wreath, etc. [Footnote: Our Touchstone would seem also to be a nickname. The obituary of a Mr. Touchstone appeared in the Manchester Guardian, December 12, 1912.] It is owing to the existence of the last two groups that our fashionable intelligence is now often so suggestive of a wine-list. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... surrounding space should appear to change their positions, unless their distances were on a scale which, to the narrow ideas of the universe then prevailing, seemed altogether extravagant.[22] The existence of such apparent or "parallactic" displacements was accordingly regarded as the touchstone of the new views, and their detection became an object of earnest desire to those interested in maintaining them. Copernicus himself made the attempt; but with his "Triquetrum," a jointed wooden rule with the divisions marked in ink, constructed by himself,[23] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... doing that which would be honourable to their feelings, but might not accord with their condition, or might seem as the ostentatious display of unusual benevolence. Where men are congregated, conduct must be regulated by the touchstone of public opinion; and, although it is the fashion of New-York to applaud acts of charity, and to do them too in a particular manner—it is by no means usual to run to the assistance of a fellow creature who is lying in ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... 675; analysis &c. (investigation) 461; screen; trial, tentative method, ttonnement. verification, probation, experimentum crucis[Lat], proof, (demonstration) 478; criterion, diagnostic, test, probe, crucial test, acid test, litmus test. crucible, reagent, check, touchstone, pix[obs3]; assay, ordeal; ring; litmus paper, curcuma paper[obs3], turmeric paper; test tube; analytical instruments &c. 633. empiricism, rule of thumb. feeler; trial balloon, pilot balloon, messenger balloon; pilot engine; scout; straw to show the wind. speculation, random ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Others were there with him—town dandies and nobodies, young men who came there to get shaved or to drink a glass of whisky. And all of these he admired and sought to emulate. Clothes were the main touchstone. If men wore nice clothes and had rings and pins, whatever they did seemed appropriate. He wanted to be like them and to act like them, and so his experience of the more pointless ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... possess a clue to guide us on the dark and slippery way. That clue is action. While it is generally very difficult to ascertain what any man thinks, it is comparatively easy to ascertain what he does; and what a man does, not what he says, is the surest touchstone to his real belief. Hence when we attempt to study the religion of backward races, the ritual which they practise is generally a safer indication of their actual creed than the loudest profession ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the only touchstone of democratic sensitiveness. At Wellesley there has always been uneasiness at the hint of unequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membership in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... the Kazi and the King; and akin to this is the exploit of Temal Ramakistnan, the Madrasi Tyl Eulenspiegel and Scogin who by means of a lady saves his life from the Rajah and the High Priest. Mr. G. H. Damant (pp. 357-360 of the "Indian Antiquary" of 1873) relates the "Tale of the Touchstone," a legend of Dinahpur, wherein a woman "sells" her four admirers. In the Persian Tales ascribed to the Dervish "Mokles" (Mukhlis) of Isfahan, the lady Aruya tricks and exposes a Kazi, a doctor and a governor. Boccaccio (viii. 1) has the story of a lady who shut up her gallant in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... utterance? There is a passage in his "Bartholomew Fair" which I feel sure is meant as a skit upon the relations we find in the Sonnets. In Act V, scene iii, there is a puppet-show setting forth "the ancient modern history of Hero and Leander, otherwise called the Touchstone of true Love, with as true a trial of Friendship between Damon and Pythias, two faithful friends o' the Bankside." Hero is a "wench o' the Bankside," and Leander swims across the Thames to her. Damon and Pythias meet at her lodgings, and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... and examined it, weighed it, and submitted its metal to the test of the touchstone. It was a pretty thimble, though small, or it would not have fitted Adrienne's finger. This fact struck the woman of the shop, and she cast a suspicious glance at Adrienne's hand, the whiteness and size ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... signing a certain business document which gave her a handsome pecuniary interest in my success, if I became Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose. The chance of turning this mischievous morsel of paper to good account, in the capacity of a touchstone, was too tempting to be resisted. I asked my devout friend's permission to say one last word before I left ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... who preceded him. Bellini's, Auber's and Spontini's scores are thin compared with his; even Auber's grandest ensembles lack his sham magnificence. Wagner's artistic conscience had not ripened to the point at which conscience is an absolute, unfailing, unerring touchstone. He had been impressed with Meyerbeer's showiness and superficial sparkle: it had not yet occurred to him to test the music with the touchstone of truth. It is not at all hard for me to believe that he had at this time a sincere admiration for the Jewish autocrat of the opera ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... "conceptualism," and ready, like Protagoras, to show us how man is the measure of all things and how the individual is the measure of man. The ardour of his intellectual curiosity burns with a clear smokeless flame. He brings back to the touchstone of a sort of distinguished common sense, free from every species of superstition, all those great metaphysical and moral problems which have been too often monopolised by the acrid and technical ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... made to rise at once from the metaphysical to the positivist stage of intellectual development; metaphysical reasoning and romantic sentiment must be rigorously discarded; and everything must be brought to the touchstone ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... pathos—And unexpectedly answers drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of ice and wisdom, of problems solved. Where am I? Bizet makes me productive. Everything that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude for nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... your accounts over to free grace. And if you have any bands of apprehension in your death, recollect that your apprehensions are not canonical.' And the dying man answered: 'There is nothing that I have done that can stand the touchstone of God's justice. Christ is my ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... found, a very new mode of trial was instituted. The suspected or accused person was suspended by the neck until the process of strangulation was nearly completed. He was then let down, and if he was still pertinacious, the touchstone was again tried, until he either confessed or accused others. In other cases, it was ascertained what quantity of arms should be brought in by a certain village or district—if the full quantity could not be ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... poked it playfully under the arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get some braid. Beneath her ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the Revolution, but of an anxious woman concerned with the hardship and grime of our own day, "amid the dust and defilement of the city, on the highway, always in quest of lodgings, climbing to the fifth story, wounded on every angle." Only sympathy and a poetic touchstone could bring out the essence and sweetness of a nature so unhappily disguised; but Sainte-Beuve, discarding with a single gesture her penitential mask and hood, finds Madame Desbordes-Valmore "polished, gracious, and even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... *** So, Touchstone's philosophy hath legal warrant: "Is the single man blessed? No: as a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare brow of a bachelor."—As ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... be found. Why, in my professional career, I have so often seen the most wicked accusations burst like a soap-bubble when submitted to the touchstone of cross-examination, that now I believe nothing which I have not seen with my own eyes, or for which I have not proofs equal to ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... some of the most distinguished American and British historians would be even more calamitous than that of their Continental brethren. If the touchstone of impartiality were applied, Prescott might perhaps pass unscathed through the trial. But few will deny that Motley wrote his very attractive histories at a white heat of Republican and anti-Catholic fervour. He, as also ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Gentlemen of the Jury: If fidelity to duty involved no sacrifice of personal feeling, should we make it the touchstone of human character, value it as the most precious jewel in the crown of human virtues? I were less than a man, immeasurably less than a gentleman, were I capable of addressing you to-day, in obedience to the behests of justice, and in fulfilment of the stern requirements of my official position, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of King's meat, which is stationed, as in a citadel, to control and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work they have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition of public men to keep this corps together, and to act under it, or to co- operate with it, is a touchstone by which every Administration ought in future to be tried. There has not been one which has not sufficiently experienced the utter incompatibility of that faction with the public peace, and with all the ends of good Government; since, if they opposed it, they soon lost every power of serving ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... comparisons; but that the parallels they saw were commonly of the simplest, not to say of the most childish, cast. Every sentence of Meres' critical effort—or, to be rigorously exact, every sentence but one—is built on "as" and "so"; but it reads like a parody—a schoolmaster's parody—of Touchstone's improvement on Orlando's verses in praise of Rosalind. Shakespeare is brought into line with Ovid, Elizabeth with Achilles, and Homer with William Warner. This, no doubt, is an extreme instance; but it is typical of the artless methods dear to the infancy of criticism. In Jonson's Discoveries, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Prince; "therefore 'tis necessary to ascertain your veritable friends, to tear off the painted masks from those who, under pretence-of not daring to displease the King, are seeking to swim between two waters. 'Tis necessary to have a touchstone; to sign a declaration in such wise that you may know whom to trust, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... inclination: if you do not love me, I may have the less esteem of myself, but not of you: I am not of the number of those women that have the opinion of their persons Mr. Bayes had of his play, that 'tis the touchstone of sense, and they are to frame their judgment of people's understanding according to ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... of every observer; and let no one think that he knows Baudelaire when he has read the letters to Poulet-Malassis, the friend and publisher, to whom he showed his business side, or the letters to la Presidente, the touchstone of his spleen et ideal, his chief experiment in the higher sentiments. Some of his carefully hidden virtues peep out at moments, it is true, but nothing that everybody has not long been aware of. We hear of his ill-luck with money, with proof-sheets, with his own health. The tragedy ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... drama, and who is of a very different sort. Thersites sits with Caliban high among Shakespeare's minor triumphs. He was brought in to please the mob. He is the Fool of the piece, fulfilling the functions of Touchstone, and Launce, and Launcelot, and Costard. As the gravediggers were brought into "Hamlet" for the sake of the groundlings, so Thersites came into "Troilus and Cressida." As if that he might leave no form of human ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... name of Hamlet's mother, the Queen,) is the figure under which Ophelia is ridiculed in 'Eastward Hoe.' [48] The first is a girl of loosest manners. Her ambition torments her to marry a nobleman, in order to obtain a 'coach.' To her mother (Mrs. Touchstone) she incessantly speaks words of most shameless indecency, which cannot be repeated; more especially as regards her 'coach,' for which she asks ever and anon. A lackey, called Hamlet, must procure it to her. We will give some fragments ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... news both from choice and profession. He was able to give me a distinct account of what had passed in the House of Commons and House of Lords on the affair of Morris, which, it appears, had been made by both parties a touchstone to ascertain the temper of the Parliament. It appeared also, that, as I had learned from Andrew, by second hand, the ministry had proved too weak to support a story involving the character of men of rank and importance, and resting upon the credit of a person of such indifferent fame as Morris, who ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of God. Things flashed out at him that fairly dazzled his thoughts; living, palpitating things, as if they were hidden of a purpose to be discovered only by him who cared to search. Hidden truths came to light that filled his soul with wonder. Gradually he understood that Belief was the touchstone by which all these treasures were to be revealed. Everywhere he found it, that belief in Christ was a condition to all the blessings promised. He read of hearts hardened and eyes blinded because of unbelief, and came to see that unbelief was something a man was responsible ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... two dukes. Are they conventional characters, or do they have distinct personalities? Compare Touchstone with Wamba in Ivanhoe. ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... without comment, frequently without indicating whether or not the idea broached by others had already occurred to him. We who knew him best knew that often the idea had occurred to him and had been thought out more lucidly than any adviser could state it. But he would test his own views by the touchstone of other minds' reactions to the situations and problems which he was facing and would get the "slant" of ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... know, the egg or germ shows traces of structure in the case of the higher animals and plants; while even lowly forms of life exhibit more or less characteristic phases when they reach their adult stage. But, of life's beginnings, the microscope is as futile as a kind scientific touchstone for distinguishing animals from plants as is power of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... has here brought Mesmerism to the 'touchstone of truth,' to the test of the standard of right or wrong. We thank him for this first instalment of his inquiry, and hope that he will not long delay ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain, no longer ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... actually on the stage, all murders, battles, duels. It explains the magnificent largesse given by Shakespeare to the professional fool. Work had to be found for him, and Shakespeare, whose difficulties were stepping-stones to his triumphs, gave him Touchstone and Feste, the Porter in Macbeth and the Fool in Lear. Others met the problem in an attitude of frank despair. Not all great tragic writers can easily or gracefully wield the pen of comedy, and Marlowe in Dr. Faustus ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Queries, 3rd S. v. 33, is given the following title-page of one of his books: '[Greek: Pharmako-Basauos]: or the Touchstone of Medicines, etc. By Sir John Floyer of the City of Litchfield, Kt., M.D., of Queen's College, Oxford. London: Printed for Michael Johnson, Bookseller, and are to be sold at his shops at Litchfield and Uttoxiter, in Staffordshire; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... development of Mr Hardy's poetry was concealed or visible during the period of the novels, development there was into a maturity so overwhelming that by its touchstone the poetical work of his famous contemporaries appears singularly jejune and false. But, though by the accident of social conditions—for that Mr Hardy waited till 1898 to publish his first volume of poems is more a social than an artistic fact—it is impossible to follow ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... because they have not had the opportunity to sin. The opportunity, which makes the thief, is also the touchstone of women's virtue. Therefore, when this blessed opportunity presents itself, although it is said to be bald, they well know how to find other hairs on it by which they seize and do not let it ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... turn the pages, we come to one name which immediately if whimsically suggests poetry. The man was, like Touchstone's Audrey, not poetical and yet a great poet has been pleased to address him, very much as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Van Swieten was a hard and honest man, the touchstone opportunity came to him, and he did an act of heartless roguery. It seemed a safe one. It had hitherto proved a safe one, though he had never felt safe. To-day he had seen youth, enterprise, and, above all, knowledge, seated by fair Margaret and her ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... little or no value; but, by the common consent of mankind, is erected into a general arbitrator, to fix a value upon all others: a medium through which every thing passes: a balance by which they must be weighed: a touchstone to which they must be applied to find their worth: though we can neither eat nor drink it, we can neither eat nor drink without it.—He that has none best knows ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... general tenor of his life, which, but for that gross act of traitorous ingratitude, had been fair and honourable. But what of that? The hypocrite is a saint, and the false traitor a man of honour, till opportunity, that faithful touchstone, proves ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... himself. What was he to do? To be sure, he could imagine with tolerable distinctness the sensations to be experienced in such a crisis. He could have put them on paper with every appearance of realism. But he had no touchstone by which to test their truth. He might be unconsciously false to his art, to which he had vowed allegiance at such cost! ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... I could find that camera!" he cried. "It's the touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it's an accomplice who did this thing, he's ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous than Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other things of the same kind that we may find reproduced in the bas-reliefs. Unless we had thoroughly understood the system of which the sculptors made use, we should have been unable to base our restorations upon their works in any important degree; and, besides, if there be one touchstone more sure than another by which we may determine the plastic genius of a people, it is the ingenuity, or the want of it, shown in the contrivance of means to make lines represent the thickness of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... culmination of his career as a collector might have remained doubtful were it not for the cross in Fourth Avenue. When he found it, hardly a week before he met Miriam Trent, he naturally did not take it for a touchstone. That it was in a manner such, may be inferred from the fact that the anxious morning before the wedding, he stopped at Novelli's for a last look, a ceremony strangely parodying the bachelor supper of more ordinary bridegrooms. After a lingering survey of its deep translucent enamels penned within ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Well, this is the Forest of Arden. Touchstone. Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content. Rosalind. Ay, be so, good Touchstone. Look you, who comes here; a young man and an old, in solemn talk. As You Like ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... laughed at for the folly and impracticability of their attempts in 1715 and 1745. That they failed, I bless GOD; but cannot join in the ridicule against them. Who does not know that the abilities or defects of leaders and commanders are often hidden until put to the touchstone of exigency; and that there is a caprice of fortune, an omnipotence in particular accidents and conjunctures of circumstances, which exalt us as heroes, or brand us as madmen, just as they are for or ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of the title-pages of the time, "tragi-comedies." The low comedy interlude, on the other hand, was broadly comic. It was cunningly interwoven with the texture of the play, sometimes loosely, and by way of variety or relief, as in the episode of {115} Touchstone and Audrey, in As You Like It; sometimes closely, as in the case of Dogberry and Verges, in Much Ado about Nothing, where the blundering of the watch is made to bring about the denouement of the main action. The Merry Wives of Windsor is an ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... whom this volume will open out so fair a prospect that they will long to pass further, this "cluster of grapes" being one of the "lures immortal" for the rapidly increasing number of discriminating lovers of the high poetry that is the touchstone of beauty. The finest lyric work of our day needs no further introduction; the poet is his own best interpreter; but it may be added, in anticipation of adventitious criticism of the limitations of these examples, that the capacity ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... no Name too sweet to tell of her, For Love's sweet Sake and Domination. She hath me all; her Spell hath Power to stir My Heart to every Lust, and spur me on. Love saith: 'tis even thus; her Will no Thrall, But Touchstone of thy Worth in Love's Armure; They only conquer in Love's Lists that fall, And Wounds renewed for Wounds are captain Cure. He doubly is inslaved that gilts his Chain, Saith Reason, chaffering for his Empire gone, Bestir, and root the Canker ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... this point, to consider for a little what we mean when we use the term "dramatic." We shall probably not arrive at any definition which can be applied as an infallible touchstone to distinguish the dramatic from the undramatic. Perhaps, indeed, the upshot may rather be to place the student on his guard against troubling too much about the formal definitions of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... newly fallen; from whence I inferred that the horse had touched them, and that he must therefore be five feet high. As to his bit, it must be gold of twenty-three carats, for he had rubbed its bosses against a stone which I knew to be a touchstone, and which I have tried. In a word, from the marks made by his shoes on flints of another kind, I concluded that he was shod with ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... rest respectively on power, rivalry, and sympathetic interchange. Each may contribute to human welfare. On the other hand, each may be taken so abstractly as to threaten human values. I hope to point out that the greatest of these is cooperation, and that it is largely the touchstone ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... are three other characters, who serve to set off the main figure. Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben a touchstone. Eulalia and Luitolfo, though sufficiently worked out for their several purposes, are only sketches, the latter perhaps more distinctly outlined than the former, and serving admirably as a contrast to Chiappino. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... passed. One morning (it was a FETE, and we had the day to ourselves) Frances said to me, with a suddenness peculiar to her when she had been thinking long on a subject, and at last, having come to a conclusion, wished to test its soundness by the touchstone ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... "Victorians." The centenaries of Hawthorne and Longfellow and Whittier were celebrated at a period of comparative indifference to their significance. But if the present moment is still too near to Lowell's life-time to afford a desirable literary perspective, a moral touchstone of his worth is close at hand. In this hour of heightened national consciousness, when we are all absorbed with the part which the English-speaking races are playing in the service of the world, we may surely ask whether Lowell's mind kept faith with his blood and ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... ascertained the parsimony of the wealthy only through the medium of your own beggary; otherwise to him who lays covetousness aside the generous man and miser seem all one. The touchstone can prove which is pure gold, and the beggar can say which is the niggard." He said: "I speak of them from experience; for they station dependants by their doors, and plant surly porters at their gates, to deny admittance to the worthy, and to lay violent ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... . . . Pardon me, but a thoroughly virtuous or a thoroughly amiable man is not worth twopence as a touchstone for a creed; he would convert even Mormonism to a thing of beauty. . . . Whereas the real test of any religion is—as I saw it excellently well put the other day—'not what form it takes in a virtuous ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whatever is in store for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with the character of this term; so that our attitude even toward the unexpected is in a general sense defined. Take again the notion of immortality, which for common people seems to be the touchstone of every philosophic or religious creed: what is this but a way of saying that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of rationality? The wrath of science against miracles, of certain philosophers against the doctrine of free-will, has precisely the same root,—dislike ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... seventeen years old; the trusty soldier, Joutel, and the friar, Anastase Douay. Duhaut followed, a man of respectable birth and education; and Liotot, the surgeon of the party. At home, they might, perhaps, have lived and died with a fair repute; but the wilderness is a rude touchstone, which often reveals traits that would have lain buried and unsuspected in civilized life. The German Hiens, the ex-buccaneer, was also of the number. He had probably sailed with an English crew, for he was sometimes known as Gemme Anglais or "English Jem." ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... she answered with a jaunty affectation of amusement. "The Touchstone-Blatz people sent it back. The slip says its being returned does not imply any lack ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... something after the fashion of Touchstone," said Fleda, laughing; "he thinks, that 'in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is nought. In respect that it is solitary, he likes it very well; but in respect ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, child-like conscience. The two old, lonely Quakers rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North at last, she makes her own religion one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above, all forms, the dove floats at last ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the same way, they are true physiological species. The test would be an admirable one, if, in the first place, it were always practicable to apply it, and if, in the second, it always yielded results susceptible of a definite interpretation. Unfortunately, in the great majority of cases, this touchstone for ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... was the theme of general admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty minutes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-and-twenty minutes to three. The Baby's head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for every description of matter,—animal, vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that didn't come, at some time or other, into close ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... it—she did not want to go. The attraction that held her was as yet too intangible to be definitely analyzed, but she could not deny its existence. She did not love the man—oh, surely she did not love him—for she did not want to marry him. She brought her feelings to that touchstone and it seemed that they were able to withstand the test. But neither did she want to cut herself finally adrift from all chance of contact with him. It would hurt her to go. Probably—almost certainly—she would wish ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... follow. She must not be too sure; she must go carefully. But all the same she would win. She was Sally. She was going to get on. She was going to be cautious. She was going to be secure. That was her touchstone—security. Without it, she would never know peace. At all costs, security. That meant keeping cool. That meant watching your step. And in the end it meant making money, and having enough to eat, and nice clothes, and pleasures, and all that she had never yet had. Into the eyes that had been brimming ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and daughter, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... ease and facility that try men and bring out the good that is in them, so much as trial and difficulty. Adversity is the touchstone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odor, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Hence trials often unmask virtues and bring to ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... shadow had clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human relation. And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of impressions, her secret doubts ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... carrying-out an enterprise attempted by a good many people, from Smerdis to Perkin Warbeck, namely, the personation of Royalty. Something similar, you see, even apart from the fact that neither of us found any truth in Touchstone's statement, that "there is ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Lady Touchstone. I was at school with her niece. They live at Bell Hammer, a beautiful place about five miles from here. You're included, of course. I saw her last week, so she knows all about you. It's because of her niece's birthday. Only about eight couples, she ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... sensitive, to the soft moonlit atmosphere of the "Midsummernight's Dream," to the tender gloom of "Cymbeline," to the "philosophic poetry" of "As You Like It." Some of his interpretations of isolated passages are hardly to be surpassed. He comments minutely and exquisitely on what he considers to be a touchstone of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... prosperity of the company nor any particular type or system furnishes an index to proper management, what then is the touchstone which indicates good or ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... thinking about Dick Marston," he said. "After the way he was generally regarded at home, it was strange to hear that Canadian's opinions; but I've a notion that this country's a pretty severe touchstone. I mean that the sort of qualities that make one popular in England may not prove ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... uncle denies him what he asks and requests; and he says: "Fair Sire, it becomes me not, nor am I brave or wise enough to be given this partnership with you or with another so as to rule an empire; very young am I and know but little. For this reason is gold applied to the touchstone because one wishes to know if it is real gold. So wish I—that is the end and sum of it—to assay and prove myself where I think to find the touchstone. In Britain if I am valiant I shall be able to put myself to the touch with the Whetstone; and with the true ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... heart's desire? Is power thy climbing aim? Is love thy folly's fire? Is wealth thy restless game? Pride, power, love, wealth and all, Time's touchstone shall destroy, And, like base coin, prove ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... house of care, A place where none can thrive, A touchstone true to try a friend, A grave for one alive. Sometimes a place of right, Sometimes a place of wrong, Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves, And honest men among. Inscription on ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who draws out all the alloy in ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... stated to the reader, but it must be clearly stated by the writer for his own guidance. It is, however, usually announced at the opening of the essay. Whether announced or not, it is most essential to the success of the essay. It is the touchstone by which the author tries all the material which he has collected. Not everything on the subject of patriotism should be admitted to an essay that has for its theme, "A real partisan cannot be a true patriot." It would save many a ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... seems to have risen from the writing of this play, certain that poetry is not given to the trained mind, nor to the untrained mind, but to the quick and noble nature, earnest with the passion which stands the touchstone of death. "Subtlety," so Cromwell wrote, "may deceive you, integrity never will." The mind is her own armour. She will not fail for the want of a little learning or a ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... so firmly adhere to them, yet are they bad laws notwithstanding, what penalties then do they deserve to undergo who do not observe their own laws, which they esteem so far superior to them? Whereas, therefore, length of time is esteemed to be the truest touchstone in all cases, I would make that a testimonial of the excellency of our laws, and of that belief thereby delivered to us concerning God. For as there hath been a very long time for this comparison, if any ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is not incapable of serving as a stone ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... his hand was cold, while the works of many ordinary legislators have attained to a perpetuity denied to the statutes of Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is not the test of merit in human institutions. Tried by the only touchstone applicable to governments, their capacity to insure the highest welfare of the governed, we shall not find his polity deserving of much admiration. It is not merely that he was a despot by birth and inclination, nor that he naturally substituted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prominent in myself, overrated both the power and the integrity of my mind (for the one is bootless without the other,) neither I nor the world can yet tell. "Time," says one of the fathers, "is the only touchstone which distinguishes the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truly said that we judge our neighbors severely by the breach of written or traditional laws, and choose our society, and even our friends, by the touchstone of courtesy. It is not an uncommon occurrence for a girl or a boy to win an advantageous position in life, not by superior mental or physical endowments but by a graciousness of manners that have smoothed for them the ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... typical visions, the anticipation of a restless impatience which yearned for the touchstone of sober experience, to-day they are the re-creation of memory, and a rehearsal of all those circumstances that have made sober experience ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Touchstone, with unfailing loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk into exile. When all, even his daughters, had forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak; and when in our day we meet the avatars of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... to look upon writing as an art, rather than a business? Oh, you silly little man, the touchstone of any artist is the skill with which he adapts his craftsmanship to his art's limitations. He will not attempt to paint a sound or to sculpture a colour, because he knows that painting and sculpture have their limitations, and he, quite ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... others, and not of the unfortunate person himself. Besides this negative merit, the doctor had one positive recommendation;—this was a great appearance of religion. Whether his religion was real, or consisted only in appearance, I shall not presume to say, as I am not possessed of any touchstone which can distinguish the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'—That is a proposition with which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in these lines ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the sacrifice the most awful that the human eye can contemplate or the imagination with all its efforts invent. "The drum," says a French moralist, "is the music of battle, because it deadens thought." But in modern warfare the faculties are awake. Solitude is the touchstone of valour, and the modern soldier cast in upon himself, undazzled, unblinded, faces death singly. Fighting for ideal ends, he dies for men and things that are not yet; he dies, knowing in his heart that they may never be at all. Courage and self-renunciation ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... We see the great pursuit of it on every side, and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a Finding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding God from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he, and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive mysterious unseen ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... it had lovely lawns, and amongst them running water. This choicest place of earth filled him with wonder. There was a tree such as he had never seen before; its branches were alike, but it bore flowers and fruit of a thousand kinds. Near it a reservoir had been fashioned of four sorts of stone—touchstone, pure stone, marble, and loadstone. In and out of it flowed water like attar. The prince felt sure this must be the place of the Simurgh; he dismounted, turned his horse loose to graze, ate some of the food Jamila had given him, drank of ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... read, not the best only, but the poorest, thinking, perhaps, as good a lesson as could come to the careless or the incapable would come from that sure touchstone of the value ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... "we set good breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice. We would have it ever present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the central faith in which they should live and move and have their being, as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or evil according as they make for good ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... branches crossed over the path at the height of five feet, and as leaves had been broken off, the observer had decided that the horse was just five feet high. As to the bit, this must be of gold, since the horse had rubbed it against a stone, which Zadig had recognized as a touchstone and on which he had assayed the trace of precious metal. And from the marks left by the horse's shoes on another kind of stone Zadig had felt certain that they were made of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... for their own advantage regulated, &c. 3. Not absolute, and infallible; but limited and fallible: any synod or council may err, being constituted of men that are weak, frail, ignorant in part, &c., and therefore all their decrees and determinations are to be examined by the touchstone of the Scriptures, nor are they further to be embraced, or counted obligatory, than they are consonant thereunto, Isa. viii. 20. Hence there is liberty of appeal, as from congregational elderships to the classical presbytery, and from thence to the provincial synod, so from the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... is found waiting upon God, is the thriving one; the best way to be assured of our election is to examine our state with the touchstone of truth, the Scriptures. The elect of God know Christ savingly, esteem him precious, and obey him cheerfully from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was moved to emulate the simple grandeur of that poem, for he often repeated it in those days, and somewhat later we find it copied into his notebook in full. It would seem to have become to him a sort of literary touchstone; and in some measure it may be regarded as accountable for the fact that in the fullness of time "he made use of the purest English of any modern writer." These are Goodman's words, though William Dean Howells has said them, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it was found to amount to the amazing sum of six hundred millions of maravedies, or more than 4,500,000 livres. It is true that the proof or essay of this gold was made hurriedly, and only by means of the touchstone, as they had no aqua fortis to conduct the process in a more exact manner. It afterwards appeared that this gold had been estimated two or three carats below its real value; so that the whole amount ought to have been reckoned at seven millions of maravedies, or 5,250,000 livres. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... in a duel, I declare; died fighting for his principles, if the truth were known! I shall have a double respect for his opinion, for this is the touchstone of a man's honesty. Mr. Sharp, let us take a glass of Geissenheimer to his memory; we might honour ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... "blushing sixteen" in dainty boots and white muslin. There, too, we met a match for sighing Orlando,—mirrored in the water; there, too, some diluted Jaques may have "moralized" the excursion for next day's "Courier," and some lout of a Touchstone (there are always such in picnics) passed the ices, made poor puns, and won more than his share ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... gestures, his idiotic figure. Get up, dress, to what end?... He tried desperately to work: it made him sick. What was the good of creation, when everything ends in nothing? Music had become impossible for Mm. Art—(and everything else)—can only be rightly judged in unhappiness. Unhappiness is the touchstone. Only then do we know those who can stride across the ages, those who are stronger than death. Very few bear the test. In unhappiness we are struck by the mediocrity of certain souls upon whom we had counted—(and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... surroundings. Those of them who were amateurs were too artistic to be stagey, and those who were actors too experienced to be artificial. The humorous sadness of Jaques, that philosopher in search of sensation, found a perfect exponent in Mr. Hermann Vezin. Touchstone has been so often acted as a low comedy part that Mr. Elliott's rendering of the swift sententious fool was a welcome change, and a more graceful and winning Phebe than Mrs. Plowden, a more tender Celia than Miss Schletter, a more realistic Audrey than Miss Fulton, I have ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... would be removed if there were an appearance of more equality," wrote the Regent to Dubois on the 24th of January, 1718. "I am quite aware that my personal interest does not suffer from this inequality, and that it is a species of touchstone for discovering my friends as well at home as abroad. But I am Regent of France, and I ought to so behave myself that none may be able to reproach me with having thought of nothing but myself. I also owe some consideration ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ideal in our minds with which to test all realities. But it is equally true, and less noted, that we need a reality with which to test ideals. Thus I have selected Mrs. Buttons, a charwoman in Battersea, as the touchstone of all modern theories about the mass of women. Her name is not Buttons; she is not in the least a contemptible nor entirely a comic figure. She has a powerful stoop and an ugly, attractive face, a little like that of Huxley—without the whiskers, of course. The courage with which she supports ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... see this famous Sicilian coiner,' he said, rubbing his hands and screwing up his little red eyes. 'Bring up his effects, too, and send for a goldsmith with his touchstone and acids.' ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... took up the management of her Inn with renewed vigor. She had found her touchstone. The flower of love, which she had scarcely understood to be indigenous to the soil of her own practical little garden, had suddenly lifted up its head there in fragrant, radiant bloom. She was so happy that she was impatient of all the inadequate, inefficient manipulation ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... anything but English; while it is quite rare for Germans in England, America, or France to take any pride in their blood. The second generation constantly denies it, changes its name, assures you it knows nothing of Germany. They have not the spirit of a Touchstone, and in so far they do their country ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... its faulty characters; in a word, weighing in the critical scales the nonsense of the poet. Parody sometimes became a refined instructor for the public, whose discernment is often blinded by party or prejudice. But it was, too, a severe touchstone for genius: Racine, some say, smiled, others say he did not, when he witnessed Harlequin, in the language of Titus to Berenice, declaiming on some ludicrous affair to Columbine; La Motte was very sore, and Voltaire, and others, shrunk away with a cry—from a parody! Voltaire was angry ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli |
