"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the wall. A cry burst from the man's lips and a deep groan from those of his comrades below as he fell with a jerk which sent him half-way up to the parapet again, and then after dancing like a child's toy swung slowly backward and forward with limp ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it now in earnest, Because I toy'd too freely with the thought! Accursed he who dallies with a devil! And must I—I must realize it now— Now, while I have the power, it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the mighty ship, and as some fragile toy it twisted and bent, and yet was not hurt. In awful wonder those Outsiders saw the ship turned inside out, and yet it was whole, and no part damaged. They saw the ship restored, and its great screen ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... over in form, and their chiefs—for they had chiefs—gave the order to form into half sections, then to march in the direction of Charenton; a mite of a child trudged before, blowing in a penny trumpet bought at a toy-shop, and they had a cantiniere, a little girl of six. Soon, they met another troop of children of about the same numbers. Had the encounter been previously arranged? Had it been decided that they ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend or a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... portion of its trunk. Decay set in. A huge cavity gradually appeared, betokening vital injuries. The soft though tough wood does not patiently endure the annihilating fret of time. Far up in a recess of this cavity a toy boomerang was found, placed there by some provident but forgetful piccaninny. At the date of the discovery of the missile the age of the resident blacks had passed away; but still the tree stood, stout of limb, while the encompassing ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... fought and races run, had shrunk into ridiculously small dimensions. The fine residences, Broomhall, Fordell, and especially the conservatories at Donibristle, fell one after the other into the petty and insignificant. What I felt on a later occasion on a visit to Japan, with its small toy houses, was something like a repetition of the impression my old home ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... failures. Had the world of 1850, by some wave of impulse, placed all its resources in the hands of the ablest scientific man alive, and asked him to produce a practicable paying electric vehicle before 1852, at best he would have produced some clumsy, curious toy, more probably he would have failed altogether; and, similarly, if the whole population of the world came to the present writer and promised meekly to do whatever it was told, we should find ourselves still very largely ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... very amusing. Uncle Steve presented each child with a Noah's Ark. These were of the toy variety usually seen, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... of white marble, highly polished and perfectly carved to imitate a tiny Bible. A pretty toy it is to other eyes; but to mine it is infinitely pathetic, and goes well with another toy in my possession, a far older one, which ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... and through the tears came laughter, and she held the toy out for her father and mother to take and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... he's awful nice!" exclaimed Flossie. "He's just as gentle, and he's soft, like the little toy lamb I ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... been pulled out. And they said, "Oh, fie, fie on us! Both Partha and Krishna have gone, in the very sight of all the Kshatriyas, riding on the same car, and clad in mail, and slaughtering our troops with as much ease as boys sporting with a toy. Indeed, those scorchers of foes have gone away in the very sight of all the kings displaying the prowess and unimpeded by our shouting and struggling combatants." Seeing them gone away, other warriors ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... matter how men talk of 'Revolution,' any and every form of government is bound to run on the old eternal lines, whether it be Imperial, Socialistic or Republican. Men are always the same children—never satisfied,—ever clamouring for change,—tired of one toy and crying for another,—so on and on,—till the end! I would rather save a life"—and she glanced pityingly down upon the sleeping infant she ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... which formed apparently part of the casing of one of the wheels. "I must insist upon seeing the linings of your pockets; and I need hardly warn you that it will be extremely undesirable for you to make any movement liable to misconstruction. This toy"—he lifted his pistol—"has a very delicate touch. Now, gentlemen. One at a time, please, and do not wait to discuss the question of precedence. I am quite willing to overlook any ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Japanese toy in her arms, and crouched down in the grass. But the trotting came nearer. Then Violet knew it was more ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... girl was torn with jealousy and spent much time thinking about how she might win her husband again. So she asked the ring for a toy in the form of a beautiful little ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... door her cab was still waiting, and she gave the driver the name of the toy shop at which she intended to buy presents for Lucy's stepchildren. Though her heart was breaking within her, there was no impatience in her manner when she was obliged to wait some time before she could find the particular sort of doll for which Lucy had written; and she ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its circus—in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the whole Roman Empire. It was a toy, a plaything, a show-box, in which the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity—the moral of the maxim, that under the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... in ecstasies. She seized Vetranio's cheeks between her rosy little fingers, kissed him as enthusiastically as a child kisses a new toy, and darted gaily off to prepare ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... finished measuring, a small boy, dressed in a Fauntleroy velvet suit, with an enormous collar and a flap cap, ran noisily into the shop, dragging a toy train at his heels. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... very selfish. Those things are all right. Come on and let's go in the toy department. The doll is the most important of all, and don't dolls have carriages or something? Here, this way ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... know her well, Of lover's vows she hath no care, And little good a man can tell Of one so cruel and so fair. True love is but a woman's toy, They never know the lover's pain, And I who loved as loves a boy Must love in vain, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... highness. Orders are toys for grown-up children. But you are a great man, and a toy for you must have some scientific significance. My emperor has heard that your highness has a costly collection of minerals and precious stones. His majesty, therefore, with his own hand has selected the specimens which I have the honor to present ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... playful, he would rise with a rush at anything breaking the sheen of his roof, slap it with his tail, then seize it between his hard lips and carry it down with him, only to drop it a moment later as a child might drop a toy. Once in awhile, either in hunger or in sport, he would rise swiftly at the claws or wing-tips of a dipping swallow; but he never managed to catch the nimble bird. Had he, by any chance, succeeded, he would probably have ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not without success, to augment, if that was possible, the detestation which the court, the aristocracy, and the whole Austrian people felt for France and French ideas. When Marie Louise was a child, and with her little brothers and sisters used to play with toy-soldiers, the ugliest, blackest, and most repulsive of them was always picked out and called Bonaparte, and this one they used to prick with pins and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... a neuvaine[3147] was held in Saint Francois-de-Paule to pray God to enlighten the French." A counter-revolution is certainly under way. Some of the aristocrats have stated "with an air of triumph, that the National Guard and municipalities are a mere toy, and that this sort of thing will not last long." One of the leading members of the new club, M. de Guiraitiand, an old officer of seventy-eight years, makes speeches in public against the National Assembly, tries to enlist artisans in his party, "affects to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled river on whose curved bank rose messages of light concerning ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... best plan? To attempt gradually to inure him—or to guard him absolutely from contact with picture, stuffed specimen, model, toy, and the real thing, wild or captive, as one would guard him against ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... hasty observer printing seems the simplest of arts or crafts. The small boy who has been taught to spell can readily arrange lettered blocks of wood in readable words, and that arrangement is rated by many as the great feature of printing. With his toy printing-press he can stamp paper upon inked type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. The elementary processes of printing are indeed so simple that they might have justified Dogberry in adding typography to the accomplishments of the "reading ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Petrokoff. He twirled his mustache fiercely. "The Russians are like children, they run after every new plaything. The Pole is a new plaything, a toy—bah! I have been before the public twenty-five years. I am an artist; I am one ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... that was the delight of our city-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds from depredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care the slenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned and watered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toy would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray cat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on the gravel walk, were punishable offences. No room ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... violet eyes looked, and her bloom A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens, And round her limbs, mature in womanhood; And slender was her hand and small her shape; And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn, She might have seemed a toy to trifle with, And pass and care no more. But while he gazed The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy, As though it were the beauty of her soul: For as the base man, judging of the good, Puts his own baseness in him by default Of will ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... be on any bargain day. I've got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man, anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to be able to do something more than make a noise like a toy bank." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... d'Ulm, which starts from the Place du Pantheon, and finishes abruptly at the Rue des Feuillantines. The shops are unassuming, and so few that one can easily count them. There is a wine-shop on the left-hand side, at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade; then a little toy-shop, then a washerwoman's and then a book-binder's establishment; while on the right-hand you will find the office of the Bulletin, with a locksmith's, a fruiterer's, and a baker's—that is all. Along ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that by his own only folly, and that against caution, and counsel, and reason to the contrary, he hath brought himself into extreme distress and misery. But how much more will it make this fire burn when he shall see all this is come upon him for a toy, for a bauble, for a thing that is worse ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... just catch a glimpse as it whisks by, and you know it is beautiful. It's all settled. My essay is going to be called The Rose of Joy. I've just decided. It hasn't any beginning, nor any middle, but there will be a thrilling ending, something like this: let me see; joy, boy, toy, ahoy, decoy, alloy:— ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... hunded dollars, an' I gotta sign it vit my own hand, and I tell you it gives me de cramps to sign so much money all de time, but I do it, and you see all dem rings and ribbons and veils and tings vot she buys vit de money, she looks like a jeweler's shop and a toy-store all rolled into vun ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... really desired to take her life, and imagined that she had irrevocably decided on the step. So, obtaining some poison, she poured it into a glass, and in another instant would have drunk it, had not her sister's little son of five at that very moment run in to show her a toy his grandmother had given him. She caressed the child, and, suddenly stopping short, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... tippet bound about his head; While she came after in a gown of red, And Simkin wore his long hose of the same. There durst no wight address her but as dame: None was so bold that passed along the way Who with her durst once toy or jesting play, Unless he wished the sudden loss of life Before Disdainful Simkin's sword or knife. (For jealous folk most fierce and perilous grow; And this they always wish their wives to know.) But since that to broad jokes she'd no dislike ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... spring are more tenderly green or in more ceaseless motion at the lightest breeze. Privet makes the last and least esteemed of these "one-tree" hedges. Yet it is the most tractable of all hedge material, and was almost invariably used to form the intricate "mazes," once a favourite toy of ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... they were several hundred feet above the earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... articles for their comfort made, but toys for the children. Many a man, in the intervals of shoveling snow, at which each man took his turn, called up the resources of boyhood, and whittled precious things out of wood; a whistle and a toy sled for the boy; a cradle made of a cigar box, with rockers nailed on with pins, for the girl, and fitted with bedding from her mother's sheet by Ethel, with a piece of the shoulder shawl ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... 'Rose Mallett is always trying to give me pleasure,' and her tone, her glance at Rose, startled Henrietta as much as if the little thin hand outside the coverlet had suddenly produced a glittering toy which had its uses as a dagger. She, too, looked at Rose, but Rose was talking to the dog and it was then that Henrietta became really aware of the cat. It was certainly listening; it had stretched out its fore-paws and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... concealed about the apartment. The yellow pumpkins counted five and the green two points. At the end of the search a small pumpkin scooped out, and filled with small maple sugar hearts, was presented to the guest having the highest score, and a toy book of, "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" was awarded to the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... the world mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... up. Had there been a moment's time he would have dug a hole in the sand with his hands and buried his treasure. It was only a toy of wood, but he loved it, as one of necessity loves what has been born of him, whether of the flesh or spirit. When cold eyes have looked at it, the feathers are rubbed off our ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... thence winding round into a clear space of greensward, which they completely enclosed. On this isolated and mewed- up bit of lawn stood a timber-built cottage, having ornamental barge-boards, balconettes, and porch. It was an erection interesting enough as an experiment, and grand as a toy, but as ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... counteract these plots, by petitioning the king, till a good while after the departure of Mucrob Khan, as my enemies were very numerous, though they had received many presents from me. When I saw a convenient time, I resolved to petition the king again, having in the mean time found a fit toy to present, as the custom is, for no man who makes a petition must come empty handed. On presenting this petition, the king immediately granted my request, commanding the vizier to make me out another commission or licence in as ample form as before, and expressly commanded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... my senses cleared. My dive from the Cometara carried me in a slow arc some three hundred feet away. There had been a sense of falling, but no actual fall. My velocity was retarded, with the mass of the Cometara pulling at me. I went like a toy boat in water shoved by a child, quickly slowing. In a few moments, the velocity was gone, and I hung poised. I saw Grantline's bloated form not over fifty feet from me. He waved ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... Carraway. "In fact, I will say positively that the man who made our new frying-pan made it to fry things in, and not to be used in connection with a tack-hammer as a dinner-gong. I know that the hardware people who manufactured our clothes-boiler, down in the laundry, did not design it as a toy bass-drum for the children to bang on on the morning of the Fourth of July. I would make a solemn affidavit to the fact that the maker of a baby-carriage never dreamed of its possible use as an impromptu toboggan for a couple of small boys to coast downhill on in midsummer. Yet these ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... to toy with Diamond, giving him several little pat-like blows on the breast and in the ribs. When the Virginian felt that he had Frank cornered he was astonished to see Merriwell slip under his arm and come up ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... Liveried lackeys may jeer aside, Though the peasant girl is their master's bride, At her shyness, mingled with awkward pride,— 'Twere folly for trifles like these to fret; But the love of one that I cannot love, Will it last when the gloss of his toy is gone? Is there naught beyond, below, or above? (The ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... regret the disuse of that custom, because it put an end to one way of distinguishing those who had, from those who had not, been used to good society. To wear the sword easily was an art which, like swimming and skating, required to be learned in youth. Children could practise it early with their toy swords adapted ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... he was not to associate with that saucy Cattarina? He had seen my Lord March driving her about in his lordship's phaeton. Harry thought there was no harm in giving her his arm, and parading openly with her in the public walks. She took a fancy to a trinket at the toy-shop; and, as his pockets were full of money, he was delighted to make her a present of the locket, which she coveted. The next day it was a piece of lace: again Harry gratified her. The next day it was something else: there was no end to Madame ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of the most marvellous voices in the world, deep with a depth of old and vanished ages, heavy with the burden of all the long-dead years, and this evening it seemed suddenly to strike away a veil from Catherine's husband. She was leaning her arms on the painted railing and searching the toy city with her happy eyes. Mark, standing behind her, was solicitously winding a shawl round her to protect her from the chill that falls from the Sierra Nevada with the dropping downward of the sun. As the bell tolled, Catherine ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... varieties of the dog are classified in the order of (1) Non-Sporting and Utility breeds, (2) Hounds, Gundogs and other Sporting breeds, (3) the Terriers, (4) Toy and Miniature breeds. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, lights, and pictures, have raised the character of the instrument from that of a mere toy to an apparatus of the highest utility. By its employment the most wonderful forms of creation, invisible, perhaps, to the eye, are not only revealed but reproduced in gigantic proportions, with all the marvelous truth of nature ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... toy is used for a superstitious purpose, it is, so far, churinga, and, so far, modern Aberdeenshire had the same churinga irula as the Arunta. The object ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... set about the Green like those in a toy village. They are of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep-toned red, and tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves. Diamond-paned windows, half open, admit the sweet summer air; and as for the gardens in front, it would seem ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... motionless, with eyes riveted on the door, the pause that followed lengthened interminably. It seemed as if that low, stealthy, sibilant whispering was going on forever. Mrs. Archer held her little pearl-handled toy with a spasmodic grip which brought out a row of dots across her delicate knuckles, rivaling her face in whiteness. Mary Thorne's gray eyes, dilated with emotion, stood out against her pallor like deep wells of black. One clenched hand ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... persons. Instead, every man, woman, and child had his own stand, or bit of cloth or cobblestone on which to spread a few scanty, bedraggled wares. Such a mass of silly, useless, pathetic articles, toy jars, old bottles, anything that could be found in all the dump-heaps of Christendom. The covered market housed only a very small percentage of the whole. There was a constant, multicolored going and coming, with many laden asses and miserable, gaunt creatures bent nearly double ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the second shot, however, these unleashed searchlights slashed the dark through and through with their great, white, fanlike blades, till first one then the other picked up and steadied relentlessly upon a toy-boat shape that swam the swells about midway between the Assyrian and the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food and rest as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... together, Mary with a basket in her hand, which was replenished at the toy-shop in Minster Street with two china-faced dolls, and, a little farther on, parted with a couple of rolls, interspersed with strata of cold beef and butter, to a household of convalescents in the stage for ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pigs came to market on their own legs, and very long, feeble legs they were, for a more unsightly beast than a Breton pig was never seen out of a toy Noah's ark. Tall, thin, high-backed, and sharp-nosed, these porcine [Footnote: Porcine: relating to swine; hoglike.] victims tottered to their doom, with dismal wailings, and not a vestige of spirit till the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of fine names, and together they read them, the white cat sitting and eagerly watching them for a time, and then playing on the lawn with a ball that was her own especial toy. At last after reading the list of imposing names again and again, they decided that, after all, Beauty ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... railway fare following us about, and who almost bought you a watch in Geneva, really disappoints me. His persistence had actually compelled my admiration. For a glass-blower he was fairly decent, though, and better than a lot of these little toy men ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... shore. Go forth now! Be it into some other life: the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt rest from the beating of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this way and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the intellect, from thy toilsome ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... cried Chokie, sitting on the floor with his treasures. "Don't tome here, Lill; my dod will bite!" He made the little toy squeak violently. "He barks at folks doin' to ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet- -almost a lazy—air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little man who ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... thoughts!' She said this with an emphasis that assured me of its truth. 'A mere life of fashionable pleasure is a great exhauster of resources. One tires of this excitement and of that, pushing them aside, as a child does an old or broken toy, to grasp after something new. It is not surprising, therefore, that mere pleasure-seeking women forget at times the just proprieties of life, and, before they are aware of danger, find themselves in ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... present bed, and thus leaving the famous bridge high and dry. A wide sheet of navigable water would then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's broken toy. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tell you all the things that happened that day. You see, I have made quite a long story of my first evening, so you must try and fancy all about the walk in the park with Jane, and the drive with Grandmamma to the town, and the toy-shop, and what we ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... with you lads is that you grip your guns too tightly. Take a light hold on the butt of your revolver. Toy with it. It's the fellow with the feather-weight touch that does the best work with the revolver. He is the man to look ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We give another twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and obtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniest piece of new glass to the toy. ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the West something showed up against the blue of the sky—something that might have been a bird, a toy kite, or an aeroplane ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... together. In the room at the top they came upon a miserable spectacle. On something which, for want of another name, was probably called a bed, there lay a woman either already dead or in a state of coma, and on the floor sat two very young children, amusing themselves with a dead kitten, their only toy. Mr. Woodstock bent over the woman and examined her. He found that she was breathing, though in a slow and scarcely perceptible way; her eyes were open, but expressed no consciousness. The slightly-parted lips were almost black, and here and there on her face there seemed to be a kind of ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... a hundred miles to the north-west, two midget mountains wavered in the sky. John Wesley nodded at their unforgotten shapes and pieced this vast landscape to the patchwork map in his head. Those toy hills were San Mateo and Magdalena. Pringle had passed that way on a bygone year, headed east. He was ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... of a bare-footed enemy, this rude contrivance, combined with the scratching of the thorns, and the gashing cuts of the grass, must somewhat discourage pursuit. The shields of elephant hide are large, square, and ponderous. The "terrible war-axe" is the usual poor little tomahawk, more like a toy than ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... by its mother Lies bathed in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,— The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—"Hear this new sound." ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... and more than friendship, Valerie de Ventadour—respect—admiration—gratitude. At a time of life when passion and fancy, most strong, might have left me an idle and worthless voluptuary, you convinced me that the world has virtue, and that woman is too noble to be our toy—the idol of to-day, the victim of to-morrow. Your influence, Valerie, left me a more thoughtful ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... until I went into the matter a little more carefully. Before abandoning poor Lily, and consigning her to everlasting obscurity, it seemed to me that I owed it to her, as a matter of common gallantry, to investigate this charge. An author has no more right than any other man to toy with feminine affections; and having pledged myself to Lily as my heroine, I dared not commit a breach of promise, save on most serious grounds. Into this matter of Lily's diet I therefore plunged, with results that have surprised myself. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... an automatic toy having the legs of the horse and the head and arm of the driver actuated by mechanical devices, in manner substantially as herein described and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... with the daedaleum, in which the disk was replaced by a hollow cylinder which had the pictures on the inside and holes to watch them from without while the cylinder was in rotation. From this was developed the popular toy which as the zooetrope or bioscope became familiar everywhere. It was a revolving black cylinder with vertical slits, on the inside of which paper strips with pictures of moving objects in successive phases were placed. The clowns sprang ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... and up, went Mary and Tom, in this the girl's first big sky ride. The earth below seemed farther and farther away. The wide, green fields became little emerald squares, and the houses like those in a toy Noah's ark. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... any means induced to leave Mrs Betty Higden's skirts; towards which he exhibited, even when in Mrs Boffin's embrace, strong yearnings, spiritual and bodily; the former expressed in a very gloomy visage, the latter in extended arms. However, a general description of the toy-wonders lurking in Mr Boffin's house, so far conciliated this worldly-minded orphan as to induce him to stare at her frowningly, with a fist in his mouth, and even at length to chuckle when a richly-caparisoned ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... promise to take a child for a drive. The child comes up beaming with a furry bear in her arms. You say the bear cannot go. The child bursts into tears. You think it is because the child cannot endure to be separated from a toy. It is no such thing. It is the intolerable hurt done to the bear's human heart—a hurt not to be healed by any proffer of buns. He wanted to go, but he was a shy, proud bear, and he would ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... fool? He passed me, muttering The strangest garbage in the fiercest tone. "Ha! ha!" cried he, "they made a fool of me— motley man, a slave; as if I felt No stir in me of manly dignity! Ha! ha! a fool—a painted plaything, toy— For men to kick about this dirty world!— My world as well as theirs.—God's world, I trow! I will get even with them yet—ha! ha! In the democracy of death we'll square. I'll crawl and lie beside a king's own son; Kiss a young ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... name is Wilbert?" inquired Mr. Congdon. "Well, now, Wilbert, I want you to let me take this toy of yours home with me. I have come after Clarence. We leave this evening for Boston. Trust me with it, and you won't regret ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... It was the only really comfortable chair in the room but Ray never sat in it. It reminded him, vaguely, of a coffin. The corridors of the apartment house were long, narrow, and white-walled. You traversed these like a convict, speaking to no one, and entered your own cubicle. A toy dwelling for toy people. But Ray was a man-size man. When he was working downtown his mind did not take temporary refuge in the thought of the feverish little apartment to which he was to return at night. It wasn't a place to come back to, except for sleep. A roost. Bedding for ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... must be the scene, for any father and any son are the dramatis personae. We could pick them up in Mayfair, in Tooting, on the Veldt, in rectories or in grocers' back parlours, dump them down on our toy stage and tell them to begin. It is a great gathering to choose from, but our needs are small. Let the company shake hands, and all ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... last they found Emily, but they went to a number of toy shops and looked at a great many dolls before ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... intellectual faculties begin to tire. When I was quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work immediately at carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that when we were set loose, I "regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... has told us that one of his main objects in the education of his son, was to give him a ready habit of accurate observation, a certainty of perception, and that for this purpose one of his means was a month's course as follows:—he took the boy rapidly past a toy-shop; the father and son then described to each other as many of the objects as they could, which they had seen in passing the windows, noting them down with pencil and paper, and returning afterwards to verify their own accuracy. The boy always succeeded best, e.g., if the father ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... unexpectedly spacious place. We, who have spent the winter constructing slits in the ground two feet wide, feel quite lost in this roomy thoroughfare. For a thoroughfare it is, with little toy houses on either side. They are hewn out of the solid earth, lined with planks, painted, furnished, and decorated. These are, so to speak, permanent trenches, which have been occupied ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... dolly that seems but "so odd" to Polly or Maggie is there the cherished darling of its little owner. It passes half its day tied on to her back, peeping companionably its head over her shoulder. At night it is lovingly sheltered under the green mosquito curtains, and provided with a toy wooden pillow. ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... By the side of the glorious Gunnar my early days were nursed; By the side of the heart-wise Hogni I went from field to flower, Joy rose with the sun's uprising, nor sank in the twilight hour; Kings looked and laughed upon us as we played with the golden toy: And oft our hands were meeting as we mingled joy ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been put to much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A plague on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... delay. Mr. Disraeli was out, but I found Mrs. Disraeli at home. She was a little, plain, vivacious woman; one who, like an india-rubber toy, you have only to touch, and it issues sound. But she was obviously no common-place woman. Her comments upon what she had seen already in Manchester were acute, and, at times, decidedly humorous. They were those of a shrewd observer. We became ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... although mature in learning, he knew not as yet. Only he turned on his mother a face at once eager and shy, coaxing her as when in his long-ago baby-days he had implored some petty indulgence or the gift of some coveted toy on which his little ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... lad," and the captain took one in his hand. "Fine weapon, that, and loaded up to the muzzle. Wouldn't yez like to have it, eh?" and he held it out to the captives. "Too bad, isn't it, that I've got to keep it? But this toy isn't safe fer every one to handle, so ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... he said, and at that moment a toy man and woman on the table began a vastly amusing conversation about their ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... higher power, of which he knew nothing. I added, however, that when I recovered I would take him out shooting with us, and he should kill an animal for himself, and at this he was as pleased as a child at the promise of a new toy. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... later we roll past gardens, gaiety is in the air.... And then the streets of Passy begin to appear, mean streets, like London streets. I like them not; but the railway station is compensation; the little railway station like a house of cards under toy trees, and the train steaming out into the fanciful country. The bright wood along which it speeds ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... carriage or in his chair for a short time each day. When in his chair he should be tied in, a soft pad or pillow should be at his back to support him. He now enjoys exercise on a bed or in a large clothes basket, and may even have one toy at a time to play with. Do not shake rattles at him. It tires him. His naps now grow shorter gradually, but he should take two daily; a long one of two or three hours in the morning and about one hour in the afternoon. He should not sleep late in the afternoon, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... have a pretty art of constructing miniature landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these: "It was a fairy-like landscape seen through a spy-glass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... door of the hut. They had turned away, absorbed in the horrible preparations which were going on. Then she rummaged deeply within the folds of her loose gown and pulled out a small pistol with two brass barrels and double triggers in the form of winged dragons. It was only a toy to look at, all carved and scrolled and graven with the choicest work of the Paris gunsmith. For its beauty the seigneur had bought it at his last visit to Quebec, and yet it might be useful, too, and it ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cared for by the servants, and appeared the next day without any shame, bringing "a toy for missy." All my lecture was quite thrown away—she "had only taken a glass of grog in the bazaar, and they had put bang into it, so of course it made her insensible; but it was no fault of hers." This curious old woman was a Mahometan, therefore her tipsiness was ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... antechamber, and the newcomer found herself received with a torrent of affectionate and delighted exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the three toy terriers, the most sociable of their kind in all Paris, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... however, show his real character so much as the masquerade, when he came forward with hideous grin, and made what he considered his bow,—which consisted in thrusting his head forward and bobbing it up and down several times, his body remaining perfectly upright and stiff, like a toy mandarin ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... again, Bee went back to what she was busy at—making a little toy scrap-book for Fixie which she meant to send in to him the next morning as if it had come by post. And she had need of her good resolutions, for she hardly saw Rosy again all day, and when they were going to bed Nelson came to help Rosy ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... the toy department," returned Pamela, leading the way with her armful of packages. "I do hope you're not frightfully tired." Of course it seemed ridiculous, but I had not been out of hospital many days, and as yet I had not grown used to stumping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... most beautiful one of all, adorned with vases full of fragrant blossoms and surrounded by flowering plants and by cozy bowers of verdure. This cottage was the highest delight of the queen's life, the enchanting toy of her happiness. Even the little castle of Trianon, however simple and modest, seemed too splendid for the taste of the pastoral queen. For in Trianon one was always reminded that the lady of this castle was a queen; there, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls' house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... now, because a great many of these trees were destroyed on account of a worm, or caterpillar, by which they were infested. Poplar-wood is soft, light and generally of a pale-yellow color; it is much used for toy-making and for boarded floors, 'for which last purpose it is well adapted from its whiteness and the facility with which it is scoured, and also from the difficulty with which it catches fire and the slowness with which ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... remember much, about what I played until I got to be about 10 years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. I shaped two pieces ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... his attitude. He brought home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion which he was creating—for himself at least—he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy-store whether "the paint would come oft the pink duck if the baby put it ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... complacent smile of vanity; his arched brows furnished him with a supercilious expression which atoned for his lack of inches,—he was barely five feet two. His large curved nose was also a compensating gift from the godmother of dignity, and he carried himself so erectly that he looked like a toy general. His small black eyes were bright as glass beads, and his hair was ribboned as bravely as Reinaldo's. He was clad in silk attire,—red silk embroidered with butterflies. His little hands were laden with rings; carbuncles glowed ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
