"In a nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a nutshell and depends entirely upon whether Lance continues true to his love or not. If he remains true, your scheme for parting them will have but little effect; if he prove false, why then all will be well, according to your way ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... our party in particular, for Hannibal to stay at the head of the army in Spain, or to come home and bring the influence of his popularity and reputation to bear upon the populace? There is the question put in a nutshell, and if they can't decide upon it let them toss up. There is virtue, I am ready to maintain, in an appeal ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... honest and satisfactory. A cynic might have said that his mind moved in rather narrow limits. But then within those limits he was so ruddy and jubilant that I could not but remember something Shakspeare says about the ease of being bounded in a nutshell and yet counting one's self king of infinite space,—were it not for bad dreams. These "bad dreams" had never retarded the British digestion of Sir Joseph Barley. No American citizen could, by any possibility, be so shut in measureless content. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of words poured out from her: "It was a pretty scheme your Miss Verney had planned! She was to egg me on to divorce you, so that she could get a clutch on your feelings and marry you and your money! Your money—that puts it in a nutshell! That's the kind of woman a man like you falls in love with! A woman who's too shrewd and too cunning to commit herself. Who provokes and tantalizes and lures on a man, and then stops him short at the very ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... assert that these statements were true. He wished, he said, to be quite fair to the Brethren; he wished to give them a chance of clearing themselves; and, therefore, he now published his pamphlet entitled "Queries to Count Zinzendorf." It contained the whole case in a nutshell. For the sum of sixpence the ordinary reader had now the case against the Brethren in a popular ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... puts what we mean in a nutshell. Now, we must write that out, and try to get signatures. We might add a fifth rule, about not doing sneaking ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... could tell them wonderful fairy tales and strange stories of the forest. He told them of the goblins that came at night to water the horses, of how the oxen talked in their stalls on Christmas Eve, of how a spider shut up in a nutshell could cure the fever, and of the marvellous powers possessed by horse shoes and four-leaved clover. He knew more strange ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Roderick's concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural course to talk of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Miss Garland's fine smile. Madame Grandoni was an intelligent listener, and she lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell. "At one moment you tell me the girl is plain," she said; "the next you tell me she 's pretty. I will invite them, and I shall see for myself. But one thing is very clear: you are in ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... of evidence," he said, "ought to go to the coroner's jury. It clinches the case against Perry. Here's the whole business in a nutshell: the buttons missing from his blouse, one found in Number Five, the other in your bungalow; Miss Hardesty's having seen him the night of the murder; the ease with which he undoubtedly got the kitchen ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... Marxian theory of surplus-value in a nutshell. Rent, interest, and profit, the three great divisions of capitalist income into which this surplus-value is divided, are thus traced to the exploitation of labor, resting fundamentally upon the ownership by the exploiting class of the means of production. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... have in a nutshell the whole modus operandi of the gossip in all ages, and as he may be observed at any hour of the day or night, slimily engaged in his cowardly business. "Going to and fro in the earth, walking up and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mrs. Johnson, but as her business is not so good at times she has me whenever she can feel as if she can spare the money. So this little life of mine has been almost locked up in a nutshell, and Jesus has come to me in the spirit's power that I should tell the world of His wonderful love to me a poor sinner of the dust. And what can not the Lord do for those who put their trust in Him? We feel like saying to the ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... rides enough dust to build a new world. Every street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat—"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full this'll ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Eldest of the Wise Men) There you have it! That, as some one has admirably phrased it, is the situation in a nutshell. What ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... will go out upon the balcony and take a look. You see, I am afraid of someone. Oh, Baldos, what's the use of my trifling like this? You are to escape from Edelweiss to-night. That is the whole plan—the whole idea in a nutshell. Don't look like that. Don't you want to go?" Now ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... it; development does not know it; instinct revolts from it; and man is the only animal who has been silly and wrong-headed enough to stumble into it. The explanation and the remedy are so simple, so close at hand, that we have not seen them. The whole thing lies in a nutshell. Where does this abnormal, uncomfortable period come in? Between childhood, we say, and maturity; it is the transition from one to the other. When human beings, then, are neither boys nor men, girls nor women, they must be for a few years anomalous creatures, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... whole lot of you. I've been in New York three days and I've begun to feel that there isn't a remotely intelligent human animal in the place. I'm going to retreat inland. In Chicago, at least, people know enough to keep their mouths shut. I'll tell you what the trouble is in a nutshell. People want things straight again. They want black and white so's they can all mass on the white side and make faces at the evil-doers who prefer the black. They don't want facts, diagnosis, theories, interpretations, reports. They want somebody to stand up and ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... said Isabel. "They will learn by-and-by. I don't suppose Mr. and Mrs. Cardew mean to keep them always shut up in a nutshell." ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... take what should have been Eleanor's. There was the case in a nutshell. And how insist in these circumstances, as he would have done vehemently in any other, that Eleanor ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice is—this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness. Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the alms-basket a Magazine. Methinks the Turke should license Diurnals, because he prohibits learning and books." He characterises the Diurnal as "a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time; it is a history in sippets; the English Iliads in a nutshell; the Apocryphal Parliament's Book ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... me with the clew to all the investigations I afterward conducted; I won't tell you how I went about collecting data and more data, little by little, for that would bore you. I'll put the thing for you in a nutshell." ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... out the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you cannot tell what century ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... called upon to do. And I formed the opinion that the mind of the writer was—eh—warped." Lord Ferriby smiled sadly, and gave a final wave of the hand, as if to indicate that the whole matter lay in a nutshell, and that nutshell under his lordship's heel. "Warped or not," answered Cornish, "the man says that we have formed ourselves into a company, which company is bound to make huge profits, and those profits are naturally assumed to find ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of. I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which I am assured you received. I make no public accusation ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... which we call God. The soul which can feel and affirm in serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nazarene: 'I and my Father are one,' has no further need of healer, or of healing. This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine union. Disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how can weariness enter ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Scotchman cannot do without his potato as an adjunct; but the error of the Irishman is in making it the mainstay of his life. The words of Malthus in this connection put the matter in a nutshell, much as he has been abused for his theory of the effects of the potato on population. 'When the common people of a country,' he says, 'live principally upon the dearest grain, as they do in England on wheat, they have great resources in a scarcity, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Duval chimed in, with a laugh, 'To put it in a nutshell, gentlemen, we are going to smash Ryder and scare ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... many ways admirable, Dr. Hahn's 'Tsuni Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi Khoi.' {202b} This book is sometimes appealed to as a crushing argument against the mythologists who adopt the method we have just explained. Let us see if the blow be so very crushing. To put the case in a nutshell, the Hottentots have commonly been described as a race which worshipped a dead chief, or conjurer—Tsui Goab his name is, meaning Wounded Knee, a not unlikely name for a savage. Dr. Hahn, on the other hand, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... reported that Roosevelt's comments on the dinner party were "blistering." "He told my mother afterwards," said Lang in later times, "that Mrs. Cummins was out of place in the Bad Lands"; which was Mrs. Cummins's tragedy in a nutshell. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... conquest of the world! Now, a lad of your intelligence ought to be able to see, without much persuasion, how tremendous an advantage it will be to belong to such a formidable band as we shall soon become, therefore I put it to you in a nutshell—Will you ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... in this house. The ceilings are low and thin, and the walls are near and thin, and the children are omnipresent and not thin, and their wants and their joys and their quarrels are as numerous as the fishes in the sea, and there you have the problem in a nutshell. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... extending his arm in a sweeping gesture. "A hundred thousand people there, and no reason there shouldn't be half a million. There's the chance to make five people grow where one grows now. Here's the scheme in a nutshell. Why don't more people live in Oakland? No good service with San Francisco, and, besides, Oakland is asleep. It's a whole lot better place to live in than San Francisco. Now, suppose I buy in all ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... it in a nutshell. The doctrine of the Church is that when God created man, He raised him from a natural to a supernatural state, and assigned to him a supernatural end. Supernatural means what is above the natural, beyond our natural powers of obtaining. Our destiny therefore ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... In a nutshell, then, what the advertising department needs is that great body of non-subscribing suffragists to enroll as readers. Think of that 68,000 whose names and addresses we have! If we only had them on our lists, if they stood back ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... who is but little acquainted with legislation, and who has never witnessed the effects of an occultation of the great moral postulate Principle, by the orb Pecuniary Interest, would very plausibly suppose that the whole affair lay in a nutshell, and that all we had to do was to pass a law ordering the causeways to extend just as far as the public convenience rendered it necessary. But these are mere tyros in the affairs of monikins. The fact ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Not at all, my good fellow. You shall not wait a moment,' returned his friend, as he lazily crossed his legs. 'The simplest thing in the world. It lies in a nutshell. Ned has written her a letter—a boyish, honest, sentimental composition, which remains as yet in his desk, because he hasn't had the heart to send it. I have taken a liberty, for which my parental affection and anxiety are a sufficient excuse, and possessed myself of the contents. I have described ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... to Beaumanoir with a quiet laugh. "There you have the story in a nutshell," he said. "A few minutes ago I became aware that I am not Prince Michael's son. Although I strove to act fairly, my worthy stepfather is not content. He thinks to force my hand, because he fears the republican idea; but I may ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Pope to negotiate, and many letters were written on either side, but without effect. The difference was said to lie in a nutshell; but where the liberties of the Church were concerned, Becket was inflexible. At the Epiphany, 1169, he was put to a severe trial; Henry himself, who had long been at war with Louis le Jeune, came to Montmirail, to hold a conference and sign a treaty, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Charles notes, 'there lies in a nutshell all that I afterwards wrote at much greater length upon army reform in my ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... not cried out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams—which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream—and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "It all lies in a nutshell, my dear. Oh, how glad I am that you take it so quietly. Then, perhaps it is all a mistake, arising from your hearty manner to every one. I told him so, and said that he need not scruple visiting you, or be ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O'Connett, and had ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... in a nutshell. When people say that our inventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved themselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they are made or what it is in them that ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... beg to compliment him on the motto in his title-page; it is felicitous. A motto should contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I intended them to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... outside. When the baby is ready to be born, the passageway widens and lets the baby through. It's a good deal like swallowing, only the other way around. Your food slips down a passage into your stomach, out of sight. The baby slips down a passage into sight!" There is your story of birth in a nutshell. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... in a nutshell. It is tersely put and carries conviction with every sentence. If it had been any longer or any shorter it would have failed of its purpose. I could not express myself any better if I wrote a column. It will go in just as ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... said, "but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold only a certain number of men, so couldn't master estimate ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Christian scheme in a nutshell? God made man perfect—though some people, after reading the life of Adam, say that God made him a perfect fool. This perfect man was tackled by the Devil, a sort of spiritual Pasteur, who inoculated him with sin, which was transmitted to his posterity ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Edward Grey tell the whole story in a nutshell. Austria believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a question of life or death for her, while Russia claimed the right of preventing Austria from becoming the predominate power in the Balkans, and actually threatened war. Russia did not claim to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!—Permit me to hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams." Saying those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with the pitiless politeness ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... celery, parsley, savoy cabbage, brussels sprouts, Scotch kale, leek and endive rank highest in organic mineral salts. Next to these come tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, radishes, onions, asparagus, cauliflower and horseradish.(See also Group V in "Dietetics in a Nutshell.") ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... an' in a nutshell," commented Billy, as, blowing rather hard, the miller made an end of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... our lot who would give me the lie!... To behave like that is treachery!... You have betrayed the Numbers. There it is in a nutshell!... What have ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... are hungry you just tell me, and I will send you the proper food; and it will not be gum, or cold-cream or candels ether, I can tell you. Why even Mr. le Cure wood no enuf not to give you enny of those things. That Teddy is not fit to have a godchild, and that is the hole story in a nutshell. I dunno just what I shall do if he rites to me. Mebbe I will anser and mebbe I wont. I guess I shall tell miss Betty about it. Have I ever tole you about her? She lives in the big house on the hill next to Sid Perkins and she has hare like, well like what you sed about Jean's, like gold ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... and then, I had no guess, and did not greatly care, being a devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance. Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a good exterior—there is all life in a nutshell. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my lady. Well, here it is in a nutshell: I have not spoken of it before, but you and Mr. Browne can very easily comply with the provisions of the will. You can be married at any time. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Legrand decidedly. "Do you think they'd give up all they had? No, it would only be a pretence—a sham. I agree with the doctor that Holgate's safety is only spelled out by our deaths. There you have it in a nutshell. The man can't afford to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... your dodge, eh?" Jared laughed comfortably from the secure position he had gained for himself from this misery. "Trying to shield him, eh? It won't do, Joyce. Your daddy's too much a man of the world for that. Now here it is in a nutshell: The boys at the tavern are back of me. How do I know? You leave that to me. Now I calculate that Gaston don't want any of the dust of his past stirred up by us. If he's been playing with you, it's for you to say whether you'd rather have ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... which we have discovered concerning Progress in a nutshell, hiding or disregarding the internal contradiction. What is the nature, what is the kind of reality, which we have learned to ascribe to Progress (for we did pronounce it real and essentially capable of being realized)? It is that it is fact, yet fact not made but in the making; ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Biquet; "I slept badly, or rather, didn't sleep. I've got a doss-house all to myself. Look, see, there it is—the damned thing." He points to a trough on the ground level, where on a meager mattress of muck, there is just body-room for one. "Talk about home in a nutshell!" he declares, wagging the rough and rock-hard little head that looks as if it had never been finished. "I hardly snoozed. I'd just got off, but was woke up by the relief of the 129th that went by—not by the noise, but the smell. Ah, all ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... individual to choose his own religion and to determine for himself matters of faith. The position which Luther occupies in his final answer before the Emperor at Worms is generally believed to state Luther's position on the question of religious liberty in a nutshell. "Unless convinced by the Word of God or by cogent reason" that he was wrong, he declared at the Diet of Worms, he could not and would not retract what he had written. The individual conscience, he maintained, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Oriental species might easily have found their way to America on the ice, and have been modified as we find them by "the well-known influence of climate." And the persons who gave expression to this idea never dreamed of its real significance. In truth, here was the doctrine of evolution in a nutshell, and, because its ultimate bearings were not clear, it seemed the most natural of doctrines. But most of the persons who advanced it would have turned from it aghast could they have realized its import. As it was, however, only here and there a man like Buffon reasoned far enough to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it—but bless me, what does it matter? It is a mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back—which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I don't wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the day. The ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lengths, dragged them to the roads already prepared, piled them on sleighs, hauled them to the river, and stacked them there. In the spring you floated the logs to the mill where they were sawed into boards, laden into sailing vessels or steam barges, and taken to market. There was the whole process in a nutshell. Of course, there would be details and obstructions to cope with. But between the eighty thousand dollars or so worth of trees standing in the forest and the quarter-million dollars or so they represented at the market seemed space enough to allow ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... of the ship. You may be 25 miles away from it. But the important information gained is that, though you may be 25 miles away, you know on what line you are, and when this line is later crossed with another line of position that fix will be accurate. "Two sights make a fix" is the whole matter in a nutshell. ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... wants, ma'am. Take my word for it, this matter rests entirely with you. It's all in a nutshell. Encourage her to confide ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... sound talk, Nan, and I will try to do just as you say. But—well, here's the thing in a nutshell. I like Phil so much that I hate to tell him I ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... hounded that poor man to his death in revenge for the trifling sum of money which he was called on to pay for him. It may be that the first blame lay not with the Prime Minister himself, but with the Prime Minister's wife. With that we have nothing to do. The whole thing lies in a nutshell. The bare mention of the name of her Grace the Duchess in Parliament would have saved the Duke, at any rate as effectually as he has been saved by the services of his man-of-all-work, Phineas Finn, and would have saved him ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... respectability. You've a dashing, masterful way which no girl of her sort can long resist. I propose that you make desperate love to Louise Merrick and so cut Arthur Weldon out of the deal entirely. My part of the comedy will be to attract him to my side again. Now you have the entire proposition in a nutshell." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... thin out. Reduced to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy", (Urbanite, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with the French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it, imposes on the public. Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the purpose of composing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... only a thousand or so of mulattoes who share the blood of people like your Uncle Edward. And for the most part they take after their white kin, unfortunately. And there you have the Lichfield Negro Problem in a nutshell. It is a venerable one and fully set forth in the Bible. You needn't attempt to argue with me, because you are a ninnyhammer, and I am a second Nestor. The Holy Scriptures are perfectly explicit as to what happens to the heads of the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... begin to act normally. Under the influence of the Spirit, God's holiness reveals to man his sin, and God's love leads him to the feet of Jesus. This is the first step in Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutshell, deduction from the existence of God normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted Christ, his Lord is more than a historical Redeemer, he is a present Saviour ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... "I've been talking matters over with Budge and Throppy, and we're all agreed it's time we came to an understanding. Things can't go on in this way any longer. To put the matter in a nutshell, we can't afford to have you living off us and not working. You've got to do your share or quit. That's all ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... right, we should begin to send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along about the first of May we should sit down about a hundred strong, the most distinguished people in the country, and solemnize our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might expand and I might expound, but that's the sum ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... misconception just mentioned is preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and Bosola—Bonapartes in the bud, Napoleons in a nutshell, Caesars who have missed their Rubicon and collapse into the likeness of a Catiline—is a sign rather of his noble English loathing for the traditions associated with such names as Caesar and Medici and Borgia, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... are going to say: you mean that I had best look out for a military swell; but, after all, the matter lies in a nutshell. I am the insulted party, and draw pistols at ten paces. If that frightens him, he will make the governor ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... charming moonlight evening, we embarked at Ranelagh for Vauxhall, in a wherry so light and slender that we looked like so many fairies sailing in a nutshell. My uncle, being apprehensive of catching cold upon the water, went round in the coach, and my aunt would have accompanied him, but he would not suffer me to go by water if she went by land; and therefore she favoured us with her company, as she perceived ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... it in a nutshell: the ideal of the American woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of view this world they've invented has more originality than ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... say nothing about it. You're wanting to get something for nothing now, and presently I daresay you'd remind me of something I had said. We can go back to the beginning if you like, but you're not going to play lawyer with me, Ray. It's in a nutshell, I suppose. You're going to marry Miss Dinnett, or else you're not. Of course, you know which. And if you won't tell me which, then don't ask me ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the whole thing in a nutshell," answered Milsom. "Of course it is altogether too early yet to express an opinion in public upon the occurrence; but, strictly between ourselves, and in the privacy of this saloon, I don't mind saying that I believe the Maine was deliberately destroyed, and that the submarine which was stolen ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... history in a nutshell. But we must be getting near the place, according to what you said at the start. There are the three oaks growing in a clump. Now ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... constitution to work, in the winter of 1791-92. It was soon found out that Mirabeau had been right when he said that for a monarchy it was too democratic, and for a republic there was a king too much. This was Burke's Reflections in a nutshell. But it was foreign intervention that finally ruined the king, and destroyed the hope of an orderly issue. Frederick the Great had set the first example of what some call iniquity and violence in Europe, and others in milder terms ...
— Burke • John Morley
... there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves. Yes, there you have it in a nutshell. For my own part, I would rather grow fat after the Russian manner, or squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to be 'Hoppe and Company' at the end of five generations. I want the money for MYSELF, for in no way do I look upon my personality as necessary to, or meet ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spent would land the whole kettle of fish in the fire. The grand old party would go crashing down the precipice. Was not that a criminal price to pay for getting a reformatory institution two years before the people were ready to pay for it? There was the whole question in a nutshell. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to struggle against a desire; she has simply not felt the need of drink. Further, her sleep continues to be splendid. She is getting more and more calm, in spite of the fact that on several occasions her sang-froid has been severely tested. To put the matter in a nutshell, she is a changed woman. But what impresses me most is the fact that when she took to your method she thought herself at the end of her tether, and in the event of its doing her no good had decided to kill herself (she had ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... fundamental outlines of this solution, and every hour which has passed has only sufficed, to strengthen a conviction which was already so deeply rooted as to be beyond the reach of hostile argument. What is now required to be done may be stated in a nutshell. Let the Government withdraw the present Home Rule Bill. They will thus dispose at once of the opposition of Mr. BONAR LAW, Sir EDWARD CARSON, Mr. J. L. GARVIN and Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN, and will provide themselves with a clean slate, which will be a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... what I'm suggesting, doctor," answered the detective, good-humouredly. "I'll put the thing in a nutshell—my profound belief is that if we want to get at the bottom of these two murders we've got to go back a long way, to the Elizabeth Robinson time, and that Chuh Fen is the only person I've heard of, up to now, who can throw a light on that episode. And it seems to me, to be plain ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... lies in a nutshell, my dear: there is a man who swears that Honor McBride was behind the chapel, with Randal Rooney putting a ring on her finger, when the clock struck twelve, and our workmen's bell rang this morning. Honor avers she was at Bob's Fort with you: now as she could ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... on the ground we had three or four days at Ravenna—which is the most interesting deadly lively sepulchre of a place I was ever in in my life. The evolution of modern from ancient art is all there in a nutshell... ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... advisable, he despatched Mr. Dolby to America for the purpose of surveying the proposed scene of operations. Immediately on his emissary's return, Dickens drew up a few pithy sentences, headed by him, "The Case in a Nutshell." His decision was what those more immediately about him had for some time anticipated. He made up his mind to go, and to go quite independently. The Messrs. Chappell, it should be remarked at once, had no part whatever in the enterprise. The Author-Reader accepted for himself the sole ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the whole thing in a nutshell—it's a wise thing to keep watch of that man when he's near anything valuable, for he's got a reputation for being light-fingered, and I know he's been accused of lots of mean things up in this country. Most men are afraid of him, for he can be an ugly ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... the story of a nation like ours in a nutshell, requires a peculiar faculty for selecting, condensing, and philosophizing. The brevity with which he relates the principal events in American history, does not detract from the charming interest of the narrative ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... sea air. Yes, it would be delightful to be on board Flying Fish now. However, no doubt Algie Thynne—(how eloquently, by the way, you describe him! putting all the complications of his character and the dazzling charm of his personality in a nutshell by the simple sentence 'He's rather a nut!')—amply compensates for my absence. You ask if I know him. I do, though perhaps more by reputation than anything else. We have met once or twice. Where? ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... told them, and they know," she said to herself. "I have given them the whole story in a nutshell. I don't ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... didn't twig what the little minx was up to, until she said we could go on the same steamer that took the baseball party. Lots of other women—wives of the managers and players and so on—will go along, I understand. So there's the whole bally story in a nutshell. Rippin' good idea ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... building. It had been useful in incipient fires, but it was child's play in a serious outburst. The mournful fact that Manitou had never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns. Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Here, in a nutshell, are not only the natural variations of the rock garden, but the inspiration. No rock garden worthy of the name has ever been created by man that did not depend upon a study of those that nature has given the world in prodigal abundance. There ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams |
