"Pickings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is verily a sorry-looking gallant, and doth seem to have donned ill-content with his jerkin this morning; nevertheless, I will out and talk with him, for there may be some pickings here for a hungry daw. Methinks his dress is rich, though he himself is so downcast. Bide ye here till I look into this matter." So saying, he arose and left them, crossed the road to the shrine, and there ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of the manors, and all the little farmers, and even those whom most I feared; videlicet, the parsons. And the King's Commissioner was compelled to profess himself contented, although of all he was most aggrieved; for his pickings would ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... eavesdroppings, with her sour civility, her stinted discharge of obligations, her pilferings and mendacities, would have rather amused than annoyed him. "Poor creature, isn't it a miserable as well as a sordid life. Let her have her pickings, however illegitimate, and much good may they do her." Now he too often found himself regarding her with something like animosity, whereby, to be sure, he brought himself to the woman's level. Was it not a struggle between him and her for a share of life's poorest comforts? When ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... life as the prairie in midwinter. Moose and buffalo had sought the shelter of wooded ravines. Here a fox track ran over the snow. There a coyote skulked from cover, to lope away the next instant for brushwood or hollow, and snow-buntings or whiskey-jacks might have followed the marchers for pickings of waste; but east, west, north, and south was nothing but the wide, white wastes of drifted snow. On Christmas Eve of 1738 low curling smoke above the prairie told the wanderers that they were nearing the Indian camps of the Assiniboines; and ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... when wanted for anything particular, cheated us and each other, swore eternal honesty and fidelity to our faces, called us infidel dogs and pedar sags behind our backs, quarrelled daily among themselves over their modokal (legitimate pickings and stealings—ten per cent, on everything passing through their hands), and meekly bore with any abuse bestowed gratuitously upon them, for an aggregate of one hundred and thirty kerans a month—and, of course, their modokal. Some enterprising ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... two bags up came "Just" Smith, who had done so bravely before; but alas! as that Belleville fan had truly said, the local pitcher had tightened up and was not such "easy pickings" now; so Smith only whiffed, and the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... be with thee when thou carvest the Leviathan," he said once. "Else would the heathen princesses who shall wait upon us come in for thy pickings." ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... marten, mink and weasel are all courageous, savage and merciless. To the wolverine Western trappers accord the evil distinction of being a veritable imp of darkness on four legs. To them he is the arch-fiend, beyond which animal cunning and depravity cannot go. Excepting the profane history of the pickings and stealings of this "mountain devil" as recorded by suffering trappers, I know little of it; but if its instincts are not supremely murderous, its reputation is no index of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... and butter out of my mouth; and as for the fees—there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site; there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot, always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they locate over night, just like the gypsies that ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... can tell. It is not yet agreed. There is small competition for the task. There are better pickings here on the border, raiding now and then, and pocketing the gold of this Wassmuss between-whiles! Who wants the task of escorting a machine ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... had somehow recovered his good looks, in the opinion of Chariclea: once more the maid-servant and the notes, with reproaches for his long neglect; once more, too, the throng of parasites; they saw that there were still pickings to be had. Dinias arrived at her house, by agreement, at about bedtime, and was already inside, when Demonax—whether he had an understanding with his wife in the matter, as some say, or had got his information independently—sprang out from concealment, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... hath a dainty maw, With savory pickings he crammeth his craw; Kept meat from the gibbet it pleaseth his whim, It can never hang too long for ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... What else is there left for me? Scuttle me, if I don't take it out of the Dons! It's their doing. They've had a rest for nigh twenty years. We'll let it slip out quietly among the islands that Harry Morgan's afloat once more and there's pickings to be had on the Spanish Main—wine and women and pieces of eight. Art ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight Rochester's battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or, failing that, to retire and vanish back to the States with honourable pickings. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... plainest and scantiest make, low in the neck, short in the sleeves and skirt. Her feet and head were bare. A sack of like material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds. This small basket was kept in the picker's vicinity, being moved forward whenever the sack was taken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... its income was usually discounted well beforehand. Moreover, the rumour of Iemon's gambling was spreading among his connections. Neither Kwaiba nor Akiyama, nor the others engaged, were men to lose sight of the likelihood of fine pickings from the Tamiya. Jibei made prompt answer. "Respectfully heard and understood. It shall be sent.... Ah! It is required now? Matsu! Matsu! Put up three sho[u] of rice for the lady of Tamiya. Its conveyance is to be provided. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a great number of wenches and young chaps assemble in the slaughtering place before dawn, all of them with bags which come empty and go away full of pieces of meat. Not a beast is killed out of which these people do not take tithes, and that of the choicest and most savoury pickings. The masters trust implicitly in these honest folk, not with the hope that they will not rob them (for that is impossible), but that they may use their knives with some moderation. But what struck me as the worst thing of all, was that these ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases."—In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revolution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... papers, periodicals and certain pickings from the publishers' lists. India had not prepared Bedient for this. With glad welcome he discovered David Cairns here and there among short-story contributors, but the love of man and woman which the stories in general exploited, struck him of Indian ideals as shifty and pestilential. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Rosny into the council of finance, saying to him, "You promise me, you know, to be a good manager, and that you and I shall lop arms and legs from Madame Grivelee, as you have so often told me could be done." Madame Grivelee (Mrs. Pickings) was, in the language of the day, she who presided over illicit gains made in the administration of the public finances. Rosny at once undertook to accomplish that which he had promised the king. He made, in person, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... going the minimum six weeks for a contest like that. Instead, we're taking off in a couple of hours. Jones agrees. The astronomers back home have picked out another Sol-type star that ought to have planets. We're going to run over and see what pickings we can find. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... dignity of man—the humblest man—as an individual. Thrown, as we all now are, into the modern anarchy, hurly-burly, and caricaturism, when fathers are "old governors," and dukes are served solely for their wages and pickings, like Mr Prog, the sausage-vendor, and the gentle look of respect and courtesy has been exchanged for the puppy's stare through a quizzing-glass; is it not something to have lived in the more reverent primitive state, to have tasted its early vernal ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... villain in the world, Pratinas. Ahenobarbus might have his debts paid by his father, and forego risk and crime if he did not absolutely need Drusus's fortune; but Pratinas, she knew, must have planned to secure rich pickings of his own, and if Ahenobarbus married permanently, all these were lost; and the Greeks never turned back or let another turn back, when there was a fortune before them. It was a fearful sort of confidence. Drusus ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... P'raps they'll chuck British jockeys next! Much good their Grong Pree, ancetrer, will be then, my boy. Our 'osses, our jockeys, and our bookies has bin the making of French Sport,—and werrv nice little pickings there's bin out of it take it all round. Wot'll Ler Hig Life, and Hart, and Leagues o' Patriots, and miles o' bullyvards, and COOK's Tourists and Awful Towers do for Parry without hus, I wonder? We shall see! Ah, Madame lar Republick, maybe you'll be sorry, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... little of the value of his wares; it was his object to turn a small certain profit on his expenditure. It is reckoned that an energetic, business-like old bookseller will turn over 150,000 volumes in a year. In this vast number there must be pickings for the humble collector who cannot afford to encounter the children of Israel at Sotheby's ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... and, oh, the easy pickings for them! A fresh kill daily. Warm meat with every meal. Such hunting they had never known, hence they gorged themselves openly, seldom quarreling among themselves nor even bothering to conceal the carcasses of their prey. It was easier to pull down a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... afternoon which has been already quoted. Dress was her weapon and her stock in trade; it was, she said, necessary to her "career." And on this plea she steadily exacted in its support a proportion of the family income which left but small pickings for the schooling of her younger brothers and the allowances of her two younger sisters. But so great were the indulgence and the pride of her parents—small Devonshire land-owners living on an impoverished estate—that Alicia's demands were conceded without a murmur. They themselves ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... immediate consumption, it may be allowed to get riper than would otherwise be the case. With most varieties one picking is sufficient, but in the case of varieties like the Wealthy which does not ripen uniformly, or like the Twenty Ounce, which does not always color evenly, two or three pickings should be made. Two or three pickings are practically always necessary where fancy fruit is desired, in order to get the ideal size, ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... that he had redeemed his note to propriety in marrying and having children, who become hampering things when a man is in a tight place. The servants gossiped, were insolent at times, but in such a household there were many pickings. The Middleton people, driving by at night within sound of the noise when the Four Corners was garishly lit, would repeat the family story and recall old Roper Ellwell, who lay in a green mound near his first church. But the ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... it was her way of helping an old woman who kept a stall of small wares on market days, and could sometimes dispose of little pictures on domestic and Scriptural subjects, if highly coloured, glazed with gum, and bound with bright paper—pickings and stealings, as Felix called them, gleaned from advertisements and packing-boxes at Mr. Froggatt's; but these did not allow much scope for ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coming," said the Austrian deserters to us); and that, on November 6th, Treskow, looking out from Neisse, found the Austrian trenches empty, Generals Harsch and Deville hurrying over the Hills homewards,—pickings to be had of them by Treskow,—and Neisse Siege a thing finished. [TAGEBUCH, &c. ("Diary of the Siege of Neisse," 4th August, 26th October, 6th November, 1758, "1 A.M. suddenly"), in Seyfarth, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Megatherium, ready jointed for cooking. It was as big as an elephant, you see, so there was a good deal of meat on it. And if they wanted fish, the Ichthyosaurus was asked for - he was twenty to forty feet long, so there was plenty of him. And for poultry there was the Plesiosaurus; there were nice pickings on that too. Then the other children could wish for other things. But when people had dinner-parties it was nearly always Megatheriums; and Ichthyosaurus, because his fins were a great delicacy and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... are also joining in the rumpus, as I guess they're anxious to be in the "top dog" so as to get some pickings after the scrap. Then in August we got the tip to ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... capital. Why had I done this? Perhaps the bottom reason was that I shrank from permitting any part of the machine for which I was directly responsible to be financed by collections from vice and crime. I admit that the distinction between corporate privilege and plunder and the pickings and stealings and prostitutions of individuals is more apparent than real. I admit that the kinds of vice and crime I tolerated are far more harmful than the other sorts which are petty and make loathed outcasts ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... I can tell you. Sniggins, besides being a warm man, has good interest in the Customs; and there's nice pickings there, if one only goes the right way to get 'em. It's no use, Caudle, your fidgetting about—not a bit. I'm not going to have baby lost— sacrificed, I may say, like its ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... redemption, salvage, trover [Law]. find, trouvaille^, foundling. gain, thrift; money-making, money grubbing; lucre, filthy lucre, pelf; loaves and fishes, the main chance; emolument &c (remuneration) 973. profit, earnings, winnings, innings, pickings, net profit; avails; income &c (receipt) 810; proceeds, produce, product; outcome, output; return, fruit, crop, harvest; second crop, aftermath; benefit &c (good) 618. sweepstakes, trick, prize, pool; pot; wealth ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is an annual expense to the throne. Formerly the snug sum of seven or eight millions of dollars was the yearly contribution which the island made to the royal treasury, after paying local army, navy, and civil expenses. This handsome sum was over and above the pickings and stealings of the venal officials. As to the Cuban sympathizers at Key West, Florida, a recent visit to that port, just opposite to the island on the hither side of the Gulf Stream, showed us ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... only now endeavor to impress Lord Cumber with a strong sense of what is due to public opinion, which would be outraged by having such a Law Agent on his estate. Come, leave the matter to me, and we shall turn Solomon's flank yet; I know he hates me, because I curtailed his pickings, by adopting the system of not giving leases, unless to those on whom we can depend. Besides, the little scoundrel has no political ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... certain "revolucionista" of no particular notoriety as yet, of avaricious character, unscrupulous nature, and with a small following of fellow bandits and a large animosity for Americans. His ambition was to emulate the brilliant Villa. But pickings had been poor of late, no more than that of stealing a few horses from across the border. To Burkhardt, who had heard of him and sought him out, he listened with interest and bargained with zest. Five thousand in gold for ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd |
