"Pottage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dealt with elsewhere; but a lifelong lover of Italy may perhaps be permitted to state his personal view of her action. While the negotiations lasted, her position was scarcely a dignified one. It seemed that she was willing, not, indeed, to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage, but to buy her birthright at the cost of complicity in monstrous crime. Neither Italy nor Europe would have profited in the long run by the substitution of "Belgia Irredenta" for "Italia Irredenta." But now that she has repudiated ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... expense, there being none to be had in the market. You will imagine, that there must have been a service of plate, and great attendance, to wait on the illustrious stranger; but my fare was a mess of sorry pottage, brought me by a naked slave, who left me to deal with it as I thought proper: and even this I was in continual danger of having stolen from me by the children; who are as vigilant to seize opportunities, and ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... forgetfulness! The smoke of thy altar-fires, the steam of thy incense, and the odors of thy sanctity rise from every hypaethral shrine in Rome. Out-doors and in-doors, wherever the foot wanders, on palatial stairs or in the hut of poverty, in the convent pottage and the Lepre soup, in the wooden platter of the beggar and the silver tureen of the prince, thou fillest our nostrils, thou satisfiest our stomach. Thou hast no false pride; great as thou art, thou condescendest to be exchanged for a baiocco. Dear enchantress! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... person; and therefore God heareth not sinners, (John viii.,) that is, unjustified sinners; though they pray much, yet God heareth them not. And this is lively expressed by Hag. ii. 12, 13, 14. As the priest's holy garments and flesh could not make bread or pottage holy, but the unclean body could make these unclean; so this nation's and people's performances and holy duties, could not make them holy, and their persons clean, but their unclean persons and actions made all their performances unclean. The solemn meeting and sacrifice, &c. could not ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... effects serve instead of those produced externally by mustard. If a teaspoonful is sprinkled within the palms and its volatile vapours are inhaled through the mouth and nose, this [22] will dispel an incipient catarrh. The name Pulsatilla is a diminutive of the Latin puls, a pottage, as made from pulse, and used at sacrificial feasts. The title Anemone signifies "wind-flower." Pliny says this flower never opens but when the wind is blowing. The title has been misapprehended as "an emony." Turner says gardeners call the flowers "emonies"; and Tennyson, in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... an important influence, their reports against their fellow prisoners being seriously considered, and often made the basis of action by their superiors, which has no small effect upon the welfare of the jail. Yet these poor wretches—they are mostly negroes—sell their brethren for a mess of pottage of secret favors and immunities; none save the most abject would accept such employment. Could any inspiration or procedure be more insecure? Yet it is an essential factor in the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... caressing tenderness. "Think how easy it would be for me, dear friend," she cried, with a catch in her voice, "to do as other women do; to accept the HONORABLE MARRIAGE you offer me, as other women would call it; to be false to my sex, a traitor to my convictions; to sell my kind for a mess of pottage, a name and a home, or even for thirty pieces of silver, to be some rich man's wife, as other women have sold it. But, Alan, I can't. My conscience won't let me. I know what marriage is, from what vile slavery it has sprung; on what unseen horrors for my sister women it is reared and buttressed; ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... her. Why should they care for the same things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... one but Jacob that had any, And no grant would he make for ought that I could say, Yet no man alive with fairer words could him pray. But the best red pottage he hath, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... us,—though Jacob and Esau quarrelled already in the womb, yet, so long as the weaker and more politic brother can get the elder brother's portion, and simple Esau hunts his whales and pierces his untrodden forests, content with his mess of pottage,—honestly abiding by his bargain, though a little puzzled at its terms,—we think that fratricide, or the sincere thought of it, is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... know that when the last Coercion Act was in full swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"—no publication of a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but upon a claim ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your active service, but in that manner ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... told the boys in our office that the old man was cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town, who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys quarrelled, and that she was cruel to him. Certain it is that she began to feed on young boys, and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... of hot pottage and a warm cake for thee, Naomi. Eat all of it," she commanded. "And talk not to me of robbers. In truth, there are as many robbers in the khan at Bethlehem as upon the length of Jerusalem highway. The caravan to Egypt will pay for straw for six camels and ten mules, will they, when I myself counted ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... will keep them near me till I have occasion to try them; when, if they prove their abilities, I will promote them; but if not, I will put them to death." He then allotted them an apartment, with an allowance of three cakes of bread and a mess of pottage daily; but placed spies over them, fearing lest ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... the salacacabia of the Romans; one is made of parsley, pennyroyal, cheese, pine-tops, honey, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen livers; the other is much the same as the soup-maigre of this country. Then there is a loin of veal boiled with fennel and caraway-seed, on a pottage composed of pickle, oil, honey, and flour, and a curious hachis of the lights, liver, and blood of a hare, together with a dish of roasted pigeons. Monsieur le baron, shall I help you to a plate of this ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... possesses one manah may buy, in addition to his bread, a litra of vegetables; the owner of ten manahs may add to his bread a litra of fish; he that has fifty manahs may add a litra of meat; while the possessor of a hundred may have pottage every day. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... drive liberty from out the land; but when a brave people, like the Americans, from their infancy us'd to liberty (not as a gift, but who inherit it as a birth-right, but not as a mess of pottage, to be bought by, or sold to, ev'ry hungry glutton of a minister) find attempts made to reduce them to slavery, they generally take some desperate successful measure for their deliverance. I should not be at all surpris'd to hear of independency proclaim'd throughout their ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... can hardly consent to sell our birthright for so poor a mess of pottage as this petty jealousy offers. A teachable spirit in matters of which we are ignorant, is usually as profitable and respectable as abundant self-conceit, and rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... not. They have left us a priceless heritage. Is there to be found among us now one who would so dishonor the memory of these sainted dead; one so lost to love of country and loyalty to his race, as to offer to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage? When we were slaves, Garrison labored to make us free; when our manhood was denied, he proclaimed it. Shall we in the day of freedom be less loyal to our country and true to ourselves than were the friends ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and the sphinx,—in spite of all these things, I would rather have been the hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt in the promise, rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds with him an essentially noble nature—no brother with his mess of pottage could mulct him of that. And he had a fine revenge; for when Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother was near with four hundred men, and made division of his flocks and herds, his man-servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent, the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... this very thing he desired presented the temptation by which he was deceived. And you might have mentioned, too, how Esau himself yielded to his appetite, and sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, Gen. xxv. 29. When we yield to these propensities of the flesh, we lay a snare for our own souls, and expose our weakness to an adversary, ever ready to take advantage of our infirmity. It is a common fault ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... to some minds, fascinatingly, notorious. But now I was hail-fellow-well-met with him, a bird of his own feather, a rogue of his own kidney, to whom he threw open the gates of his bediamonded and befrilled Alsatia. A pestilential fellow! As if I would mortgage my birthright for such a mess of pottage. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... likely prove the case, the beast is no longer in its skin?"—demanded the aide-de-camp. "If the cow should have been already eaten, in a score of messes of pottage?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... feeling, so judgement is likely to be unbiassed. It may, however, be biassed by the tone absorbed from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning Jacob's refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all natural children do condemn, says: "No, Esau shouldn't have got it, 'cause he ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... on the quarters of a single pullet: The victuals of the under servants were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in the other scale: A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and then he would have whipped it up, as his own fees, at a morsel; but that his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Clary, Sir Thomas was very decided that if there were any truth in the suspicion which had been now roused in his mind as to Ralph the heir, the thing must be put an end to at once. Ralph who had been the heir was now in possession of that mess of pottage for which he had sold his inheritance,—so said Sir Thomas to his daughter,—and would undoubtedly consume that, as he had consumed the other mess which should have lasted him till the inheritance was his own. And he told to Patience the whole story as to Polly ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... skins well cured, some mats close wove, wherewith they adorn their huts, and some earthen vessels which they are very skilful at making, and wherein they boil their flesh or roots, or sagamise, which, as has been said, is their pottage. They have also some small baskets made of canes, serving to put in their fruit and other provisions. Their beds are made of canes, raised 2 or 3 feet above the ground, handsomely fitted with mats and bullocks' hides, or ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... my Soul! how glad am I to find thee in my Arms again— and well— When left you Paris? Paris, that City of Pottage and Crab-Wine, swarming with Lacquies and Philies, whose Government is carried on by most Hands, not most Voices— And prithee how does Belvile and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Every day till then we have to take up our cross; every hour to see that we are carrying it. A birthright may be lost for a mess of pottage, and what Satan calls a trifle must be ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... into which, it is said, all sorts of things, including letters to the Patriarchs, are thrown, especially by women. In the Middle Ages, they spread at this hole a tender calf, some venison pasties, and some red pottage, every day, in honor of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the food was eaten by the poor. It is commonly reported, though I failed to obtain any local confirmation of the assertion, that the Jews still write their names and their requests on strips of paper and thrust ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Margaret Louise had not sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish I had a home that I had a perfect right to go and live in forevermore. I wish my mother was here ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... not exchange a mess of pottage for the benediction from a father's lips? Who is so dead he no longer finds more satisfaction in truth and love and beauty than in food or furniture? And why are we so foolish as to seek to satisfy ourselves with things that perish, while down to the least blade of creation earth is laden with ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... sir, remembering that our forefathers contended with the Norman at Hastings, and bled at a variety of other places that will readily occur to you, demands that its birthright shall not be bartered away for a mess of pottage. Have a care, sir, have a care! Or Tattlesnivel (its idle Rifles piled in its scouted streets) may be seen ere long, advancing with its Bleater to the foot of the Throne, and demanding redress for this conspiracy, from the orbed and ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury"; but he evidently was not my brother, for he demanded seventy per cent. I put my signature to certain indentures, received my pottage, and fled ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... commonplace woman hung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon's very antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful—this sickened her. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright in exchange for a mess of pottage. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... think I'll sell my loyalty for a mess of pottage! No, I'm for a well-regulated monarchy: hurrah ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... fashion of them to wear cloaks when they go abroad, but especially on Sundays. They have neither good bread, cheese nor drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call kail, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country-houses are pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with turfs, having in them but one room, many of them ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and fifty years before Christ when the young prophet cried out to his master, Elisha, over the pottage of wild gourds, "There is death in the pot!" It was two thousand six hundred and seventy years afterward, in 1820, that Accum, the chemist cried out over again, "There is death in the pot!" in the title page of a book so named, which gave almost everybody a pain ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... semi-civilized chieftains; and the Russian fabrics were a temptation to all, especially to the women; but to the honor of the Circassians, the tribes with few exceptions disdained to sell their birthright of independence for a mere mess of pottage. Relations of trade and amity could be established only with the tribes whose position on the frontier compelled them to be neutral. The chiefs in the interior, though often jealous of each other, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... offendeth the eyes, dulleth the sight, &c." Nor does Parkinson give a much more favourable account. "Our dainty eye now refuseth them wholly, in all sorts except the poorest; they are used with us sometimes in Lent to make pottage, and is a great and generall feeding in Wales with the vulgar gentlemen." It was even used as the proverbial expression of worthlessness, as in the "Roumaunt of the Rose," where the author says, speaking of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... excitement in the colony over the Convention of 1857 was most intense and widespread; the British flag was hoisted half-mast; other excited citizens flew American flags; everywhere there was burning indignation over this proposal to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage.[40] The resolute attitude of those interested elicited from Mr H. Labouchere, then Colonial Secretary, the welcome expression ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... against his comfort, and then ordered the boots to be chopped into little pieces, stewed and seasoned. Then sending for the culprit shoemaker, he ordered him to eat his own boots, thus converted into a pottage; and with this punishment the unfortunate mechanic, who had thought his life forfeited, was sufficiently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tame, the Sorts. Ditto Carrier, its use. Ditto broiled. Ditto in Paste or Dumplings. Ditto stew'd. Portmanteau Pottage. Pike, to roast. Ditto to bake. Pease, preserved all the Year. Pickled Walnuts. Ditto Cucumbers. Ditto for Mangoes. Ditto Kidney-Beans. Ditto Nasturtium-Seeds. Partridges stew'd with Sallery. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... mind and body; sodden with vice; mentally rotten with the knowledge thereof: the fair god of his ideal dragged from its altar and sold, with all the rest of his great heritage, for less than a mess of pottage.—Again, as he neared the city, these memories were augmented by an anticipation: the imagined picture of the third and last interview he was destined to have with the tragic boy. Ivan was to get his last glimpse into that soul to-night. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... cases:—viz. of the decoction, five ounces, of common oil, three ounces, of sugar, two ounces, and of cassia fistula, one ounce. But if she will not take a clyster, one or two yolks of new laid eggs, or a little peas-pottage warm, a little salt and sugar, and supped a little before meat, will be very convenient. But if her belly be distended and stretched with wind a little fennel seed and aniseed reduced to a powder and mixed with honey and sugar made after the manner of an electuary, will be very well Also, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... for her. This contingent had not been pleased with the patronizing manner which the Sans had displayed towards them at the picnic. They were altogether too independent and honorable to barter their class vote for a mess of pottage. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the most opulent and powerful spirits ever seen on earth have scarcely done more than indicate what kind of birthrights they bartered away for a mess of pottage. Coleridge, for example, ceased to write poetry after thirty because, by dissipating his overplus of life, he had too grievously ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... a prophet called Habakkuk who made pottage and broken bread to take to the reapers in the field. An Angel of the Lord said unto Habakkuk: Go, carry the dinner that thou hast into Babylon unto Daniel, who is in the lions' den. And Habakkuk said: Lord, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... a poet's word even deep enough In any man's breast, looking presently For offshoots, you have done more for the man Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat, And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire." ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... dreamed of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some of them were for the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... host and the consideration to be paid to the guests. The head cook and his assistants entered in procession, bearing the dishes in regular order, and deposited them on the table with due solemnity. The pottage was first served, and when this course was eaten, the vessels and spoons were removed. The carver performed his office on the meats, holding the joint, according to the traditions of his order, carefully with the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand, whilst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... far up in the west, by a family who have come down on a special mission from some great chief to his brethren on the Otonabee, and the squaws have cooked some in honour of the guests. That pot that sends up such a savoury steam is venison-pottage, or soup, or stew, or any name you choose to give the Indian mess that is concocted of venison, wild rice, and herbs. Those tired hounds that lie stretched before the fire have been out, and now they enjoy ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... REICHSHOFRATH (Imperial Aulic Council at Vienna; chief Court of the Empire in such cases); openly protesting there, That their Papa had no power to make such a bargain, selling their birthright for immediate pottage; and that, in brief, they would not stand by it at all;—and summoned Friedrich Wilhelm to show cause why ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that you ever said about the sacredness of marriage has been forgotten. I believe with you that it is a little less than crime to marry when no love exists—that she who does so, sells her heart's birthright for some mess of pottage, sinks down from the pure level of noble womanhood, and traffics away her person, is henceforth meaner in quality if not ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... German morals. This mood eventuated in Lord Haldane's "week end" trip to Berlin. The voice was the voice of Jacob, in spite of the hand of Esau. Mr. Churchill at Glasgow, showed the real hand and the mess of pottage so amiably offered at Berlin bought no German birthright. The Kreuz Zeitung rightly summed up the situation by pointing out that "Mr. Churchill's testimony can now be advanced as showing that the will of England alone ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... with much feeling—"you shall never suppose that the old sailor sold the birthright of his honour for a mess of pottage." ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Treitschke as the typical Protestant nation; but the misfortune of German Protestantism has been that it has never "protested." Through the fusion and confusion of Church and State the Germans have sold their spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage. Their spiritual life has been almost entirely divorced from action. It has been centred in the intellect and in the emotions. It has moved in a world of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... precipitately from the spot. And the question of what to do worried her as much as it worried de Spain. The whole range had been shaken by the Calabasas fight. Even in a country where appeal to arms was common, where men were ready to snuff out a life for a word, or kill for a mess of pottage—to settle for the least grave offense a dispute with a shot—the story of the surprising, unequal, and fatal encounter of the Calabasas men with de Spain, and of his complete disappearance after withstanding almost unheard-of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... brought me my platter of this pottage, and though it tasted of nothing in my experience—a kind of sweet, cloying meat—I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not so fast as that the young "Gulliver" had not finished his before me, and sat at length watching every ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... understanding is involved in such a shade, that it does not know how to distinguish fornication from adultery, and still less the milder kinds of fornication from the more grievous, and in like manner of adultery; thus it mixes evils, and of different evils makes one pottage, and of different goods one paste. In order therefore that the love of the sex may be distinctly known as to that part by which it inclines and makes advances to adulterous love altogether opposite to conjugial love, it is ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... prayer was employed by the early Christians, until the splendid vision of the Christ became obscured and finally lost to the Church by its bargaining with Constantine for a mess of pottage, namely, temporal power. Then began to rise that great worldly institution, the so-called Holy Church. In the first half of the sixth century Justinian closed the schools of philosophy at Athens. For a while Judaizing Christianity continued ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... all, the enumeration of plants, herbs, and shrubs which his reverend conductor pointed out to him, of which this was choice, because of prime use in medicine, and that more choice for yielding a rare flavour to pottage, and a third, choicest of all, because possessed of no merit but its extreme scarcity. Still it was necessary to preserve some semblance at least of attention, which the youth found so difficult, that he fairly ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "I will do so, dear Hans." And when he was gone, she cooked herself a nice mess of pottage to take with her. As she came to the field she said to herself, "What shall I do? Shall I cut first, or eat first? Ay, I will eat first!" Then she ate up the contents of her pot, and when it was finished, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... near were about forty more of the same sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly. Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well considered before it came out, and never ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... as she moved beside Mrs. Graham into the music-room. A wave of contempt was sweeping over her, as she reviewed the dinner, its gilding, its gluttony, and its unspeakable dulness, and she felt that she had sold her birthright of self-respect for a mess of pottage. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... other day the two Southwestern representatives put up at the Grand Union, Copah's tar-paper-covered simulacrum of a hotel; and during that day Ford contrived to sell his birthright for what he, himself, valued at the moment as a mess of pottage. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... thought only of his own comfort, but now he sent his servant to take a mantle to the mother because she looked like his daughter at home, who had named her boy for him. And there was a peevish clerk who had paid for the last bowl of pottage they had, who gave it to the little family and supped ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... of the good God, nor dance nor choose our own clothes nor laugh nor think. We shall scurry hither and thither before the flick of the devil's tail and be ready for the burning. We shall have sold our birthright of daring for an insipid mess of pottage: sold our right to choose and to spare, to slay and to leave alive, to be glad and to be sorry, to be martyrs if we would be, to explore, to risk, to win. We shall be docile and respectable, and the standard of our docility and respectability will ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... should be said for them during life, at the four chief feasts, and 300 per annum for either or both after death, for ever; on the anniversary of Hugh, the Abbot bound himself to feed the poor with bread, beer, pottage, and one mess from the kitchen, for ever. (Rot. Pat., 20 Edward the Second) In the Appendix to the companion volume, In All Time of our Tribulation, will be found an account of the petitions of the two Despensers, with the curious list of their goods destroyed ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... do all that a maiden might and more—delve could they no less than spin, hunt no less than weave, brew pottage and helm ships, wake the harp and tell the stars, face all danger and ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... roasted on the fire; like the head-cooks of our kitchen, who often lard partridges, queests, and stock-doves with intent to roast them, one would think; but it happens sometimes that they e'en turn the partridges into the pot to be boiled with cabbages, the queests with leek pottage, and the stock-doves with turnips. But hark you me, good friends, I protest before this noble company, that as for the chapel which I vowed to Mons. St. Nicholas between Quande and Montsoreau, I honestly mean that it shall be a chapel of rose-water, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... babies formed a pretty sight, with their hair all tied on the tops of their heads with red, green, and blue ribbons. One teacher asked a row of eight children, "Where does rice grow?" The whole eight opened their mouths wide, filled as they were with the pottage, and replied in concert, in a sing-song, "It grows in the water." Then the teacher gave the order, "Hands up!" and it was pretty to see all those little arms fly up, which a few months ago were all in swaddling-clothes, and all those little ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... agnize a prompt alacrity in carrying burdens—one, rather, who recognizes a moral and physical unfitness for such, and indeed all other dorsal and manual operations—one who has been born a Briton, and would not, therefore, sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; but, on the contrary, holds that his birthright entitles him to as many messes of pottage as there may be days to his mortal span, though time's fingers stretched beyond the distance allotted to extreme Parr or extremest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... he had to do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in the courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my inner office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put them to boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He had to run errands for me, open the door to prospective clients, show them into the outer office, explain to them that his master was engaged on affairs ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... History of Mere,) bear date somewhat more than two hundred years afterwards, in the reign of Edward the First, 1299. But at that time, what were the wages of the labourer? The ploughman's wages were about five shillings a-year, fifteen shillings by the present scale; a maid for making "pottage" received a penny ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... seruau{n}t {a}t he hit see faste & he deruely at his dome dy[gh]t hit bylyue. 632 [Sidenote: Abraham appears bare-headed before his guests.] e burne to be bare-heued buske[gh] hy{m} e{n}ne, [Sidenote: He casts a clean cloth on the green, and sets before them cakes, butter, milk, and pottage.] Cleche[gh] to a clene cloe & keste[gh] on e grene, rwe ryftyly {er}-on o re erue kake[gh], & bry{n}ge[gh] butt{er} wyth-al, & by e bred sette[gh] 636 Mete; messe[gh] of mylke he merkke[gh] bytwene, Sye{n} ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... Omkarah sarvadaivatyah, Brahmani is Brahmavidi. What is intended to be said in this verse is that when such a man eats and is gratified, the whole universe becomes gratified. In the Vana Parvam, Krishna, by swallowing a particle of pottage gratified the hunger of thousands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... worldly consolations and exhortations Goodwife Dolly brought him to rise and accept his bowl of pottage, though he could not swallow much, and soon put it aside and sought ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of that eloquent vagabond cheap-Jack) and popped up his nose before we could say Jack {326} Robinson; and when Jack-in-the-green ushered in May-day? While a halo of charmed recollections encircles the memory of Jack-pudding, dear to the Englishman as Jack Pottage and Jack Sausage (Jean Potage and Hans Wurst) are ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... kind, and loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild, And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of Fever smiled The welcome which they could ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... time they arrived. He was at the moment engaged in dilating upon the peril through which the country had recently passed, and thanking God that Canada had loyally stood by the Empire and had refused to sell her heritage for a mess of pottage. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... till night, beneath a broiling sun, or exposed to cold, rain, and hail, the coarsest of black bread and lentil pottage, formed his scanty meal; his associates the lowest ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of a time Cormac, king of Ulaid, "the man of the three gifts," forsakes Eochaid's daughter, because she was barren save for one daughter that she had borne to Cormac after the making of the pottage which her mother—the woman from the elfmounds—gave her. Then she said to her mother: "Bad is what thou hast given me: it will be a daughter that I ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Take Sheeps-heads, Wooll and all, hack, hew, and bruise them into pieces, make Pottage of it, with Oatmeal, and Penny-Royal, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the Faith may be still more sacred. For the rest of us, the issue was formulated by Gladstone sixty years ago: "You have our decision: take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright of the Bride ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... skin, and when I have killed more, I will have a coat made out of them." "But what shall we do with the body?" said she, for as yet men had not begun to eat animal food, but lived on vegetables alone. "Cut it in two," he answered, "and season our pottage with one half of it at a time." She did so. The boy, who was of a very small stature, continued his efforts, and succeeded in killing ten birds, out of the skins of which his sister made him a ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... fit to receive three or four besides my family, without any trouble; and whatever their fare was, they were sure to have a hearty welcome. Twice a week, a certain number of old people, widows and indigent persons, were served at my gates with bread and good pottage made of beef, which I mention that those which succeed may follow the example.' Not content with merely benefiting the aged folk of his town, Sir Hugh took great pains to extend the piers, and ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... yourselves, you doors, for mighty Wealth will enter in, and with Wealth comes jolly Mirth and gentle Peace. May all the corn-bins be full and the mass of dough always overflow the kneading-trough. Now (set before us) cheerful barley-pottage, full of sesame.... ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... beneath its canopy, Ere this misshapen thing, the world, be rolled And sphered to perfect freedom, ere the old Incrusted statutes that our God defy Be crushed in its rotation, and those die That lived defiance through them. Then man's gold No more shall manhood buy, or men be sold For pottage messes. We may not be nigh To see the glory, but if true and bold Our hands may ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Swiss Protestant minister and author, is of the opinion that coffee (and not lentils, as others have supposed) was the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright; also that the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given Ruth was undoubtedly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather contemptible by a later one—that of falling in love with Rachel, and the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first person who had offered ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... down by the Red Butte today," began Noah, "that had been on one of these here walkin' tours—the kind you take when your money gives out. After he'd stuffed himself with pottage and Chinese greens, and fried bacon, and a few other things round the camp, he got right talkative. He says they've broke a good road through the sand straight from Red Butte to the head of the Gulf of California. And that there is a little ship down there from Guaymas lying round waiting ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... old food. We read of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of red pottage, or a mess of red dal. Then later we read of the Hebrew children refusing to eat the king's meat, and growing rosy and fat on their ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... tart, my brother? Esau sold his birthright, and that for a mess of pottage, and that birthright was his greatest jewel; and if he, why might not Little-faith ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is made. I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. Whatever regrets or grief I may have are just. To contemplate a girl like Judith having any interest in me, is ghastly. Judith is yours, whether she realizes it or not. ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait. Beside, I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the head cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: With him I proved no bargain driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square. These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so many dried cakes. This was their principal ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... what so many artists have been bullied into doing before," Ainsworth observed. "If he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, that is precisely what the patrons of art in this country demand that every man shall do who comes here. I could tell you of a dozen good fellows who've been spoiled in that way. I am far enough outside to look on in an unbiased ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat pottage with, and a cape. Trowle the servant has nought to offer but a pair of his wife's old hose; four boys follow with presents of a bottle, a hood, a pipe, and a nut-hook. Quaint are the words of the last ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... though worn out with fatigue, she could not sleep. This, then, was her coming home! She had sold her birthright, and got not even the "mess of pottage," but the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... roast loin is an excellent summer dish. The back-ribs are divided into two, and used for very different purposes. The fore-part, the neck, is boiled and makes sweet barley-broth, and the meat, when well boiled, or rather the whole pottage simmered for a considerable time beside the fire, eats tenderly. The back-ribs make an excellent roast; indeed, there is not a sweeter or more varied one in the carcass, having both ribs and shoulder. The shoulder-blade eats best cold, and the ribs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... very different from what it was at home. The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Rat hotly; "I'll have none of your pottage, or your sauce, either. You don't suppose I am going to give my best buffalo, that gave quarts and quarts of milk-the buffalo I have been feeding all day-for a wee bit of rice? No! I got a loaf for a bit of stick; I got ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... shouldst dine, And thou wilt not, I will go to mine.' 'I bid thee (said he) vere up the pot.' 'A ha! (she said) I trow thou dote,' Up she goeth for fear, at last, No question mooved where it should stand Upon his hed the pottage she cast, And heeld the pot stil in her hand. Said and swore, he might her trust, She would with the pottage ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... beware of this old king, who clings to you to support his own tottering royalty, and to obstruct your schemes of conquest. But he will not succeed with you as he has done by me. You have no mother to thrust you aside, while she barters away your rights for a mess of pottage! I see your eagle glance—it turns toward the south, where roll the stormy waves of the Black Sea! I see this fair white hand as it points to mosques of Constantinople, where the crescent is being lowered and the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Hotel de Milan close by the bridge; but though dignified with the name of hotel, it is only a common roadside inn. Still, it is tolerably clean, and in summer the want of carpets is not missed. The people were civil and attentive, their bread wholesome, their pottage and bouilli good—being such fare as the people of the locality contrive to live and thrive upon. The accommodation of the place is, indeed, quite equal to the demand; for very few travellers accustomed to a better ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... either or both of us, and the false, fickle heart of a woman was laid in the balances against the ancestral estates, I saw my opportunity for seizing the long coveted prize. We each made his choice; my brother sold his birthright for a mess of pottage; his rights were transferred to me, and my ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... good deal of feeling into their crying of special editions when I reached the streets again; but I was not inclined to waste further pence upon the Sunday News' moralizings over the evolution of canards. I took a mess of some adulterated pottage at a foreign restaurant in Notting Hill, as I had no wish to return to Bloomsbury before the Demonstration. The waiter—either a ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... disturbance in a church in Friday St.; a great many young [people] knotting together and crying out Porridge often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away.' There is a four leaved pamphlet, 4to 1642, by Gyles Calsine, entitled 'A Messe of Pottage, very well seasoned and crumb'd with bread of life, and easie to be digested against the contumelious slanderers of the Divine Service, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... water keeps the clearing clean of sand-flies, the pest of the inner settlements, and European employes will find the place healthy. The up-sloping ground behind the house could be laid out in a pottage-garden; and, as Bahama-grass grows fast, there will be no difficulty ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... truth and plain-speaking? Ah, where are they found? As scarce in these days as is genuine freedom! They all prate of Honour, yet Honour all round They'll sell for the first mess of pottage from Edom. Well, Madame, Punch wishes you luck with your lantern, And up, soon or late, may a true Honest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... and Rupert, spruce enow with nosegays and ribbons, rowed us up to Putney. We had a brave ramble through Fulham meadows, father discoursing of the virtues of plants, and how many a poor knave's pottage would be improved if he were skilled in the properties of burdock ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... adjoining lodging, came the poignant spectacle of three beings, half clad in shreds, apparently sexless and ageless, who, amidst the dire bareness of their room, were gluttonously eating from the same earthen pan some pottage which even dogs would have refused. They barely raised their heads to growl, and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to warrant hope of pardon. Nature never forgives a trespass against her law. The opportunity that is lost does not return. The mistake by which a life is marred cannot be undone. The constitution shattered by intemperance cannot be restored, the birthright bartered for a mess of pottage is gone for ever, and no bitter tears or supplications have power to bring it back. Whether we repent of it or not, every sin we commit leaves its dark mark behind, and in this life at least the stain can never be effaced; and yet we believe in the forgiveness ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... fair green hill. As we quit the highroad to reach the monument, we come upon pretty pastoral groups. It is supper-time-l'heure de la soupe, as French rustics say— and before every cottage-door are squatted family groups, eating their pottage on the doorsteps. Around are the dogs and cats, chickens, pigs and goats. To every humble homestead is attached orchard, garden, even a patch of corn or vineyard. All is ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... manner become independent, and the retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city. A regular government was established ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... birthright?" said Berry. "We know they had birthrights. And I'd sooner be a birthright than a wine-cooler any day. Besides, Jonah could go as a mess of pottage. There's an idea for you. Talk ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... a hunter. On returning one day from hunting he was faint from hunger, and cast a greedy eye on some pottage that Jacob had prepared. But Jacob would not give his hungry brother the food until he had promised, by a solemn oath, to surrender his birthright to him. The clever man of enterprise, impulsive and passionate, thought more, for the moment, of the pangs of hunger than of his future prospects, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... because they will be useful in later life, while Latin and Greek are omitted because they have no practical use, although their educational value may be greater, you will be bartering away the boy's rightful heritage of knowledge for a mess of pottage." ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the place of slaughter Are cots and sheepfolds seen, And rows of vines, and fields of wheat, And apple-orchards green; 40 And swine crush the big acorns That fall from Corne's[18] oaks. Upon the turf by the Fair Fount[19] The reaper's pottage smokes. The fisher baits his angle; 45 The hunter twangs his bow; Little they think on those strong limbs That moulder deep below. Little they think how sternly That day the trumpets pealed; 50 How in the slippery swamp of blood ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... minute he is at Frejus, the next in Paris. There, they all adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with him and kill him—click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various |
