"Small fry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nor on the Malabar coast. In Central India it is not uncommon. It has got a reputation for digging into graves, and is called in some parts "the grave-digger;" but I do not believe in its carnivorous propensities to this extent; it lives principally on small fry, insects, and small animals, honey and vegetable food. Jerdon says it is destructive to poultry, which is probable, for it will eat small birds. Both it and the Cape species will eagerly look out for bees, but it is not to be supposed, as some books would make out, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... English sense of the word is hardly known in Germany. People who can afford it give up two rooms to the small fry, but where the flat system prevails, and rents are high, this is seldom possible. One room is usually known as the Kinderstube, and here the children sleep and play. But it must be remembered that rooms are big, light, and high in Germany, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... consuming hundreds of insects in the course of a day. Nor does he confine his attention to flies and gnats and mosquitoes and such small fry. He catches what he can. A large dragon fly will even gorge himself on one of the large-sized butterflies, and one has been seen calmly chewing away ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... no more Speakers, but fewer; She 's hed plenty o' them, wut she wants is a doer"? Fer the matter o' thet, it 's notorous in town Thet her own representatives du her quite brown. But thet 's nothin' to du with it; wut right hed Palfrey To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? Warn't we gettin' on prime with our hot an' cold blowin', Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it agoin'? We 'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position, On this side or thet, no one could n't tell wich one, So, wutever side wipped, we 'd a chance ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... poor thing,' he said presently. 'And that's what I wanted to tell you. I suppose it's not a very pretty story, is it? But I'll tell you one thing. Though we made a little by the turn of the market, we saved a heap of small fry from losing all they'd put in. If we'd let the slump come and then bought we should have made a pile; but then we might have had difficulty in getting the stock up to anywhere near ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... you—or like Uncle George," he observed, making an amiable effort to assure me that even in the hour of adversity, I still held my coveted place in the General's class; "when the crash comes, you big ones have to pay the piper, while the rest of us small fry manage ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... immediately over that one spot was fairly darkened with them. They were as thick as midges-or as ducks used to be in California. All sizes were there from the little carrion crows to the great dignified vultures and marabouts and eagles. The small fry flopped and scolded, and rose and fell in a dense mass; the marabouts walked with dignified pace to and fro through the grass all about. As far as the eye could penetrate the blue, it could make out more and yet more of the great soarers stooping with half bent wings. Below we could see uncertainly ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... eager, vivid interest which was characteristic of her. So absorbed was she that she failed to notice that her own small skiff was getting rather dangerously hemmed in. To her right lay a biggish sailing vessel, blocking the view on that side, behind her a small fry of miscellaneous craft, packed together like a flotilla of Thames boats on a summer's day awaiting the opening of the lock gates. Half unconsciously she heard the approaching chug-chug of an engine mingling with the sound of voices singing lustily—the hilarious chorus of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... well doubt the nature of a fish-hawk, which is to pick up all the small fry, and to let the big ones go. We might show him our canvas and try the open sea, but I fear that fore-mast is too weak, with three such holes in it, to bear ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... smacks and other small fry, including some few coastwise steamers whose routes hugged the land. Surely they might expect safety from submarines so far inshore, for ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... through Bankruptcy, side-stepping the Assessor, working the Farmers for a Railroad Bonus, handling the Funds for denominational Colleges and putting the double Hammer-Lock on the Small Fry who had Notes falling due, Hezekiah accumulated a Wad that put ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... approved of is to sell your entire copyright in your book for a very small sum. You want the ready money, and perhaps you are not very hopeful. But, when your book is in all men's hands, when you are daily reviled by the small fry of paragraphers, when the publisher is clearing a thousand a year by it, while you only got a hundred down, then you will thank me, and will acknowledge that, in spite of apparent success, you are a failure after all. There are publishers, however, so inconsiderate that they ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... despoil the idlers' family of their goods and the country of its barley, which would otherwise be made into bread for the poor. All these are arrant robbers, the others in the upper end of the street are mostly small fry, such as highwaymen, tailors, weavers, millers, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... every evening; and Odo soon found that, as Gamba had said, it was the best company in Pianura. His lordship lived in great state in the Gothic palace adjoining the Cathedral. The gloomy vaulted rooms of the original structure had been abandoned to the small fry of the episcopal retinue. In the chambers around the courtyard his lordship drove a thriving trade in wines from his vineyards, while his clients awaited his pleasure in the armoury, where the panoplies of his fighting predecessors still rusted on the walls. Behind ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... he met. All Bonneville knew of it. What a mark for gibes he had made of himself. The workingman turned farmer! What a target for jeers—he who had fancied he could elude the Railroad! He remembered he had once said the great Trust had overlooked his little enterprise, disdaining to plunder such small fry. He should have known better than that. How had he ever imagined the Road would permit him to make ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... these young men are in this curious plot. They are merely the small fry of the fishing banks: they are petty rascals, with occasional big game. But somewhere, behind this sinister machine, is a guiding hand on the throttle, a brain which is profound, an eye which is all-seeing and a heart as cold as an Antartic mountain. There is the exceptional ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... o' them, wut she wants is a doer'? Fer the matter o' thet, it's notorous in town Thet her own representatives du her quite brown. But thet's nothin' to du with it; wut right hed Palfrey To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? Warn't we gittin' on prime with our hot an' cold blowin', Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it agoin'? We'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position. On this side or thet, no one couldn't tell wich one, 150 So, wutever side wipped, we'd a chance ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and killed his little son when the latter dropped a basket of fish into the water are cited without regard to the fact that cases of sudden domestic violence and quick repentance are common in any city today; and the failure of the Australian blacks to throw back the small fry when seining is referred to without pausing to consider that our practice of exterminating game and denuding our forests shows an amazing lack of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... of the proposed transaction. Ralph had never seen his way clearly in that dim underworld of affairs where men of the Moffatt and Driscoll type moved like shadowy destructive monsters beneath the darting small fry of the surface. He knew that "business" has created its own special morality; and his musings on man's relation to his self imposed laws had shown him how little human conduct is generally troubled ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the side street toward Biltom Electronics—Bill-Tom, get it?—when I saw Marge threading her way to the curb. She was leading a small blonde girl of about eight, who clutched a child-size hatbox in her hand. Marge was hot and exasperated, but small fry was as cool and ...
— The Aggravation of Elmer • Robert Andrew Arthur
... boys and girls who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen of his affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small fry. ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... before it was really launched and by some other clever strokes of stock manipulation, and had undertaken at length the much-needed trip to Carlsbad. The suspicion that Porter had won back the money he owed to Colonel Hitchcock by a trick upon the small fry of speculators, such as Webber, had its influence in the feeling which Sommers and his wife had about the Hitchcock money. The last move of the "operator" had made something of a scandal in Chicago, for many of Porter's friends and acquaintances lost heavily in "Rag," and felt sore because ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the Saints we see these Elect tormented by dreadful maladies, and the most painful trials. No, holiness on earth is no child's play, life is not amusement. To Saints, indeed, even on earth excessive suffering finds compensation in excessive joys; but to other Christians, such small fry as we are, what distress and trouble! We question the everlasting silence and none answers; we wait and none comes. In vain do we proclaim Him as Illimitable, Incomprehensible, Unthinkable, and confess that every effort of our reason is vain, we cannot cease to wonder, and still less cease ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of tender flesh, would not consent to replace her pinch of young Acridian-grubs with the one big Locust that forms the food of Panzer's Tachytes; and the latter, in her turn, would never exchange her adult Acridian for the other's menu of small fry. The genus and the species are the same, but the age differs; and this is enough to decide the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... quick thinkin' apple-ratus, an' mos' inginner'lly, all de time, de pranks he played on de yuther creeturs pestered um bofe ways a-comin' an' a-gwine. De dogs done mighty well, 'long ez dey had dealin's wid de small fry, like Brer Fox, an' Brer Coon, an' Brer Wolf, but when dey run ag'in' ol' Brer B'ar, dey sho struck a snag. De mos' servigrous wuz de identual one dat got de wust hurted. He got too close ter Brer B'ar, an' when he look at hisse'f in runnin' water, he tuck notice dat he wuz split wide ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... it, or possibly for that very reason, it has a note of originality that is most conspicuous. Everybody admits that it is most beautiful, and very few seem to know just how this was accomplished. Many of the "small fry" of the architectural profession enjoy themselves in picking out its faults, which are really, as suggested above, the reason for its supreme beauty. Save for Mullgardt's court, it is the only building ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... tired, they said, of ducks and geese and swans. They wanted a change from seals and bears, walruses and such small fry. Nothing short of a whale would ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sowerby is an agreeable fellow; and if it be so, he will have all that he wants for life. But his creditors will gain nothing. The duke, who has his title-deeds, will doubtless get his money, and the estate will in fact belong to the wife. But the small fry, such as you, will not get a shilling." Poor Mark! He had had an inkling of this before; but it had hardly presented itself to him in such certain terms. It was, then, a positive fact, that in punishment for his weakness in having signed ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... fled. It was usually found where grasshoppers were abundant and the two hunters not infrequently followed its movements for the purpose of locating more easily the swarms of insects. Suma was not overfond of this small fry but Warruk caught and ate of them until his stomach refused to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... utensils are placed. These are but ill adapted for preparing a roast. John Bull would look with sovereign contempt, or downright despair, according to the state of his stomach, on the thing called a roast in Rome. There it is seldom seen beyond the size of a beef-steak. Much small fry is roasted with a ratchet-wheel and spit. This is wound up with a weight, and revolves over the fire, which is strewed ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... spoke a shoal was making the water dance just ahead and completely changing its colour, for, as they fed upon the small fry with which the surface gleamed, the sea was dappled with rings, serried with ridges, and seemed as if it were a fluid of mingled gold and silver beneath which some volcanic action was going on, which ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... fell, save dreary mud flats whole miles in extent, with the line of blue water beyond stretching along the distant horizon. These mud flats were much frequented by birds of the wader family, that used to come and fish in the shallow pools for the small fry that had lingered behind when the tide fell; and my cousin, a keen sportsman in his day, has told me that he used to steal upon them in his mud shoes,—flat boards attached to the soles, like the snow shoes of the higher latitudes,—and enjoy rare sport in knocking down magnificent ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... endeavours to propitiate the miser, who was irritated if his miserable loans were not repaid at the proper time. Silver Stick with his love of authority was delighted to hold a priest and an equal under his thumb, so that those in the Claverias should see that he did not order about the small fry only. Don Martin was for him only a servant in a cassock, and he made him come up to the cloister nearly every evening on various pretexts. His delight Was to keep him whole hours standing in front of his door, obliged ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and said, "Well, Eric, it would serve you right to be caught. What business have you to be going out at night, at the invitation of contemptible small fry, like this little Wildney?" ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... their satisfaction, they'd take his word for law and the gospel more than ever. In this sort of a scrape you want to hit as high as you can, strike the biggest man who will let you in his office. It's the small fry that make the trouble. I guess that's true 'most everywhere. I know the general manager of a railroad is always an easier chap to get on with ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... of business. My confidence left me. There was no use in making new contracts—that was plain. I talked with first one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathized with me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last a Gentile said, 'Go to Brigham Young!—these small fry cannot do you any good.' I did not think much of the idea, for if the law could not help me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thursday se'nnight our great expedition departed from Portsmouth—and soon separated; lord Anson with the great ships to lie before Brest, and Commodore Howe,(895) our naval hero, with the transports and a million of small fry on the secret enterprise. At one o'clock on Thursday night, alias Friday morning a cutter brought advice that on Sunday night the transports had made land in Concalle Bay, near St. Maloes, had disembarked with no opposition or loss, except of a boatswain and two sailors, killed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... But when you look at the combinations, and the dropping-off of roads that have been drained, and the scaling down in refunding, and the rearranging, and the strikes, how much chance do you think the small fry stand? I don't doubt that Henderson will make a big thing out of it, and there will be lots of howling by those who were not so smart, and the newspapers will say that Henderson was too strong for them. What we respect ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Jack's, striped bass cooked in wine is what we think the best of the fish to be found in the market, or at the restaurants, cooked that way. Jule's is famous for his Rex sole. At all of the French and Italian restaurants small fry is cooked to perfection. If you wish fish in any way or of any kind you will make no mistake in asking for it at any of the French or Italian restaurants, or at the Shell Fish Grotto, and if you are in doubt regarding what to order just take the proprietor into your confidence, ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... with it, Mart—never in a thousand years, even if they wanted to. Of course I am small fry, but you are too big a man for even Steel to do away with. It can't ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... face. She watched the sweep of a gull following the crested windrow of the breakers on a near-by reef, busy with his fishing. All manner of craft etched their spars and canvas on the horizon, only bluer than the sea itself. Inshore was a fleet of small fry—catboats, sloops, dories under sail, and a smart smack or two going around to Provincetown with cargoes ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... a 'Whirling Coxcomb,' or a 'pensioned scribbler,' was a very mild amenity in eighteenth century party warfare; and the abuse of such small fry as these anonymous pamphleteers might be wholly disregarded did it not show Fielding's prominence, during these anxious times, as a strenuous Hanoverian, and also the fact that he had now not only largely abjured party politics, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... eyes flashed wrathful threats, till meseemed they were more fiery than the jewels in the tall plumes she wore on her head. She thrust aside the young men and maid who made up the Court of Love as a swift ship cuts through the small fry in the water. Without let or pause she pushed on, and as soon as she caught sight of Ann she seized her by the arm, stroked her hair and cheeks, and flung a few sharp ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... plain enough when the Baleen Whale rushes through the water with open jaws, engulfing in the huge cavern of its mouth, where the pendent whalebone plates form a huge sieve, incalculable millions of small fry. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... o'clock the company was actually beginning to arrive, the small fry of the neighbourhood being, of course, the first to appear. By-and-by came the rank and fashion of Meadowshire, and by three o'clock the gardens ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... would cast you in bronze. You aimed a just reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! it's useless talking of one's-self; it's useless bragging. We have no one yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere—either small fry, nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and are for ever feeling the pulse ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... Carlyles, but it never much respects the Carlyles of other ages. We have our Ferrero and our H. G. Wells, to say nothing of such small fry as Faguets, Marinetti, e tutti quanti. They are people who have something for their own age and nothing for any other, and their own age is pretty sure to prefer them to any great man it may produce but fail to smother: they are adored and duly ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... unmasticating teeth. Dolphins and porpoises, those faithful companions of the sailor, around whose vessel they come playing and tumbling in the seas of all countries, are the only ones who have them in both jaws. And these are the small fry of the order; they do not usually exceed six ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Creme de Langoustines was excellent, a most delightful bisque. The nonnats are the small fry of the bay, smaller far than whitebait, and are delicious to eat. They are perhaps more suitable for breakfast than for a dinner of ceremony, and had I not yearned for local colour I should have ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... world-dominion, and casting about to pave the way for this result by absorbing the minor States of Northern Europe—as a shark would open its voracious jaws to swallow down a shoal of minnows, or other small fry. That this was a prominent plank in the platform of German policy must be clear to all who have read the diplomatic revelations of the last few months; but now the "Three Kings of Scandinavia," going one ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... vaticinations of the seer are likely to spread his reputation far beyond the limits of the street in which he practises. Younger competitors must be content to scrape together a precarious existence by preying on the small fry which pass unheeded through the meshes of the old man's net. Just as there is no medical diploma necessary for a doctor in China, so any man may be a fortune-teller who likes to start business in that particular line. The ranks are recruited generally from unsuccessful ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... pannikin of tea, and hooking them out with the point of his hash-besmeared knife as he sat on his log beside him. Joe, too, had come down specially to share the meal, but he, being a member of the household, was very small fry at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Laura the less she liked her. She could see that what Rosie said was perfectly true—Laura put on airs. Every afternoon Laura played on the lawn. Her appearance was the signal for all the small fry of the neighborhood to gather about the gate. First would come the Doyles, then Betsy, then, one by one, the strange children who wandered into the court, until there would be a row of wistful little faces stuck between the bars of the fence. They would follow every move that Laura made ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... the Reichstag a host of small fry from the Departments collects behind the Government and this dominent Federal Council. The Chancellor, whose place is at the corner of the Government "table" nearest the President, is always shepherded by his political aide-de-camp, Dr. Wahnschaffe. There is always a group of uniformed Army and ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... casting from the shore at the inlet for small fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore, which told me plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a huge trout rolled half his length out of water behind my fly, small fry lost all their interest and I promised myself the joy of feeling my rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big trout ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... their looks," said Faith. The manse children had been at the station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and taste a small drop of Young American whiskey, which would have the effect of making stronger our friendship. This we did, drinking a good time to Mr. Pierce. No sooner was the whiskey down than all his ideas came straight up. He said he was none of yer small fry;—like thunder he had stumped it for General Pierce; like electricity he had down in Georgia and Western Alabama carried everything for true democracy. 'Reckon Mr. Smooth never was down South?' he concluded, in parenthesis. I assured him I never was; but that I had heard it was great ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... value to me, and I appreciate it. I send you herewith a number of my verses that have appeared this week in my column. Having done my work ahead I am rusticating in great shape and have become a veritable terror to the small fry in which the lakes of this delectable locality abound. My books will be issued about the first of August; they will be very pretty pieces of work; I shall send you a set at once. My western verse seems to be catching on; ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "because we have not enough positive evidence—at any rate not enough to hang them all; and next we must catch the small fry—the desperate little ones who will themselves attempt the killing. It is now that I should be ready for a visit from your friend Rumbald, if I were you. They can have no suspicion that you have done anything but betray them in the way they intended: ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... ground all about it." Satisfied by this, Mildred crouched down, with her arm about her brother's neck, and saw the great net cast, and the pond almost emptied of its fish,—some few being kept for food, and the small fry—especially of the stickleback—being thrown into heaps, to be ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... was the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found 140 Knotted in clumps ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... get by making wares of stone, across little coves, or branches of the sea; every tide bringing in the small fish, and there leaving them for a prey to these people, who constantly attend there to search for them at low water. This small fry I take to be the top of their fishery; they have no instruments to catch great fish, should they come; and such seldom stay to be left behind at low water; nor could we catch any fish with our hooks and lines all the while we ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne |
