"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be cold here, and I only await the results of my inquiries about possible houses at Thebes to hire a boat and depart. Yesterday I saw a camel go through the eye of a needle—i.e., the low arched door of an enclosure; he must kneel and bow his head to creep through—and thus the rich man must humble himself. See how a false translation spoils a good metaphor, and turns ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... down her darning needle and clapped her hands with delight. Clifford gazed at her admiringly, thinking that he had the prettiest sister in the world—she was so bright, so eager, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cakes, which saved Alice a good deal of time and trouble in watching them. It was astonishing how much the children could do, now that there was no one to do it for them; and they had daily instruction from Jacob. In the evening Alice sat down with her needle and thread to mend the clothes; at first they were not very well done, but she improved every day. Edith and Humphrey learned to read while Alice worked, and then Alice learned; and thus passed the winter away so rapidly, that, although they had been five months at the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... and Morning, one of four lines, the other of twelve, we have, besides the picture, two moments which sum up a lifetime, and "on how fine a needle's point that little world of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... happy to announce that I have passed the pons asinorum of Bar Exam with facility of a needle penetrating the camel's eye. Tant mieux! ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... The needle-like boat threaded its way in and out among the islands, and leaped into the mouth of a sluggish gulfward-stealing bayou. Here a few strokes of the paddle swept pirogue and paddler into a strange and lonely world. The tall cypress-trees ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... translucent with bliss, and know not the doom In the Marah valley of life laid up for the sons of the womb. —I speak not of grovelling hearts, souls blind and begrimed from the birth, But the spirits of nobler strain, the elect of the children of earth:— For the needle swerves from the pole; they cannot do what they would; In their truest aim is falsehood, and ill out-balancing good. Faith's first felicities fade; the world-mists thicken and roll, 'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul. Then the vision ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... astronomical instrument and used like one, rather than as a time teller, or as a simple demonstration of magnetism. In the second part of the Epistle Peter turns to practical instruments, describing for the first time, the construction of a magnetic compass consisting of a loadstone or iron needle pivoted with a casing marked with a scale of degrees. The third chapter of this section, concluding the Epistle, then continues with the description of a perpetual motion wheel, "elaboured with marvellous ingenuity, in the pursuit ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... abundance, and of which the squaws manufacture the coarse matting used in covering their wigwams. Their mode of fabricating this is very primitive and simple. Seated on the ground, with the rushes laid side by side, and fastened at each extremity, they pass their shuttle, a long flat needle made of bone, to which is attached a piece of cordage formed of the bark of a tree, through each rush, thus confining it very closely, and making a fine substantial mat. These mats are seldom more than five or six feet ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... finds some few comforts aboard the Wind-Flower. I could not fill all the list, Mr. Renault; but a needle will do much, and the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... each line I sensed the presence of multitudes of finer lines, dwindling into infinitude, ultramicroscopic, traced by some instrument compared to whose delicacy our finest tool would be as a crowbar to the needle of ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... show that every nerve is independent of any other. Press two fingers closely together. Let the point of the finest needle be carried ever so lightly across from one finger to another, and we can easily tell just when the needle leaves one ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... who seemed so much more communicative and affable than on the occasion of those theatricals. He lit a cigarette and watched, for a while, the flow of life through that gateway. Its passage was pierced, like the eye of a needle, with a slender shaft of light from the westering sun. Fine particles of dust, suspended overhead, enveloped the homeward moving peasantry in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... or at least the major part of it, was not injected into the tissues of the person struck. The effect is very much the same as when an inexperienced practitioner picks up a fold of skin for the purpose of making a hypodermic injection, and plunges his needle entirely through, forcing the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... had an excellent idea of his design before he ever touched the needle to the plate. Though he is often admired for his spontaneity, particularly in his landscapes,[9] this is a misconception. Benesch lists no fewer than 78 landscape drawings by Rembrandt in the years 1648-1650,[10] and there were perhaps many more, now lost or unidentified. For this etching ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse
... But there was a penalty: he must allow pins and needles to be thrust into his flesh and suffer these tortures without showing discomfort to the spectators. It is difficult to believe that any boy, however great his exhibitory passion, could permit, in the full possession of his sensibilities, a needle to be thrust deeply into his flesh without manifestations of a most unmesmeric sort. The conclusion seems warranted that he began by pretending, but that at times he was at least under semi-mesmeric control. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mother and sisters for him, and offered to have her grand-children taught to make the like. Persian princesses thought it was dignified to have nothing to do, and Sisygambis fancied he meant to make slaves of them; so that he had to reassure her, and tell her that the distaff, loom, and needle were held to give honour to Greek ladies. Darius had fled beyond the rivers, and Alexander waited to follow till he should have reduced the western part of the empire. He turned into Syria and Phoenicia, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... onions are soft and then cool. Fill into squab and then sew up with darning needle and stout string. Rub with shortening and dust with cornflour. Place in a hot oven and bake, basting with ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... writer describes a class of persons who have souls so very small that "500 of them could dance at once upon the point of a cambric needle." These wee people are often wrapped up in a lump of the very coarsest of human clay, ponderous enough to give them the semblance of full-grown men and women. A grain of mustard seed, buried in the heart of a mammoth ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... reason of the Gambians not going naked, as those of Senegal do, where cotton is very scarce. The women dress in the same manner; and, when they are very young, take great delight in delineating figures on their necks, breasts, and arms, with the point of a hot needle, which are never obliterated, and which resemble the flowers and ornaments which are wrought on silk handkerchiefs. The country is excessively hot, and the heat increases as we go to the south; besides which, we found it much hotter up the river than at sea, owing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly before they blew it up; and hidden in a disused chimney—solid bit of old Dutch masonry big enough to accommodate a baker's dozen of sweeps—were a few things calculated to facilitate that search for the needle in the haystack—you understand? Disguises of various kinds—a suit of clothes lined with chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'—a good deal of the raw stuff itself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up—and in a rusty cashbox a diary or ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a dive with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint, and pure, my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard, she runs a modiste's shop; her fingers—the fingers of an angel—are pricked with the needle, but I! Oh, sainted woman! And I—the scoundrel!—whom do I exchange thee for! Oh, horror!" The actor seized his hair. "Professor, let me, I'll kiss your scholarly hand. You alone understand me. Let us go, I'll introduce you, you'll see what an angel this is! ... She ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... woman, she grieved for the partner of her joys and sorrows; as a woman, she wished to pay the last sad honors to the only man whom she had ever loved. She whose hands were accustomed to the sceptre, now held a needle, and to all offers of assistance she ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... will soon find your legs covered with small and pertinacious ticks, who have apparently taken a "header" into your flesh and made up their minds to die sooner than let go. They must be the bull-dogs of the insect tribe, these ticks, for a sharp needle will scarcely dislodge them. At the last extremity of extraction they only burrow their heads deeper into the skin, and will lose this important part of their tiny bodies sooner than yield to the gentlest leverage. Then there are myriads of burs which cling to you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Lady Cecilia to Helen, one day, as she was standing near her tambour frame, "you are an industrious creature, and the only very industrious person I ever could bear. I have myself a natural aversion to a needle, but that tambour needle I can better endure than a common one, because, in the first place, it makes a little noise in the world; one not only sees but hears it getting on; one finds, that without dragging it draws at ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... from the Cape in November: "Write to me constantly; write me pages and volumes. Tell me the dress thou wearest, tell me thy dreams, anything, so do but talk to me and of thyself. When thou art sitting at thy needle and alone, then think of me, my love, and write me the uppermost of thy thoughts. Fill me half a dozen sheets, and send them when thou canst. Think only, my dearest girl upon the gratification which the perusal and reperusal fifty times repeated will afford me, and thou wilt write me ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to sailing; difficulties begin to arise; arrives at the Canaries; comes in sight of Mount Teneriffe; arrives at Gomera; the news which reached him there; alarm of his sailors on losing all sight of land; begins to keep two reckonings; falls in with part of a mast; notices a variation of the needle; his opinion relative to that phenomenon; they are visited by two birds; terrors of the seamen; sees large patches of weeds; his situation becomes more critical; part of his crew determine, should he refuse to return, to throw him into the sea; ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... vast haystack of lost needles—New York, and effaced Berene Dumont in Mrs Lamont. The money left from my father's belongings I resolved to use in cultivating my voice. I advertised for embroidery and fine sewing also, and as I was an expert with the needle, I was able to support myself and lay aside a little sum each week. I trimmed hats at a small price, and added to my income in various manners, owing to my French ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the position in which a nest can be built; the strength and grasping power of the foot in relation to the weight of the bird, a power absolutely essential to the constructor of a delicately-woven and well-finished nest; the length and fineness of the beak, which has to be used like a needle in building the best textile nests; the length and mobility of the neck, which is needful for the same purpose; the possession of a salivary secretion like that used in the nests of many of the swifts ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and engraving. The workers in jewels and gold are the next best provided for; next to them workers in metal and in fancy ware. Workers on spun and woven fabrics get low wages; the lowest is earned, as in London, by slop-workers and all workers with the needle. The average receipts of Paris needlewomen have not, however, fallen below fourteenpence a day; those of them who work with fashionable dressmakers earn about one and eightpence. While speaking of the ill-paid class of women, I must mention that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... brothers and sisters meet, And each for other's weelfare kindly speirs: The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet: Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mother, wi' her needle and her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes a' wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pardons, indulgences, redeem their souls from purgatory and hell itself,—clausum possidet arca Jovem. Let them be epicures, or atheists, libertines, Machiavellians, (as they often are) [2233]Et quamvis perjuris erit, sine gente, cruentus, they may go to heaven through the eye of a needle, if they will themselves, they may be canonised for saints, they shall be [2234]honourably interred in Mausolean tombs, commended by poets, registered in histories, have temples and statues erected ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... we gotten over the edge of this shoal when we began to see things—big blue crabs, the kind that can pinch and that play havoc with the fishermen's nets, and impudent little gray crabs, and needle-fish, and small chocolate-colored sharks—nurse sharks, Sam called them—and barracuda from one foot to five feet in length, and whip-rays and sting-rays. It was exceedingly interesting and surprising ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... the principles which His professed disciples wholly follow and in part avow. These anxious questionings form the subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of 1906, on the text about the camel and the needle's eye. Jesus Christ chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of labouring men. He chose to belong to the class of the respectable artisan, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... not quite 'torture' to me, with the family so close, across the street," I answered him, and I went on whipping the lace on a piece of fluff I am making, to discipline myself because I loathe a needle so. "Please don't you worry over me, dear." I raised my eyes to his and I tried the common citizenship look. It must have carried a little way for he flushed, the first time I ever saw him do it, and his hand with the cigarette ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the table with his left hand, slipped it beneath Egavine's right coat lapel, tugged sharply at something in there, and brought out a flat black pouch with a tiny spray needle projecting from it. He dropped the pouch in his pocket, said, "Keep your seat, doctor," stood up and went over to Quist. Quist darted an anxious glance at his employer, and made a whimpering sound ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... and age. There are the old men in the pews beneath the pulpit. There are the young men in the gallery, or near the door, with ruffs, showy belts, gold and silver buttons, "points" at the knees, and great boots. There are the young women, with "silk or tiffany hoods or scarfs," "embroidered or needle-worked caps," "immoderate great sleeves," "cut works,"—a mystery,—"slash apparel,"—another mystery,—"immoderate great vayles, long wings," etc.,—mystery on mystery, but all recorded in the statutes, which forbid these splendors to persons of mean estate. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the shape of a too intelligent young coffee-planter, who possessed an aneroid barometer, brought that instrument to the smoking-room with a scared face. The needle was deflected to a part of the dial which the intelligent young planter had hitherto considered to be merely ornamental and not intended for practical use. His elders and betters told him to put it away and not to tell the ladies. Then they continued smoking; but they knew that ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... three thousand tailors in Paris, how is it possible for the police to find those who use these buttons? And when the tailors are found, how could they designate the owner of this button, this one exactly, and not another? It is looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. Where did your brother have these trousers made? Did he ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable melancholy. The silence is so profound that you hear a dead leaf rustling on the snow, or the needle of the fir dropping to the ground. Such a silence is oppressive as the tomb; it urges on the mind the idea of man's nothingness in ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... still survive in some one or other of the English provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single exception in the verb to sleeve. To sleeve silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. (A.S. slefan, to cleavedivide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleeveless errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... especially intended to give room for a peculiar swinging gait, with which the men seemed to urge themselves over the ground with ease and rapidity. There was little or no straggling, and being strong, lusty young fellows, and lightly equipped—they carried only needle-guns, ammunition, a very small knapsack, a water-bottle, and a haversack —they strode by with an elastic step, covering at least three ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the Scriptures, in a single night. I have told my story ill if I have not made you understand that my friend was a frank, warm-hearted lad of impulse, whose reason seldom stood sentry over his inclinations. Such a man can no more draw away from a winning maid than the needle can shun the magnet. He loves as the mavis sings or the kitten plays. Now, a slow-witted, heavy fellow like myself, in whose veins the blood has always flowed somewhat coolly and temperately, may go into love as a horse goes into a shelving stream, step ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... get home we discuss the duck till we try to imitate it. We take a needle thoroughly magnetised, we imbed it in white wax, shaped as far as possible like a duck, with the needle running through the body, so that its eye forms the beak. We put the duck in water and put the end of a key near its beak, and you will readily understand our delight when we find ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... understand by tapestry what the ancients were accustomed to call needle embroidery or painting on stuffs: I can find no indication on the most ancient monuments of Chaldaean or Egypt of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe. I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em for markers in their garden. I want—land sakes! ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... When, Where. Buz. Jenkins Up! State Outlines. Prefixes. My Father Had A Rooster! Cross Questions And Crooked Answers. Magic Writing. Famous Numbers. Magic Answers. Modelling. Scissors Crossed Or Uncrossed. Capping Verses. Rabbit. Ghost. What Am I? Needle Threading. Confusions. Verbal Authors. Pin Doll Babies. Building Sentences. Geography. What Would You Do If—? Watch Trick. Find Your Better-half. Words Letters. Seeing And Remembering. Live Tit-tat-to. Bits Of Advice. Pictures. Household Gossip. Table Football. Musical ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... week later she was in her house, and had in the window an exhibition of balls of cotton, bread, twists, sweets, stay-laces, needle-cases, snuff, clay pipes, steel pens, matches, etc., etc., while she herself sat behind the counter—which was a packing-case disguised under some print—and ground coffee, which she roasted in the kitchen beyond. In a drawer that would lock, which Nikolai had overlooked, stood the cigar-box ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... born of the music and his dreaming imagination? And would it ever be possible to dream her again; or, if she were real, where, where could he find her? To discover a fairy princess and to lose her, lose her, as he ruefully confessed, like a needle in a haystack, was worse than never to ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... containing thus a powder which equals in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... two. Oh, the dreadful weariness of these long summer days! I can't keep thinking and thinking any longer; I must do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, and put ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and buy my clothes at the smartest places. The ladies of Nantucket have never been provincial in their fashions. Our ancestors shopped in the marts of the world. When our captains sailed the seas they brought home to their womenfolk the treasures of loom and needle from Barcelona and Bordeaux, from Bombay and Calcutta, London and Paris ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... lower she bent, the needle point of the weapon pricking my skin, until her beautiful, evil face almost touched mine. Then, miraculously, the fire died out of her eyes; they half closed again and became languishing, luresome Ghazeeyeh eyes. She laughed softly, wickedly, and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the plant—a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... are over 24,000 feet in height. But they are not the highest. So our eyes pass over peaks of every remarkable form—abrupt, rugged, and enticing, and we seek the highest peak of all. And Kinchinjunga is a worthy mountain-monarch. It is not a needle-point—a sudden upstart which might easily be upset. Kinchinjunga is grand and massive and of ample gesture, broad and stable and yet also culminating in a clear and definite point. There is no mistaking her superiority both in massiveness and height to every peak ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... disclose. It had to be done with a twist here, and a loop there, and a sudden clever bringing round of the thread from the left to the right at a critical moment; then followed a still more clever darting of the needle through a loop, which suddenly appeared just when it was least expected. The feather-stitching involved many movements of the hand and arm, and certainly gave a splendid effect to the fine linen or cambric ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... a gilt-framed mirror and the various knick-knacks of a girlish toilet. There was a little blue rocker and an ottoman with a work-basket on it. In the work-basket was a bit of unfinished, yellowed lace with a needle sticking in it. A small bookcase under the sloping ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sighed Mrs. Collins. "It gives me a feelin' to see yo' po' thin little face—no wider'n a knitting needle." ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... realised that Science was still but the flimsiest of trial sketches and discovery scarcely beginning. No one seems to have been afraid of science and its possibilities. Yet now where there had been but a score or so of seekers, there were many thousands, and for one needle of speculation that had been probing the curtain of appearances in 1800, there were now hundreds. And already Chemistry, which had been content with her atoms and molecules for the better part of a century, was ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cleanliness and order. They want someone to come to them and help them to transform their huts into homes. Could you see their rags, their ugly, misshapen garments, you would agree with me that the women and girls greatly need to be taught the use of the needle. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... world's best list-checkers. And the worst. I wish we were just a handful of warriors going out for a fight. But whole families are coming along. Apparently the Brons intend to sow their seed among the stars. And with families. I'll wager that your lists are not worth a darning needle. Something will be left behind. A slice of some bride's wedding cake. Little Nordo's favorite toy. Papa's best pocket-knife. Mama's button-box." The strong little man made a wry face. "Bah, this is no trip for families. They want too much. They are never ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... the wind. Still he had no power to direct his course when the lofty promontory sunk from sight, or the orbs above him were lost in clouds. But the secret of the magnet is, at length, revealed to him, and his needle now settles, with a fixedness which love has stolen as the symbol of its constancy, to the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... found that barbarous hand attained The spoil of fame deserved by virtuous men, Whose glorious actions luckily had gained Th'eternal annals of a happy pen. And therefore grieve not if thy beauties die Though time do spoil thee of the fairest veil That ever yet covered mortality, And must instar the needle and the rail. That grace which doth more than inwoman thee, Lives in my ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... not a-beam, nor was the hooker close-hauled; but one cannot ascertain the true course made, except when the wind is abaft. When you perceive long streaks of clouds meeting in a point on the horizon, you may be sure that the wind is in that quarter; but this evening the wind was variable; the needle fluctuated; the captain distrusted the erratic movements of the vessel. He steered carefully but resolutely, luffed her up, watched her coming to, prevented her from yawing, and from running into the wind's eye: noted the leeway, the little jerks of the helm: was observant of every ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... flow toward the man of her choice. Before that, there was a waywardness, a vacillation, a nervous excitement, which passed away as soon as love dawned upon her soul. So long as the heart is subject to every influence, it quivers and wavers as the magnet needle when swept by streams of electricity. A strong uniting love does for us what the strong attraction of the pole does for the needle. Christ loved the Father. There was no difficulty in bearing what He sent, or doing what He bade. There were no rival claimants, no ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... all this mean? I've kept out of watching cricket since I landed in England, but yesterday they got the poison needle to work and took me off to see Surrey play Kent at that place Lord's where you say ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... recovery of him, third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone. Something falls on the turf—it is the glass. Something else drops immediately after—it is the needle. The compass is broken, and the exploring ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... the objects of scientific research, it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the mosquitos, zancudos, jejens, and tempraneros, that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes with their long, needle-formed suckers; and, getting into the mouth and nostrils, occasion coughing and sneezing, whenever any attempt is made to speak ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... little alone. She helped David in his work more than ever; not a person, for instance, managed to escape the bath because Grizel's heart was broken. You could never say that she was alone when her needle was going, and the linen became sheets and the like, in what was probably record time. Yet they could have been sewn more quickly; for at times the needle stopped and she did not know it. Once a bedridden old woman, with whom she had been sitting up, lay watching her instead of sleeping, and finally ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... and a wench full grown, Even ripe for marriage-rite; this maid Hight Philoten: and it is said For certain in our story, she Would ever with Marina be: Be't when she weaved the sleided silk With fingers long, small, white as milk; Or when she would with sharp needle wound, The cambric, which she made more sound By hurting it; or when to the lute She sung, and made the night-bird mute That still records with moan; or when She would with rich and constant pen Vail to her mistress ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... don't play fast and loose, sir, you are right. What I do, I do as straight as a needle." The ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... {bogometer}; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say "My bogometer just triggered". More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat /mi:k'roh-len'*t/ (uL). The consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... a life of self-indulgence till he doesn't know how to control a thought or a passion. It was something of that kind which was meant when we were told about the rich man and the eye of the needle." ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... case of discovery, the spy threaded a needle. Thus, if any one should chance to see him shake out a garment, preparatory to laying it on his knee and mending it, there could be no reasonable cause for suspicion. Herr Stolz was ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... and clumsily touched the teacups and spoons so that they jarred upon Sally's nerves. Everything her mother did now annoyed Sally. The slow motions, the awkward way in which her fingers turned to thumbs, the shortsightedness that made her unable to thread a needle or read a paper except through an old magnifying glass, the general air of debility and discouragement. Sally felt furious with her all the time—"Old fool ... old fool!" she would frantically murmur ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... enough one. We ought to change the old proverb, 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a poor man to marry ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... two afterward, in the same tree, I heard for the first time the song of the ruby-crowned wren, or kinglet,—the same liquid bubble and cadence which characterize the wren-songs generally, but much finer and more delicate than the song of any other variety known to me; beginning in a fine, round, needle-like note, and rising into a full, sustained warble, [SYMBOL DELETED] a strain, on whole, remarkably exquisite and pleasing, the singer being all the while as busy as a bee, catching some kind of insects. It is certainly ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... before it like death itself, how canst regard it as available by thee? How can he, O son of Kunti, wait whose life is shortened every moment, even like a quantity of collyrium that is lessened each time a grain is taken up by the needle? He only whose life is unlimited or who knoweth with certitude what the period of his life is, and who knoweth the future as if it were before his eyes, can indeed wait for the arrival of (an expected) time. If ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... suddenly bounded from the table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its foot again, the frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then thrust a needle down the spinal cord. "The limbs are now flaccid," observed the experimenter; "we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move." Here is where congratulations can come in for la grenouille. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... did the maiden become wife than her habits and character utterly changed for the worse. She became not only very merry and lively, but quite forsook loom and needle, giving up her nights and days to play and idleness; no silly lover could have been more foolish than she. The Sun-king, in great wrath at all this, concluded that the husband was the cause of it, and determined to separate the couple. So he ordered him ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... upon the cheek-bone, having the patient before you; then slightly bend the finger, this will draw down the lower lid of the eye, and you will probably be able to remove the dirt; but if this will not enable you to get at it, repeat this operation while you have a netting needle or bodkin placed over the eyelid; this will turn it inside out, and enable you to remove the sand or eyelash, etc., with the corner of a fine silk handkerchief. As soon as the substance is removed, bathe ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing, distinguishing, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... near, and Major Jones, summoned by the "oft-heard beat," wended his way to the mess. The officers were dropping in, and true as "the needle to the pole," came Father Mooney and the Abbe. They were welcomed with the usual warmth, and strange to say, by none more than the major himself, whose ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... tasks set him by her enchanter father (levelling mountain, planting wheat, newly-baked bread—recovering flask from sea—removing mountain—recovering ring from sea [same method as in our folk-tale]—catching king's horse). Then the two escape, pursued by the magician. Transformation flight (needle, thorns; piece of soap, mountain; withe [? coje], lake). The baffled magician curses his daughter, and says that she will be forgotten by Juan. When Juan reaches home and sees Leonora, he forgets Maria. On his wedding day with Leonora, an unknown princess ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... and there it remained for seven days, throughout which burnt offerings were offered before it, and ceremonies performed. At the end of this week, the bird's tongue would begin to move, and if pricked by a golden needle, would divulge great secrets. It was this bird that had imparted to Balak all his occult lore. One day, however, a flame that suddenly leaped up burned the wings of this bird, which greatly alarmed Balak, for he thought that Israel's ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, and I'll wager a- -a darning needle against a pair of those silk stockings you'll find her O. K. Maybe she'll let you have an extra drawer and a hook ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Bigotry writhed and raged, the more I felt that our policy was telling. Borrowing a metaphor from Carlyle's "Frederick," I likened Superstition to the boa, which defies all ponderous assaults, and will not yield to the pounding of sledge-hammers, but sinks dead when some expert thrusts in a needle's point and ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... least it looked hard for such little bits of hands. First, cutting with those great heavy shears through the thick, stiff cloth; next, the braiding; and finally, the sewing together with the huge needle, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Plancus ever had the fasces borne before him. These prints were signed Gilray, Bunbury, Rowlandson, Woodward, and some actually George Cruikshank—for George is a veteran now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a child. He caricatured "Boney," borrowing not a little from Gilray in his first puerile efforts. He drew Louis XVIII. trying on Boney's boots. Before the century was actually in its teens we believe that George ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in nodules, the crevices being filled with crystals of sulphate of lime, and there were many round balls of ironstone, like marbles or round shot, strewed about. A red ferruginous crust projected from the highest part, and, on this summit, the magnetic needle was greatly affected by local attraction, and quite useless. Fortunately, I had also my pocket sextant, and with it took some valuable angles. On descending, I heartily enjoyed a breakfast, and named the hill which gave us ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... adversaries that day. Soon after we left the stand of the field guns a civilian Red Cross man halted our machines to show us a new device for killing men. It was a steel dart, of the length and thickness of a fountain pen, and of much the same aspect. It was pointed like a needle at one end, and at the other was fashioned into a tiny rudder arrangement, the purpose of this being to hold it upright—-point downward—as it descended. It was an innocent-looking device—that dart; but it was ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Ghoojurs carried a long, muzzle-loading gun, and every one had a yataghan thrust into a girdle around his waist, the weapon being a foot or more in length, and with a point of needle-like fineness. The leader spoke in Hindustani, which was as familiar to the young woman as her ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... love in woman are similar to those of man. Jealousy is perhaps not much less developed in woman than in man. It is less brutal and violent but more instinctive and persevering; it manifests itself by quarrels, needle pricks, chicanery, petty tyrannies and all kinds of tricks which poison existence as much as man's jealousy, and are quite as inefficient against infidelity. In the highest degree of passion the jealous man uses violence or resorts to firearms, while the woman scratches, poisons or stabs. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... which was first acted about the year 1560, certainly deserves the name of a comedy. However antiquated in language and versification, it possesses unequivocal merit in the low comic. The whole plot turns on a lost needle, the search for which is pursued with the utmost assiduity: the poverty of the persons of the drama, which this supposes, and the whole of their domestic condition, is very amusingly portrayed, and the part of a cunning beggar especially is drawn ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... triple name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and denomination: the silk was painted with the Tyrian dye, and adorned by the labors of the needle; and the linen was so exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of a cane. [20] In his description of the Greek manufactures, an historian of Sicily discriminates their price, according ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... being at last settled, I wrote to Grant on the subject, and sent all the men off who were not sick. Thinking then how I could best cure the disease that was keeping me down, as I found the blister of no use, I tried to stick a packing needle, used as a seton, into my side; but finding it was not sharp enough, in such weak hands a mine, to go through my skin, I got Baraka to try; and he failing too, I then made him fire me, for the coughing was so incessant I could get no sleep at night. I had now ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not profess even to sketch the outlines of a history of Oxford. They are merely records of the impressions made by this or that aspect of the life of the University as it has been in different ages. Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with the pen or the etcher's needle. On a wild winter or late autumn day (such as Father Faber has made permanent in a beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... the Queen used to occupy herself much in fancy needle-works. Knowing, from arrangements, that I was every day in a certain part of the Tuileries, Her Majesty, when she heard the shout of La Brave Anglaise! immediately called the Princesse de Lamballe to know if she had ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... circumference—was still the chief machine used for ascertaining the latitude, and on shipboard a most defective one. There were no logarithms, no means of determining at sea the variations of the magnetic needle, no system of dead reckoning by throwing the log and chronicling the courses traversed. The firearms with which the sailors were to do battle with the unknown enemies that might beset their path were rude and clumsy to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... them in this manner. First shear with them or write with them in sapphires, in crystal or in other precious stones. After that, men take the adamant, that is the shipman's stone, that draweth the needle to him, and men lay the diamond upon the adamant, and lay the needle before the adamant; and, if the diamond be good and virtuous, the adamant draweth not the needle to him whiles the diamond is there present. And this is the proof that ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... antipathy to nature! Look, his eye 's bloodshot, like a needle a surgeon stitcheth a wound with. Let me embrace thee, toad, and love thee, O thou abominable, loathsome gargarism, that will fetch up lungs, lights, heart, and liver, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... competition for the favor of readers. The reviewer, indeed, has a pretty steady call for his work, but I fancy the reviewers who get a hundred dollars a thousand words could all stand upon the point of a needle without crowding one another; I should rather like to see them doing it. Another gratifying fact of the situation is that the best writers of fiction who are most in demand with the magazines, probably get nearly as much money for their work as the inferior novelists who outsell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not think he could have helped falling in love with her, although most men, I fear, would only have fallen the more in love with themselves, and cared the less for her. But he did not see them, or hear the divine measures to which her needle flew, as she laboured to arm him against ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... associated with money. I know this phase—what business man does not? But beyond this, are there not far subtler influences, which in one form or another draw every man away from the course he would naturally steer for himself as surely as the iron deflects the magnet's needle? Ambition influences an honorable legislator apparently to condone acts which he knows are wrong, that he may gain a Governor's chair, from which position he can more surely crush out the evils he has always recognized and abhorred. I do not say that all our stockholders ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt |
