"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stimulated by the smell of the mess of lentils, is strikingly expressed in the Hebrew: 'Let me devour, I pray thee, of that red, that red there.' It is no sin to be hungry, but to let appetite speak so clamorously indicates feeble self-control. Jacob's coolness is an unpleasant foil to Esau's impatience, and his cautious bargaining, before he will sell what a brother would have given, shows a mean soul, without generous love to his own flesh and blood. Esau lets one ravenous desire hide everything else from him. He wants the pottage which smokes there, and that one poor dish ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... stiffly up, as under sudden renewal of strength. The Warhorse put forth all his power, not to reach the hedge to the north, but over the open prairie eastward. The Greyhound followed, and within fifty yards the Jack dodged to foil his fierce pursuer; but on the next tack he was on his eastern course again, and so tacking and dodging, he kept the line direct for the next farm-house, where was a very high board fence with a hen-hole, and where ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... her pocket and drew out a tin foil-covered package. "Here's a piece of chocolate I've been carrying around with me ever since I've been at Ellen's Isle," she said. "It's pretty stale by this time, I guess, but it'll keep you from starving while Sahwah and I ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... express'd Love's better omens, in the green hues dress'd Of this selected foliage.—Nymph, 't is thine The warning story on its leaves to find, Proud Daphne's fate, imprison'd in its rind, And with its umbrage veil'd, great Phoebus' power Scorning, and bent, with feet of wind, to foil His swift pursuit, till on Thessalian shore Shot into boughs, and rooted to the soil.— Thus warn'd, fair Maid, Apollo's ire to shun, Soon may his Spray's and VOTARY's lot ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... is dark and massive—a splendid foil for his wife's slenderness and fairness. They are much in love with each other. He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up at him and smiles, and last night I saw him take her hand where it hung ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. In composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. It was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. And in this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance Italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake, and that, as will ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... for the last one, with the stern looks and bushy black hair, he appears to bear his fate in such a manner as ought to make us resigned to our own." "That," whispered a fellow-prisoner, "is Foresti, who, like Ajax, doubtless mutters between his teeth, 'I will foil them yet, though even the gods oppose me!'" [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Prisonnier d'Etat." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of thin, shimmering stuff, diaphanous as finest silk. It was black, caught at one shoulder with a flashing green stone. The other shoulder was bared, and the black garment was a perfect foil for the whiteness of her perfect skin, her amazing blue eyes, and the ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... though not so lofty in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no shame to them, as she began firing away merrily, determined, as all well knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... driven to the conviction that there is something wrong, and that he had better see the doctor. The result of the young athlete's visit to the doctor was that he mournfully laid down the dumb-bells and the foil, eschewed gymnastics, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... thin, and twinkly blue eyes and a lot of dark hair that blew around like Jerry's. He looked from one to the other of us and nodded his head to himself. I suppose we did look very queer,—quite dirty, and Jerry with the tin-foil-buckled belt still around him and no shirt; and my bloomers dangling down like a Turkish person's because of the elastics having ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... completely. Strings of pop-corn festooned the branches, and flakes of cotton-wool snow were cunningly disposed here and there. Bright apples peeped from amid the green, and from every tip hung a splendid star of tinsel or tin foil. No "boughten stuff" these; all through the year Miss Fidely patiently begged from her neighbors: from the women the tinsel on their button-cards, from the men the "silver" that wrapped their tobacco. Carefully pressed under the ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... tells of the love-affairs of three young people, with an old-fashioned romance in the background. A tiny dog plays an important role in serving as a foil for the heroine's talking ingeniousness. There is poetry, as well as tenderness and charm, in this tale ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... dress that a gentleman ever appears in; and during a pause she happened to notice Colonel Colquhoun, who had stepped back to judge the effect of some drapery he was putting up. Mr. Price was a little behind him, and two of the younger men, the three making an excellent foil to Colonel Colquhoun. Evadne was struck by the contrast. The outside aspect of the man still pleased her. There was no doubt that he was a fine specimen of his species, a splendid animal to look at; what a pity he should have had a regrettable ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... which way the conversation was tending, and hated all allusions to the foil he had sustained from the fish, made his escape before the Antiquary concluded ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... detected Camilla Vivian in some flagrant cheating at a game, and had roundly expressed their opinion. In the subsequent period of Raymond's courtship, Miles had succumbed to the fascination, but Julius had given one such foil, that she had never again attempted to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many meanings, and I am sure that in using it, I did n't place the same construction that you did in hearing it. But let that pass. I apologize. What I should have said was that, if you will pardon me, she used you, as young women will do, as a foil against her fiance in a time of petty quarreling between them. Is ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... story!" he thought to himself as he strode across the turf, "to make myself a mere foil and stop-gap for that conceited brute! Not I." Far from practising the abstinence of the other two, he had eaten as much as he could stuff and drunk all the beer he could get, and this, combined with resentment at Robarts' words, caused him to go in ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... business, Bone, the barkeep, cut down a fluffy lot of colored paper, stuck there in a great rosette, and with this he added much original beauty to the pile. Out of cigar-boxes came a great heap of bright tin-foil that went on the branches in a way that only men ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... attendant on the mode of payment by results. A certain number of teachers made it their chief effort to secure the largest possible number of grants. Huxley regarded these as poachers of the worst kind, and did all he could to foil them. He did all he could to promote systematic practical instruction in the classes, and to aid teachers who desired to learn their business more thoroughly. He insisted again and again upon the popular nature of the classes; their great advantage was that they were accessible ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... bishop believed she had jeopardised her soul with divorce. He feared now she meant to lose it irrevocably through remarriage. As a foil to his austerity, therefore, she would be audaciously gay in ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... every passing hour; Who but Thyself can foil the tempter's power? When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which the later ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... is the next study, No. 4! How well Chopin knew the value of contrast in tonality and sentiment! A veritable classic is this piece, which, despite its dark key color, C sharp minor as a foil to the preceding one in E, bubbles with life and spurts flame. It reminds one of the story of the Polish peasants, who are happiest when they sing in the minor mode. Kullak calls this "a bravura study for velocity and lightness in both hands. Accentuation ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the bleak sense that all is vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity—of a too easy acceptance of the world—in the imperial philosophy. For in the companionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, and his friend was more truly an aristocrat than his Emperor. Cornelius did not accept the world in its entirety, either sadly or otherwise. In him there was "some inward standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the period ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... results in the production of an electrical charge. Herr S. Kalischer has renewed his investigations upon this point, and believes that he has proved that no electricity results from such condensation. Atmospheric vapor was condensed upon a vessel coated with tin foil, filled with ice, carefully insulated, and connected with a very sensitive electrometer. No evidence could be obtained of electricity.—Ann. der Physik ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... a household of women, who were laden with ornaments, and wore boots, and sat astride on ponies; many Lamas were also with him, one of whom wore a broad Chinese-like hat covered with polished copper foil. Half a dozen Sepoys with matchlocks preceded him, and on approaching Tumloong, bawled out his titles, dignities, etc., as was formerly the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Derwentwater, and the disinterested Nithisdale. When we contrast the petty and selfish policy of the Earl of Mar with the integrity and fidelity of those who fought in the same cause, and over whom he was commander, his character sinks low in the estimate, and acts like a foil to the purity and brightness of his fellow sufferers in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... metallic Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Moliere true, is that Moliere was certainly in love with Celimene. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worst faults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoe is her foil, introduced to show ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Rhine country and elsewhere, to equal that piece of workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help of his pupils ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... building, a structure equal to the other in age and dimensions, but differing in all other respects as much as neglect and misuse could make it. Gray and forbidding, it towered in its place, a perfect foil to the attractive dwelling whose single step I ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies: But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... moment Charley was back with the painters from the two canvas canoes knotted together. His first toss confirmed the captain's fears, the rope foil ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and the foil was put on, I shouted a verse of "Mary had a little lamb" into the crude little machine. Then I adjusted the reproducer, which when he began to operate it, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... that thy springs revive The drooping patient, scarce alive; Where, as he gathers strength to toil, Not e'en thy heights his spirit foil, But nerve him on to bless, t'inhale, And triumph in the morning gale; Or noon's transcendent glories give The vigorous touch that bids him live. Perhaps e'en now he stops to breathe, Surveying the expanse beneath? Now climbs again, where keen winds blow. And holds ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... the letter L is plainly shown. In the diagram of Fundamental Forms also, the tree-mass, cow and river bank in shadow serve as a sombre foil for the clump of trees upon the opposite shore which are bathed in the soft luminous haze of early morning. This is the real attraction which, grafted upon the heavy structure of the foreground affects us the more through the contrast. In Mr. Pettie's picture of "James II and the Duke of Monmouth," ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... aluminium of the best quality contains as the average of a large number of tests, 0.48% of silicon and 0.46% of iron, the residue being essentially aluminium itself. The metal in mass is not affected by hot or cold water, the foil is very slowly oxidized, while the amalgam decomposes rapidly. Sulphuretted hydrogen having no action upon it, articles made of it are not blackened in foggy weather or in rooms where crude coal gas is burnt. To inorganic acids, except hydrochloric, it is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... about Mr. Merwyn, Arthur. I have my own personal score to settle with him. He has made a good foil for you and my other friends, and I have learned to appreciate you the more. YOU have won my entire esteem and respect, and have taught me how quickly a noble, self-sacrificing purpose can develop manhood. O Arthur, Heaven grant ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... country and abroad, and that this had been done by combinations made with a purpose and effect to stifle competition, control prices, and establish a monopoly, not only in the manufacture of tobacco, but also of tin-foil and licorice used in its manufacture and of its products of cigars, cigarettes, and snuffs. The tobacco suit presented a far more complicated and difficult case than the Standard Oil suit for a decree which would effectuate the will of the court and end the violation of the statute. There was here ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... case," reasoned Nick, "the gang may stand in fear of me, and perhaps are afraid that I shall foil some scheme they have in operation, or are about to undertake. Then they to-night may have aimed only to discover the extent and nature ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... highlands And lowlands hot with fruit, Sea-bays and shoals and islands, And cliffs that foil man's foot, And all the flower of large-limbed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and recognize your own handwriting, foretells that malicious enemies will use your expressed opinion to foil you in advancing ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... with him nearly a year. Keralio warmly recommends him and says he is a very faithful fellow. He only left him because he objected to being compelled to practise sword-play with his master. One day Keralio's foil slipped. Francois got a puncture ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... modern science, have looked with a favorable eye on the wild science of the false religions, and professed to detect in it at least striking analogies with the deductions of both the geologist and the astronomer. When the skeptical wits of the last century wished to produce, by way of foil, a morality vastly superior, as they said, to that of Christianity, they had recourse to the Brahmins and the Chinese. And though we hear less of the ethics of these people since we have come to know them better, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... to his post, was directed to row out a little from shore, and presently the two artists were at work, rapidly sketching in the bright figure with the slim black prow for a foil, and the silvery reaches ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... woods which cover the W. bank of the Avon, near Clifton. They form a fine foil to the open downs opposite. To enter them cross the Suspension Bridge into Somerset, take first turning to R., cross the intervening combe, which runs up from the river, by the first available footpath, and then wander at your will. Hidden away amongst ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Hamlet, he also sees Laertes in danger through the exchange of foils in the scuffle. Now it is not to be supposed that Laertes is particularly dear to him; but he sees instantaneously that, if Laertes escapes the poisoned foil, he will certainly hold his tongue about the plot against Hamlet, while, if he is wounded, he may confess the truth; for it is no doubt quite evident to the King that Laertes has fenced tamely because his ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... highest feather and in the full employment of all those little arts and graces which served as a foil to his real worth, I took it as a great honour that he laid them aside for the nonce; and introduced me to the seat of honour and made me known to his companions with a boyish directness and a simple thought for my ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... plainly visible from where they sat; to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Chateauroux as a foil, his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's aesthetic taste which held him ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... know what I think?" Beth inquired. "I think you should be punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. That's a Wordl—a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the north bank, opposite Windsor, and really a continuous town with that which nestles close to the castle walls, is on our way from Slough. The red-brick buildings of the school, forming a fine foil to the lighter-colored and more elegantly designed chapel, are on our left, the principal front looking over a garden toward the river and Windsor Home Park beyond. We become aware of a populace of boys, the file-closers of England's nineteenth century worthies, and her coming veterans of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... rendered possible by this gift from the skies. He was beginning, at last, to see a way to circumvent the Germans. What he had in mind was risky, certainly, and might prove perilous in the extreme. But he did not let that aspect of the situation worry him. His one concern was to foil the terrible plan that the Germans had made, and he was willing to run any risk that would help ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... transparent plastic cover for a keyboard, designed to provide some protection against dust and {programming fluid} without impeding typing. 4. 'elephant condom': the plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard boxes to protect hardware in transit. 5. /n. obs./ A dummy directory '/usr/tmp/sh', created to foil the Great Worm by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So named in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during the Worm crisis, and again in the text of "The Internet Worm Program: ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to- day! And ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow the pellet. The letter appealed to Miss Wright's loyalty and patriotism, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Waker, with a short laugh. "I seem to have fitted in just right to foil the villain in getting the papers. Say, better not let Jack know about this, or he'll be on the job, too, and what he needs just now ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... Second Part, after an interval of seven years, followed early in 1685. Between the two parts appeared two of his most celebrated works—the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," published in 1680, originally intended to supply a contrast and a foil to "The Pilgrim's Progress," by depicting a life which was scandalously bad; and, in 1682, that which Macaulay, with perhaps exaggerated eulogy, has said, "would have been our greatest allegory if the earlier allegory had never been written," the "Holy War made by Shaddai ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... afternoon of the day in question we stood before each other, foil in hand, both of us nerved by an intense, though as yet unspoken, enmity. This had been observed by most of the spectators, who approached and formed a circle around us; all of them highly interested in the result—which, they knew, would ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Long in the dreary path, and must be sped! But Love, that holds the mastery of dread, Braces his spirit, and with constant toil He wins his way, and now, with arms outspread, Impatient plunges from the last long coil; So may all gentle Love ungentle Malice foil! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... there no milder way but the small-pox; The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? One jewel set off with so many a foil? Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout, Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit, Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... short of miraculous. Hissing and seething at the opposition she offered, the larger waves burst over her bows, and swept the deck from stem to stern; but her ample scuppers discharged it quickly, and up she rose again, dripping from the flood, to face and fight and foil ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... as a foil—of course, only to yourself, privately. He had great abilities; and though I widely differed with him in his views of history—which I, being of the science school, thought should be different from an anecdote book, yet I admit the great merits of his work, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... were white, but not exactly even. The small-pox had left one only mark on her chin, which was so large, it might have been mistaken for a dimple, had not her left cheek produced one so near a neighbour to it, that the former served only for a foil to the latter. Her complexion was fair, a little injured by the sun, but overspread with such a bloom that the finest ladies would have exchanged all their white for it: add to these a countenance in which, though she was extremely bashful, a sensibility appeared ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... invention of Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Safe be the highway where their feet may go, Rich be the fields wherein their hands may toil, The fountains many where their good wines flow. Full be their harvest-bins with corn and oil, To sorrow may their humour be a foil; Quick be their hearts all wise delights to know, Tardy their footsteps to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Coolidge were the life of the company, the latter seeming a different man from the one who had come to consult his old chum as to the trouble in his life. Mrs. Coolidge, quiet and very attractive in her reserved, fair beauty, made an interesting foil to Ellen Burns, and the two, beside the rather fussy aunt and cousins, ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... my wedding, Ursula, and I must choose your dress for you; of course father will pay for it, but I promise you it shall be pretty, and suitable to your complexion. I mean to have eight bridesmaids. Jocelyn will be one, of course, and I shall get that tall, fair Grace Underley to act as a foil to her bigness. I shall not ask poor Lesbia to be one; it would be too trying for her, and I know you will not care about it; but you must come for a week, and see all my pretty things, and help poor mamma, for she has only Jocelyn: so remember you are to keep yourself ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... you care; now I'm coming with my expeditionary forces, and you and I'll foil them yet. One of our office men was taken sick, that was the trouble. And I've been so busy doing his work and my own, and getting this crew of wild Indians ready to invade Temple Camp, that I haven't had time to write a letter, ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... appearances, a military man as well) took from his pocket-book a fifty-pound banknote, and held it up before me. "I have a heavy wager depending on a fencing match," he said, "and I have no time to improve myself. Teach me a trick which will make me a match for a man skilled in the use of the foil, and keep the secret—and there are fifty ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of their being, both as to subject-matter and style and method, remote a Scaevolae studiis. He sat by, as he would have done at a stage-play or a fencing-match, enjoying and applauding the skill exhibited, but without feeling much ambition to parade himself as a rival either of the foil or the buskin. I can easily believe, therefore, that in the earlier part of his life—before the blaze of universal fame had overawed {p.245} local prejudice, and a new generation, accustomed to hear of that fame from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... generous meed of praise given by his contemporaries is a venial offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers. Charisi was particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor, but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may serve as samples of his versatile muse. The first is addressed to his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... to try to find a new system of handling the budding operations that would give more definite results and if possible to eliminate the use of a wax melter and the waxing of buds. My first trial consisted in the use of florist's tin foil. Cutting bud from bud stick with my new style bud cutter, I cut out the patch from stalk and placed bud in place and with two or three turns of raffia, or rubber bands, secured bud in place, then put 2 wraps of tinfoil ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... both an admirable picture in himself, and an admirable foil to those characters which are most unlike him—above all to the "Parson" and the "Clerk of Oxford," the representatives of ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... insistent whisper of moving dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... crayons, Conte crayon, in wood, Nos. 0 and 1, 6 B. Faber's holder for Siberian lead pencil points, 4 H. Faber's holder with Siberian lead pencil point, Velour crayon, Peerless crayon sauce, Black Conte crayon sauce, in foil, White crayon, in wood, Bunch of tortillon stumps, Large grey paper stumps, Small grey paper stumps, The Peerless stump, Large rubber eraser, 4 inches by 3-4 inches square, bevelled end, Two small ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... the two are confronted, as they very often are confronted, it is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... as one necessary character, do you think: as a foil (as, by-the-bye, some of your own actions have been to your lady's virtue) to set off some more edifying example, where variety of characters make up a feast ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... is given at one hundred and fifty thousand. Several of the daimios were converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set them up as a foil to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mild x-ray erythema; and in some instances benefit or cure only occurs after more active exposure, sufficient to cause an x-ray burn of the second degree. The method is not attended with much risk if properly used. The healthy parts should be protected by lead-foil. Exposure should be two to five times weekly, at a distance of three to eight inches, and from five to twenty minutes, employing a tube of medium vacuum. Unfortunately the method is usually slow. The radium treatment is essentially similar to that ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us; sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... a foil or contrast it enables him to value more truly the good things he constantly enjoys, perhaps ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... was a rough model of the human ear, carved in oak, and provided with a drum which actuated a bent and pivoted lever of platinum, making it open and close a springy contact of platinum foil in the metallic circuit of the current. He devised some ten or twelve different forms, each an improvement on its predecessors, which transmitted music fairly well, and even a word or two of speech with more or less perfection. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through the little ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... obtain rapid combustion, the body, if not already black, ought to be blackened. When metals are to be burned, it is necessary to blacken or otherwise tarnish them, so as to diminish their reflective power. Blackened zinc foil, when brought into the focus of invisible rays, is instantly caused to blaze, and burns with its peculiar purple light. Magnesium wire flattened, or tarnished magnesium ribbon, also bursts into flame. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... recording the vibrations of sounds, and consists of a revolving cylinder covered with tin-foil. To this cylinder is attached a mouth-piece, fitted with a thin plate or disk, on the outer side of which, next to the cylinder, is a needle or point. The cylinder runs on a screw, so that the whole length of it, from ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... been so successful in her obvious stupid way that Hans had been enabled to transmit the most useful information to his country, which had assisted to foil more than one Allied plan. Harietta saw numbers of old gentlemen who pulled strings in that time, and although they wearied her, she found them easier to extract news from than the younger men. Her method was so irresistible: a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... packets that would make a Twain of Job; I have "Seeds of Tales Narcotic; Tales of Surgeons and the Probe." I've a most superb assortment, on the very cheapest terms, Done up carefully in tin-foil, of my A ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... international law, unique and alone; there is nothing like it in the world. The historical setting of this lustrous stone is intensely interesting. Out of what mine did the priceless diamond come? By whose skill was it so admirably cut and polished? By whose hand was it set in its own historic foil? Such questions are worthy ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... writing an old-fashioned romance, with its hero and villain and moral ending. But if you study this or any subsequent work of Dickens, you are apt to find the four elements already noted; namely, an unfortunate child, humorous interludes, a grotesque or horrible creature who serves as a foil to virtue or innocence, and a medley of characters good or bad that might be transferred without change to any other story. The most interesting thing about Dickens's men and women is that they are human enough to make themselves ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters thrust into their mouths. We should throw off incubus, our dreadful familiar—by some called boredom—whom it is our present humiliation to be just alive enough to loathe, never quick enough to foil. There would be a bright and positive, clear Hellenic perception of facts. The vapours of Unreason and Sentimentalism would be blown away before they were productive. Where would Pessimist and Optimist be? They would in any case have a diminished ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... construction shown in Fig. 41, the anode is put in first. This anode simply consists of a square bit of platinum or platinum-iridium foil, measuring about 0.75 inch by 1 inch, and riveted on to a bent ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... shape of the insect. Cut this out of a piece of cork about three inches long, and make the legs of thin wire (after the manner of the spider we described in a previous number); then get some strips of thin tin-foil, and gum them on the back of the cucuius; then paint over the whole with transparent green color (oil paints if possible). Now gouge out two holes about the size of the head of a common match, and ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that they were also used for draping the less ornamental walls. Mirrors were apparently plentiful. No mention is made of such articles in glass, probably because the ancients had not yet learned to make that material sufficiently pure and true or to provide it with the proper foil or background. For the most part they were made of highly polished copper, bronze, or silver. The smaller ones were held in the hand, the handle and back parts being richly and often tastefully ornamented. There is an epigram ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... knew all about George and Roddy. The novelty was Lemoyne, and she must learn about him. She readily seized the points that composed his personal aspect, which she found good: his general darkness and richness made him a fine foil for Cope. She quickly credited him with a pretty complete battery of artistic aptitudes and apprehensions. She felt certain that he would appreciate her ballroom and picture-gallery, and would figure well within it. The company was young, the night was wild, and cheer was ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... a smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like, vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain positions and circumstances, the one would recall the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... dazzled by dresses trimmed with precious stones. Never had there been seen such profusion of light, flowers, perfumes, and diamonds. In this magical setting, fashionable beauties, with their dresses worked with silver and gold foil, their turbans of Eastern stuffs, their jewels and ancient cameos, appeared like sultanas. It was a most ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... a triumph decreed him at Rome, much more splendid than his first; they looked upon him now as a champion who had learned to cope with his antagonist, and could now easily foil his arts and prove his best skill ineffectual. And, indeed, the army of Hannibal was at this time partly worn away with continual action, and partly weakened and become dissolute with overabundance and luxury. Marcus Livius, who was governor of Tarentum when it was betrayed to Hannibal, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... adequate to the office, as some of the public works are magnificent; but I cannot go so far as to say that one must approve of all. The St. Lawrence Canal has cost the best part of a million, is useless in time of war, and a mere foil at all times to the Rideau navigation, which the British government constructed free of any provincial funds. The timber slides on the Trent are so much money put into the timber-merchants' pockets, to the extreme detriment of the ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... were not kept to this way of declaiming when Sophocles and Euripides influenc'd the age. Nor yet had any blind alley-professor foil'd their inclinations, when Pindar and the Nine Lyricks durst not attempt Homer's Numbers: And that I may not bring my authority from poets, 'tis certain, neither Plato nor Demosthenes ever made it their practice: A stile one would value, and as I may call ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... bad commingled, In equal balance in such way, That each in turn had its sway; He's gone! the grass grows o'er his head; The muse deals gently with the dead. James Devlin, where are you old man, Whose fingers o'er the catgut ran? Professor of the art to foil Both "treason, stratagem and spoil," In days which now are but a riddle, When William Murphy played the fiddle So merrily, long, long ago, To trip of "light fantastic toe." Fond were you of the rod and line When sport and profit did combine In other days, when mighty Bass And Pickerel ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... his days. Thebes was his home town and he was as well known in the all-night restaurants as Oscar Hammerstein is on Forty-second Street. He was a great poker player, and wore an amalgamated copper mask when engaged in a stiff game; it was a helpful foil when trying to work his passage on a pair of trays. This, mind you, was in the stone age of poker, when a man couldn't hide his feelings when he held a full hand. To-day the player sits disconsolate and looks woebegone when ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... (which is also evil) should never be used except as a foil. There is no immorality in exhibiting the prevailing vices of the epoch, but this is the physician's duty. The evil lies in presenting these evils under such forms as may lead many to enjoy or tolerate them, giving them the additional power ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of tricks. I can take a flashlight battery, a piece of copper foil, a few transistors and bamboo tube and turn out a paralyzer gun that'll stop a man cold in his tracks. And you know ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... Royale. A famous Belgian fencer, I forget his name, and a Frenchman, both stationed in the vicinity, instructed, and "Squig" kindly let me take her lessons when she was on leave. Fencing is one of the best tests I know for teaching you to keep your temper. When my foil had been hit up into the air about three times in succession to the triumphant Riposte! of the little Frenchman, I would determine to keep "Quite cool." In spite of all, however, when I lunged ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... the carved curtainboxes, are of a charming cream silk and with their flower borders lend a tone both sumptuous and refined. The carpet is of a slender trellis design with bluish pink roses trailing over a pearl grey ground and forms a perfect foil to the splendid furniture. The chairs are of polished beech covered with 18th ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... recognize this principle, and if the story is well told, and the drama well made up, the hero and the heroine are made to conform to these complexions. The society belle who gives a party, if she be a blonde, invites some dark-eyed lady friend as a foil to her beauty; and the dark-complexioned friend responds cheerfully to the invitation, conscious that her own beauty will be heightened by the contrast. The blonde and brunette are complementary to each ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... 178 foil. The accounts of Ctesias and other ancient writers seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets of Babylon, however ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... talking incessantly to the bewildered freshman "home" whom she guarded, batted balls with ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, not a girl. But as the score piled up in ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... son, Fathom, the hero of the book. Because he is placarded, "Shrewd villain of monstrous inhumanity," we are fain to accept him for what his creator intended; but seldom in word or deed is he a convincingly real villain. His friend and foil, the noble young Count de Melvil, is no more alive than he; and equally wooden are Joshua, the high-minded, saint-like Jew, and that tedious, foolish Don Diego. Neither is the heroine alive, the peerless Monimia, but then, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... discussing questions which in their opinion demanded a special training. For an uncouth country ploughman gifted with song they were prepared, but they did not expect one who could meet them in conversation with the fence and foil of a skilled logician. We may see also his burning desire for distinction in that scene in school when he led the self-confident schoolmaster into debate and left him humiliated in the eyes of the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger and more ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... clog, foil, obstruct, retard, balk, counteract, frustrate, oppose, stay, bar, delay, hamper, prevent, stop, block, embarrass, impede, resist, thwart. check, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... different parts of a garment, &c. The word is also used of other objects which have a projecting knob-like character, e.g. button-mushrooms, the button of an electric bell-push, or the guard at the tip of a fencing foil; or which resemble a button in size and shape, as the button of metal obtained in assaying operations. At first buttons were apparently used for purposes of ornamentation; in Piers Plowman (1377) mention is made of a knife with "botones ouergylte," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... what it meant, if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, that he must pack it away as part of his mental furniture before he took in another sentence. That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. He does not put one large wad on the hollow tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel Lofft says that this reflection—going forward as a serpent does, by a series of backward bends over ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, revolver contest and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... almost seem," he continued, "as if Nature had determined to foil any further attempts to rifle her secrets and Heaven to check mankind in the making of future wars. Only three months after the Grand Duke's death, the American admiral, Mackney, died at sea—you will remember? Now, following Ericksen, Van Rembold, undoubtedly the greatest mining engineer ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... this tone is like drawing the lead from the pistol or putting a foil on the rapier: it defeats his purpose, it renders his weapon ineffective. So far from setting his congregation on fire he sets them asleep; instead of sending them away with clenched convictions they leave the church tittering, or perhaps ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... burned up by the Divine immaculateness,—then, to have the Great God take him to His heart, and pour out upon him the infinite wealth of His mercy and compassion, is overwhelming. Here, the Divine indignation becomes a foil to set off the Divine love. Read the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, with an eye "purged with euphrasy and rue," so that you can take in the full spiritual significance of the comparisons and metaphors, and your whole soul will dissolve ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... then consider the Society as out of date? You do not think, as is sometimes said, that the establishment of the Grosvenor took away the raison d'etre and original intention of the Society—that of being a foil to the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... of 'The Nights' serves admirably as a foil to the absolute realism of the picture in general. We enjoy being carried away from trivial and commonplace characters, scenes, and incidents; from the matter-of-fact surroundings of a workaday world, a life ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... pitches the bar admirably, wrestles with amazing dexterity, and is an excellent cricketer. He runs like a buck, leaps like a wild goat, and plays at skittles like a wizard. Then he has a fine voice for singing, he touches the guitar so as to make it speak, and handles a foil as well as any fencer in Spain.—Cervantes, Don Quixote, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to is the once-famous description of the condemned Felon in the "Letter" on Prisons. Macaulay had, as we know, his "heightened way of putting things," but the narrative which he cites, as foil to one of Robert Montgomery's borrowings, deserves the praise. It shows Crabbe's descriptive power at its best, and his rare power and insight into the workings of the heart and mind. He has to ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... sore than heart can bear.... Then said Rolland:—"Fair comrade Olivier, Son of the good Count Renier, he who held The marches to the distant shores of Gennes; To break a lance, to pierce a shield, the brave To counsel, traitors to dismay and foil, No land e'er ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... of my coat and climbed down. I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to-night. Lupton's Pond may fill to a puddle, the meadows may shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and old Time may even try his wiles on me. But I shall foil him to the end; for I am carrying still in my pocket some of yesterday's persimmons,—persimmons that ripened in the rime of a winter ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... with some amusement, answered these artless inquiries as best he could; they came as a refreshing foil to the sweet but melancholy memories of the past. They were interesting, too, from this very pretty but very ignorant little girl in this backward little Southern town. She was a flash of sunlight through ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of foil, I suppose,' said Elizabeth; 'still, saving your presence, Helen, I think that if Lucy had all the sense you ascribe to her, she might keep ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul repairing to the nuptial chamber is the transparent veil of desire half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar situations in metaphors which—for sensuous passion—leave nothing to be desired, even the famous love-potion of Tristan ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... with the moral law when it comes in the path of the master passion. Mother and sisters are defied and forsaken; father and brethren are resisted at the sword's point when they cross, as is their wont, the course of true love. It is curious to note how little, except as a foil, the ballad makes of brotherly or sisterly love. It finds exquisite expression in the tale of Chil Ether and ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... doth the ghostly foe our souls abuse, And all beyond his force he gains by ruse; He hates the purpose fast he cannot foil,— Then he retreats—retreats but to recoil! In endless barricade obstruction piles, To-day 'tis tears impede, to-morrow—smiles! And this poor dream—his coinage of the night Gives place to other lures, all falsely bright: All tricks he knows ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... waters of finance wherein we paddle we find that a book of fifty cheques lasts us about four months, allowing for two or three duds when we start to make out a foil payable to bearer (self) and decide to renounce that worthy ambition and make it out ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun"; but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... it in the mouths of leaders of polite society. As coolly as if it had been a question of parlor decoration, they appear to have argued that the black background of the general misery was a desirable foil to set off the pomp of the rich. But, after all, this objection was not more brutal than it was stupid. If here and there might be found some perverted being who relished his luxuries the more keenly for the sight of others' ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... ample span Of the wide doors disclos'd a place unknown Some time to any, but those two alone, And a few Persian mutes, who that same year 390 Were seen about the markets: none knew where They could inhabit; the most curious Were foil'd, who watch'd to trace them to their house: And but the flitter-winged verse must tell, For truth's sake, what woe afterwards befel, 'Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus, Shut from the busy world ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... him to doubt his own possession of sufficient wit for all purposes,—something which no amount of argument could have accomplished. But to-day Hugo felt no contempt for him. He smiled only at the one weakness which was a foil to Humphrey's many excellent qualities. And he said pleasantly, "Why, how now, Humphrey? Thou dost need another dream ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... the boys strapped on the new hydrolung equipment. Before adjusting his face mask, Tom mentioned that he had inserted scrambling circuits into the communicators to foil any ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... with two more to help me, 'Will face yon Graces Three; 'Will guard the Holy Tripod, 'And the M.A. Degree. 'We know that by obstruction 'Three may a thousand foil. 'Now who will stand on either hand 'To guard our ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... 31.—The peace in the Parliamentary arena which passed the understanding of the KAISER and went far to foil his plans, is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... north-gate of the Forest (Here General Hawley thought it prudent to change his horse for a true-blue that staid up the hills). Billy Ives likewise took a horse of Sir Harry Liddell's, went quite through the Forest and run the foil through Nightingale Bottom to Cobden at Draught, up his Pine Pit Hanger to My Lady Lewknor's Puttocks, through every mews she went in the morning; went through the Warren above Westdean (where we dropt Sir Harry Liddell) ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... selenium, thalium, | | and many other | | substances. | | | | Organic matter, as | Gives a brown color to the acid. | a piece of straw | | in a carboy of acid | | | Hydrochloric acid | Arsenic | Marsh's test. | | | Some yellow samples | Reinsh's test; a small piece of | contain no iron, | copper foil becomes coated | but an organic salt,| on boiling in dilute acid. | and give an alkaline| | ash on ignition of | | the residue after | | evaporation | | | Calcium chloride | Calcium hydrate | The clear filtered solution made | | with distilled water is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... was a variety of tapa that was stained with hili kukui (the root-bark of the kukui tree). The ripe kukui nut was chewed into a paste and mingled with this stain. Mama ula refers to this chewing. The malua ula is mentioned as a foil to the pa-u, being ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... even now flying from an unwelcome suitor? She knew full well that her friend would resent the slightest semblance of love-making on the part of any man on board. Already her astonishment at Elsie's unlooked-for vivacity was yielding to the humor of meeting such a rival. The Count might serve as a foil, but the real quarry now was the captain. That very night there would be a moon. And the sea was calm as a sheltered lake. Isobel's lips parted in a delighted smile as she tried to imagine Courtenay deserting her ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... (Jour. Soc. Chem. Ind., xxiv., April 1905) process is as follows:—The cap composition is removed by squeezing the cap with pliers, while held over a porcelain basin of about 200 c.c. capacity, and removing the loosened foil and broken composition by means of a pointed wooden chip. Composition adhering to the shell or foil is loosened by alcohol, and washed into the dish by means of alcohol in a small wash bottle. The shell and foil are put to one side and subsequently weighed when dry. The ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... of hair. So he came to himself, and for the rest of our walk he kept to himself as the thread of his discourse, and went over himself from top to toe, and strung thereon all topics under the sun by way of illustrating his splendours. But especially his foil was the relative folly, the unnaturalness and want of logic in his fellow men. He held strong views about the extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle-headedness, had confounded it all. "Hence, for example, these trams! They are always running up and down as though ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... him, but was almost slain, Perhaps is dead now; everywhere The knights come foil'd from the great quest, in vain; In vain they struggle for the ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... believe I'm best described as an aristocratic 'stiff', a 'stiff' being a person who spends his life trying to avoid having to do things. "I fill a niche all the same," he finished, "because I make such an excellent foil for the other chaps, who like to pride themselves on their superiority and hard work. It's nice for them to be able to say contemptuously, 'Look at Denton,' and it's nice for me to be able to feel I'm of some use, without the bother of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to the poet's ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour! Because our statemen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality. Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May the Teuton ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fiend has told them that? how came they to suspect? Confusion! it will foil all my plans, and my vengeance will be incomplete. At least this one victim must not escape, and yet I had sooner he should escape than any other member of the house. Poor boy! the sins of the fathers are ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... peahen's cry, above all a bird's song, is a great interruption to hypnotism—silent or by voices. A nightingale will foil ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... beside his horse, stood Lassiter, his dark apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to some semblance of ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Meredith Simpson!" Selingman recited, waving his cigar. "Well, well, we certainly have made a stir with our little meetings here. An inspired English Cabinet Minister, travel-stained and dusty, arrives with his valet and a black dispatch-box, to foil our schemes. Send him along, my friend. We are not at all afraid of Mr. Simpson. Perhaps we may even ask him ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when young, and must very often transgress ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of importance not mentioned here is Aristippus, 'a pleasant gentleman' and a successful courtier, whose friendship with Carisophus, an alliance hollow, suspicious, and most unloving on one side at least, forms an admirable foil for the true friendship of ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of certain substances in the fluid in which they are growing. Growth may be inhibited by the smallest trace of some of the metallic salts, as corrosive sublimate, although the bacteria themselves are not destroyed. If small pieces of gold foil be placed on the surface of prepared jelly on which bacteria have been planted, no growth will take place in the vicinity of the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... in one of the seats inside the hearth, did Mr. Hempseed, for he was an authority and important personage not only at "The Fisherman's Rest," where Mr. Jellyband always made a special selection of him as a foil for political arguments, but throughout the neighborhood, where his learning and notably his knowledge of the Scriptures was held in the most profound awe and respect. With one hand buried in the capacious pockets ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy |
