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Foil   Listen
noun
Foil  n.  
1.
Failure of success when on the point of attainment; defeat; frustration; miscarriage. " Nor e'er was fate so near a foil."
2.
A blunt weapon used in fencing, resembling a smallsword in the main, but usually lighter and having a button at the point. " Blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not." " Isocrates contended with a foil against Demosthenes with a word."
3.
The track or trail of an animal.
To run a foil,to lead astray; to puzzle; alluding to the habits of some animals of running back over the same track to mislead their pursuers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books



... Gonds. It is further related that when a Kawar is going to make a ceremonial visit he likes always to take with him two or three Bhainas, who are considered as his retainers, though not being so in fact. This enhances his importance, and it is also said that the stupidity of the Bhainas acts as a foil, through which the superior intelligence of the Kawar is made more apparent. All these details point to the same conclusion that the primitive Bhainas first held the country and were supplanted by the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... this their dear domain, 595 Are scattered everywhere, no rarities, Even to the rudest novice of the Schools. Me, rather, it employed, to note, and keep In memory, those individual sights Of courage, or integrity, or truth, 600 Or tenderness, which there, set off by foil, Appeared more touching. One will I select; A Father—for he bore that sacred name— Him saw I, sitting in an open square, Upon a corner-stone of that low wall, 605 Wherein were fixed the iron pales that fenced A spacious grass-plot; there, in silence, sate ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... and his eyes revealed that he would have said more, but the room was meantime filling with players from the stage, some exchanging compliments, some strutting before the glass, and he would not so degrade his dignity before them. Dick, foil in hand even in the manager's room, was testing the steel's strength to his utmost, in ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... or burn joss-sticks before idols; or grope our way by the help of conventional eyes that have no sight in them; or sacrifice substantial facts for absurd forms? The ignorant crew of the Keying refused to enter on the ships' books, until 'a considerable amount of silvered-paper, tin-foil, and joss-stick' had been laid in by the owners for the purposes of their worship. And I wonder whether our seamen, let alone our bishops and deacons, ever stand out upon points of silvered-paper and tin-foil and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... laugh about it, if you choose. That's your way: giggle over everything. But when I play background, I want it to be with something worth while in the foreground. I don't hanker after making myself a foil to show off such fellers as our officers are, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... an inopportune moment, and who will give us because we are His friends, and He ours! The very ugliness of character ascribed to the owner of the loaves, selfish in his enjoyment of his bed, in his refusal to turn out on an errand of neighbourliness, and in his final giving, thus serves as a foil to the character of Him to whom our prayers ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... through water which fills a rubber tube; first of all the tube is distended, and its compression, or secondary effect, really transmits the impulse. A remedy for this is a condenser formed of alternate sheets of tin-foil and mica, C, connected with the battery, B, so as to balance the electric charge of the cable wire (Fig. 60). In the first Atlantic line an impulse demanded one-seventh of a second for its journey. This was reduced when Mr. Whitehouse ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... confession to me in a moment of agitation. He was, he said, overpowered by a sentiment with regard to me which amounted to this—that a man wanted, after all, to be something more than a cipher in his own house, where, if anywhere, it is not pleasant to serve as a mere foil to some one else. This sentiment was merely excusable, he thought, in a man who, though he might reasonably suppose himself of some account among his fellows, had been brought into close contact with another ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... table at which Alixe Delavigne, Captain Anstruther, Major Hardwicke, and Captain Murray merrily discussed the sudden hastening of Captain Eric Murray's nuptials. Hardwicke's duty as "best man" was now the only bar to the beginning of a campaign destined to foil Andrew Fraser's Loch Leven tactics of imprisoning his niece ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Jews unjustly to the Crown to bring; No Edward, Richard, to lose rule and life, Nor no Lancastrians to renew old strife; No Duke of York nor Earl of March to soyle Their hands in kindred's blood whom they did foil. No crafty Tyrant now usurps the Seat, Who Nephews slew that so he might be great; No need of Tudor Roses to unite, None knows which is the Red or which the White; Spain's braving Fleet a second time is sunk, France knows how oft my fury she hath drunk; By Edward third, and Henry ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... in the darkness. She was not willing to plant a seed of distrust in the bosom of her brother, yet she remembered bitterly and indignantly what Angelique had said of her intentions towards the Intendant. Was she using Le Gardeur as a foil to set off her attractions in the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... saw many who were vastly richer dressed than your friends, but I will venture to say that I saw none neater or more elegant: which praise I ascribe to the taste of Mrs. Temple and my mantuamaker; for, after having declared that I would not have any foil or tinsel about me, they fixed upon the dress I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... note to the color harmony. Not only do the paintings and sculpture take proper place in the tone scheme, but every bit of planting, every strip of lawn and every bed of flowers or shrubs, has its duty to perform as color accent or foil. Even the gravel of the walks was especially chosen to shade in ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... Aguecheek, the aspiring, lackadaisical, self-satisfied echo and sequel of Sir Toby, fitly serves the double purpose of a butt and a foil to the latter, at once drawing him out and setting him off. Ludicrously proud of the most petty, childish irregularities, which, however, his natural fatuity keeps him from acting, and barely suffers him to affect, on this point he reminds us of that impressive imbecility, Abraham ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... contained a great number of pots, including more than fifty of the shape XIII, 22, and many of XIII, 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, and small ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... olive-skinned youth who touched Blaine softly on the shoulder. Pegrani did not see. He was pointing into the distance and expounding on the merits of the monorail system. The youth touched a finger to his lips to enjoin silence, and thrust a crumpled ball of metal foil into Blaine's hand before the pilot realized his intention. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... a foil or contrast it enables him to value more truly the good things he constantly ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... was a veil of dark gauze at the horizon-line, its foil a golden, virgin moon, dangling a single ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... distinction between the first Edison patent, and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin-foil (wax was included as a recording material in his English patent); the Bell and Tainter improvement called for cutting or "engraving" the sound waves into a wax record, with a ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... consciously or unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter, really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... very little sign of passion in Mr. ASQUITH'S measured criticism of the Allied Council and of the PRIME MINISTER'S speech on the subject in Paris. His foil was carefully buttoned, and though it administered a shrewd thrust now and again it was not intended to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... very cunning; they are called by the French Canadian the savants, the knowing ones, and seem to understand the wiles of the fisherman. They warn off the others and so foil the design against them. But greediness proves often their destruction. From over-feeding year after year they become fat and stupid and they too are likely in time to be taken. The less knowing beluga ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... there is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 direct appeal to the senses, and it hardly ever failed. If only ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... up and down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... 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 green door in the garden wall, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... with so much Applause. I don't want to be put in mind how very Defective I am in every thing that is Ugly: I am too sensible of my own Unworthiness in this Particular, and therefore I only propose my self as a Foil to the Club. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust me. If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing of life. He presented me in society under the expectation that my dulness would be a foil to his qualities. Had I not remembered the sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the faintest ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... and so forth, by being taken up with the lead present in it. That you may have a notion of the great power that platinum has of combining with other metals, I will refer you to a little of the chemist's experience—his bad experience. He knows very well that if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, and heats a piece of lead upon it, or if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, such as we have here, and heats things upon it that have lead in them, his platinum is destroyed. I have here a piece of platinum, and if I apply the heat of the ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... poem, running to about six hundred lines, and serving as a powerful foil, to use a painter's word, to the two seguidillas at the beginning and end, the masculine utterance of inexpressible grief, alarmed the woman who found herself admired by three departments, under the black cloak of the anonymous. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... same Figure of the Wrist, with this Difference only, that in Seconde, the Wrist must be raised higher, in order to oppose the Adversary's Sword; but in both these Thrusts the Thumb Nail must be turned directly down, and the Edges of the Blade of the Foil of an ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat

... furious rage. It was plain that his plan, successful as it seemed to be, was still in danger of being upset, and the knowledge gave Eleanor new hope. It had seemed to her that, with Trenwith turned traitor, there was not one chance in a million to foil Holmes this time. But now everything was changed. He stayed with them only long enough to give them into the keeping of the servant, who came down the stairs just as he finished giving his orders to the men for the pursuit ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart

... formed a striking contrast. Kemp stood tall, stalwart, straight as an arrow; Levice, with his short stature, his stooping shoulders, and his silvery hair falling about and softening somewhat his plain Jewish face, served as a foil to the other's bright, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... the moment when I may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... cross each other at the orifice, the image is inverted. At present we may illustrate and expand the subject thus: In front of our camera is a large opening (L, fig. 2), from which the lens has been removed, and which is closed at present by a sheet of tin-foil. Pricking by means of a common sewing-needle a small aperture in the tin-foil, an inverted image of the carbon-points starts forth upon the screen. A dozen apertures will give a dozen images, a hundred ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... 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 ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... freedmen and freedwomen, the Pomps and Cudjos, the Dinahs and Blossoms. Sitting by Prudence, among the treble singers, Perez noticed a young Indian girl of very uncommon beauty, and refinement of features, her dark olive complexion furnishing a most perfect foil to the blooming face ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... was most reassuring in her speech, and taking the cold remains of a similar cut from the ice chest, she gave him an object lesson. She demonstrated to him how he should begin the attack, how he might foil the bone that existed only to baffle, how slice after slice might fall beneath his sure and ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... the Tinleys, each party called again; giving the ladies of Brookfield further opportunity for studying one of the levels from which they had risen. Arabella did almost all the fencing with Laura Tinley, contemptuously as a youth of station returned from college will turn and foil an ill-conditioned villager, whom formerly he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... not," said Adelaide; "and I should have serious objections to being used as a foil to ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... 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

... temper, and a quick adaptation to his surroundings. He could drink flip with Dutch boors, or Madeira with royal governors. He liked the society of the great, would intrigue and flatter when he had an end to gain, and foil a rival without looking too closely at the means; but compared with the Indian traders who infested the border, he was a model of uprightness. He lived by the Mohawk in a fortified house which was a stronghold against foes and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the word "balk" falls short of expressing the full force of the Chinese word, which implies not an attitude of defense, whereby one might be content to foil the enemy's stratagems one after another, but an active policy of counter- attack. Ho Shih puts this very clearly in his note: "When the enemy has made a plan of attack against us, we must anticipate him by delivering our ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such contradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it has been shown, is suggestive of life. But over against it we find a suggestion of death. Indeed there has been a widely diffused belief in a river of death—a striking foil to the inspiring mysticism of the river of life. The old-world mythology taught, in varying forms, but with underlying unity of concept, that there is a river, or gulf, which must be crossed by the departing soul on its way to the land of the departed. ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... private intercourse with Marcus Aurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it 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 ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... pass 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 ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... up one of the foils, removed the button, and, creeping close to the window, made one rapid pass at the enemy, which vanished with a shriek of hatred and fear. He then, replacing the button, laid the foil down, and resumed his seat and his discourse. This, after dealing with generalities and commonplaces for some time, gave no sign of coming either to an end or to the point. All the time he was watching Hugh — at least so Hugh thought — as ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... second, the Court upset the conviction of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Maryland for using a public park without first obtaining a permit.[60] The third case,[61] which had nothing to do with religion, affords an interesting foil to the other two. It is dealt ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... foils with buttons on the points, and fight according to the strict rules of fencing. The game is won by touching the adversary over the heart with the sheathed point of the foil. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... us the other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, is doubtful, but he certainly taught us to understand and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... first; the first proffer of the gospel is to be made to the Jerusalem sinner; I am he, wherefore stand back, Satan; make a lane, my right is first to come to Jesus Christ.' This now would be like for like. This would foil the devil; this would make him say, I must not deal with this man thus; for then I put a sword into his hand ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... their loves shall dwell, 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to say about Herr Doermaul's opinion?" asked Benda. He found it difficult to trust the man before him, and was using the judgment of the man behind him as a foil. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... three inches from the navel. I remained with her for some time, during which she was endeavouring to get it off, to effect which she made use of the small bone of the leg of the kangaroo, round the point of which Bennillong had rolled some punk, so that it looked not unlike the button of a foil. She held it every now and then to the fire, then applied and pressed it to the navel until it cooled. This was persevered in, till the mother thought the cord sufficiently deadened, and then with ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... buzzed; he set down the coffee and flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... his formal speech he began on his statement of the action of the naval affairs committee in buying control of the Altacoola land to foil attempts to rob the Government. As he had predicted, the Senate did "sit up." The Senate did agree that a new ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... hard after, if so be that I may but cross over, and will but await tomorrow's dawn. Since that I have heard he rideth not so far ahead I may well overtake him, an my steed, which is so swift, and strong, and good, foil me not!" ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... rich array, Light, lustrous hair about her brow, She yonder sat, a kind of day Lit up what seems so gloomy now. These grim oak walls even then were grim; That old carved chair was then antique; But what around looked dusk and dim Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; Her neck and arms, of hue so fair, Eyes of unclouded, smiling light; Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, Gems and ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... the grind, the closer the particles pack together, the less the circulation of air through the mass, and the smaller the amount of aroma which is carried away. He also found that glass makes the best container for coffee, with the tin can, and the foil-lined bag with an inner lining of glassine, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... 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 of eating and drinking, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... a vain dissembling—a part of the work of the day, And the words that your voice makes music, but the dull, dead lines of the play. Little you care for the woman you woo, save as a foil designed. To prove your skill as a lover—yet—"I am ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... the room 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 big Bible, they waited till ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... nor Drumgold,(290) who have both got fevers, nor the Duc de Nivernois, who dined at Claremont. The gallery is not advanced enough to give them any idea at all, as they are not apt to go out of their way for one; but the cabinet, and the glory of yellow glass at top, which had a charming sun for a foil, did surmount their indifference, especially as they were animated by the Duchess of Grafton, who had never happened to be here before, and who perfectly entered into the air of enchantment and fairyism, which is the tone of the place, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... moreover, there was the style, the vital and penetrating Emersonianism, which aroused, and no doubt, dazzled the youthful and impressionable reader. Emerson's terse epigrammatic method of writing was congenial to my inability to follow difficult logic. His style seemed to me the poetical foil of all the prosers of all time. Through the reading of this book eventually I became acquainted with Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau. They became my teachers; I followed them until, by their guidance, I was enlarged enough to find my own way into companionship with those poets and thinkers, who have ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... to have none, I suppose, but just be a foil to throw her into relief. Is he to be allowed any opinions of his own? . . . It looks hard, that cushion, Kit, and I 'm ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... aesthetically, but serves as a connecting link between the other features, which have before seemed more or less unrelated. The grand staircase, built of Siena marble, the finest example of the intelligent use of colored marble in this country, has until now lacked its foil, which the dull blue walls now give. The added pleasure which is apparent in viewing the stairway emphasizes the importance of the guiding intelligence which has made all this possible. There is in our experience only one other building ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various

... hour's practice, for the most part in quatre and tierce,—my A B C's, as it were,—and the ease with which he held me off and bent his foil against my breast at pleasure chafed me greatly, and showed me how much I had yet to learn, besides making me somewhat less vain of my size and strength. For my antagonist was but a small man, and yet held me at a distance with consummate ease, and twisted my foil from my hand with a mere turn ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... is always an imitation shown off by the foil of some incongruous setting. The setting in this case Stevenson found about him in the omnibuses, the clubs, and the railways of sordid and ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... were unattainable. The duplicity of the Court of Berlin, the triumphs of the Russian arms on the Danube, and changes in the general diplomatic situation, enabled Catharine II to foil the efforts of Pitt in 1791. She worked her will on the Turks and not long after on the Poles; Sweden came to an understanding with her; and Prussia, slighting the British alliance, drew near to the new Hapsburg Sovereign, Leopold II. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... festival, an occasion of which Laura carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, that looked more like campaign banners than texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of calla lilies, imitation bells of tin-foil, revival hymns vociferated with deafening vehemence from seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the disagreeable smell of poverty, the odor of uncleanliness that mingled strangely with ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the day in my chamber lamenting the kindest of lords, the best of masters. Last evening I heard the soldiers boasting that today they would capture the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and I determined to foil them. They have been feasting and drinking all night, and it is but now that the troopers have fallen into a drunken slumber and I was able to possess myself of the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... contrast flow as from a head-water innumerable rills of comedy through many and many a page of dialogue; but not, of course, from this source alone. Uncle Toby is ever delightful, even when his brother is not near him as his foil; the faithful Corporal brings out another side of his character, upon which we linger with equal pleasure of contemplation; the allurements of the Widow Wadman reveal him to us in yet another—but always in a captivating aspect. There ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... stretches of plain, and even through hills, proving beyond a doubt that the etheric electric waves penetrated everything. For a long time Marconi used modifications of the tin boxes which were a feature of his early trials, but later balloons covered with tin-foil, and then a kite six feet high, covered with thin metallic sheets, was used, the wire leading down to the sending and receiving instruments running down the cord. With the kite, signals were sent eight miles by the middle of 1897. Marconi was working on the theory that the higher ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... the Sun with harvests in its heat, And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night, An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light, More real, or a world force more complete, Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight Of evil's foil and ultimate defeat. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... Tommy, his target, but he 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 yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a high hand, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... waving his hands and calling. She could distinctly hear a cry! It chilled her senses, and brought a frantic, unreasoning fear. Somehow she felt he was connected with the one from whom she fled. Some emissary of his sent out to foil her in her attempt for ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... 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, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... poesy, they, the others, are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene, there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias, the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbe Mouret; La Teuse, the priest's garrulous old housekeeper; Desiree, his 'innocent' sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... at dinner that Jimmy had his first chance of seeing the rope of pearls which had so stimulated the roving fancy of Spike Mullins. Lady Blunt sat almost opposite to him. Her dress was of unrelieved black, and formed a wonderfully effective foil to the gems. It was not a rope of pearls. It was a collar. Her neck was covered with them. There was something Oriental and barbaric in the overwhelming display of jewelry. And this suggestion of the East was emphasized ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... could the pituitary be reached? If you will study my skiagraph, you will see how I got my first clue. There was something over that spot which caused the refractory sore. What was it? Radium—carefully placed in the mask with guards of lead foil in such a way as to protect the eyes, but direct the emission full at the gland which was to be ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... by dissolving gold in aqua regia, a composition of one part of nitric to two parts of muriatic acid. Gold foil is the best for our purposes; coin, however, answers, in most cases, for the daguerreotype operator, as the alloy, being so slight is not noticed in the gilding process. When the latter is used, it ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... I say almost, for, of course, she'll be still lovelier when she goes to Heaven. Her well-shaped head indicates a strong, active, inventive mind, while her pure heart and clean soul are mirrored in her sweet face. She is a good foil for you, Quincy. You are almost dark enough for a Spaniard or an Italian, while she is ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... fortified, the banks of the main land being distant on both sides some nine hundred to a thousand paces. Vessels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon on this island, and we deemed the location the most advantageous, not only on account of its situation and good foil, but also on account of the intercourse which we proposed with the savages of these coasts and of the interior, as we should be in the midst of them. We hoped to pacify them in the course of time, and put an end to the wars which they ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... bell at the door of Mrs. Wilson's home she did not know that her approach had been watched. She meant to be very careful during her interview, for she realized that she and Ruth were endeavoring to foil two ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... John William 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 to ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... mercury on a tin foil, smoothly laid on a flat table, and rub it gently with a hare's foot. It soon unites itself to the tin, which then becomes very splendid, or is what they call quickened. A plate of glass is then cautiously, passed upon the tin leaf, in such ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... small chemical blowpipe with ivory mouthpiece, and two platina tips; also some platina foil and wire. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... Westburnflat here, like Christie of the Clinthill later, is one of our old friends of the poems back again, and welcome back again. But he and Hobbie can hardly save a book which Scott seems to have thrown in with its admirable companion, not as a makeweight, but rather as a foil. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... knew what he had to do. In a single act of destruction he could simultaneously foil Paul Brennan's plan and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... his cap from him. This is the usher of his school, that draws the rabble together, and then he draws their teeth. He administers physic with a farce, and gives his patients a preparative of dancing on the rope, to stir the humours and prepare them for evacuation. His fool serves for his foil, and sets him off as well as his bragging and lying. The first thing he vents is his own praise, and then his medicines wrapped up in several papers and lies. He mounts his bank as a vaulter does his wooden horse, and then shows tricks ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... 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

... revelations. Fuller adds that they "grieved the Comforter, charging all their sins on God's Spirit, for not effectually assisting them against the same . . . sinning on design that their wickedness might be a foil to God's mercy, to set it off the brighter." But that they were Communists, Anarchists, or Libertines, there is no evidence; and the Queen's menial servant who wrote and presented to Parliament an apology for the Service of Love ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubts and disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed the existence of any other world, and dies at last not a bloody death, but by a foil "unbated ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... be thy feeling,—though them knowest not the rack!—I too am a slave, but it may be that I can help thee." The girl stilled her sobs to listen. "Hito is a fat swine. It would give me great joy to foil him." ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... the pouting lips were fretful, the whole appearance unhealthy, and the dark bullet-shaped head seemed too large for the thin bony little figure. Worn, fagged, and aged as Flora looked, she had still so much beauty, and far more of refinement and elegance, as to be a painful foil and contrast to the child that clung to her, waywardly refusing all ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the train could be faintly seen as it glided along its steel track bringing its load of human or mechanical food to the hungry battle-line. Swiftly but with great care the two brothers made ready the deadly missiles with which they hoped to foil the plans of their ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay

... discipline." And in his profound chapter on a "State of probation, as intended for moral discipline and improvement," he shows that they are actually distributed for this purpose. 3. The unavoidable evils of this life, which are not brought upon us by our faults, are intended to serve as a foil to set off the blessedness of eternity. Our present light afflictions are intended, not merely to work out for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, but also to heighten our sense and enjoyment of it by a recollection of the miseries ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... fortune, and had married a very agreeable woman for love, by whom he then had two children. As our reader is to be more acquainted with this person, it may not be improper to open somewhat of his character, especially as it will serve as a kind of foil to the noble and great disposition of our hero, and as the one seems sent into this world as a proper object on which the talents of the other were to be displayed with a proper and ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... former times, every Family of Distinction was considered as incomplete in its establishment, if it did not possess a certain whimsical Character called a Fool; who was either to afford amusement to his witty Master by the real singularity of his Humour,—or to act as a foil to his foolish Lord by well-timed displays of affected Folly.—These appendages to Greatness have long been laid aside.—Indeed, the present Age, which is remarkable for its refinements, has, in the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... aggressiveness. Then Quisante put his arms on the table, interrupted Morewood without apology, and began to talk. May thought that she would not have known how good the talk was—for it came so easily—had she not seen how soon Morewood became a listener, or even a foil, ready and content to put his questions not as puzzles but as provocatives. Yet Morewood was proverbially conceited, and he was fully a dozen years Quisante's senior. She stole a look round; the brothers were open-mouthed, Mrs. Gellatly looked almost frightened. Next her eyes scanned Quisante's ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... Don Pedro, the professor, because there was still deep within him a certain dislike of the man since the days of his courtship. Besides, it offended him to see him in his home with a certain air of a noble personage whose virtue served as foil for the sins and shortcomings of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Phillips 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 ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... snow; shall see 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

... was divided with mathematical precision, according to the formal taste of the time, into smaller squares, with a broad well-kept gravel walk at each angle. These plots were arranged in various figures and devices—such as the cinq-foil, the flower-de-luce, the trefoil, the lozenge, the fret, the diamond, the crossbow, and the oval—all very elaborate and intricate in design. Besides these knots, as they were termed, there were labyrinths, and clipped yew-tree walks, and that indispensable requisite to a garden ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... yourself 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 that we may all meet again! ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... time. Tears of longing and vexation dimmed her eyes as she thought of the golden, halcyon days of youth that would never return. At any rate, Felipe and Chiquita must not meet until after she had warned the latter. Blanch must be used as a foil as ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... but hardly spoke a word. He did not need to speak. His intelligent eyes, his smile, his refined manners, the tranquillity that was in and inundated by his personality, could not but attract Jacqueline. Christophe, by contrast, stood as a foil to Olivier's shining qualities. She did not show anything, for she was fearful of the feeling stirring in her: she confined herself to talking to Christophe, but it was always about Olivier. Christophe was only too happy to talk about his friend, and did not notice Jacqueline's ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... fears, sweetheart. They shall not have me. I have plans that will foil them yet. But think not too well of me, Rosamund. I am not the hero you would make me out. I am a mad fellow, and have played the fool once too often; but for all that they shall ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... of use only in cavities which had sound walls for its retention. In the form of rolls or tape it was forced into the previously cleaned and prepared cavity, condensed with instruments under heavy hand pressure, smoothed with files, and finally burnished. Tin foil was also used to a limited extent and by the same method. Improvements in the refining of gold for dental use brought the product to a fair degree of purity, and, about 1855, led to the invention by Dr Robert Arthur of Baltimore of a method by which it could be welded firmly within the cavity. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... bravely put his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and have ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... Israel shown, His praise and glory was in Israel known. That saw the troubl'd Sea, and shivering fled, And sought to hide his froth-becurled head Low in the earth, Jordan's clear streams recoil, As a faint host that hath receiv'd the foil. 10 The high, huge-bellied Mountains skip like Rams Amongst their Ewes, the little Hills like Lambs. Why fled the Ocean? And why skip'd the Mountains? Why turned Jordan toward his Crystal Fountains? Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast Of ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... clear to his own mind, Moodie cursed in his heart Lord Strathern's fatuity and the facile disposition Lady Mabel had so unexpectedly betrayed. But, though sorely troubled, he was not a man to despair. He resolved to watch L'Isle closely, and to rack his own invention for some way to foil his schemes, while taking care not to betray the least suspicion ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... forests, while on any summer's day one may see, far away and "sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill," some neighboring village with its graceful spire of purest white gleaming and flaming in the hot sunshine, like marble set in a foil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... the stones set in foil, and six in number," continued the methodical chatelain, whose eye now lighted with the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... such word as foil in my bright lexicon. I'll lay you a wager, if you like, that I play a practical joke on you, that you, yourself, will admit is clever and not unkind. That's the test of a right kind of a joke,—to ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... for the good graces of their common friend Johnson, as Scott thought, and the fear of his older acquaintance as the possible biographer made him suspicious of the merits of the poet, who figures in the pages of Boswell as a foil for his gently ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... 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

... whom he related what had passed. "O my son," said she, "know that Mardas hateth thee and doth but send thee to this mountain, to bereave me of thee; then take me with thee and let us depart the tents of this tyrant." But he answered, "O my mother, I will not depart hence till I win my wish and foil my foe." Thereupon he slept till morning arose with its sheen and shone, and hardly had he mounted his charger when his friends, the young men, came up to him; two hundred stalwart knights armed cap-a-pie and cried out to him, saying, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... a distich, in which he places Johnston in a contemptuous comparison with the author of Paradise Lost[2]. From this time, all my praises of Johnston became ridiculous, and I was censured, with great freedom, for forcing upon the schools an author whom Mr. Pope had mentioned only as a foil to a better poet. On this occasion, it was natural not to be pleased, and my resentment seeking to discharge itself somewhere, was unhappily directed against Milton. I resolved to attack his fame, and found some passages ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... that overrul'd I oversway'd, Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain: Strong-temper'd steel his stronger strength obey'd, Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. 112 O! be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mastering her that foil'd the god ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... modern warfare, as illustrating the immense power that quick-firing rifles confer upon the defence. Given a nucleus of well-trained troops, with skilled engineers, any position of ordinary strength can quickly be turned into a stronghold that will foil the efforts of a far greater number of assailants. Experience at Plevna showed that four or five times as many men were needed to attack redoubts and trenches as in the days of muzzle-loading muskets. It also proved that infantry fire is far more deadly in such cases than the best ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... had 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 out with continual action, and partly weakened and become dissolute with over abundance and luxury. Marcus Livius, who was governor of Tarentum ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... without remorse, and that I still survived was itself a mere accident. Yet the very fact that I lived yielded me fresh confidence, a fatalistic belief that my life had thus been spared for a specific purpose. It might yet be my privilege to foil these villains, and rescue Mrs. Henley. It was my belief she was also on board this vessel. I had no reason to assume this, except the wording of Broussard's report which I had overheard. But she was a prisoner, and this vessel would be the ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... 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 ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... to his companion as could be desired by the humorous painter. He was a plump, spry little fellow, brightly dressed and bubbling over with merry, roguish spirits, which formed the most fantastic foil to the lugubriousness of his fellow-worker. Any good citizen of Paris, arising belated, if any such there may have been, and hurrying to the walls to know how things went for the king's cause, would have recognized ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... She had come to Briar Hills, flattering Jerry, of course, that they could be alone, intriguing meanwhile with Channing Lloyd, a wild fellow, according to Jack Ballard, who at thirty could have unprofitably shared his omniscience with the devil. A fine foil for Jerry! ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... "Ma foil!" exclaimed Mademoiselle. She seized an end of the boa and drew Gwendolyn to her knee. "You make ze head buzz. Come!" She reached for a book on the ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... me," she said; and as she stroked the skinny old hand, the tears came at the thought of it. Everybody was so kind to her! The world was so foil of love! God was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... made inquiries," he said, "and I have learned enough to substantiate this story. We can, of course, foil the plot with ease, but that is ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes

... of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair and sleek," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Those dark, purple-faced people are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... crisis and turns of them, in their cooling and decay; all which errors proceed from want of judgment in the poet, and from being unskilled in the principles of moral philosophy. Nothing is more frequent in a fanciful writer, than to foil himself by not managing his strength; therefore, as, in a wrestler, there is first required some measure of force, a well-knit body and active limbs, without which all instruction would be vain; yet, these being granted, if he want the skill which is necessary to a wrestler, he shall make but small ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... in the light of the doorway; his alert, theatric, dominating personality; his superb self-consciousness; the decision of manner which comes only to those who have achieved, seemed to her prejudiced gaze admirable in themselves, but more admirable as a foil to the warm brown of Frank's hair, to the poetic gray of his eyes, his apparent self-depreciation, his easy acceptances, and his elegant reluctance to obtrude on others either his views ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... a pretty girl, less graceful than Cicely, but with her big brown eyes and masses of dark hair, a foil to her friend's fair beauty. She had her mother's sensible face, but was better-looking than her mother ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... every passing hour; What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... leave of me, and I would not have them meet. In my confusion my eyes rested on a 'trophy of arms' with which my father had decorated one side of the room. Scarcely knowing what I was about, I seized a foil, handed it to my would-be lover, and taking another myself, I took up my position ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... 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 the arrogance of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris



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