"Fritter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snow, but will put forth its golden blossoms in the dreariest days of February, and after the flowers have passed away the foliage will remain as an ornament. To put in single roots is useless; it is far better to plant a few large patches than to fritter away the flower in a number of small and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... not solid and tangible. The obstacles that retard our progress in life neither display yawning chasms nor rows of teeth; they dwell within our own minds—they are versatility, disgust, ennui, thirst after the unknown, and love of change. These lead us to take bye-paths and long turnings, and fritter away the strength that should be used in promoting a single aim. Hence arise a multiplicity of hermaphrodite avocations and desultory studies, that terminate in nothing but vexation of spirit. Let us suppose, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... you to fritter away what you have got. It isn't worth while to spend money on people who can do ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... wildness. From the round point of Atocha to where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward her spanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merry roysterers. At short intervals are the busy groups of fritter merchants; over the crackling fire a great caldron of boiling oil; beside it a mighty bowl of dough. The bunolero, with the swift precision of machinery, dips his hand into the bowl and makes a delicate ring of the tough dough, which he throws into the bubbling ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... any great objects in your life, then, if you fritter away your interest on an idle acquaintance whom you will forget as soon as you are out of her sight, and, if you'll pardon me, who will forget you, except when something calls up your name, or a reminiscence of you." Even Edmonson as ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... mere questions of right or wrong? You had a world of light and frivolous women to choose from, your own kind of women who could dance and fritter life away in following fads that make for license—but you must come into the household of a man who has tried to fight God's battles; standing against these encroachments of Satan which you advocate—and beguile my only daughter into telling me that I ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... smothered, without awakening the quick attention of its mother; and at the first whisper of our Father's name, He is at hand to hear and bless. Alas! we have too often grieved His Holy Spirit by a string of selfish petitions, or a number of formal platitudes! To the wonderment of angels, we thus fritter away the most precious and sacred opportunities. Be still, then, before you pray, to consider what to ask; order your prayers for presentation: and be sure to begin the blessed interview with words of sincere and loving appreciation ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... going to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows and prayers, all to no purpose; and then I come away and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons,—the next fashion of bonnets,—how to make my old dresses answer instead of new,—how to keep the air of the world, while in my heart I am cherishing something ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... something in his coarse, roaring voice, and was promptly arrested for inciting a riot. Nobody cared enough seriously for the redoubtable Sam to object to this. The situation was ticklish, but the police handled it tactfully for once, opposing only a passive opposition, leaving the crowd to fritter its energies in purposeless cursing, surging to and fro, and in ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... what I can be, and therefore, no doubt, should be, is only possible for me if I renounce all those external things which I could gain by dint of the aforesaid external force. That force would always make me fritter away my genuine power, would always conjure up the same evils. In all I do and think I am only artist, nothing but artist. If I am to throw myself into our modern publicity, I cannot conquer it as an artist, and God preserve me ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... where you have become noted for your dress.... That's what exasperates me against you! No girl appreciates refinement and luxury more than you do. No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better advantage. And you have intelligence. You know you must have a competent husband. Yet you fritter away your opportunities. A very short time, and you'll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and deriding you, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Prince, "you have yourselves judged the cause, you have yourselves signed the decree. It remains for me to cause your order to be executed, since it is you who with the heart of a negro, with the cruelty of Medea, made a fritter of this beautiful head, and chopped up these lovely limbs like sausage-meat. So quick, make haste, lose not a moment! throw them this very instant into a large dungeon, where they shall ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... day of service in these offices. This afternoon I will pay you what is due you, and to-morrow I will endeavor to get a boy who is willing to attend to business and not fritter away ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... every portion of India, ten times over, in order to preserve our credit for scrupulous good faith, and the advantages and honour we gained by the late war and the peace: and we must not fritter them away in arguments, drawn from overstrained principles of the laws of nations, which are not understood in this country. What brought me through many difficulties in the war, and the negociations for peace? The British good ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... boys whose daddies tormented them with: "Well, we Il see—" that's so exasperating!—or, "I wish you wouldn't tease, when you know we can't spare the money just at present." A perfectly foolish answer, that last. They had money to fritter away at the grocery, and the butcher-shop, and the dry-goods store, but when it came to a necessity of life, such as going to the circus, they let on they couldn't afford it. A ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau^, screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet^, flitter, gobbet^, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive^; snip, snippet; snick^, snack, snatch, slip, scrag^; chip, chipping; shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair. nutshell; thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful; fragment; fraction &c (part) 51; drop in the ocean. animalcule ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sixty thousand dollars for his picture of Ulysses in the under-world, he refused this great sum, and gave the painting to his native city. Nikias seems to have greatly exalted and respected his art, for he contended that painters should not fritter away time and talent on insignificant subjects, but ought rather to choose some grand event, such as a battle or a sea-fight. His figures of women and his pictures of animals, especially those of dogs, were much praised. Some of his paintings ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... it leads to the most dangerous of results in warfare—the dissipation of forces, which, if united, would win the desired success, but if disunited will probably fail. Thus we are told that we must not fritter away our energies in enterprises which, however important in themselves, are not comparable with the one unique preoccupation of our minds—the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... fly around and make a great commotion, but I fritter away my time, because I forget to keep my eyes on the ball. Why, I ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... I saw of Cigarette was this: She was seven years old; she had been beaten black and blue; she had had two of her tiny teeth knocked out. The men were furious—she was a pet with them; and she would not say who had done it, though she knew twenty swords would have beaten him flat as a fritter if she had given his name. I got her to sit to me some days after. I pleased her with her own picture. I asked her to tell me why she would not say who had ill-treated her. She put her head on one side like a robin, and told me, in a whisper: ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of it and mean to stick to it; it suits me and I am not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I live almost the life of a recluse, seeing very few people and going nowhere that I can help—I mean in the way of parties and so forth; if my friends had their way they would fritter away my time without any remorse; but I made a regular stand against it from the beginning and so, having my time pretty much in my own hands, work hard; I find, as I am sure you must find, that it is next to impossible ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... applied at the right time, I should hope that it will not require many of your ships. The fisheries will, for a season, be a regular and fixed object of attention. Though I feel that your number of ships is small, it is difficult for me to increase it. I hate to fritter away our men and naval strength on a multitude of brigs and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... prepared flour, one saltspoonful of nutmeg, a pinch of salt. Stir the whites into the cream in turn with the flour, put in nutmeg and salt, beat all up hard for two minutes. The batter should be rather thick. Fry in plenty of hot, sweet lard, a spoonful of batter for each fritter. Drain, and serve upon a hot, clean napkin. Eat with jelly sauce. Pull, not cut, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... I been in Arkansas? Me? We landed at Marianna, Arkansas in 1889. They emigranted us here. They sure said they had fritter trees and a molasses pond. They said to just shake the tree and the fritters would fall in the pond. You know anybody that had any sense wouldn't believe that. Yes ma'am, they sure told that lie. 'Course there was times when you could ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... is prepared to put his hand to anything he finds to do, and can be trusted, there is always employment and promotion waiting; but for him who is too proud or too lazy to work, or who prefers to fritter his time in dissipation and amusement, there is nothing but ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... that Chopin acquired the rarest and most precious kind of knowledge, that is, self-knowledge. His countryman, the painter Kwiatkowski, calling one day on Chopin found him and Mickiewicz in the midst of a very excited discussion. The poet urged the composer to undertake a great work, and not to fritter away his power on trifles; the composer, on the other hand, maintained that he was not in possession of the qualities requisite for what he was advised to undertake. G. Mathias, who studied under ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... there's any bottom to my stomach today, for I've got a lot of neglected dinners to make up for, you know. The sky never did look one-half so bright to me as this morning, after I learned the great news. It would seem cheery even if black clouds sailed over, and the snow began to fritter down; because my heart is as light as a feather right now, and there's no ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels between Democrats and Republicans, or between the House and the Senate, or between the South and North, or between the Congress and the administration, then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we succeed, if ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... well sustained. Here and there Mr. HARCOURT permitted himself allusive refinements which deserved a better response, as when Captain Corkoran, discussing with Mabel the menu of the dinner that she fails to cook for him, adapts the language of SOLOMON and says, "Fritter me apples, for I am sick of love." This was lost upon an audience insufficiently familiar with the works of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to utilize that quantity to the best advantage. This can be done only by having a purpose in life strong enough to resist alluring temptations to fritter away both ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... with impatience during this tirade, in which he justly suspected an attempt to fritter away a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... when you eagerly seize the first opportunity to fritter away your time over old clothes. You precipitate yourself unnecessarily against a disagreeable thing. For you are not going to put your stockings on. Perhaps you will not need your buttons for a week, and in a week you may have passed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... several weeks—I've never seen you do anything but caper about the meadow and dance." And then Mrs. Ladybug began to knit furiously, as if to show Freddie Firefly that she was never idle, even if she did spend a good deal of time away from home. "Do you intend always to fritter your nights away as you do ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays; she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more powerfully. As I walked the pavements ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach |
