"Millstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you what it is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain's whistle again, if you 'ar'n't, some how or other, in the wrong box. That 'ere ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... I should think so, forsooth. But verily a reckoning day is at hand. Woe to him who carries a load of guilt at his heart and thinks that no man knows of it. Better a millstone were about his neck, and he were swallowed up in ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed: For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd 'Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he held The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself Were that great Angel; 'Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea; Then comes the close.' The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world; He at his own: but when the wordy storm Had ended, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... passed, faded. Weede, attire. Weel, well. Weel-hained, carefully saved. Ween, believe. Weet, wet. Weir, war. Wha, who. Wham, whom. Whang, large piece, slice. Whare, where. Whase, whose. Whestling, whistling. Whig-mig-morum, talking politics. Whinging, whining. Whunstane, hard rock, millstone. Whyles, sometimes. Winna, will not. Winnock-bunker, window-seat. Woddie, woody. Wonner, wonder. Woo, wool. Wood, mad Wordy, worthy. Wrack, wreck. Wraith, spectre. Wrang, wrong. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... the world. You can understand now what I mean when I say that I do not know how to begin." Jack acknowledged that in that matter he did understand his brother. It is always hard for a man to commence any new duty when he knows that he has a millstone round his neck which will probably make that duty ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... had brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"—the originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public men did—that hung a millstone about England's neck. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... mighty seven-hided shield of Ajax, in the midst of the boss, and the brass rang around. Ajax next taking up a much larger stone, whirling, discharged it, and applied immense strength. And he broke through the shield, having struck with a rock like unto a millstone, and he wounded him in the knee; and he was stretched supine, having come into violent contact with his shield; but Apollo quickly raised him. And now in close combat hand to hand, they would have wounded each other with ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... vile details, fathomed such immense hypocrisy, assisting in thought at a double vision so atrocious in irony, that she would have liked to die, mechanical and implacable, pounded her brain with the weight and ceaseless action of a millstone. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... is clearly most desirable to encourage. The rentier in these days gets less than no sympathy, but we make a great mistake if we think that we can with impunity crush him between the upper and nether millstone of fixed income and rising prices. With his help we have equipped industry at home and abroad. We can, if we choose, by depreciating the currency still further, lessen still more the reward that we pay him for that ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... called Hasdrubal, dashing Phormio aside with the flat of his blade. "I have him at last!" But just as Hiram was leading down a dozen more, the athlete's axe swept past the sword, and fell like a millstone on the master's skull. He never screamed as he crashed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... cried, intolerable pain in his voice. "You win! You have a heart harder than the millstone, more set than ice! I call you to witness I have struggled hard, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... to learn farming. One Saturday, in 1907, I saw a hundred and twenty of these lads, who were on Bridge of Weir platform waiting for the train. The scene was pathetic in the extreme—enough to melt a heart of nether millstone. Many of the lads were in tears as they answered the roll-call for the last time. In the afternoon they (and over two thousand emigrants) left the Clyde, amid sobs, cheers, and the waving of multitudinous handkerchiefs. These boys go, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... came, and you were playing your game?' answered, 'I would finish it'? The best way for a steward to be ready for the Master, and to show that he is watching, is that he should be 'found so doing' the humble task of his stewardship. The two women that were squatting on either side of the millstone, and helping each other to whirl the handle round in that night were in the right place, and the one that was taken had no cause to regret that she was not more religiously employed. The watchful servant should be a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and always my dear sister if no other home should offer, and though we said no word that day of Captain Standish, sure am I that he was in both our minds. And now, dear man, dost see through the millstone?" ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... a soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something like a dead hand would fall on me—'You did it, you, for your own pleasure you created this thing! See your work!' If it lived to be eighty it would always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God—if his work turns out bad, so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands of it. Time and years can never bring ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... bestowed cheap tears upon the sorrows of Uncle Tom, cheap aristocratic homage upon Mrs. Stowe, and cheap or indeed gratis advice upon "American sisters," any American or Continental paper had prophesied (seeing farther into a millstone than Times prophets during the war) that the issues between Slavery and Abolition would, in a very few years, come to a tremendous crisis and not less tremendous arbitrament, and that the great majority ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... your opinion—because you can't see into a millstone. I tell you that Harry knows more about this Captain Scarborough than any one else. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to play villain in a new mystery play by Mr. WALTER HACKETT. Essential elements of the business as follows: Obstinate old millstone of a shipbuilder, Bransby, who simply will not give up shipbuilding for aeroplane making (and no wonder in these days!); nephew Stephen, with an unwholesome hankering after power and a complete inability to see the obvious; nephew Hugh, lieutenant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... would be for all parties. That the two ladies were not very happy together was evident, and then he made a little comparison between Madeline and Mary. Was it really the case that for the last three years he had contemplated making that poor child his wife? Would it not be better for him to tie a millstone round his neck and cast himself into the sea? That was now his thought ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... repeated Austin, reaching for the tongs and laying a log of white birch across the coals; "and that is Gerald's fondness for pretty girls. . . . Not that it isn't all right, too, but I hope he isn't going to involve himself—hang a millstone around his neck before he can see his way clear to some promise of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of one department, stood, as it were, between the upper and nether millstone, at present just escaping both. He thought it hard that the men should have this second reduction so soon, and it did seem to him reasonable that profits ought to yield a little, that there ought to be a sympathy between them. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... head about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... much attention on the professional services which the exigencies of the tale demand of him, that he has very little leisure to expound his own personal equation—the rather since the attitude of peering into a millstone is not, of itself, conducive to elucidations of oneself; the professional endowment obscures all the others. We ordinarily find, therefore, our author dismissing the individuality of his detective with a few strong black-chalk outlines, and devoting his main labor upon what he feels the reader ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... of a very simple nature. It is disintegrated rock, worn small by the enormous millstone of ice that rolls slowly over the bed, and deposited in part as 'terminal moraine' near the summer melting-point. It is the quantity of mud thus produced, and borne down by mountain torrents, that makes the alluvial plains collect so quickly at their base. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... show that they were quite two. The fact is that they are in a huge difficulty with this appropriation clause, which served their turn for a while (when it turned out Peel and cemented their alliance with the Radicals), and now it hangs like a millstone round their necks, and is not unlikely to produce the dissolution of the Government. Strange that this Irish Church in one way or another is the insuperable obstacle to peace and tranquillity in Ireland, and to the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... agony as he spoke, and looked utterly crushed. It was an awful memory. Le Neve hardly knew what to say, the man's remorse was so poignant. After all those years the boy's thoughtless act seemed to weigh like a millstone round the grown man's neck. Eustace held his peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel went on again, rocking himself to and fro on his rough seat as he spoke. "For fifteen years," he said, piteously, "I've borne this burden in my heart, and never told ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the new historian was therefore clearly marked out: he must do the work of compiler and peacemaker. He failed in neither. His book is a true sheaf, or rather it is a millstone under which the indefatigable author has pressed, somewhat at hazard, the sheaves of his predecessors. Most of the time he inserts them just as they are, confining himself to the work of harvesting them and weeding ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... believe that great mechanical forces were at work producing vast changes in the relations of land and water. "It has long been the opinion of the most eminent geologists that the coalfields of Lancashire and Yorkshire were once united, the upper coal measures and the overlying Millstone Grit and Toredale Bocks having been subsequently removed by denudation; but what is remarkable is the ancient date now assigned to this denudation, for it seems that a thickness of no less than 10,000 feet of the coal measures had been ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... all dragooned down about her heels. On the whole, she was rather, I must confess, an out-of-the-way creature; and though I had not muckle faith in these bodies that pretend to see further through a millstone than their neighbours, I somehow or other, taking pity on her miserable condition, being still a fellow-creature, though plain in the lugs, had not the heart to huff her out; more by token, as Nanse, Benjie, and the new prentice Mungo, had ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... should he not return to a state of childhood like the others, since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him, that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the eye. If we make a cross section of a grain of wheat, or rye, and place it under the microscope, we perceive very distinct layers in it as we examine from without inwards. The outer of them belong to the husk of the fruit and seed, and are separated as bran, in grinding. But the millstone does not separate so exactly as the eye may by means of the microscope, not even as accurately as the knife of the vegetable anatomist, and thus with the bran is removed also the whole outer layer of the cells of the nucleus, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... from Charleston, where we would live for months without seeing a white face outside of the home circle. It was often lonely, but we had many out-door enjoyments, and were very happy. I, however, always had one terrible drawback. Slavery was a millstone about my neck, and marred my comfort from the time I can remember myself. My chief pleasure was riding on horseback daily. 'Hiram' was a gentle, spirited, beautiful creature. He was neither slave nor slave owner, and I loved and enjoyed ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Raymond, desiring the floor, was somewhat chagrined to find himself preceded by Mr. Finck of Ohio, a respectable gentleman of the Vallandingham type of Democrat,—representing a political school whose friendship to the Administration at that time was a millstone about its neck. Mr. Raymond followed Mr. Finck late in the day, and could not help showing his resentment that the ground which the Administration intended to occupy should be so promptly pre-empted by the anti-war party of the country. "I have," said Mr. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... those sterne Barbarians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, where Smith having used the salvages with what kindnesse he could, he shewed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demiculverings and a millstone to carry Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavie; but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with Isickles, the yce and branches came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals—when it came to delicate chicane, and scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... residence, as it were, in the vineyard." Again, "the vineyard flourished for some time, and tolerably good wine was made from the produce; but after the death of the noble planter, in 1713, it was much neglected, and nothing remained but the name. On taking down the house, a stone resembling a millstone, was found, by which the grapes were pressed."[5] We were on the spot at the time, and saw the stone in question. Vines are still very abundant at Dorking, the soil being very congenial to their growth. "Hence, almost every house in this part has ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... consciousness, he had intended to go directly he was well and demand his love openly and chance the rest, this news made that course now quite out of the question. He could not condemn her to wretched poverty and tie a millstone round both their necks. The doctors had absolutely forbidden him to read or even know of any more letters—the official ones the secretary could deal with—but he became so restless with anxiety that Arabella Clinker was persuaded to bring them up and at ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we should treat the Southern people with great consideration. What we must do, we may do in the spirit of love, and not of wrath or scorn. Oh, what a mystery of Providence, that this terrible burden—I had almost said millstone—should ever have been hung around the neck of ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the use of land. And when that necessity is absolute, when starvation is the alternative to the use of land, then does the ownership of men involved in the ownership of land become absolute. Private ownership of land is the nether millstone. Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically, as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has everywhere had its birth in war and conquest, and in the selfish use which the cunning have made of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... of Cumberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of the same age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones "are overlaid along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and grits, which occupy much the same place in the general series as the millstone grit of England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the "representative of the millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows that he thinks likeness of mineral composition some evidence of equivalence in time, even at that ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... are not what they were," Bertie said sullenly, "and that's about what has brought things to a crisis. I can see through a millstone when there is a hole in it. I have a bachelor uncle on my mother's side—a woman-hater—who always said that he would remain single and make me his heir. But he changed his mind a couple ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Imagine this trustful woman for instance—she would suffer anguish at the thoughts of such a sin, though another were the sinner. "If anyone offend one of these little ones it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he be cast into the sea." Yet truth is truth, and should be spoken—should it not, malignant monitor, who remindest me how often I fail to speak it? Surely among all his army of black-coats our worthy Bishop must have ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... harm than good by interfering with regular trade, because she had not studied those matters. But that was the line of her argument. Lady Sarah told her that her heart in that matter was as hard as a nether millstone. The young wife, not liking this, withdrew; and again appealed to her husband. His mind was divided on the subject. He was clearly of opinion that the petticoat should be obtained in the cheapest market, but he doubted much about that three-halfpence in two hours. It ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... commands, and though ye flatter yourselves in your own eyes, and cry, "Peace, peace," even though ye walk in the imagination of your own heart, yet certainly "he is a God of truth." I pray you read that sad and weighty word, that will be like a millstone about many men's necks to sink them in hell, Deut. xxix. 20, 21, ye who "add drunkenness to thirst," whose rule of walking is your own lust, and whatsoever pleaseth you, without respect of his commands, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... workingman. This man you do not know; nor do we. You represent a force in modern society; we also represent a force—a new force. Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As you will readily discern, we are simply a business proposition. You are the upper, and we the nether, millstone; this man's life shall be ground out between. You may save him if you agree to our conditions and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... exclaimed Don Quixote, "for I would rather they had deprived me of my arm, as long as it were not my sword arm. Know, Sancho, that a mouth without teeth is like a mill without a grindstone, and a tooth is more to be prized than a millstone. But all this must we suffer who profess the stern rule of knights-errant. Mount, friend, and lead the way, for I will follow ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... When General Townshend was besieged in Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. To the Commander-in-Chief a detailed ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... necessity for a woman of quality. It is only by the advantages of education that we can show ourselves superior to such a hussy as Albemarle's gutter-bred duchess, who was the faithless wife of a sailor or barber—I forget which—and who hangs like a millstone upon the General's neck now that he has climbed to the zenith. To have perfect Italian and some Spanish is as needful as to have fine eyes and complexion nowadays. And to dance admirably is a gift indispensable to a lady. Alas! ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... he said unto his disciples, It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! 2 It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. 4 And if he sin against ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... a certainty, underlying all his impatience, that there was nothing to live for now. What did it matter, after all? One moment, life and hope and youth made him thrill and tremble in every limb; the next, his fate weighed upon him like a millstone; he laid his head down on the broad pillow of the sofa, and while Henriette chattered his eyelashes were sometimes wet. All was settled now. He must be banished to England, to Germany, banished in a cause he did not care for, in which he was involved against his will. Never again should ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... interposed Ming Yen from outside the window. "What a determined and self-confident fellow he must be to even come and bully us; Mrs. Huang is his paternal aunt! That mother of yours is only good for tossing about like a millstone, for kneeling before our lady Lien, and begging for something to pawn. I've no eye for such ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... from Dr. L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... there upon the millstone with her gun across her knees, she told me all the story, very quietly:—How at the last she had been found in the house in Brussels by Marc'antonio and Stephanu and fetched home to the island; how she had found there her brother Camillo in charge of Fra Domenico, his tutor and confessor; with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... insurmountable obstacle, preventing all material and moral progress; as a cumbrous load which rendered all free, vigorous action impossible, and prevented Russia from rising to the level of the Western nations. If Russia had succeeded in stemming the flood of adverse fortune in spite of this millstone round her neck, what might she not accomplish when free and untrammelled? All sections of the literary world had arguments to offer in support of the foregone conclusion. The moralists declared that ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... traitors had been buried together, and begged him not to exhume them, since they would "smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days." Apparently he ranked Seward among these defunct and decaying Conservatives; certainly he regarded the secretary as a "millstone about the neck" of the President.[52] Still, in spite of such denunciations, times were not in this respect so bad as they had been, and the danger that the uncompromising Radicals would make wreck of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... your schoolhouse now stands; but their old dog, Duke, would never go past the church when he followed his master out on Sunday mornings: he would not go to Presbyterian meeting—not he: he stretched himself on the great millstone before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... all-shielding devotion, laboring and beseeching and waiting for its regeneration, upheld above the depths of suffering and regret by the immortal power of a love so fervent, so pure, so self-forgetting, that it will be a millstone about the necks that disregard its tender clasping now, to sink them into a bottomless abyss in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... also see God arising to fall upon the Germans. Berlin, with Babylon the Great, is fallen. It has become a nest of unclean things. There serpents dwell. Woe unto them that offend against my little ones. For, lo, a millstone is hanged about their necks and they shall be drowned ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... who if they can but bring themselves to weep for their sins, they are then full of an ill-grounded confidence and security; never considering that all this may prove to be no more than the very garb and outward dress of a contrite heart, which another heart, as hard as the nether millstone, may as well put on. For tears and sighs, however in some persons they may be decent and commendable expressions of a godly sorrow, are neither necessary, nor infallible signs of a true and unfeigned repentance. Not necessary, because sometimes, and in some persons, the inward grief and anguish ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whim? Only this morning he had been thanking his lucky stars that he was well rid of women of the world for a month at least. And now—Shades of Pluto! He had one hanging around his nick more securely than any millstone. And this one—Hermia Challoner, an enthusiast without a mission—a feminine abnormity, half child, half oracle, wholly irresponsible and yet, by the same ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... said he. "Go to Amersham to-morrow, or go to the devil if you prefer—I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction. No, you don't find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the sack, and I shouldn't wonder! But, it's a pity, too," he added, and sighed, shook his head, and took his glass ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was terrible—terrible! And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were—not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work—the workers cut each other's throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... in his library I dressed his wound and God healed him Judged the hearts of others by his own Leverage is everything Makes men imperious to sit a horse Matrimonial alliance, and a family of half a dozen children Means at least as much as he says Measles Mumps And Sin,—that's always catching Millstone round their necks, taking it for a life-preserver? Mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity Not quite dead enough to bury Old Doctor did not believe in medicine One angry man is as good as another ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... know what I'm doing. You Yankees may be clever at your tricks, but you can't trick me. Don't I know about the money you stole from 'er father? Don't I, eh? You can tell 'er your lies about it being stolen by someone else, but I can see a 'ole through a millstone. You can't trick me, I tell you. They're giving that girl a good 'ome and care and all that, but we're goin' to see she 'as 'er rights. You've filled 'er silly 'ead with your stories. You've made 'er think you're all that's ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... place, led to the unavoidable publication of a fact previously known only to a living few—namely, that the father and mother of Alice Hopwood had never been married, which fact deprived them of the smallest claim on the legacy, and fell like a millstone upon Alice and her pride. From the height of her miserable arrogance she fell prone—not merely hurled back into the lowly condition from which she had raised her head only to despise it with base unrighteousness, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... Fergus, "it's good bread, and fills the boast** of a man's body; but now that I've made a good supper, I'll throw myself on the straw, for I feel as if my eyelids had a millstone apiece upon them. I never shtrip at night, but just throws my blanket over me, an' sleeps like a top. Glory be to God! Oh, then, there's nothing like the health ma'am: may God spare it to us! ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... somewhat near at hand in the darkness, would be lying Fremont. Somewhere in the darkness to the east was Shields. Their junction was unmade, Stonewall Jackson and his army passing between the upper and the nether millstone which should have joined ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... did you treat me so?" When the prince saw that he said, "Rinaldo, give me the horse again, for he must die." Rinaldo replied, "My lord and prince, he is yours without dispute," and gave him to him. The prince then had a millstone tied to each foot, and two to his neck, and made them throw him again into the water. Bayard struggled in the water, looked up to his master, threw off the stones, and came ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and good and true, though that can never be while I am with you. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... short duration, he suggested, may partly explain the curious remark of Dr. Wyberd that when the Sun was reduced to "a very slender crescent of light, the Moon all at once threw herself within the margin of the solar disc with such agility that she seemed to revolve like an upper millstone, affording a pleasant spectacle of rotatory motion." Wyberd's further description clearly applies to the Corona. A Scotch account says that "the country people tilling, loosed their ploughs. The birds dropped to ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... easy marching would bring his guidons fluttering through the woods about the Stockade at Andersonville, and give him a reinforcement of twelve or fifteen thousand able-bodied soldiers, with whom he could have held the whole Valley of the Chattahoochie, and become the nether millstone, against which Sherman could have ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the motor-car. If you are traveling on foot, however, there is much more to be observed, such as the great doorstep made from a broken millstone, the gigantic rambler by the kitchen window, the tiger-lilies gone wild in the dooryard, and above all, the view from the front windows. Since the house was visible far up the road, conversely a long stretch of the road is visible from the house. Standing in front of it, you can see a ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Uncle Dick. "Two formations. Mountain limestone yonder; this we are on, with all these rough pieces on the surface and sticking out everywhere, is millstone-grit." ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... of Mephistopheles. We find ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you about the old man seeing as far into a millstone as is necessary for being on ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... that look of concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying heavily, for all ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... from the position in which they had found him, both men concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window, when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... the whole village. The shop itself had a cheery look, with its weather-stained shingles, its small square windows, and its hospitable door, half as big as the front side of the building. The step was an old millstone too worn for active service, and the piles of chips and shavings on each side of it had been there for so many years that sweet-williams, clove pinks, and purple phlox were growing in among them in the most irresponsible fashion; while a morning-glory ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... elicit sensible replies to my questions as to where he came from; but he simply gibbered and babbled like a happy baby. I coaxed; I threatened; I persuaded; but it was all in vain. I soon found he was a regular millstone round my neck—particularly when we were on the "walk-about." He would suddenly take it into his head to sit down for hours at a stretch, and nothing would induce him to move until he did so of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... violent actions of the heart and arteries, after due evacuations by venesection and cathartics, by gently compressing the brain. This might be done by suspending a bed, so as to whirl the patient round with his head most distant from the center of motion, as if he lay across a millstone, as described in Sect. XVIII. 20. For this purpose a perpendicular shaft armed with iron gudgeons might have one end pass into the floor, and the other into a beam in the cieling, with an horizontal arm, to which a small bed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember that ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... something of that prodigality of imagination, that aloof engrossment in the human comedy, that penetrating cynicism, which one associates with the great artists of the Renaissance. But his nationality hung around his neck like a millstone; he could never throw off his native Philistinism. One ploughs through "The Innocents Abroad" and through parts of "A Tramp Abroad" with incredulous amazement. Is such coarse and ignorant clowning ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Unite to amaze. The queen, I would name thee, Of maidenly muster; Thy stem is so seemly, So rich is its cluster Of members complete, Adroit at each feat, And thy temper so sweet, Without banning or bluster. My grief has press'd on Since the vision of Morag, As the heavy millstone On the cross-tree that bore it. In vain the world over, Seek her match may the rover; A shaft, thy poor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to the city; The little dog's run away; The egg has fallen and broken, And the oil's leaked out, they say. But you be a roller And hull with power, And I'll be a millstone And grind ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... who were carrying millstones then came along, inquired into her trouble, and expressed their compassion by giving her a millstone, which they rolled into her back yard. While they were doing this a Man went by carrying hoes and a pickaxe, and he stopped and asked her why she was crying so hard. She told him her grief, and he said he ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... we spoke of the women singing when they are grinding at the mill. The grinding-stones of their handmills are of various sizes. The smaller ones are rather more than a foot in diameter, and can be worked by one person. The lower millstone is let into the ground. The upper one has an upright wooden handle stuck into it near the edge. The grinder sits on the ground close to the stones, and grasping the handle causes the upper stone to revolve ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... operation is to cut them up by steam saws into blocks about two feet in length. Any bark that may still cling to the log is removed by a rapidly revolving corrugated wheel of steel, while the larger blocks are split by a steam splitter. The next stage of their journey takes these blocks to a great millstone set perpendicularly instead of horizontally. Here a very strong and ingenious machine receives one block at a time, and with an automatically elastic pressure holds it sidewise against the millstone, which, like the mills of the gods, "grinds exceeding ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... as much the warrior to-day as when he entered the lists against Strauss nearly thirty years ago. His opinion of his great antagonist may be summed up in his own language. He says of him that, "He has the heart of a leviathan, which is as hard as a stone and as firm as the nether millstone; he assails the Lord's Anointed with composure and cold-bloodedness; and not a tear of pity ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... gravity, gravitation; weight; heaviness &c adj.; specific gravity; pondorosity^, pressure, load; burden, burthen^; ballast, counterpoise; lump of, mass of, weight of. lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion. weighing, ponderation^, trutination^; weights; avoirdupois weight, troy weight, apothecaries' weight; grain, scruple, drachma^, ounce, pound, lb, arroba^, load, stone, hundredweight, cwt, ton, long ton, metric ton, quintal, carat, pennyweight, tod^. [metric ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to the fear that suits for malpractice may take the place of the panel game and child-stealing as a means of extorting money. If the profession in this State, which claims a high standard of civilization, is to be crushed and ground beneath the upper millstone of the dearth of educational advantages and the lower millstone of ruinous penalties for what the ignorant ignorantly shall decide to be ignorance, all I can ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Phyllis. If I should cause offence to the least of the little ones of the flock with which I have been intrusted, it would be better that a millstone were hanged round my neck and that I were cast into the sea. You have a right to ask and it is laid ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... Shaftesbury, it was pantheistic-mystical with Spinoza, spiritualistic with Descartes, theistic with Leibnitz, materialistic with the men of the Encyclopaedia. It was orthodox with nobody. The miracle as traditionally defined became impossible. At all events it became the millstone around the neck of the apologists. The movement went to an extreme. All the evils of excess upon this side from which we since have suffered were forecast. They were in a measure called out by the evils and errors which had so long reigned ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... much as it is in old-fashioned farms to-day, by mashing the apples in a trough by means of a millstone set edgeways, and then pressing the juice out through hair mats, the juice, says Hartlib, 'having been let stand a day or two and the black scum that ariseth in that time taken off they tunne it, and in the barrels ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... a sombre hue, but natural and sympathetic; the simile here is, that no creature has yet survived the pressure of the heavens and the earth; the heavens, being in motion, representing the upper millstone, and the earth (supposed to be at rest), ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... easily made him their prisoner; and that he might never do them more harm, they put out his eyes. Then they chained him with fetters, and sent him to prison at Gaza. And in the prison they made Samson turn a heavy millstone to grind grain, just as though he were a beast ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... the black art) I can't guess. But, since it seems annoying and inopportune, I shall take my FINALE, and shall thus have a verbal P.P.C.—as you are leaving town, it seems, for Buxton so early in the morning. My Lord Colambre, if I see rightly into a millstone, as I hope and believe I do on the present occasion, I have to congratulate your lordship (haven't I?) upon something like a succession, or a windfall, in this DENEWMENT. And I beg you'll make my humble respects acceptable to the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... worst sort, whereby every man is compelled to give up his own individuality and to be bound to the iron will of an ignorant community: a will also which is based upon the past and conforms to the rules and habits of peoples who lived in remote antiquity. No greater millstone could be hung around the neck of any people than that of the multitudinous caste rules of Manu and later accretions which are the all in all of Hindu life. There may have been good in this system ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... believe in Ninetta in that galley, and I doubt if she did. Mr. GORDON ASH was the debonair hero. I do most solemnly entreat him to consider the example of some of the elders in his profession who have adopted a laugh as their principal bit of business. It may turn into a millstone. Was he not laughing the same laugh on this very stage in a very different part three days ago? He was. If he got a month, laugh-barred, he would profit by the sentence. For he has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... step in the development of the new process, also originating in Minneapolis, was the abandonment of the old system of cracking the millstone, and substituting in its stead the use of smooth surfaces on the millstones, thus in a large measure doing away with the abrasion of the bran, and raising the quality of the flour produced at the first ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... gentle a jailer for the Council. They have given her Sir Amias Paulett, a mere Puritan and Leicestrian, who is as hard as the nether millstone, and well-nigh as dull," said Babington, with a little significant chuckle, which perhaps alarmed one of his companions, a small slight man with a slight halt, clad in black like a lawyer. "Mr. Babington," he said, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the one thing, my boy," sighed Jack. "Without it, Venus herself, ever young and ever fair, would be a millstone around any man's neck, in these later days. Great God! How you missed it! If I had only stumbled on this discovery sooner. You could ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... Every sixpence he could save went to the cottage in Lincolnshire. There his father had been the incumbent of a living of under a hundred and fifty pounds a year, on which he had to bring up his family and pay certain college debts, which had hung like a millstone round his neck all his life. I mention these things now, although, of course, I did not hear them till many years afterwards. Mr Schank was still doing duty on board the frigate expecting to be superseded, that he might commence refitting the ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... say a hundred pounds," the Squire said. "I will give you a check for it. I dare say Greg will find it difficult to furnish, and he might have to borrow the money, and the debt would be a millstone round his neck, perhaps, for years, so I will hand it over ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?" Ingolby's jaw was set now like a millstone. "Well, you can have it, and have it now. If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you out of Lebanon. You're a bad and dangerous element ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... George Hamilton because she can't help it, and hates him because she recognized him as one of the murderers of Roger Wentworth. She did not say that this is all true, nor will she talk on the subject, but one may see through a millstone with ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... no good, Grannie," she said, when she entered her little home half an hour afterward. "Shaw is as hard as a millstone. He won't give me a character until I am cleared; and, as I never shall be cleared, why, I'll never get a character, and I cannot get a situation. What is to become of me, Grannie; oh, Grannie, what is ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... possible after the pattern of the first implement invented by man for this purpose. The peasant set no value upon it; I could have had it for a trifle—even for nothing, had I been so minded; but whatever liking I may have for antiquities, it did not gird me up to the task of carrying a millstone back to Vers. The nail could not be found, so I was obliged to leave without a souvenir of the Celtic city. Not far from this spot I found another millstone that would have fitted the one I had left and made ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... all that nonsense?" Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do with it, yet awhile? Why didn't I hold up to him those awful examples I could have cited, where poor young fellows that could just keep themselves afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone round their necks, taking it for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... world alone, with the millstone of her shame around her neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she had kept both herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours' drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much—much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul—if he could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better have a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!" Here he kissed her. "Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other little children, like the Angels who behold ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... "The Bible says it would be better for a man, sometimes, if a millstone were about his neck, and he were in the bottom of the sea. I'd look out for that, if I were you. Hurry up with your meat; I ought ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... gore! The mists of error, that in darkness held Our reason, like the sun, his voice dispell'd. And lo! exhausted, with no power to save, We view Britannia panting on the wave: Hung round her neck, a millstone's pond'rous weight Drags down the struggling victim to her fate! While horror at the thought our bosom feels, We bless the man this horror who reveals. 120 But what alarming thoughts the heart amaze, When on this Janus' other face we gaze! For, lo, possess'd of power's ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... was much struck with its surprising analogy in mineral and fossil characters to that of Europe; ... the whole series resting on a coarse grit and conglomerate, containing quartz pebbles, very like our millstone grit, and often called by the Americans, as well as the English miners, the 'Farewell Rock,' because, when they have reached it in their borings, they take leave of all valuable fuel."—Ibid., vol. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... blunder is made it is not easily rectified; but during many a sad hour have I regretted it, for Michael Delgrado did not scruple to use it as a threat whenever I resented his ill conduct. At first a trivial thing, in time it became a millstone round my neck. As Alec grew up, it became more and more difficult to announce that he was not Prince Alexis Delgrado, but a simple ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... who is not one of those (to speak in his own phrase) who can penetrate a millstone, sees the deceit, and thinks it unworthy of her; though my cousins Montague vindicate her. And no wonder this cursed partial sex [I hate 'em all—by my soul, I hate 'em all!] will never allow any thing against an individual of it, where our's is concerned. And why? Because, if they ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... she went on hurriedly, "about a month ago I bought the mortgage on this farm. It seemed to me the only thing that stood in the way of your prosperity now—it hung around your father's neck like a millstone—just the thought that he couldn't feel that this wonderful old place was wholly his, the last years of his life, and that he couldn't leave it intact for you and Thomas and your children after you when he died. So I made up my mind it should be destroyed to-day, as my real Christmas present ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... of one lost in a foreign land, where the language is unknown and every sight and sound unfamiliar and bewildering. This weak fashionable woman, the costly product of an artificial luxurious life, seemed capable of being little better than a millstone around the necks of her children in this hour of their need. If there had been some innate strength and nobility in Mrs. Allen's character it might have developed now into something worthy of respect under this sharp attrition of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... they jawed our Lord hisself, and he said, 'Woe! woe! to you lie-yers.' Now, Marse Alfred, if you have made up your mind you are gwine to have that hankcher, it will be bound to come; for if it was tied to a millstone and drapped in the sea, you lie-yers would float it into court; so Bedney, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... presented to him which he carried in his breast; and forgetting all besides, he had nothing but that marble in his head; in short, he became in a manner so worn away upon the stone that he was at last as thin as the edge of a penknife; and this marble was a millstone which crushed his life, a slab of porphyry upon which the colours of his days were ground and mixed, a tinder-box which set fire to the brimstone match of his soul, a loadstone which attracted him, and lastly, a rolling-stone which ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... raised against the bloody one. "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my sober eye for a minute—'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a millstone round the neck of their common-sense." Credit me, Richie, the proposition kindled. We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us, and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young nobleman. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of his wife. As she sat there with bent head, silent, working or reading, but so unutterably silent that his heart seemed under the millstone of it, she became herself like the upper millstone lying on him, crushing him, as sometimes a heavy ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... striped silk, bordered with spangles of gold, next to his white skin, and over that he put his well-sewn apron of brown leather to protect the lower part of his body. Upon his belly he put a great stone as large as a millstone, and over that great stone as large as a millstone he put his firm deep apron of purified iron, on account of the fear and the dread that he had of the Gae-Bulg that day. And his crested helmet that he used for battle and conflict and fight he put upon ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... out detachments of his army, he speedily drove the enemy from Hackensack, Chatham, Springfield, Westfield, and Elizabethtown, all which places we have possessed ever since that time, as well as Millstone and Princeton to the west, and Cranbury to the south; the enemy being confined to a narrow communication on Rariton River, from Brunswick to Amboy, twelve miles. About ten days ago General Washington moved his head quarters towards the enemy, to a place called Middlebrook, about eight ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... fulfilment of the promise, 'there shall no evil touch thee,' and the other does not. For the evil in the evil is all sucked out of it, and the poison is wiped off the arrow which strikes him who is united to God by faith and submission. Two women are grinding at the same millstone, and the same blow kills them both; but the one is delivered, and the other is not. They who pass through an evil, and are not drawn away from God by it, but brought nearer to Him, are hid from its power. To die may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... such little child in My name receiveth Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is more profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... in Schweinfurt near Koenigshofen. The nurses dip the babies out of it with silver pails, and it flows not with water but with milk. If the little ones come to this baby fountain they look through the holes of the millstone (specially mentioned on account of what follows) at its still water, that mirrors their features, and think they have seen a little brother or sister that looks just like them. (Nork. Myth ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... make her see for whom the carriage door was being held open. Such was her entrance into wealth and love and alas! into trouble. For the latter followed hard upon the two first. Mr. Ocumpaugh's mother, who had held sway at Homewood for thirty years or more, was hard as the nether millstone. She was a Rathbone and had brought both wealth and aristocratic connections into the family. She had no sympathy for penniless beauties (she was a very plain woman herself) and made those first few years of her daughter-in-law's life as nearly miserable as any woman's can be ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... industry. Of course, if you resolve to adhere to the two former of these extremes, an intimacy with those who incline to the latter of them would be extremely embarrassing to you: it would be a stumbling-block in your way, and act like a millstone hung to your neck, for it is the nature of idleness and vice to obtain as many ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... anxiety had made confidential; "for I own I was prejudiced against her from the first, as, if you'll excuse me, ma'am, all we Bowstead people are apt to be set against whatever comes from my Lady's side. However, one must have been made of the nether millstone not to feel the difference she made in the house. She was the very life of it with her pretty ways, singing and playing with the children, and rousing up the poor gentleman too that had lived just like a mere ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... going to the place I had seen them fill up, scraped off and removed the earth; and in patience possessed my soul till I had cleared the whole of it away. Then appeared the trap door which was of wood, in shape and size like a millstone; and when I lifted it up it disclosed a winding staircase of stone. At this I marvelled and, descending the steps till I reached the last, found a fair hall, spread with various kinds of carpets and silk stuffs, wherein was a youth sitting upon a raised couch and leaning back on a round ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton |
