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Pencil   Listen
verb
Pencil  v. t.  (past & past part. penciled or pencilled; pres. part. penciling or pencilling)  To write or mark with a pencil; to paint or to draw. "Where nature pencils butterflies on flowers."
pencil in to write (a tentative appoinment) on an appointment calendar, so as to reserve time, but to allow the appointment to be readily canceled and replaced with another; also used figuratively, with other means of recording appointments. The notion being that something written in pencil can be more easily changed than something written in ink. The phrase is commonly used in the early stages of organizing a meeting of multiple persons, before it is known whether all attendees will be free at the suggested time.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pencil" Quotes from Famous Books



... little doubtful about bein' shunted like that, but she follows me into the next room, where I produces a pencil and pad and ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... learned that a person, whom I shall not name, who was present at the Council, and who probably was under obligations to Ouvrard, wrote him a note in pencil to inform him of the vote for his arrest carried by the First Consul. This individual stepped out for a moment and despatched his servant with the note to Ouvrard. Having thus escaped the writ of arrest, Ouvrard, after a few days had passed over, reappeared, and surrendered ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... have an evening paper in your pocket. Anyone might have any evening paper, but yours is a Special Edition, which will not be on the streets for half-an-hour yet. You must have obtained it before you left the office, and to do this you must be on the staff. A book notice is marked with a blue pencil. A journalist always despises every article in his own paper not written by himself; therefore, you wrote the article you have marked, and doubtless are about to send it to the author of the book referred to. Your paper makes a speciality of abusing all books not written by some member ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... refreshing, and good against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque, climbing over stone walls, and what not, to gain some hill-top whence we may see the sun set or the moon rise, haply getting soused in a peat-drain for our pains—and we pencil sketches from nature, really very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the sea, whose blue-gray melts into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... Swiveller had finished his entry, and he now replaced his pencil in its little sheath and closed the book, in a perfectly grave and serious frame of mind. His friend discovered that it was time for him to fulfil some other engagement, and Richard Swiveller was accordingly left alone, in company with the rosy wine and his own ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... may learn to do that which is most helpful with those things, to care for its toys, to put them away neatly. A child can learn while very young to take care of its spoon, of certain clothes, of chair, and pencil and paper. True, it is much easier to "pick up" after the child; but to do so is to yield to our own sloth. The more tedious way is the one we must follow if we would train ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... pleased with the compliment, drew a pocket-book and a stubby end of a pencil from his pocket, and began alternately stroking his chin and jotting down words and figures. Lorna grimaced at me behind his back, but kept a stern expression for his benefit. I suppose she knew that if he saw her smile prices ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of the fete, the fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet, bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: like its slow-wheeling ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... front of the house talking to the corporal of the guard. He produced a soiled paper, at sight of which the corporal signed to him to enter. Nancy, sure that she had been seen by him, dropped the curtain into place and returned to the mantel. She drew out a piece of paper and a small pencil and, leaning on the mantel, wrote rapidly. She had just finished when the hall door was cautiously opened. Quickly she crumpled the paper in her hand; then, seeing the intruder's face, she stepped into the center of the ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... sentiments of elevation in themselves turgid and unnatural. Nature is never more truly herself than in her grandest forms. The Apollo of Belvedere (if the universal robber has yet left him at Belvedere) is as much in Nature as any figure from the pencil of Rembrandt or any clown in the rustic revels of Teniers. Indeed, it is when a great nation is in great difficulties that minds must exalt themselves to the occasion, or all is lost. Strong passion under the direction of a feeble reason feeds a low fever, which serves only to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and an envelope from his war sack, seated himself at the end of the long dinner-table, farthest from the fireplace, lighted a fresh candle, spread out his five treasures, carefully sharpened a stub pencil, and duly set its lead end a-soak in his mouth, preparatory to the composition of a letter. The surprise was complete. Such painstaking preparation and elaborate costuming for the mere writing of a letter none present—or ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... in his burglar's make-up when you confronted him in the police court?" Parker drew out copy paper and a pencil, and waited for her reply. There was ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... in bringing this to me," he said, tapping the top of the table thoughtfully with the end of his pencil. "That contract is very ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... disliked anybody as I do her, and no wonder, the way she's gone on. At first she used to come up here almost every week on purpose to ask about you, though she pretended to tumble over your books, and mark 'em all up with her pencil. But when that scapegrace Stephen Grey came, she took another tack, and the way she and he went on was scandalous. She was a runnin' up here the whole time that he wasn't a streakin' it ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... said Fran, staring at her pencil and paper, "he's at the head of the show, and watches when ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... of Christ for his whole time. Comparatively few are called of God into the ministry; but every boy should seriously face the question, under God's guidance, whether or not he be one of those few. Take a pencil and draw a vertical line on a sheet of paper. On one side the line put down the reasons why you should go into the ministry; on the other side, the reasons why you should not. Be honest with yourself and with God. Weigh each reason, for or against, upon your knees. Ask God to ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... through helping her mother, Gustav, the father, was accustomed to light his long-handled pipe, and, as he slowly puffed it while sitting in his chair by the hearth, he looked across to his boy, who sat with his slate and pencil in hand, preparing for the morrow. Carefully watching the studious lad for a few minutes, he generally asked ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... interesting, and doubly characteristic, because they illustrate at the same time his practical shrewdness and his intense prejudice. For these reasons, and also because in many instances his advice was followed, it may be worth while to give some account of his pencil jottings, written when Carlyle's hand was still firm, and as legible as they were fifty years ago. Upon the first chapter as a whole, Carlyle's judgment, though critical, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... man, with visible reluctance, directed his thoughts from the one to the many, and named this person and that, while Jennie, with the pencil attached to her card, made cabalistic notes in shorthand, economizing thus both space and time. When at last she had all the information that could be desired, she leaned back in her chair with ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... a little boy six years old. He always wants to be doing something; and many funny pictures he makes, both on his slate and with a lead pencil on paper. Mamma saves all the blank pieces of paper she can to give him. When he is tired of pictures, he plays with his blocks, and makes boats, and cars and ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines, and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoid anything sombre where Allan was concerned—and the green gown was very becoming. Then, armed with her list and a pencil, she crossed boldly to the couch where her Crusader lay in the old attitude, moveless ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... edition of Gaudentio of 1786, which is preserved in the British Museum, contains in the title-page the following note, in pencil: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various

... think. I am sorry to observe that the book I send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places, unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... Slaughter House and went into the dragoons, the honest fellow did not forget his old friend, but actually made his appearance one day in the playground in moustaches and a braided coat, and gave me a gold pencil-case and a couple of sovereigns. I blushed when I took them, but take them I did; and I think the thing I almost best recollect in my life, is the sight of Berry getting behind an immense bay cab-horse, which was held by a correct little groom, and was waiting near the school ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The negroes, however, were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... need the map. He'll have memorized it. There's only a circle drawn on it to mark the Elgon district. All the old pencil marks have been rubbed out as he searched the other likely places and drew ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... "how-do-you-do" and try to smile like grown-up folks. One or two of them may have some little account dating from old school-fights waiting to be settled—but, never mind—just as well to forget old scores now. Peer caught sight of Johan Koja, who stole a pencil from him last summer, but, after all, even that didn't seem worth making a fuss about. "Well, how've you been getting on since last summer?" they ask each other, as they move together up the stone steps to the big church door, through which the peal of the organ ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... arrived at the school without finding anything but a coat-button and a yellow lead pencil. Then they walked past the school in the direction ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... The Portrait of the Master in the Royal Library at Turin, which is reproduced—slightly diminished—on Pl. I, has in the original two lines of writing underneath; one in red chalk of two or three words is partly effaced: lionardo it... lm (or lai?); the second written in pencil is as follows: fatto da lui stesso assai vecchio. In both of these the writing is very like the Master's, but is certainly only ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... will not be wanted to keep watch any longer. Step down to Minden Cottage and give this note to Miss Brooks." He pulled out a pencil, searched his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and, leaning over the table, scribbled a few lines. "If Miss Brooks has gone to bed, you ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... are to be made directly into syrup and do not have to be shipped in bulk they go into slicers which cut them into V-shaped pieces about the length and thickness of a slate pencil, these pieces being called cossettes. The sliced beet-root is next put into warm water tanks in order that the sugar contained in it may be drawn out. Built in a circle, these tanks are connected, and as the beets move ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... more. The sun set, a great illuminated bubble, submerged in one vast bank of rosy suffusion; it grew dark; after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set, a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... myself and called for a glass of lemonade, and before long a man came and sat by me to profit by the light. He had a printed paper in his hand, and I could see that the words were Italian. He had a pencil with which he scratched out some words and letters, writing the corrections in the margin. Idle curiosity made me follow him in his work, and I noticed him correcting the word 'ancora', putting in an 'h' in the margin. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... know there's a story to it!" she cried at last one day; and forthwith she hunted up an old lead-pencil stub and a bit of ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... the beginning of the nineteenth century. Those who knew him tell us that he was of average height, with brown straight hair, a calm glance, a thin countenance and an air of quiet and assurance. A pencil portrait, which his son, M. le Docteur Martin, has kindly sent me, gives a more exact idea of the visionary. The portrait, which is in profile, presents a forehead curiously high and straight, a long narrow head, round eyes, broad nostrils, a compressed mouth, a protruding chin, hollow cheeks ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... inches' radius. Draw two diameters AB and CD at right angles to each other and intersecting at O. The more distinctly the lines stand out the better—they should be thickly drawn in black ink. Now take a lead pencil or a light ruler and tie to one end a piece of cotton about eight inches long; to the lower end of the cotton fasten a heavy metal button, of the sort used on a soldier's tunic. Place the paper on a table so ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... case. From it he took a letter-knife, a pencil sharpener, a glass globe paperweight, a box of thumb tacks, a stapler, some clips, a plastic ashtray, and some things Thacher could not identify. He placed the objects in a row in front of him on the table top. Then he closed ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick

... the same spirit that our artist sat down to his drawings. He is by nature a Bunyan of the pencil. He, too, will draw anything, from a butcher at work on a dead sheep, up to the courts of Heaven. 'A Lamb for Supper' is the name of one of his designs, 'Their Glorious Entry' of another. He has the same disregard for the ridiculous, and enjoys somewhat of the same privilege of style, so that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as on every similar occasion, that I saw the Times correspondent eagerly taking down notes and sketches of the scene, under fire—listening apparently with attention to all the busy little crowd that surrounded him, but without laying down his pencil; and yet finding time, even in his busiest moment, to lend a helping hand to the wounded. It may have been on this occasion that his keen eye noticed me, and his mind, albeit engrossed with far more important memories, found room to remember ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... was painted by herself in the spring of 1827, to send to her eldest brother, George Giberne (at Dhoolia, Candeish), afterwards Judge in the Bombay Presidency (East India Co.). On the back of it her brother had written in pencil:— ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... from Tata and given it to Peter; but his wife would not let him; and he had to content himself with giving Peter a pencil of his own that drew red at one end and blue at the other, and that at once drew a blue boy, that looked like Peter, on the pavement. He told Peter not to draw a boy now, but wait till he got home, and then be careful not to draw a blue boy with the red end. He helped him ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... inhabit the Indian Ocean, where it fixes itself to a zoophyte, known by the name Gorgonia. The curious foldings of the suture, the one into the other, the alternate flutings or grooves, and the curved form of my specimen being much easier expressed by the pencil than by words, I have caused it to be drawn ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... operations of mind, the acquisition of knowledge, the gradual expansion of genius; its application, its felicities, its sorrows, its wreaths of fame, its cold, undeserved neglect? Such scenes, painted by, the artist himself, are a rich bequest to mankind: even when traced by the hand of friendship or the pencil of admiration, they possess a permanent interest in our hearts. I cannot conceive a life more worthy of public notice, more important, more interesting to human nature, than the life of a literary ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... persons. She loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual. Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors. She wrote with a pencil in the margins: "Wonderful!" ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... is told while the manuscript is being looked at, of his occupation in depicting his favourite bird, when he was informed of the loss of his kingdom, and so interested was he in his work that he never laid down his pencil, but proceeded to finish it off as if nothing had happened. Still, I think, whoever painted this book was the royal amateur's master in the art; it appears certain that the beautiful volume was presented by him to Jeanne de Laval, his wife: it is decorated ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... Proverbs." Yes, I sometimes find it hard to understand what Harrington, a man of really fine sensibilities, sees in Mrs. Harrington. The very suggestion of locking up books to prevent their being carried away hurts like the screech of a pencil upon a slate. I think of Mrs. Harrington and then I think of Cooper. Cooper's shelves are continuously being denuded by his friends. But if you think of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an elaborate scheme behind it ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... napkins marked our breakfast-place, and the busy appearance of our cook gave hopes that our fast was nearly over. The whole scene was indescribably romantic and picturesque, and worthy of delineation by a more experienced pencil than mine. Breakfast was a repetition of the supper of the preceding night; the only difference being, that we ate it by daylight, in the open air, instead of by candlelight, under the folds of our canvas tent. After it was over, we again embarked, and ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... possessed of artistic genius, I would seize the pencil and imprison in rich and gorgeous coloring two pictures for the woman's pavilion of our centennial; for the first I would reproduce that prophetically symbolic scene at the dawn of our history, when with a faith and generosity worthy of honorable mention, Isabella of Castile placed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the harsh and dry manner of Holbein—probably, indeed, the work of that artist, as the dates corresponded. The formal and marked angles, points and projections of the armour, were a good subject for the harsh pencil of that early school. The face of the knight was, from the fading of the colours, pale and dim, like that of some being from the other world, yet the lines expressed ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... degree enlivened us. Grandma was tired, but a night and day's rest made her quite herself again. We felt amply repaid for any amount of fatigue or discomfort, by our view of the crater and burning lake. It was a scene for a lifetime; no pen could describe it, no pencil portray it; one must see it with one's own eyes, to appreciate its wonders. God alone could create it; and his power only could say to this surging, fiery torrent, "Thus far shalt thou ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... to think that at that very instant she was sleeping quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was incredible—incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in which every book, every photograph, every pen and pencil, was a part of him, he found himself once more straining for a hope, catching at straws. He took a sheet of paper, and sitting down at his desk began again, for the ten thousandth time, to balance feverishly his meagre assets against his overwhelming liabilities. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first shoes, but to one, at least, it speaks with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... RICHMOND, referring to a recent lawsuit, said that it was monstrous that careful conclusions based upon a long life of study should be upset by the production of a pencil sketch, and he called for the removal of Mr. Justice DARLING from the Bench. Art criticism was not a mere matter of caprice, as people were now pretending, but an exact science. If a qualified man, not only a theorist but a practical craftsman, after years of preparation, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various

... Not really? (TJAELDE takes out a pencil and begins making calculations on the margins of ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love, Between our kingdoms and our royal selves; And even before this truce, but new before,— No longer than we well could wash our hands, To clap this royal bargain up of peace,— Heaven knows, they were besmear'd and overstain'd With slaughter's pencil, where revenge did paint The fearful difference of incensed kings: And shall these hands, so lately purg'd of blood, So newly join'd in love, so strong in both, Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet? Play fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven, Make such unconstant children ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... seemed fixed on a gold pencil which he had taken from his waistcoat pocket. Then opening his card-case he scribbled a line on a card and handed it to me. "If you choose you may take that to Bob Brackett at the Old Dominion Tobacco ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... on him as he waited, staring out at the fast yellowing sky. (Beneath him the slopes towards the valley and the far-off hills on the other side appeared like a pencil drawing, delicate, minute and colourless, or, at the most, faintly tinted in phantoms of their own colours. The sky, too, was grey with the night mists not yet dissolved.) It was an unneighbourly action, this of his, he thought. He must do his best to make ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... the other day, which gives one some idea of what the average state of the arts was among the gentry of a hundred years ago. Miss Howe, in drawing up a character of her lost Clarissa, says that among other things she had a fine taste for the Pencil: had not time to practise it much, but 'was an absolute mistress of the "should be,"' and then proceeds thus: 'To give a familiar instance for the sake of young Ladies: she (untaught) observed when ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... an' death!'" As he spoke he held out a roll of paper tied about the middle with a boot lace; which done, the round head grinned, nodded, and disappeared from my ken. Unwinding the boot lace, I spread out the paper and read the following words, scrawled in pencil: ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Thurlow Weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a world he could not see; ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... so powerful with 'pen, pencil and poison,' as a great poet of our own day has finely said of him, was born at Chiswick, in 1794. His father was the son of a distinguished solicitor of Gray's Inn and Hatton Garden. His mother was the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Griffiths, the editor and founder of the Monthly Review, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... it comes to all. Most true! But, "let the galled jade wince," Still Punch's pencil pictures you As every inch a Prince, My Prince, Yes, every inch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various

... convey an idea of the kind of suffering, I must content myself by repeating, of its extent, that no prolonged pain of any kind known to science can equal it. The totality of the experience is only conceivable by adding this physical torture to a mental anguish which even the Oriental pencil of De Quincey has but feebly painted; an anguish which slays the will, yet leaves the soul conscious of its murder; which utterly blots out hope, and either paralyzes the reasoning faculties which might suggest encouragements, or deadens the emotional nature to ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... their shouts. Of their elders some, by imitating the antics of youth, strive to persuade themselves that their day is not yet over; they shout with the lustiest, but the war cry sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like poor wantons attempting with pencil, paint and powder, with shrill gaiety, to recover the illusion of their spring. The wiser go their way with a decent grace. In their chastened smile is an indulgent mockery. They remember that they too trod down a sated generation, with just such clamor and with just such scorn, and they foresee ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... had, and at a cheaper rate by the thousandth part than that. O there is no comparison; there is Heaven, there is God, there is Christ, there is communion with an innumerable company of saints and angels"-(ED). [12] Here you have another volume of meaning in a single touch of the pencil. Pliable is one of those who is willing, or think they are willing, to have Heaven, but without any sense of sin, or of the labour and self-denial necessary to enter Heaven. But now his heart is momentarily fired with Christian's ravishing descriptions, and as he seems to have nothing to trouble ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Poor, Occupy pen and pencil more Than Pictures in the Passing Show Of the Immense Metropolis. And few have knowledge such as his, (The great Q.C., the worthy Beak!) Of modern Babylon, high and low; And so shall I with interest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various

... ago, a deaf and dumb man was in the habit of visiting my native village, who was believed to possess wonderful gifts of foresight. This dummy carried with him a slate, a pencil, and a piece of chalk, by use of which he gave his answers, and often he volunteered to give certain information concerning the future; he would often write down occurrences which he averred would happen to parties in the village, or to persons ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... moraine, lake, boulder and terrace. Happily I had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to be done on returning. In making such excursions as this, it is above all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on the way out: I always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. It is impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the bodily ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... devices, for they always knew how to amuse themselves, and were very independent and dependable in spite of their extreme youth. I have often thanked Heaven since that, with all their faults, my boy and girl have never been lazy and never dull. At this time Teddy always had a pencil in his hand, when he wasn't looking for his biscuit—he was a greedy little thing!—and Edy was hammering clothes onto her dolls with tin-tacks! Teddy said poetry beautifully, and when he and his sister were still ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... out of my album, and begin at once, seated on the floor and leaning on my desk, ornamented with grasshoppers in relief, while behind me, very, very close to me, the three women follow the movements of my pencil with astonished attention. Japanese art being entirely conventional, they have never before seen any one draw from nature, and my style delights them. I may not perhaps possess the steady and nimble touch of M. Sucre, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... manufacture," he remarked. "It has at some time been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a plan of part of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it is '3.37 from left,' in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters, 'The sign of the four,—Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar.' No, I confess that I do not see how ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome Lucien de Rubempre, had all been treated with the utmost coquetry of brush and pencil by celebrated artists. As the princess now received only two or three of these personages, she called the book, jokingly, the collection ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... Mr. Snell. "That's the way to talk. I sized you up for a plucky lad as soon as I saw you. Now if you will take pencil and paper, I'll give you directions for reaching Enos Hardy, who may succeed in getting a message to ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... line—nor a message for me," replied Rose. "Only a scrawl in pencil which the groom found on the saddle-room table, to say that nobody need try to trace him. And only to think that our banns ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... pictorial: it is not to say what might or ought to have been, but to set forth from extant records what has actually taken place: to give an account of the origin and hallowed associations of Christmas, and to depict, by pen and pencil, the important historical events and interesting festivities of Christmastide during nineteen centuries. With materials collected from different parts of the world, and from writings both ancient and modern, I have endeavoured to give in the present work a chronological ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... don't you see? There never is in such cases, and you want to be true to life in that first, great American novel. You got your brush in the wrong pot of local colour when you daubed me. No offence intended, or taken, I hope. God bless you! strike your pencil through all that came after the spree part. You're welcome to that, but I decline to let you ruin your reputation by offering up the rest to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, went every day to the "Committee of Public Safety" to procure the list of the proscribed, who were immediately placed in the Conciergerie to await trial. This list was then submitted to Robespierre, who with his pencil marked the names of those who would ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... Sylvia, laying down her slate pencil, and indulging in another tremendous yawn; "we can't do a thing more till Mary comes! What can ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the red ointment on her hair, according to the fashion of the country; she also proposed that she should pierce her under lip, and wear the long pointed polished crystal, about the size of a drawing pencil, that is the "thing" in the Latooka country. No woman among the tribe who has any pretensions to be a "swell" would be without this highly-prized ornament, and one of my thermometers having come to an end I broke the tube into three ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... night favors us. The women must be kept in the center as much as possible. I have given Geoffries special charge over them. They will be told at the last moment. There is no use in spoiling what little rest they have had." He drew out a pencil and began to scribble a despatch on the back of an old letter. "I advise you gentlemen to do likewise," he said. "Very often a piece of paper gets through where a man can not, and it is our bounden duty to supply the morning periodicals with ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... at more than forty thousand miles an hour, it seemed that we were stationary. Movement was now easy—too easy, in fact, for we were practically weightless. The professor was having a time of it manipulating a pencil and a pad of paper on which he had a mass of small figures that were absolutely meaningless to me. He was calculating and plotting our course and, without him, we should never have reached the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... right if everything didn't stink so. An' that mess hall. Nearly makes a guy puke to think of it." Fuselli spoke in a whining voice, watching the top of the mast move like a pencil scrawling on paper, back and forth across the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... greatest success. In those countries where the beautiful was felt, where the arts were objects of national importance, where a people assembled to award the palm between rival sculptors; and also, in comparatively modern times, when a reigning monarch did not disdain to pick up a painter's pencil, and a whole city mourned an artist's death, and paid honours to his remains; all the rank, wealth, genius, talent, taste, and intelligence of the people were concentrated in one grand focus. Among the states of ancient ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... exceptionally strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and it was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and her regard for another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I am gone to visit one of my school-friends," gathered a few toilet necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice had been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, might have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house. Thence ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... the dreams of a Titian or a Giorgione. Her complexion was clear and radiant, as of a descendant of the Sun God. Her bright hair, if its golden ripples were shaken out, would reach to her knees. Her face was worthy of immortality by the pencil of a Titian. Her dark eyes drew with a magnetism which attracted men, in spite of themselves, whithersoever she would lead them. They were never so dangerous as when, in apparent repose, they sheathed their fascination for a moment, and suddenly shot ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... figures at work on deck—the sails were dropped and quickly furled,—but the quivering radiance remained running up every tapering mast and spar, so that the whole vessel seemed drawn on the dusky air with pencil points of fire. I stood up, gazing at the wonderful sight in silent amazement and admiration, with the captain beside me, and it was he ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... thinking of this and of other characteristics of the English girl, as she sat idly holding her sketch book open in her lap, a drawing pencil in her hand. ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... following afternoon before I saw Kennedy again. He was in his laboratory winding two strands of platinum wire carefully about a piece of porcelain and smearing on it some peculiar black glassy granular substance that came in a sort of pencil, like a stick of sealing-wax. I noticed that he was very particular to keep the two wires exactly the same distance from each other throughout the entire length of the piece of porcelain, but I said nothing to distract his attention, though a thousand questions about the progress of the ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... with warm, unpretending, almost rustic hospitality. Here the French Houdon modeled his statue, and the English Pine painted his portrait, and caused that jocose remark, "I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters' pencil, that I am altogether at their beck, and sit like 'Patience ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... She took her pencil and brushes and drew and painted with a facility which denoted a true talent. She wrote and found her handwriting clear and elegant. She looked at the countless books which were ranged round the room and knew that ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... below in pencil: 'Don't excite yourself, I'm not quite a sneak yet,' and gave the note back to the man, and again began upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands. He looked at the reddening-sky, at the two mighty young pines standing apart from the other trees, thought ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... Absolute," as the Oxford Spectator said, had really been "got into a corner." The Absolute has too often been apparently cornered, too often has escaped from that situation. Somewhere in an old notebook I believe I have a portrait in pencil of Mr. Green as he wrestled at lecture with Aristotle, with the Notion, with his chair and table. Perhaps he was the last of that remarkable series of men, who may have begun with Wycliffe, among whom Newman's is a famous name, that were successively accepted at Oxford ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... modes of abstracting, such as serve many useful purposes, although not sufficient for the mastery of a leading Text-book, or even of a second or third in a new subject. We may pencil on the margin, or underscore, all the leading propositions, and the typical examples. In a well-composed scientific manual, the proceeding is too obvious to be impressive. Very often, however, the main points are not given in the most methodical way, but have to be searched ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... recur. Before the Freethinker had reached its third number I began to reflect on the advisability of illustrating it, and bringing in the artist's pencil to aid the writer's pen. I soon resolved to do this, and the third and fourth numbers contained a woodcut on the front page. In the fifth number there appeared an exquisite little burlesque sketch of the Calling of Samuel, by a skilful artist whose name I cannot disclose. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... violently convulsed, and, having slapped the table some forty times or more, seized a pencil and began to write:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... of idleness, the frenzy of poetry creeps over me both night and day. Round past the hedge I wend, and, leaning on the rock, I intone verses gently to myself. From the point of my pencil emanate lines of recondite grace, so near the frost I write. Some scent I hold by the side of my mouth, and, turning to the moon, I sing my sentiments. With self-pitying lines pages I fill, so as utterance to give to all my cares and woes. From these few ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... activity in Roman art. This was the epoch, in which the construction of the Roman arches and Roman roads began; in which works of art like the she-wolf of the Capitol originated; and in which a distinguished man of an old Roman patrician clan took up his pencil to embellish a newly constructed temple and thence received the honorary surname of the "Painter." This was not accident. Every great age lays grasp on all the powers of man; and, rigid as were Roman manners, strict as was Roman police, the impulse received by the Roman burgesses ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... been painted by nature's loving hand. Others were entirely of a beautiful green, all save their heads, which glowed with a peach bloom, while, again, others bore the same leafy uniform, and, for decoration, a dark collar, and long, pencil-like-produced ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... the less the white space the better will be the general effect of the page, for its beauty depends much upon a general blackness of aspect;—and let it be noted in passing that, for this reason, it is doubly difficult to judge of the final effect of a Blackletter page from any outlined pencil sketch. Even in the cases of those capital letters that extend both above and below the guide lines it will be found possible to so adjust the spaces [135] and blacks as not to interrupt the general uniformity of color, ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown

... habitations are situated. There are other divisions, less airy and more picturesque, called the fauxbourgs of Guibray and St. Laurent, and le Val d'Ante; where many antique houses are still standing, fit to engage the pencil ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. He sat a second stupefied, then tore a half leaf out of the Bible, scrawled upon it with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his next neighbour. The note came to Prestongrange, who gave me but the one look; thence it voyaged to the hands of Mr. Erskine; thence again to Argyle, where he sat between the other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... array, bevy, galaxy; corps, company, troop, troupe, task force; army, regiment &c. (combatants) 726; host &c. (multitude) 102; populousness. clan, brotherhood, fraternity, sorority, association &c. (party) 712. volley, shower, storm, cloud. group, cluster, Pleiades, clump, pencil; set, batch, lot, pack; budget, assortment, bunch; parcel; packet, package; bundle, fascine[obs3], fasces[obs3], bale; seron[obs3], seroon[obs3]; fagot, wisp, truss, tuft; shock, rick, fardel[obs3], stack, sheaf, haycock[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... in the big soft seat of the first-class carriage, a scrap of paper on one knee, a pencil chewed to splinters between his teeth. His brow was puckered into deep lines above troubled eyes which stared absently at a Mesdag picture in blue and white tile set in the compartment wall. He smiled at his friend's exuberance and ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... flattened out the type-written sheets of foolscap therein. Placing the blank side of the sheet face-downwards upon the imprint he pressed down smartly. The result was a very fair impression of the footmark, which he immediately outlined in pencil. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... chance, when out one day with Michel, of getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to throw something over it when the old man was not looking. In one of his pockets he had a card-case with a little pencil fitted into a loop at the edge, and in the case it was his custom to carry postage-stamps. He investigated and found pencil and stamps. Of course he had nothing but cards to write upon, and they were useless. He looked about the room and went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... it, to be often betrayed into exuberant and fantastic phrases, and wanderings into the realm of words unborn. One fancies the dismay of the accomplished corrector of the University Press, as his indignant pencil hung over "incanting" and "reverizing" and "cose." Yet closer examination always shows that she, too, has studied grammar and dictionary, algebra and the Greek alphabet; and her most daring verbal feats are never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... any matter; wherefore we do not find that flowers and fair trees, and kindly skies, are given only where man may see them and be fed by them, but the Spirit of God works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory, using the same pencil and outpouring the same splendor, in the caves of the waters where the sea-snakes swim, and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir-trees of the stork, and the rocks of the conies, as ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... cheering hour with Day, And unnamed horrors meet her sight; There thy form she dimly sees, And round the shape unfinish'd throws All her frantic vision shews When numbing fears her spirit freeze— But can mortal voice declare If Fancy paints thee as thou art? Thy aspect may a terror wear Her pencil never shall impart; The eye that once on thee shall gaze, No more its stiffen'd orb can raise; The lips that could thy power reveal, Shall lasting silence instant seal— In vain the icy hand we fold, In vain the breast with tears we steep, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... and he hits upon a very serviceable animal in this mixture between a tiger and a leopard. Surely no one could refuse to honour such a moderate draft upon his imagination. In short, De Foe, even in the wildest of regions, where his pencil might have full play, sticks closely to the commonplace, and will not venture beyond the regions of the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... remember how, in that one magical moment, without nearness or speech or touch, the floating strands of their destinies had become so miraculously entangled, that neither gods nor godlings, nor household despots of East or West, had power to sever them. From one swift pencil sketch, stolen without leave—he sitting on the path below, she dreaming on the Hotel balcony above—had blossomed the twin flower of their love: the deeper revealing of marriage—its living texture ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... directly. "He is showing remarkable resistance. There is no need for any immediate alarm. He wants to make a statement. I made the excuse of getting pencil and paper to come down. In a matter of such importance I think there should be ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... I could tell The creature's name so quickly? Well, I knew it was not a paper-doll, A pencil or a parasol, A tennis-racket or a cheese, And, as it was not one of these, And I am not a perfect dunce— It ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... to borrow my lead pencil yesterday," remarked Flattner. "Finally offered to put up his letter of credit as security. I gave him the laugh. That lead pencil is worth more than all the letters of credit lumped together. He ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... a little girl, and he had only just joined. He found me out before our quarters at Gibraltar trying to draw an old Spaniard selling oranges, and he helped me, and showed me how to hold my pencil. I have got it still—-the sketch. Then he used to lend me things to copy, and give me hints till—-oh, till my father said I was too old for that sort of thing! Then, you know, my father got his commission, and I ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intent on picking up the crumpled rose-petals, when Mr. Flint finally spoke. She straightened herself slowly. Her unhurried movements had a certain grace that did not escape the man opposite her. She tossed the bruised leaves into a waste-basket and reached for her pencil. Her heart was pounding, but she faced Mr. Flint ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... you make some very good resolutions—let me see," and she took a pencil out of her pocket, and drawing a sheet of paper ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow

... uncle Jervas being written and despatched, I turned to find Mr. Shrig busied with his little book and a stumpy pencil, much as if he had been composing a sermon or address, while Anthony, lounging upon the settee, watched him ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou sea-mark! thou high ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... tower of the church of Great Gonerby, Lincolnshire, is a curious cornice representing a house with a door in the centre, an oriel window, &c., which is popularly called "Tom Thumb's Castle." I have a small engraving of it ("W. T. del. 1820, R. R. sculpt."): and a pencil states that on the same tower are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... a useful hint from a celebrated sculptor, who had come to the village in search of marble for the base of a soldiers' monument. Richard was laboriously copying a spray of fern, the delicacy of which eluded his pencil. The sculptor stood a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... her. Mrs. O'Malligan's door was locked, and she determined to run across to the corner grocery to beg a bit of paper and pencil from Mr. Buckley's brother Bill who clerked there, and learn something of the absent family. And here, while crossing the street in nervous haste, she had been knocked down in a press of vehicles,—and so the long chapter of strange accidents ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... pointed out to him the rebel works, admitted that my assault had failed, and he said the result with McPherson and McClernand was about the same. While he was with me, an orderly or staff-officer came and handed him a piece of paper, which he read and handed to me. I think the writing was in pencil, on a loose piece of paper, and was in General McClernand's handwriting, to the effect that "his troops had captured the rebel parapet in his front," that, "the flag of the Union waved over the stronghold of Vicksburg," and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... eccentric types had to be resorted to. With scarce any exception save that furnished by the scales of the Lepidotus minor, which are plain lozenge-shaped plates, thickly japanned, the forms are strangely complex and irregular, easily expressible by the pencil, but beyond the reach of the pen. The remains of reptiles have been found occasionally, though rarely, in this outlier of the Weald,—the vertebra of a Plesiosaurus, the femur of some Chelonian reptile, and a large fluted ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller



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