"Pick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Letters, iv. 401. Goldsmith, in 1770, wrote from Paris:—'As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my pick-tooth.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 219. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... take a spear in my hand, I turned back, and was surprised and startled to notice that Kua-ko had moved in the interval. He had turned over on his side, and his face was now towards me. His eyes appeared closed, but he might be only feigning sleep, and I dared not go back to pick up the spear. After a moment's hesitation I moved on again, and after a second glance back and seeing that he did not stir, I waded cautiously across the stream, walked softly twenty or thirty yards, and then ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... animal will touch it. He is of ugly disposition and is hated alike by the animals and by man. His fur is of considerable value, but he is hunted more for the purpose of getting rid of him than for his fur. Sometimes when caught in a trap he will pick it up and ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... quite lacked geniality, and it was as if Phil Blood-good had gone off not only with so large a slice of his small peculium, but with all the broken bits of the past, the loose ends of old relationships, that he had supposed he might pick up again. Well, perhaps he should still pick up a few—by the sweat of his brow; no motion of their own at least, he by this time judged, would send them fluttering ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... carried on with extraordinary rapidity. The grand master himself set the example, and, throwing aside his robes and armour, laboured with pick and shovel like the commonest labourer. This excited the people to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and all classes threw themselves into the task. Knights and slaves, men, women, and children, and even the inmates of the convents and nunneries, aided in the work, and when at last the outer ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... The solid forest gives fluid utterances; They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... obtaining remunerative work. Wagon loads of them were brought in from the country by the soldiers and dumped down to shift for themselves."[43] Referring to the proclamation of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson asserts that their most general and universal response was to pick up and leave the home place to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. "The lure of the city was strong to the blacks, appealing to their social natures, to their inherent love for a crowd."[44] Davis maintains that thousands of the 70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the Federal ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... to a couple of men in the hall. From the scraps of conversation he was able to pick up, he gathered that they were reporters from the city. She invited him ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... shoot. But suddenly the birds whirred up into the air; and, as the Colonel gave them both barrels, Frank did the same. The cock and three of his wives dropped. The mahout urged his elephant forward and made the reluctant animal pick up the crumpled bunches of blood-stained feathers in its curving trunk and pass ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... he could speak further the shrill scream of a frightened child came from the campus below the ridge. At the cry Vic Burleigh sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair, and without stopping to pick it up, he rushed ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... stooped to pick up his coat in the waiting room his eyes fell on a telegraph blank lying face down upon the floor. He stooped to pick it up, thinking it might be a message of importance which some one had dropped. He glanced at it hastily, and then suddenly he forgot his coat, the approaching ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that matter to Sir Richard? They were like so many children, in his hands. And, mind you, the luck helped him. To begin with, there was the common name. Who was to pick out your poor father among the thousands of James Browns? Then, again, the house and lands went to the male heir, as they called him—the man your father quarreled with in the bygone time. He brought his own establishment ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... circles we have thus far recorded are in the western half of our land; there are as many, as worthy of note, in the eastern half. But as before we can only pick out a few. One of these crowns the volcanic peak of Brandon Hill, in Kilkenny, dividing the valleys of the Barrow and Nore. From the mountain-top you can trace the silver lines of the rivers coming together to the south, and flowing onward to the widening inlet of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... slander'd English wit: You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear, As merited a second massacre: 30 Such as, like Cain, were branded with disgrace, And had their country stamp'd upon their face. When strollers durst presume to pick your purse, We humbly thought our broken troop not worse. How ill soe'er our action may deserve, Oxford's a place ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... "They'll pick you up in a little bit," the driver said as he turned around and drove off, leaving me standing there with my bag, very ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... rather hot comer in the solar system. Is it not possible that more than once in the remote past Mars may have encountered one of these wanderers? If he came within a certain distance of the small body his great mass would sway it from its orbit, and under certain conditions he would pick up a satellite in this manner. That his present satellites were actually so acquired is the suggestion of Newton, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... our parish."—Ah, ah, Miss Charlworth, the one Our Tom fought for a young lady? Come, now we've got into the fun! - "I shouldered him: he primed his pistol, and I trailed my musket, prepared." Why, that's a fine pick-a-back for ye, to make twenty Russians look scared! "They came—never mind how many: we couldn't have run very well, We fought back to back: 'face to face, our last time!' he said, smiling, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was bred in pious bed, Brought up to be good: Respect yourself, my mother said, And rule your own mood. Fend for yourself while you're a may, And keep your own counsel, And pick at what the neighbours say As a ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... mind to pursue his researches any further. He only tarried long enough to let Patience pick out half-a-dozen thorns from his cheeks and hands, and to declare that if he had not to march to-morrow, he should bring that singular Christian man, Captain Venn, to exorcise the haunt of Apollyon. Wherewith he bade them all ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this out to his cost. Lincoln had politely requested him not to use such language before ladies, but the man persisted in doing so. When the women left the store, he became violently angry and began to abuse Lincoln. He wanted to pick a quarrel with him. Seeing this Lincoln said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you as any other man," and taking the man out of the store he gave him a well-merited chastisement. Strange to say, he became Lincoln's friend after this, and ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... an affable nod towards Godolphus who, having attracted no attention by flinging himself on the grass with a lolling tongue and every appearance of fatigue, was now filling up the time in quest of a flea. "No breed, but he has points. Where did you pick him up?" ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... danger, while Biddle hauled close to the wind on the port tack, with the Cornwallis, 74, bearing the flag of Admiral Sir George Burleton, K.C.B., [Footnote: James, vi, 564.] in hot pursuit, two leagues on his lee quarter. The 74 gained rapidly on the Hornet, although she stopped to pick up a marine who had fallen overboard. Finding he had to deal with a most weatherly craft, as well as a swift sailer, Captain Biddle, at 9 P.M., began to lighten the Hornet of the mass of stores taken from the Penguin. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... men whom Arianism suited by its shallowness. As soon as Christianity was established as a lawful worship by the edict of Milan in 312, the churches were crowded with converts and inquirers of all sorts. A church which claims to be universal cannot pick and choose like a petty sect, but must receive all comers. Now these were mostly heathens with the thinnest possible varnish of Christianity, and Arianism enabled them to use the language of Christians without giving up their heathen ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... my wife, he didn't quite know what to say, but he afterward remarked that with the pick of two worlds I ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... visit to his apartment produced no results. The "foreign gentleman" who on the previous day had called on van Heerden had been seen there that morning, but he, too, had vanished, and none of McNorton's watchers had been able to pick ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... a long time before they solved the problem of turning logging sleds around in the road. When a sled returned from the landing and put on a load they had to wait until Paul came along to pick up the four horses and the load and head them the other way. Judson M. Goss says he worked for Paul the winter he ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... "I arranged to pick him up at the cross-roads, but he wasn't there," Mordaunt replied. "Dick's a careless fellow and I didn't want ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... last two or three pages of the manuscript, struggling to pick up the threads where he had dropped them. With each reading he became more convinced that his work for that afternoon was spoiled. And by whom? By what? A little fiercely he packed his pipe with fresh tobacco. Then he leaned back, lighted it, and laughed. More and more ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... bricklayer in Macon, Georgia, was lying down during the noon hour, sleeping in the hot sun. The clock struck one, the time to pick up his hod again. He rose, stretched, and grumbled: "I wish I wuz daid. 'Tain' nothin' but wuk, wuk from ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... has neither the power nor the inclination of hurting others. The emperor Alexander has too much love for posterity to lend himself to such a crime. They have guaranteed the sovereignty of the isle of Elba to me by a solemn treaty. Here I am in my own home; and as long as I do not go out to pick a quarrel with my neighbours, they have no right to come and disturb me ... have you served in the grand army?"—"Yes, Sire, I had the felicity of distinguishing myself under your Majesty's eyes ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... longer anything for me to do in the world. It seemed a treason to poor grandpa that I saw how beautiful the crocuses were as they blossomed in the beds on the terrace here, and when the mayflowers came I did not dare to pick them except to put them on his grave. Then, you know, as not even papa knows, that with all my reverence for my grandfather I had still had a terrible sense of responsibility mingled with my love for him; and not even yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... garden, and with her own hands she strewed ten sacks full of millet all over the grass. 'He must pick all that up to-morrow morning before sunrise,' she said; 'not a grain ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... said the Very Imp; "he can go around, and pick out his previous existence. We have here all sorts of vile creepers, crawlers, hissers, and snorters. I suppose he thinks any thing will be better than ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... with his wings spread, making a great noise, as if he would ask us whether there were any more seed. There was one lying on the brink of the canal, which the cock perceiving as he went back, ran speedily thither; but just as he was going to pick it up the seed rolled into a fountain and turned into a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... I answered. "You look sick; anything the matter with you?—and, say, when you go into that kitchen, I wish you wouldn't chuck everything in the place on the floor for me to pick up." ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... It was small and poorly furnished, but very clean. I soon made myself at home; and never wanted anything doing for me, so that the widow's intercourse with me was very limited. I knew I could not write without betraying my foreign origin, so the way I did first was to get a book and pick out words signifying what I wanted, and from these words the good woman made out a sentence. I wanted so little that we had no difficulty in making out a dialogue. After hearing the talk of the drovers I determined to leave the town without delay, for my fears of recapture ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... to share the music-lessons of Augusta and Beatrice at the great house. A music-master from Barchester came over three times a week, and remained for three hours, and if the doctor chose to send his girl over, she could pick up what was going on without doing any harm. So said the Lady Arabella. The doctor with many thanks and with no hesitation, accepted the offer, merely adding, that he had perhaps better settle separately ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... it was on the wire for Boston, and the New York papers had gone to press, he had as little use for officers as Mrs. Athelstone. "Remember," he added, as he leaned back to listen, "that I know enough now to pick out ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... she repeated as they moved up to make room for her on the veranda steps. "I'm more afraid than ever to leave you alone these days when every dropped stitch means a quarrel. Give it to me, Mollie, I'll pick it up ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... that to ingenuity, talent, and manliness, the whole world swings open. Carnegie's Thirty Partners, most of whom have come from the working-ranks, demonstrate that a man can rise from the pick, the spade, the foreman's duties, to the ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... cover that the Turks continued their advance in a most gallant manner, while their artillery not only plastered our positions on shore with shrapnel, but actually tried to drive the ships off the coast by firing at them, and their desperate snipers, in place of a better target, tried to pick off officers and men on the decks and bridges. We picked up many ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which you all know now as one of the commonest of household matters. It may be that we have not got to the end of this refined analysis yet, but at any rate, I suppose I may say—and I speak with some little hesitation for fear my friend Professor Roscoe here may pick me up for trespassing upon his province—but I believe I may say that now we can account for 99 per cent. at least of the sugar, and that 99 per cent. is split up into these four things, carbonic acid, alcohol, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... at the end of the lane. He has driven into East Egdon on business, and he will come and pick me up by-and-by." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the Manor-House, who sate in the best pew in the church, were not so graceful, and the best women in the village were not so good, as was my sweet mamma; and that if she had lived, I should not have been forced to pick up a little knowledge from him, a rough sailor, or to learn to knit and sew of Susan, but that she would have taught me all lady-like fine works and delicate behaviour and perfect manners, and would have selected for me proper books, such as were most ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... boys! I never said you shouldn't. Weed out the company to suit yourself. You'll have to take the Injuns back; nobody else can handle the touch-me-not devils. You can lay off the company if you want to, and while you're up there pick up a bunch of cowboys to suit you. You're making good, Luck; don't take it that I'm criticizing anything you've done or the way you did it. You've been turning out the best Western stuff that goes on the screen; anybody knows that. That isn't the point. We just simply can't afford ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... is life there is variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... in the field. I have never known a case of stopping for an hour, in Louisiana; in Mississippi the rule is milder, though entirely subject to the will of the master. On cotton plantations, in cotton picking time, that is from October to Christmas, each hand has a certain quantity to pick, and is flogged if his task is not accomplished; their tasks are such as to keep them all the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... go with me remember that you are of the Royal James, honest merchant coaster, and that I am Captain Thomas, likewise honest navigator. We'll separate into every tavern and ship-chandler's place along the wharves, pick up the names of all ships that are soon to sail, and their cargoes, and meet at the gig at eight bells. Herriot and you men aboard here, keep a strict watch. Daggs, I leave the boy in your charge. Don't let him ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... I played truant mostly when I was sent to school, and then I began to mind the cattle soon after I were eight year old, but if any body would start me, I believe I could pick it up." ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... recall. For a governess' life she had been, indeed, notably unfit. Hard she had thought it, that penury should force her back into the school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and maps and conjugations she had never tried to master. Hating her work, she had failed signally to pick up any learning from her little pupils, and had been driven from house to house, a sullen and most ineffectual maiden. The sequence of her situations was the swifter by reason of her pretty face. Was there a grown-up son, always ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... created for a venturesome life, and was moreover gifted with remarkable vigor and agility, got into a series of scrapes which more or less threatened his safety. He plotted with the grandsons of Monsieur Hochon to worry the grocers of the city; he gathered fruit before the owners could pick it, and made nothing of scaling walls. He had no equal at bodily exercises, he played base to perfection, and could have outrun a hare. With a keen eye worthy of Leather-stocking, he loved hunting passionately. His time was passed in firing at a mark, instead of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... crowd, also seeing the guard pick something out of the water. "I guess he had to lay him in the bottom ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... unlike most of them, it has never served as such, the scene is almost rural. Pigeons, those symbols of the Holy Ghost, inviolable in Russia, attack with impunity the grain bags in the acres of storehouses opposite, pick holes, and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... difficult to speak to one's boys,—as if everything worth having in this life were not difficult!—leave him to the teaching of dirty gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is awakened—in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault, not through his—he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen the animal ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... my senses," muttered he; "where on earth did the Marquis pick this fellow up? Can it be that he is sharper than ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... becoming unpleasant, Lady Ongar took her candle and went away to bed, leaving the twenty pounds on the table. As she left the room she knew that the money was there, but she could not bring herself to pick it up and restore it to her pocket. It was improbable, she thought, that Madam Gordeloup would leave it to the mercy of the waiters; and the chances were that the notes would go into the pocket ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... along the cloister to a room back of the church, which had been deserted and left to itself for many years, and was now almost in ruins. Going into one corner, Father Zalvidea, by the light of his lantern, found a small pick and shovel which, that afternoon, he had left there for this very purpose, and set to work to dig a hole in which to bury his treasure. Although the ground was hard, it required only a few minutes, after the cement floor was broken through, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... and 27 L'Estrange notices the petition of certain of the printers to be incorporated as a separate body. He says 'that it were a hard matter to pick out twenty master printers, who are both free of the trade, of ability to manage it, and of integrity to be entrusted with it, most of the honester sort being impoverished by the late times, and the great business of the press being engross'd by Oliver's creatures.' ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... cricket was coming: and some said that Barnes would be prof and some said it would be Flowers. And all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowling twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... disreputable painting genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture—you know the type, all nose and shekels—to finance their boom. Oh, it's genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my pocket—it was handed me by McAllister—offering his gallery, the pick of Bond Street. Oswyn's Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... if you hadn't been so patient with that woman. If you'd sassed her back, I'd have thought she deserved it and wouldn't have blamed you a mite, but I wouldn't have bothered coming to talk to you either. Well, well well! Poor child, don't cry. You just pick up and go home. I'll make it all right with Tom. You're pretty near played out yourself, I can see that. But a summer in Fir Cottage, with plenty of cream and eggs and my cookery, will soon make another girl of you. Don't you dare to thank me. It's a privilege to be able to do something for ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... journey from its original position just outside the orbit of Mercury to this point nearly four hundred and fifty million miles away from the little planet. Winford studied the ground below. He was only partly acquainted with the topography of Callisto and wanted to be sure to pick a spot where Captain Robers and his men could be certain of surviving until help arrived. His eye picked out a satisfactory spot close beside the Gnan River in one of the stunted conifer forests of the planet. Swiftly he dropped ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... leaves. Every dish is a work of art in its arrangement. These two fish are the favorite of the last emperor, and you do not blame him. They are cooked in mirin, a kind of sweet liquor made from sake, and you eat all you can pick off the bones with your hashi. As soon as this tray is in place you see a lovely little girl with her long, bright-colored kimona on the floor around her, and she has in her hand a blue and white china bottle ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... of course, if I promised, but we are only just on our walk now. It is a fine autumnal day, and I want to get to the woods to pick some bracken and heather, for your Aunt Marjorie has asked me to fill all the vases for dinner to-night. There are not half enough flowers in the garden, so I must go to the woods, whatever happens. Your sister will have left the church when ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... recruit?" said the little leader, looking up and giving a start as he made believe to see Dick for the first time. "Oh, that young man? Well, perhaps he had better stand by you, and then he may pick up what he can. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... galleys under protest, and with vows of sabotage; their fundamental philosophy is almost that of the syndicalists. The sentimentality of men connives at this, and is thus largely responsible for it. Before the average puella, apprenticed in the kitchen, can pick up a fourth of the culinary subtleties that are commonplace even to the chefs on dining cars, she has caught aman and need concern herself about them no more, for he has to eat, in the last analysis, whatever she ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... himself one morning. "Every week it costs me more to keep him than he is worth. I might sell him; but there is not a man that wants him. I cannot even give him away. I will turn him out to shift for himself, and pick grass by the roadside. If he starves to death, so ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... man may live.—Ho, Pylades, Sole sharer of my quest: hast seen it all? What can we next? Thou seest this circuit wall Enormous? Must we climb the public stair, With all men watching? Shall we seek somewhere Some lock to pick, some secret bolt or bar— Of all which we know nothing? Where we are, If one man mark us, if they see us prize The gate, or think of entrance anywise, 'Tis death.—We still have time to fly for home: Back to the galley quick, ere ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God;" Luke xiii. 28, 29. Out of which company it is easy to pick such as sometimes were as bad people as any that now breathe on the face of the earth. What think you of the first man, by whose sins there are millions now in hell? And so I may say, What think you ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... soldiers could not be prevailed upon either by threats or entreaties. The Virginia troops, accustomed to the Indian mode of fighting, scattered themselves, and took post behind trees, where they could pick off the lurking foe. In this way they, in some degree, protected the regulars. Washington advised General Braddock to adopt the same plan with the regulars; but he persisted in forming them into platoons; consequently they were cut down from behind ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... business it is to pick it up or make it. They are inside of politics, of the railways, of the weather bureau, everywhere. The other day in Chicago I sat some time in a broker's office with others watching the market, and dropped into conversation with a bright young fellow, at whose ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... magazine. The millionaire ate little, spoke little, and sat throughout the feast with an anxious cloud upon his brow. I recognised the same furtive look of apprehension in his eyes that I had seen in the eyes of my stock-broking friend long before. As I glanced round the room I found myself able to pick out all the men of wealth by that same look. It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more torturing anxiety of how to keep it. That, I am persuaded, was the dominant thought of my millionaire host throughout the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... is no denying a special charm of constant tuneful flow. At times this complexity is almost marvellous in the clear simplicity of the concerted whole,—in one view, the main trait or trick of symphonic writing. It is easy to pick out the leading themes as they appear in official order. But it is not so clear which of them constitute the true text. The multiplicity of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... from his perch and hurried away towards the kitchen-garden; Antony lived there, and he would go and see him first of all. As he ran along the narrow path, bordered with fruit-trees, he stooped to pick up a wrinkled red apple which had fallen. "He's so fond of 'em!" thought he, as he put it in his pocket. There was the sty, and now he should soon hear the low grunt so delightful to his ears. All was silent, however, and he went on more slowly, with a slight feeling of dread, for somehow the sty ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... sort of Alsatia, to which the hunted prisoner retires. I don't think the boldest constable on the island would venture into that place to pick out a man from the seven hundred. If he did go in I don't think he would come ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... trade is a sort of Missourian. He must be "shown." He shies at samples; distrusts drawings. He likes to go into a warehouse and look over stocks; it gives him satisfaction to pick and choose. He is the most fastidious buyer in the world and he likes to do things his own way. Any attempt to ram foreign methods—either in buying or selling—down his sensitive ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... the nation from dangerous home questions likely to cause new plots and fresh revolts (SS286, 287), Henry now determined to act on his father's dying counsel and pick a foreign quarrel. The old grudge against France, which began with the feuds of Duke William of Normandy before he conquered England, made a war with that country always popular. At this period the French were divided into fierce parties that hated each other ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Ruin of the Antinomians (1644): "I never heard that the Indians in these parts did ever before commit the like outrage upon any one family, or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woful woman, to make her and those belonging to her an unheard of heavy example ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Town, for we have no tank room for more than eight days' supply, and no place to store casks except on deck, where they would interfere with the guns. And so I have borne up to run for Angra Pequena, where I expect to pick up my prize-crew that I may return to Simon's Bay to see what can be done, without further delay. I am quite knocked up with cold and fever, but sick as I may be, I can never lie by and be quiet, the demands of duty being ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... It must be it is there.... Yes, yes; I remember.... I went there this morning to pick up shells for little Yniold.... There were some very fine ones.... It slipped from my finger ... then the sea came in; and I had to go out before I ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by looking down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and, mingling there on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or the clever man—or that rare being, the man ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... they reached a point where it was safe to pick up a little speed, Jack hastened to do so. For a wonder Perk was not saying a word—the truth was he had his mind so filled with bewilderment in connection with the queer happenings of the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... been elected by a distinct minority in the popular vote and his practical political experience had been less than that of any chief executive since Grant. His party had been in power so little since the Civil War that it had no body of experienced administrators from which to pick cabinet officers, and no corps of parliamentary leaders practiced in the task of framing and passing a constructive program. The party as a whole was lacking in cohesion and had perforce played the role of destructive ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... with a slightly pettish manner, she raised the unfortunate skirt, its crape trimmings greatly bespattered with ruddy mud. Then recollecting how mamma would have shaken her head at that very thing, she regretted the temper she had betrayed, and in a larmoyante voice, sighed, "I wish I could pick my way better. Some people have the gift, you have hardly a splash, and I'm up to the ankles ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was in the proper frame of mind for the fight. "You go on downstairs!" he ordered. "And let me tell y' this: When I git done with y', they'll pick y' up on a ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... "Did you pick up anything among the Italians this time?" he asked. And without ceremony he reached in under the oilcloth cover that was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... one dull drowsy track of business trod, Worship their Mammon, and neglect their God; Who, breathing by one musty set of rules, Dote from their birth, and are by system fools; Who, form'd to dulness from their very youth, Lies of the day prefer to gospel truth; 100 Pick up their little knowledge from Reviews, And lay out all their stock of faith in news; How do I laugh, when creatures, form'd like these, Whom Reason scorns, and I should blush to please, Rail at all liberal ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up, and carry him tenderly ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... following Monday she complained of her nose being sore. Next day she again complained and said, "It must be the hatpin." While talking to Mrs. Pickford, she explained, Mrs. Pickford's baby stumbled on the footpath. They both stooped to pick it up, and a hatpin in Mrs. Pickford's hat caught her in the nostril. His daughter gradually got worse and died on Saturday last. Mrs. Pickford, wife of a paper merchant, said that some minutes after the deceased ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Mrs. Vervain, "it's too vexatious. Of course, going to new places, that way, as we're always doing, and only going to stay for a limited time, perhaps, you can't pick and choose. And even when you do get an elderly teacher, they're as bad as any. It really is too trying. Now, when I was talking with that nice monk of yours at the convent, there, I couldn't help thinking ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... "Hardly. We can't just pick a man up off the street and turn him into a superman. Even if we could find another subject with Bart's genetic possibilities, it would take more time than we have ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... need I add that each one of those great writers often redeems all his errors by one grand and masterly stroke? But the strongest point of all is that, if you were to pick out all the blunders of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and all the greatest names in literature, and add them together, they would be found to bear a very small, or rather an infinitesimal proportion to the passages in which these supreme masters have attained absolute perfection. ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... said the conjuror, persuasively, "pick up the other shoe and tell me what you see there. That is a ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... little odd-looking, snuffy old man, with a brown scratch wig, who had been very busily employed the whole breakfast-time with a cold game pie, the bones of which Vivian observed him most scientifically pick and polish, laid down his knife and fork, and addressed the Marchioness with an air of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... court'sy! how full he hits a woman between the lips when he kisses! how upright he sits at the table! how daintily he carves! how sweetly he talks, and tells news of this lord and of that lady! how cleanly he wipes his spoon at every spoonful of any whitemeat he eats! and what a neat case of pick-tooths he carries about him still! O ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... duffer with ducats and be welcomed by the "hupper sukkle" as a bright and shining ornament. Or if no beducated old duffer can be come at, she might marry the first shiftless he-thing that offers itself and pick up a luxurious livelihood for her family among her gentlemen friends, as so many enterprising society women now do, and be "respectable" to her heart's content—even a devout church member and prominent in "rescue" work ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of medicines," Pao-yue rejoined, "is far nicer than that emitted by the whole lot of flowers. Fairies pick medicines and prepare medicines. Besides this, eminent men and cultured scholars gather medicines and concoct medicines; so that it constitutes a most excellent thing. I was just thinking that there's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... occasion to go a few miles out of town, some days since, in a stage-coach, where I had for my fellow travellers, a dirty beau, and a pretty young Quaker woman. Having no inclination to talk much at that time, I placed myself backward, with a design to survey them, and pick a speculation out of my two companions. Their different figures were suificient of themselves to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... a treat to some of us," Lord Robert retorted. "I remember when I was a little chap going to have tea at the Mershire's; and when I wanted to gather some of their most ripping orchids, Lady M. said I might go into the garden and pick mignonette instead. 'Thank you,' I replied in my most dignified manner, 'I can pick mignonette at home; that's no change to me!' Now, that's the way with everything; it's no change to some people to ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... concern over the fact that Polly had fainted or had been in the water for a time, for he knew she was so healthy that no ill would occur to her from such causes. All he feared now, was his power of endurance to keep floating until some craft might pick them up, or he ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... will grant you that he had esprit and imagination; otherwise, not. It is of the English as a nation, however, that I make my broad and sweeping assertion, one that was fixed in my mind yesterday, when I saw a well-dressed and well-educated Englishman deliberately pick up a stone, knock off the head of a figure carved on a sarcophagus, found in one of those newly-discovered tombs on the Via Latina, and put the broken head in his pocket.... What man, with one grain of esprit ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
