"Prod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been trying to prod into you—it's their game," adjured Presson, beating expostulating ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... seen him bound from his chair when I said the words. This vile monster, who dispensed death and torture as a grocer serves out his figs, had one raw nerve then which I could prod at pleasure. His face grew livid, and those little bourgeois side-whiskers quivered and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... With a prod in the back he urged his prisoner on. But the old lady seized the skirts of his coat and held him fast ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... cynic than a disgruntled idealist. Men will arise with specious programmes by means of which they can hypnotize a group and aim at capturing the country. Progress carries on by means of such men and such groups. But the devil himself stands behind the stage bush to prod these zealots into the limelight and the next moment to lead the claque in the gallery. We are carried away by the act, afterwards find that we have been duped and hold indignation meetings after the show is safely ten miles ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... about us, and almost before my words were uttered, our wrists were manacled behind us and we were blindfolded. Our captors at once led us away. A man on either side of me held my arms, and by way of warning I received now and then a merciless prod between my shoulder-blades from a halberd in the hands of an enthusiastic soul that walked behind me. Max, I supposed, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... important person, those of neighbouring villages will join them. All available boats are manned by men armed with spears, some of which are lashed to the ends of long poles. Congregating in their boats near the scene of the disaster, the men prod the bed of the river with their spears, working systematically up and down river and up the small side streams. In this way they succeed in stabbing some of the reptiles; and in this case, though they usually do not rise to the surface, their bodies are ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of bringing artillery, with fevered lips, to roar forth shrapnel in Trafalgar Square; why not Gatling guns? The artillery did not come for very shame, but the Guards did, and there were regiments of infantry in the rear, with glittering bayonets to prod folk into moving on. All about these ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... mission he stepped back into the place of a subaltern; he was modest, even embarrassed, at the great people who thronged to him. England was saved; that was all his affair; nothing, so the books say, could prod him into prominence—though he rose to be a General later—after that, after being the first man in England for those days. It was this personage with whom I had gone out to dinner, and to whom I dared make that sudden ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... sorrowful, and he was at a loss to know what to do. His age rendered him incapable of campaigning, Tiberius (as stated) had already withdrawn, he could not venture to send any other influential man, and Gaius and Lucius were, as it happened, young and inexperienced in affairs. Still, under the prod of necessity, he chose Gaius, gave him the proconsular authority and a wife (an act intended to increase his dignity) and assigned advisers to him. Gaius set out and was everywhere received with marks of distinction, occupying as he did the position of the emperor's grandson,—one ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Bunting Behaved like a consummate loon: Her offspring in frenzy confronting She screamed herself mottled maroon: She felt of his vertebrae spinal, Expecting he'd surely succumb, And gave him one vigorous, final, Hard prod in the pit of ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... words. But he had not the faintest idea how to use a stick, whereas my practice with the foils at the gymnasium had made me quite skilful. From time to time he raised his bludgeon and ran in at me, but a sharp prod under the upraised arm always sent him leaping back out of reach ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... to change the town—awaken it, prod it, "reform" it. What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They'd eat her all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten. It was easier to change the town completely than to conciliate it! She could not take their point of view; it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... through the crack of the door to the shifting shape on the kitchen wall. Then, while he stooped over in the firelight to prod fresh tobacco into his pipe, I began again my insatiable quest for knowledge which had brought me punishment at the hand of my mother an ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... up and splintered into shafts of light Wheeling about the fish, who churned the air And made the fish-line hum, and bent the rod Almost to snapping. Care The young man took against the twigs, with slight, Deft movements he kept fish and line in tight Obedience to his will with every prod. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... live up to all the lovely, lovely things that you and he are always talking about. But I've had to talk to Mills about what he likes to eat and what we have to pay for things; I've had to push him and prod him and praise him, and it has been hard work. If you want him ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... of the populace—confiscating canes, umbrellas and parasols—before allowing people to enter an art-gallery is necessary; although it is a peculiar comment on humanity to think people have a tendency to smite, punch, prod and poke beautiful things. The same propensity manifests itself in wishing to fumble a genius. Get your coarse hands on Richard Mansfield if you can! Corral Maude Adams—hardly. To do big things, to create, breaks down ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Bill," called this fellow; and he took a hasty glance backward. A stamp of hoofs came from outside. Of course the robbers had horses waiting. The one called Bill strode across the room, and with brutal, careless haste began to prod the two men with his weapon and to search them. The robber in the ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... other is the beginning all illusion—the disenchantment more swift—the subjugation more complete. Hadn't we all commenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation? What wonder that when some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close; that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of a wider feeling—the feeling that binds a man to a child. He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... "They're on the prod," Nell Beecroft said briefly, and strode to the cellar-door. "Cache yourself!" She would have thrust Dr. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... there will be no genteel lodgings, but Theobald and I will take care of you somewhere. In a little house it may be, but one with a garden where you can walk in the sun in winter mornings as you do now, and prod at the weeds in the path as you do now ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... and tottered away. Glancing aside, she met the Vicomte de Tocqueville's tired smile; he was using his cane to prod the butcher and recall his attention to the half-cut steak. But the butcher continued to stare down ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... below Gangway; something white gleaming on front bench; with supple turn of wrist Bobby brought flambeau to bear upon it; found it was TANNER—TANNER, hatless, coatless, without even a waistcoat on! You might have knocked me down with much less than bayonet-prod. 'Morning, Colonel,' says he. 'Been here all night?' I gasped. 'Oh, no,' says he; 'had cup of coffee at stall by Westminster Bridge, bought a few hats in the New Cut, and, you see, I've planted them out.' So he had, by Gad! Every corner-seat taken, and he prone in JEMMY LOWTHER'S. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... some that, instantly, become tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are crumbling into rot and swarming with worms. Others, shaped like pears, are dry and open at the top with a round hole, a sort of chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their under side with my finger. These are the most curious. I fill my pockets with them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I exhaust the contents, which are at last reduced ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... "And she prod-uce' a piece paper fill' with memorandum' of compliment' he's say to her one time and other, what she's wrote down whiles frezh spoken and what she billieve' are proof that he's in love to her and inten' to make his proposition so ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... at a pinch provide not only meat to eat, fuel for your fire and oil for your lamp, but also leather for your finnesko and an antidote to scurvy. As he lies out on the sea-ice, a great ungainly shape, nothing short of an actual prod will persuade him to take much notice of an Antarctic explorer. Even then he is as likely as not to yawn in your face and go to sleep again. His instincts are all to avoid the water when alarmed, for he knows his enemies the killer whales live there: ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... squeeze through and thus prevent it from making a sudden rush. Then when the bear does try to come out, the hunter, standing over the opening, kills it with the back of his axe. Sometimes a second hole is dug in order to prod the beast with a pole to make it leave its den. The white hunter frequently uses fire to smoke a bear out, but not infrequently he succeeds in ruining the coat by singeing the hair. It requires more skill, however, to find a bear's wash than it does to kill him in ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Olympus' foot I'd roam (Not being really fond of climbing), Absorb romance and carry home Increased facility at rhyming; Those hallowed haunts of many a god That nowadays we only read of Would give my Pegasus the prod He not unseldom stood ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... away from them, nor did he suffer it to travel higher up than the top of his knee, nor did he let it lower down than his ankle, and he drove it and held it between his two legs and not one of the boys was able to get a prod nor a stroke nor a blow nor a shot at it, so that he carried it over the [W.904.] brink of the goal away from them. [1]Then he goes to the youths without binding them to protect him. For no one used to approach them on their play-field without first securing from them a ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... were startled at the sound. Mole gave Hugh a prod in the shoulder with the point of a ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... the policeman, mopping up the blood from his stab, which was more painful than dangerous. "He has given me a nasty prod." ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friendship, to enforce my demands, and as he (being prevented by illness, as I afterwards heard) did not reply, I hunted up the address of your cousin (from 1856), and again invoking your sacred name, asked him to prod on Haslinger. That had the desired effect, and to both I owe it that my manager will probably discharge his debt before long. You see, it is always "Franz Liszt," even if ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout bores into the back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout talks to the elephant in a low voice all the time, and the elephant seems ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the young, who, though called as witnesses, might themselves be accused, if she pronounced them to bear the mark. It was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced girl made sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings, commissioned to prod them all over with needles, and able at will to assign those ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... brushed past them, Blindeye Bozeman, returning from the celebration. Picking up a drill, he studied it with care, finally to lay it aside and reach for a gad, a sort of sharp, pointed prod, with which to tear away the loose matter that he might prepare the way for the biting drive of the drill beneath the five-pound hammer, or single jack. His weak, watery eyes centered on Harry, and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... do then I'll believe 'ee, my lad; but it are precious easy to try. Let's go up to it, and gie it a prod with the knife, and then we'll see what sort o' sap it's got in its ugly veins—for dang it, it are about the ugliest piece o' growin' timber I e'er set eyes on; ne'er a mast nor spar to be had out o' it, I reckon. It sartinly are ugly enough to make ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... him if he persevere to the end. But the seat when obtained must be kept in possession from morning to evening, and the fight must be renewed from day to day. And the benches are hard, and the space is narrow, and you feel that the under-sheriff would prod you with his sword if you ventured to sneeze, or to put to your lips the flask which you have in your pocket. And then, when all the benchfellows go out to lunch at half-past one, and you are left to eat your ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... taking their guns and big long sticks, with pikes at the ends to prod the bear with; and all the dogs of the place followed us. Many men started on their skees, others in their sleighs. According to Mikel the bear was about thirty ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... later, we were riding out of town past the trench-labourers, my heart going pit-a-pat from the excitement of my narrow escape. I dared not ask the Quaker to go fast, lest he should worm my story from me, but for the first three miles I assure you I found it hard not to prod that old nag with my knife to make him quicken his two mile an hour crawl. Often during the first hours of the ride I heard horses coming after us at a gallop. It was all fancy; we were left to our ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... moments. He heard a louder hiss from the great lizard so near him. Opening his eyes, he saw the Rogan leader in the process of forcing the serpentine neck to withdraw foot by foot back into the doorway, using his shock-tube as a sort of distant prod. ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the minds of the officers on that cruiser's deck will never be known. Cruisers of all nations hold roving commissions in regard to derelicts, and it is fitting and proper for one of them to gently prod a "vagrant of the sea" with the steel prow and send her below to trouble no more. But it may be that the sight of the Cuban flag, floating defiantly in the gale, had something to do with the full speed at which the Spanish ship approached. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... utterance of both sides of a case. However that may be, there can be no question that the men and women who sat through the acting of Wycherley's Country Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity of national impressions has caused the word theatre since then to prod the Puritan nervous system like a satanic instrument; just as one has known Anti-Papists, for whom Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke, as though they had a later recollection of the place than the lowing herds. Hereditary ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... GROTE says, "The differences between these three poets are doubtless referable to the working of Athenian politics and Athenian philosophy on the minds of the two latter. In Sophocles we may trace the companion of Herodotus; in Euripides the hearer of Anaxag'oras, Socrates, and Prod'icus; in both, the familiarity with that wide-spread popularity of speech, and real, serious debate of politicians and competitors before the dikastery, which both had ever before their eyes, but which the genius of Sophocles knew ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... blistering your wife, or giving her, with a mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... resourceful and independent, will be able to do it themselves, it being one of her objects to show them how they can get along without her. She will prove most useful when she is least needed. But her presence will still be necessary, for, while she will no longer have to prod them every moment by questions, her testing will always be important, and her greater maturity of knowledge will render her suggestions and criticisms ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... chance enough to learn where he lived; and this minor proof of her indifference became, as he jammed his way through the crowd, the main point of his grievance against her and of his derision of himself. Half way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining. Instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, parrying domes. The wind rose with the rain, and the harried wretches exposed to this double assault wreaked on their ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... nervousness reacted upon Mr. Prohack, who perceived with disgust that his gay and mischievous mood of the morning was slipping away from him despite his efforts to retain it. He knew now definitely that his health had taken the right turn, and yet he could not prod the youthful Sissie as he had prodded the youthful Mimi Winstock. Moreover Mimi was a secret which would have to be divulged, and this secret not only weighed heavy within him, but seemed disturbingly to counterbalance the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... they came on, I noted hurriedly that the first man was one of Arnald's men, and one of our men behind him leaned forward to prod him with his spear, but could not reach so far, till he himself was run through the eye with a spear, and throwing his arms up fell dead with a shriek. Also I noted concerning this first man that the laces ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... in the throne room, alone. Blaine hesitated as he crossed the threshold, Ulana's trembling fingers tightly clasped in his own. The quick prod of the invisible ray pistol warned him that ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... performance and had put on spurs which she dug into his sides. Not for a second did she leave the saddle. She finally turned the horse's head toward the road and with a prod of the spurs sent the animal down it at a speed that made the professor gasp in fright. Every moment he expected to see the girl thrown against the jagged rocks at the side of the narrow thoroughfare. But Kit held the reins. Soon she was out of sight ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... non-political or "direct" action. As a rival to the Federation of Labor the I.W.W. never materialized, but on the one hand, as an instrument of resistance by the migratory laborers of the West and, on the other hand, as a prod to the Federation to do its duty to the unorganized and unskilled foreign-speaking workers of the East, the I.W.W. will for long have a part ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you go forth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole and prod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roar his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... been doing tricks in a village for hours he would get very tired and lie down and sulk, when Pedro would beat and prod ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... water, If you prod deep enough. A dowser finds Because the whole earth's floating, like a raft. What does he know? A twitching in his thews; A dog asleep knows that much. What I know I've learnt, and if I'd learnt it wrong, I'ld starve. And if I'm right about the grubbing moles, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... pleasantest one for her book; surely there has been no kindlier biographer than this one. Yet to a quite creditable degree she is loyal to the responsibilities of her position as historian—not eulogist—and honorably gives me a quiet prod now and then. But how many, many, many she has withheld that I deserved! I could prize them now; there would be no acid in her words, and it is loss to me that she did not set them all down. Oh, Susy, you sweet little biographer, you break my old heart ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... to wax facetious. They knew the soldiers wouldn't shoot so long as they were not shooting. They knew they wouldn't prod with their bayonets men who manifestly couldn't get back. They thought they had the regulars, in fine, where they couldn't do a blessed thing unless the police would come and pull the crowd out from behind, and the police ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... Hebrew farmer Shamgar had only a long ox-goad with which to prod his beasts in the field. The traditional enemy, the Philistine, comes up over the hill. Shamgar's neighbors have taken to their heels. But Shamgar is made of different stuff. He asks a man hurrying by, "How many ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... when the poor carls in the water tried to get hold of a net or a rope or a firm piece of ice, while they floundered about in the water, and the peasants fished them up with their long hooks, at the same time giving many of them a sharp prod on the shoulder, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... at Stanley's prod in the ribs, and the two went below, talking and laughing with the intimacy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... skirt of her lingerie frock swished against his ankles and behind she left, not perfume, but an intangible essence suggestive, somehow, of the very personality of the cool, beautiful, lithe young woman. As Armitage turned in response to Thornton's prod in the ribs, he met her eyes in full. But she gave no sign of recognition, and of course ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... I. "The door is coming down. But, anyhow, I can't leave our friend here. Lie still!" I growled, giving the captive a gentle prod in the neck with the point of his knife to emphasize my desire to have ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... a start, as if in response to the prod of a rude hand, and shivered. The blaze had died to a mere flickering tongue of flame that leapt now and then from the bed of coals. Over the youth came that nameless feeling that bespoke the proximity of some living thing; seeing nothing, he nevertheless felt that hidden ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... a tower of strength to her. Every young wife needs a friend. The desire for sympathy dwells in every human heart. Even the assiduous person needs encouragement and a little praise. It is wonderful how a mite of laudation will prod us to be more worthy. Even our joys never intoxicate save in the telling. By sharing our happiness and joys with another we double them. True friendship means confidence, affection, harmony, love. To be in harmony with one person means that we invite the harmony ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... carefully as Jeb had done in loosening the shale about the body. But the moment Jeb found he could extract the crushed foot from the side that had been buried in the stone, the other man ceased prodding, as one little prod too many might turn the whole loose lava ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... battle's wild commotion I shouldn't at all object, If Sambo's body should stop a ball That was comin' for me direct; An' the prod of a Southern bagnet, So liberal are we here, I'll resign and let Sambo take it, On every day in the year. On every day in the year boys, An' wid none o' your nasty pride, All right in a Southern bagnet prod Wid ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... about her for something to prod him with. There was an arm-chair on casters beside her door. She drew this to her and pushed it with all her might toward the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... diversion of returning fire is one much appreciated by the lower-deck as furnishing a pleasant break in what otherwise might be a monotonous and odoriferous task. There is no drill laid down for this evolution, but etiquette and custom prescribe that on going up the hatch you shall not too energetically prod the next man ahead with the muzzle of your rifle. Likewise, when descending in quick time before the hatch closes, you are requested not to jump directly on the head of the next below. Otherwise you act "as requisite" on ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... all properties provided. To tell of all which took place would crowd out too much which must follow. Of course apples were bobbed for, a hat pin was run through them to prod the seeds for the true lover's heart, and they were hung upon strings to be caught in one's teeth (the apples, not the hearts) if luckily one did not get one's nose bumped as they swung back. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... me a box on the cheek which I have had to put up with. She has always got a dagger about her somewhere, to give a fellow a prod in her passion." Here Mr. Moss laughed or affected to laugh at the idea of the dagger. "I tell you that she would have it into a ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... swing at the animal with the long stick he had been using to prod the kettle of mutton. He missed and sat down suddenly, his lame leg refusing to bear the strain that had been put ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin |
