"Sprat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... For why? He was still too far down south. But for that there was a remedy. And so he swam northward, day after day, till at last he met the King of the Herrings, with a currycomb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so he bolted the sprat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... examination of the Poems and Essays, however, reveals no point of resemblance with our poem. How, then, does Howard fit into the picture? He was in the rival camp to Dryden and was a friend of Martin Clifford[7] and of Thomas Sprat, then Buckingham's chaplain: these three have been thought to be jointly responsible for The Rehearsal. Sprat had published a poem of congratulation to Howard on Howard's The British Princes (1669), the latter a long pseudo-epic of the Blackmore style in dreary couplets which, again, provides ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... the most common varieties would sell exactly at the same price; no matter what the quality of vegetables might be, all were reduced to the same level. Fish was simply fish. The best varieties and the most inferior were included in the same despotic law. Salmon and stickleback, turbot and sprat, herrings and soles, would (had they existed) have been sold at so much a pound independent of their qualities. The result was that if your servant went to market to buy a fine species of fish, the seller insisted upon ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... lay claim to the town of Mansoul.' Thinking belike that Shaddai had not power to absolve them from this covenant with death, and agreement with hell (Isa 28:15). Nor did the silly Mansoul stick or boggle at all at this most monstrous engagement, but, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale, they swallowed it without any chewing. Were they troubled at it? Nay, they rather bragged and boasted of their so brave fidelity to the tyrant, their pretended King, swearing that they would never be changelings, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... but when not managed by poets of a strong and sure rhythmic sense—as it was not by the many Cowleyan imitators—it results merely in metrical license and amorphousness. "That for which I think this inequality of number is chiefly to be preferred," said Dr. Sprat, the first historian of the Royal Society, intending no sarcasm, "is its affinity with prose." But this argument, which is in part also that of the modern free-versifiers, is simply a confusion of two functions, the verse function and the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... being parliamentarian in his sympathies, was, on the expulsion of the Royalists from Oxford, made Warden of Wadham College in that University. At Wadham, in the Warden's lodgings, the 'Experimental philosophical Club', as Aubrey calls it, renewed its meetings. Sprat, the early historian of the Royal Society, explains that religion and politics were forbidden topics. 'To have been always tossing about some theological question would have been to make that their private diversion of which they ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... or, the Works of the most celebrated Authors, of whose Writings there are but small Remains, viz. the Earls of Roscommon, Dorset, and Hallifax; Sir Sam. Garth; Geo. Stepney, Will. Walsh, and Tho. Tickell, Esqrs. and Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. In 2 Volumes. Price ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... for time after time Selim the Fisherman caught nothing but bad luck in his nets, and not so much as a single sprat, and he was very hungry. "Come," said he to himself, "those who have some should surely give to those who have none," and so he went to Selim the Baker. "Let me have a loaf of bread," said he, "and I will ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... misery, and ruin, consequent upon the loss of it. "Character, my lord," continued he, "is as dear to a fishwoman, as it is to a duchess. If 'the little worm we tread on feels a pang as great as when a giant dies;' if the vital faculties of a sprat are equal to those of a whale; why may not the feelings of an humble retailer of 'live cod,' and 'dainty fresh salmon,' be as acute as those of the highest rank in society?" Another aggravation of this case, the learned counsel said, was, that his client ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... his Jill (Even Johnson had his Thrale!): Forward, couples—with a will! This, the world, is not a jail. Hear the music, sprat and whale! Hands across, retire, advance! Though the doomsman's on your trail, Fate's ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... greatest mischief a man can do to those whom he loves, to raise men's expectations of them too high by undue and impertinent commendations.—SPRAT. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... him with royal self-assurance. "Well? What is the news?" he questioned. "Fished for a sprat and caught a whale—or is ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude: —"Now I am come from a visit, every little ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Whales, and before very long they began fighting with one another. The battle was very fierce, and had lasted some time without any sign of coming to an end, when a Sprat thought that perhaps he could stop it; so he stepped in and tried to persuade them to give up fighting and make friends. But one of the Dolphins said to him contemptuously, "We would rather go on fighting till we're all killed than be reconciled by ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... synthetically in its definition and application of principles, and particularly in its lucid, exact, and purely discriminating analysis. It was also the most striking and successful illustration of what may be called the new prose style, or that style which, initiated by Hobbes and developed by Sprat, Cowley, and Denham[1] blended the ease and plasticity of colloquy with the solidity and dignity of rhetoric, of that style in which Dryden was soon to become a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... surprising to be told, by a man of Hume's literary power, that the first polite prose in the English language was written by Swift. Locke and Temple (with whom Sprat is astoundingly conjoined) "knew too little of the rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers," and the prose of Bacon, Harrington, and Milton is "altogether stiff and pedantic." Hobbes, who whether he should be called a "polite" writer or not, is a master of vigorous English; Clarendon, Addison, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Menagerie was sallow and cadaverous. The face of his spouse was rubicund to a degree. In fact, in everything, the pair were admirably suited, according to the principle, that the more unlike two people are, the better they will agree; and they led a very prosperous "Jack Sprat and his wife" sort of life, roaming from place to place, with their caravans of wild beasts and yellow chariot of unhealthy-looking musicians, whose performance consisted of a very small quantity of trumpet, and a very great deal of drum. First-rate things ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... between being too fat or too lean, the wise woman would certainly take the smaller allowance of flesh. Jack Sprat might incite pleasant ridicule, but Jack Sprat's wife—lo! there would be naught but pity and tears for her! It is better by far to be the butt of jokes concerning "walking shoestrings" or "perambulating umbrella cases" than to waddle through ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... Shrew, that this same elegy was "marvellous good matter." It did not probably attract much general attention. The first edition, in 1659, is extremely rare: it was reprinted, however, along with those of Sprat and Waller, in the course of the same year. After the Restoration this piece fell into a slate of oblivion, from which it may be believed that the author, who had seen a new light in politics, was by no means solicitous to recall ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... more than compensated by the frank, social, and engaging qualities, both of disposition and manner, which, on a nearer intercourse, he disclosed, as well as by that entire absence of any literary assumption or pedantry, which entitled him fully to the praise bestowed by Sprat upon Cowley—that few could ever discover he was a great ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... allegory of the one-eyed Archer, and the fire arising betwixt him and Albion, will be made evident by the following extracts from Sprat's history of the Conspiracy. In enumerating the persons engaged in the Rye-house plot, he mentions "Richard Rumbold, maltster, an old army officer, a desperate and bloody Ravaillac." After agitating several schemes for assassinating Charles, the Rye-house was fixed upon as a spot which ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... as whan the sonne shyneth brighte, In March, that chaungeth ofte tyme his face, 765 And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space, A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace, That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle, So that for fere almost she ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... there was a fisherman who lived close by a palace, and fished for the King's table. One day when he was out fishing he just caught nothing. Do what he would—however he tried with bait and angle—there was never a sprat on his hook. But when the day was far spent a head bobbed up out of the ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... itself—the soul and body of the shell—is there no philosophy in him or her? For now we know that oysters are really he and she, and that Bishop Sprat, when he gravely proposed the study of oyster-beds as a pursuit worthy of the sages who, under the guidance of his co-Bishop, Wilkins, and Sir Christopher Wren, were laying the foundation stones of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... at the Porch House, Chertsey, on the 21st of July, 1667. There is a curious letter preserved of his condition when he removed here from Barn Elms. It is addressed to Dr. Sprat, dated Chertsey, 21 May, ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... correct M. Berthelot, who follows others in asserting that only the Guanches of Tenerife mummified their dead. The oldest description of this embalming is by a 'judicious and ingenious man who had lived twenty years in the island as a physitian and merchant.' It was inserted by Dr. Thomas Sprat in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' London, and was republished in John Ogilby's enormous folio [Footnote: The 'physitian' was Dr. Eden, an Englishman who visited Tenerife in 1662.—Bohn's Humboldtr, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... strong a word, as you say. 'While this lady, with whom you're all acquainted, presents the gallant winner with a cup, value Five Pounds, which you may have reckoned as an igstravagance when you heard I was the donor, 'but will now reckernise as a sprat to catch a whale—that is, unless you're even bigger fools than I take ye for. 'Twas with the greatest difficulty ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean: And so betwixt them both, you see, They licked the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... him are well known. That in Bishop Hurd's edition is very neat. This same portrait is also well engraved for Ankars's edition of Cowley; and also in that by Aikens, in 8vo. Dean Sprat has prefixed to his edition of Cowley, his portrait, engraved by Faithorne, and, in his preface, pays a warm and just tribute to his memory. When his death was announced to Charles II., he declared, that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... my saying that I don't think that a rigid system is the fairest; summa lex summa crux. Fish of very different sorts and sizes come to our nets, and you can't shove a turbot through the same mesh that barely admits a sprat." ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... be helped," Carry said cheerfully. "One must not grudge a sprat to catch a whale, and besides it would cost ever so much more if we had to apprentice you to the sea, and get your outfit. You will not want many clothes now. You have enough for the voyage and journey, and I should ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... ketches him. Scotch chap, Tom is. Well, after bin had like this, we went out on the Lachlan, clean fly-blowed; an' Tom got a job boundary ridin', through another feller goin' to Mount Brown diggin's; an' there was no work for me, so we had to shake hands. I'd part my last sprat to that feller." ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... "Hullo old sprat-catcher! Going for a sail?" called out a soldier, and I knew that the group were all round our boat, Heru trembling so violently in my breast that I thought she would ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Sprat, the Bishop of Rochester, in his interesting History of the Royal Society, so sensible and liberal—published shortly before Glanvill's book,—also contemplates the extension of science over the world. Speaking of the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... jam, The little Fish swam Over the Syllabub Sea. He took off his hat To the Sole and the Sprat, And the Willeby-wat: But he never came back to me; He never came back, He never came back, He never came back ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... once upon a time a fisherman, who lived hard by a palace and fished for the King's table. One day he was out fishing, but caught nothing at all. Let him do what he might with rod and line, there was never even so much as a sprat on his hook; but when the day was well nigh over, a head rose up out of the water, and said: 'If you will give me what your wife shows you when you go home, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... and the heels of the stockings may sometimes be seen trimmed with the same material. A sort of basket-work is now a great deal seen as a head-dress, and in these cases it is strewed over with little silver fish, something like common sprat, which gives it a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... an injudicious and superficial eye, the best educated girl may make the least brilliant figure, as she will probably have less flippancy in her manner, and less repartee in her expression; and her acquirements, to borrow bishop Sprat's idea, will be rather enamelled than embossed. But her merit will be known, and acknowledged by all who come near enough to discern, and have taste enough to distinguish. It will be understood and admired by the man, whose happiness she is one day to make, whose ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Jack Sprat could eat no fat; His wife could eat no lean; So 'twixt them both they cleared the cloth, And ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous |
