"Bite off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the door opened and Miss Inez came out. She looked paler than common, I thought but she spoke just as high and haughty as usual. She asked me what I wanted there; I told her I wanted to waken my lady. She looked at me, as though she would like to bite off my head—she was in one of her tempers, I could see. 'You had better let my lady alone,' she says, 'and attend to your nursery. She's asleep still, and it isn't your place to awaken her. Go.' I was in a fury; I don't mind owning ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... bite off a fresh quid of tobacco and shake his head mournfully, and dwell on the sins of the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... union in his ample pocket, and dauntless and deep thoughts in his broad mind. He was always far in advance of his time; one of the most "modern" men of that century; but he had the final excellence of wisdom which consists in never forcing his contemporaries to bite off more than there was reasonable prospect of their being able to chew. He lifted them gently up step after step of the ascent ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to sleep," said Suzanne. "Besides, we ain't goin' to bite off only just a little bit of a ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... surrounded by all the apparatus to restrain alcoholic excess, and not even the slightest exhilaration of spirit to justify the depressing scene. It was annoying to see frequent notices such as: This Entrance for Brandy-Topers; or Vodka Patients in This Ward; or Inmates Must Not Bite Off the Door-Knobs. It seemed carrying a jest too far when these citizens, most of whom had not even smelt a drink in two years, found themselves billeted into padded cells and confronted by rows of strait-jackets. Moreover, the ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... takes eight or ten of them to carry a single grain of wheat or barley; and yet they will patiently drag along their big burden for five hundred or a thousand yards to the door of their formicary. To prevent the grain from germinating, they bite off the embryo root—a piece of animal intelligence outdone by another species of ant, which actually allows the process of budding to begin, so as to produce sugar, as in malting. After the last thunderstorms of the monsoon the little proprietors bring up all the grain from their granaries to dry in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... roll you in perdition!" she cried hoarsely. "May they thrust burning coals into the eyes that lied to me! May the devils bite off the fingers that made me shame myself! God! God! I hate you! I—I, who have fooled so many men, to have been rolled ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... subjects, a subject without a master, dare to condemn death: kings will then tremble before thee, whilst thou alone shalt fear no person.'.... It was the passion of honor and philosophic fanaticism alone that could induce Timicha, the Pythagorean, in the midst of torture, to bite off her tongue, that she might not expose herself to reveal the secrets of her sect. Cato, when a child, going with his tutor to Sylla's palace, at seeing the bloody heads of the proscribed, asked with impatience ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... it was nobody's fault but his! I shall tell him I'm like the Christian religion, for which people are always making apologies that it doesn't want! Two years! Patience! It will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to bite off one's wings, and found an ant-hill. As to being bullied into being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I'll never sink so low! ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoughtful face of the man who had come with his legions to assist France in the great hour of need. They talked to each other about the inflexibility of his character, about the massive jaw which, they said, would bite off Germany's head. They cheered in the English manner, with a "Heep! heep! hooray!"—when they caught sight for the first time of the khaki uniforms of English officers on the steps of the Ministry of War. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a little fruit-knife. Now, who could have imagined that the simple paring of an orange could be achieved at once with such consummate grace and so naturally? In Richard's country they first bite off a fraction of the skin, then dig away with what of finger-nail may be available. He knew someone who would assuredly proceed in ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... from his pouch a small roll like a cartridge of tobacco-leaves, and taking a bite off the end of it, to convince them that it was it—the "pawn"—which had imparted to his ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... in a humour, certainly, to bite off their ears. I will freely confess, indeed I said it some pages back, that I was angry with the Anglican divines. I thought they had taken me in; I had read the Fathers with their eyes; I had sometimes trusted their quotations ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Pascua procorum, the pasturage of swine (from fearrh, a pig). Matthiolus when writing of the ferns, male and female, says, Utriusque radice sues pinguescunt. In some parts of England Ferns at large are known as "Devil's brushes"; and to bite off close to the ground the first Fern which appears in the Spring, is said, in Cornwall, to cure toothache, and to prevent its return during the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... would be their undoing—passion is glorious—it is aroused by something beyond the physical. Observe her nostril! There is simple, delightful animal sensuality for you! Look also at the convex curve below the underlip—she will bite off the cherry whether it is hers by right or another's, and devour it without ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... only stopped to bite off the end of a stogie to hold in his cheek, picked up his book in a hurry, and eyed the ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a vulgar, ludicrous, and foolish custom to bite off the nose of a cigar. Don't be a Vandal—you are not a Sandwich Islander, about to chew your Kava. A cigar should be handled daintily; it is a fragile, graceful creature—don't mar its beauty. Tear off the twist, and the pleasure of smoking is at an end! The outer leaf becomes ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of gross flattery, for when once he wore white shoes, and one said that he longed to kiss his foot, the prince said to the fawning courtier, "Sir, I am not the pope;" the other replied that "he would not kiss the pope's foot, except it were to bite off his great toe." The prince gravely rejoined: "At Rome you would be glad to kiss his foot ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... everybody uncle or aunt, to get a piece of the chalk that he had for writing on the blackboard. "Us," he said to some one when the boy was gone. Which of us would have expressed himself like that? You see, he did not say to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was right, because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump with their teeth, ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... departure. And then because Akulina has the courage to tell you the truth, and to tell you that your fine Count is no count, and that his friends get from you ten times the money he earns, then you turn on me like a bear, ready to bite off my head, and you tell me to choose my language! Is there no shame in you, Christian Gregorovitch, or is there also no understanding? Am I the mother of your four children or not? I would like to ask. I suppose ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... a lot of microscopes, and two young ladies who show people how to use them. I looked at a drop of water through one, and saw in it an animal fierce enough and almost big enough to bite off your head. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us." The desire for self-direction has made a thousand philosophies as contradictory as the temperaments of the thinkers. A storehouse of illustration is at hand: Nietzsche advising the creative man to bite off the head of the serpent which is choking him and become "a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that laughed!" One might point to Stirner's absolute individualism or turn to Whitman's wholehearted ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... laugh," said the perch; "you can only talk while the water waggles you. The horse will come down to the brook to-morrow, and bite off your long green tip, and then you will not be able to start any more falsehoods ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... in places, the ground was nearly bare of snow. The pulling was hard here and the dogs toiled along more slowly and panted as their cloudy breaths rose in steamy puffs. Madge admired them. They seemed such strong, willing animals. When they rested for a moment they would lie down and bite off the little balls of ice that formed beneath their toes, but at a word they would leap up again and throw themselves against their breast-bands, eagerly. In one difficult ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... champagne and had some uncommon fine port afterwards. It made me almost hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a footman and a sleek butler, and remember that I had been living for three weeks like a brigand, with every man's hand against me. I told Sir Walter about tiger-fish in the Zambesi that bite off your fingers if you give them a chance, and we discussed sport up and down the globe, for he had hunted a bit in ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... the sharks, and pet the sharks, and tie ribbons round their necks and give them sugar and teach them to dance. But if once a man suggests that a shark is to be valued against a sailor, or that the poor shark might be permitted to bite off a nigger's leg occasionally; then I would court-martial the man—he is a traitor ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... When the head is ripe, it will, when shaken, give the same sound as the tail of a rattle-snake, which seems to indicate the property of the plant; for it is the specific remedy against the bite of that dangerous reptile. The person who has been bit ought immediately to take a root, bite off part of it, chew it for some time, and apply it to the wound. In five or six hours it will extract the whole poison, and no bad consequences ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz |
