"Boring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... represent a vertical section of one of the Chincha islands and the depth of the deposit according to the government surveys. The paralel lines at the bottom represent the level of the water—the crooked line above, the surface of the rock; its position having been ascertained by boring and observations of the surveyors. The rounded line is the surface of the island as it now appears; all between that and the rock being guano. The almost perpendicular line at the left hand, 100 feet high, is the rock at which ships ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... on blundering, and bragging and boring, quite unconsciously. And so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, to the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot alter the nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by laying ever so many stripes ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as pumps and engines used in mining, moving, and delivering ores; apparatuses for breaking out ore and coal; for crushing and pulverizing; for reducing metals, for instance the extraction of gold and silver by milling, lixiviation, and fire; furthermore, boring and drilling tools; grinding ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... boring and worrying them all out of their lives over the books,' added Fergus. 'Poking his nose into everything, so that Stebbing says his governor vows he can't stand it, and shall cut the concern it the old brute does not take himself off to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are very good. In fact, one of the men was very enthusiastic and he was willing to put up five thousand dollars toward boring a well in one ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... little body beneath a piece of luxuriant turf, and stole back into Cruces like guilty things. But the knowledge I had obtained thus strangely was very valuable to me, and was soon put into practice. But that I dreaded boring my readers, I would fain give them some idea of my treatment of this terrible disease. I have no doubt that at first I made some lamentable blunders, and, may be, lost patients which a little later I could have saved. I know I came across, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... gazetteer—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes of Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine, sauntering about from one to the other, a wandering, absent, boring, unbearable shade, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's shoulder a thousand poetic abstractions. He so often disturbed Pellisson, that the latter, raising his head, crossly said, "At least, La Fontaine, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 'Hsh! what was that?' Tony beseeches her, 'It was nothing—don't, Maimie, don't!' and pulls the sheet over his head. 'It is coming nearer!' she cries. 'Oh, look at it, Tony! It is feeling your bed with its horns—it is boring for you, O Tony, oh!' and she desists not until he rushes downstairs in his combinations, screeching. When they came up to whip Maimie they usually found her sleeping tranquilly—not shamming, you know, but really sleeping, and looking like the sweetest ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... never speak of boring me, as it would be the greatest pleasure to aid you in the slightest degree and your letter has interested me exceedingly. I will go through your points seriatim, but I have never attended much to the history of any subject, and my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... which is a tool of substantial proportions, is adapted not only for ordinary drilling work, but also for turning the ends of boiler shells, for cutting out of flue holes tube boring, etc. As will be seen from our engraving, the pillar which supports the radial arm is mounted on a massive baseplate, which also carries a circular table 6 ft. in diameter, this table having a worm-wheel cast on it as shown. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... trio had slept for about two hours, while the reader has been receiving information second-hand about their past and future, when a scratching, scraping, boring noise on the outside of their bark roof temporarily disturbed their slumbers. Dol called out noisily, and, as was the way of that youngster on sundry occasions, talked some gibberish in his sleep. The scraping ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... house is full, I daresay we shall meet some one we know at the table d'hote to-day. It is extraordinary that the only travellers we have encountered, since we left Paris, have been one horribly vapid Englishman and wife whom we dropped at Basle, one boring Englishman whom we found (and, thank God, left) at Geneva, and two English maiden ladies, whom we found sitting on a rock (with parasols) the day before yesterday, in the most magnificent part of the Gorge of Gondo, the most awful portion of the Simplon—there awaiting ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... for he was hungry and faint. "You are too selfish to have a human form," said he. "You are too greedy to deserve food, shelter, and a warm fire. Instead, henceforth, you shall build as the birds do, and get your scanty living by picking up nuts and berries and by boring, boring all the day long, in the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... should say that instead of boring us with politics, he should have written about art, and described the picturesque aspects of the country and the local color. Then the critic bewails himself. Politics are intruded everywhere; we are weary of politics—politics on all sides. I should regret those charming books of travel ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... weary them more. They would have more resources to employ in boring them. But tell me the subject of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... what we know as beetles, has thousands of species, each one with its own distinctive mode of life; some of them feeding upon other insects, others boring into wood, others feeding upon flowers, others upon leaves, and so on ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... the protests of Captain Martin, the change was made, and late that night Ned awoke to find himself sitting up on the edge of his bed, automatic in hand, listening to the steady boring of a tool of some sort around the ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... sphere was an earth-borer—Guinness's own invention. In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray—most of them on the bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the outlets of powerful rocket propulsion ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... boring a cannon much heat is generated: the longer the boring lasts, the more heat is produced. He argues that since heat without limit may be thus produced by motion, heat must be ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... morning's action, for the fort, if defended, would have given us some trouble to take. Walidad Khan evidently hoped to become a power in the district, for he had begun to make gun-carriages, and we found roughly-cast guns on the lathes ready for boring out. It was decided that Malagarh Fort, which was full of articles of every description taken from the English residents, should be destroyed. Its demolition, however, took some time to effect, and as ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... about it. There ought to be a poll-tax on bores. Mothers ought to train their children to avoid lying and boring people with equal earnestness. Infirmaries should be established for the purpose of making the stupid interesting, or classes organized on "How to be Brief," or on "The Art of Relating Salient Points," or on "The Best Method of Skipping ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... sand had been removed, tests were resumed with practically the same results as before. The investigation was continued and the dry-vacuum pumps were overhauled, as they had been damaged by water in the cylinders, and furthermore needed re-boring. In short, the auxiliaries were restored to the best condition that could be brought about by the individual improvement of each piece of apparatus. As this was not the seat of the trouble, however, the remedy failed to effect a "cure." It ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... fact, the feeling of helpless impotency, that fired McGee's brain with reckless daring and sent him boring through the ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... enough been working down in my cellar, Working spade and pick, boring-chisel and drill; I long for wider spaces, airy, clear-dark, and stellar: Successless labour never the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... was very unfavorable. There were persistent local symptoms, referred especially to the stomach,—'boring pain,' distension, difficult digestion, with great wasting of flesh and strength. He was very gentle, very willing to answer questions, very docile to such counsel as I offered him, but evidently had no hope of recovering his health. He spoke as if his work were ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it, and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... and Thisbe. He declaimed bits of it to the guests in the house, for he had a fine loud voice. Then he flung aside the unfinished poem and suddenly fell in love with Greek tragedies of which, as it happened, he understood nothing at all, though this did not prevent him from boring everybody he met with them. Another day it was the Church music, then quite new, which flung him into enthusiasm. That day they heard Licentius singing canticles from morning ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... his kinsmen, the Golden-Wing prefers the fields and the borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods,—and hence, contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from the ground, boring for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied with being a Woodpecker. He courts the society of the Robin and the Finches, abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon berries and grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... fascinating—for a time. Breaking the wild and woolly broncho is thrilling and he needs no other tonic; but when one has gone through all this and he finds that no Broncho—or, for that matter, any other horse—ever foaled cannot be ridden, it loses its charm and becomes boring. On the prairie there are only two things left for him to do—drink or gamble. The first is impossible. It is low, degrading. Besides it only appeals to certain senses, and does not give one that 'hair-curling' thrill which makes life tolerable. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... in hunting down an unworthy man, with his cutting criticism, says, that he did it not on account of his power, but to put down what might prove noisome if not settled, much as a Dutch burgomaster might hunt a rat, not for its value, but because by its boring it might cause the water to break through his dikes, and thus flood his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... careless House some day Permit the Channel Tunnel boring, Think how this railway line would pay; If you had ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... man, his finger still boring his palm, sat for some moments and stared at the engineer. He tried to keep from scowling but his brows twisted into ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... and do not in themselves require treatment. The treatment should be applied to the disease which causes the abnormal temperature of the horns. The usual treatment for the supposed hollow horn, which consists in boring the horns with a gimlet and pouring turpentine into the openings thus made, is not only useless and cruel, but is liable to set up an acute inflammation and result in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the Nails.*—Relief from a blood blister under the nail is secured by boring a small hole through the nail with the sharp point of a sterilized penknife (page 38). This simple bit of surgery not only relieves the pain, but is frequently the only means of saving the nail. Ingrown toe ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... all this is, that I refer to Bores. It is not new, I know; if it were, a New Sense might be shown by telling whether it came from me originally. I believe that in all walks of life man's inhumanity to man is mainly manifested by boring. Sometimes this is said to have been done in past time, because the greatest "blower" known to the ancients was called Old Bore as we know, and POLYPHEMUS complained of ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... of the year when the flies and manifold sort of vermin, flying, crawling, hopping, hungry, and ever biting, were in the full rampancy of their young vigor. It was not only spiteful enemies in human form, that sent crashing shells and piercing bullets, but every kind of nipping, boring, sucking, and stinging creatures in the air and on the earth, that our brave soldiers, and especially our wounded, had to face. Even to the swallowing of a mouthful of coffee, or the biting of a piece of hard tack, it was a battle. Flies, above, around, and everywhere, made it difficult to eat ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th, and entered Richmond at one o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th. A regiment of infantry and about thirty horse continued on, without halting, to the foundery. They burnt that, the boring mill, the magazine, and two other houses, and proceeded to Westharn; but nothing being in their power there, they retired to Richmond. The next morning they burned some buildings of public and private property, with what stores remained in them, destroyed a great quantity ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... who superintended our compartment, "a driller," who with a steam drill sat all day boring holes for dynamite, and we were the "muckers"—miner's helpers—who carried away with muscular power the effects of the explosion. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... he had known—if he could have conceived, beside whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!—I suffered with courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie—I fainted; and my agony was imputed partly to the heat of the place, and partly to my extreme sensibility; and, hypocrite all over, I encouraged both opinions—anything ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... tastes were simple, and apart from the expensive equipment that was indispensable for their hunting trips, and which was Aubrey's choosing, not hers, she was not extravagant. The long list of figures that had been so boring during the tedious hours that she had spent with the lawyer, grudging every second of the glorious September morning that she had had to waste in the library when she was longing to be out of doors, had conveyed nothing to her beyond the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... early in the engagement, he had only the vaguest idea. Even fresh from it as he was, he could not enumerate the small stings, the myriad minor goads, by which it became established in his mind that his call was not a success, that he was boring the two ladies whom he was trying so hard to entertain. At the end, it was a labored dialogue between him and Mrs. Markham. Again and again, he tried to drag Annette into the conversation. She was tongue-tied. The best she did was to give him the impression that, deep down ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... As soon as he came to his speech again he told me of the great miraculum (daemonis I mean) which had befallen at the burial of old Lizzie. For that, just as the bearers were about to lower the coffin into the grave, a noise was heard therein, as though of a carpenter boring through a deal board; wherefore they thought the old hag must be come to life again, and opened the coffin. But there she lay as before, all black and blue in the face, and as cold as ice; but her eyes had started wide open, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day's experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end of five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... watching till his vanity and his fancied security have wholly encased him round, and then coming and boring with a little pin through his castle wall. And these feelings, though their predominance is subdued in the mightiest tragedies, remain powerful there. In the figure of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... I watched the one-pounder at work against the enemy's brick-bound lines. Each time, as ammunition is becoming precious, the gun was more carefully sighted and fired, and each time, with a little crash, the baby shell shot through the barricades, boring a ragged hole six or eight inches in diameter. Two or three times this might always be accomplished with everything on the Chinese side silent as death. The cunning enemy! Then suddenly, as the gun was shifted a bit to continue the work of ripping up that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peep'd—but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the powers who wait On noble deeds, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... out into the woods, taking with him the coppers and all the trays on the sledge; during that day he was busy boring the trees and fitting the reed-pipes to the holes. Strawberry and John accompanied him, and by sunset their work ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... hearty laugh, in which he did not fail to join in unison. "But are you aware of the usefulness and national importance of the projector's plans? said Crony. "Not I," responded the citizen: "I hates all projections of breweries, bridges, buildings, and boring companies, from the Golden-lane speck to the Vaterloo; from thence up to the new street, and down to the tunnel under the Thames, vich my banker, Sir William Curtis, says, is the greatest bore in London." "But humanity, sir," said ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to believe that the lowest layers which we see here were the earliest ever formed. Indeed, some deep boring in the vicinity may prove that the ledges rest upon other layers of rock which extend downward for many hundreds of feet below the valley floor. Nor may we conclude that the highest layers here were the latest ever laid; for elsewhere we may find still ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... had good occupation for several mornings in examining the improvements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy. And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk without too much boring each other. And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a heavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a man of landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twenty pounds. "There is that new lodge-gate," said Pitt, pointing to it humbly with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them—the two solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Artha was now raising his head in an expectant attitude. Landy even conjectured that he must be observing a woodpecker boring a hole in some rotten tree-top, and was about to try and follow the supposed line of vision on the part of Lil Artha when he heard him ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. Latin and Eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... I: "Styles, of Karowra, told me to let you know, if possible, that you were right about the boring rods; and he'll settle with you any time you call. Also there's a letter for you at Lochleven Station. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... path directly before him, which sent tremors of excitement racing along every nerve of his body. With body half-merging from a clump of bushes in which she must have lain hidden stood a sleek and beautiful lioness. Her yellow-green eyes were round and staring, boring straight into the eyes of the boy. Not ten paces separated them. Twenty paces behind the lioness stood the great ape, bellowing instructions to the boy and hurling taunts at the lioness in an evident effort to attract her attention from the lad while he gained the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Boring Mills, Vertical and Horizontal Drills, Slotting Machines, Punching Presses, Gear and Screw Cutting Machines, &c. ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... attendants. The captain of the pirates had wounded, and severely beaten Monsieur de Fontanges, who had resisted the "enlevement" of his wife; and, after having cut away all the standing rigging, and nearly chopped through the masts with axes, they had finished their work by boring holes in the counter of the vessel; so that, had not Newton been able to come up with her, they must all have ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the journeymen were plying their tools;—some chiseling noses; some trenching for mouths; and others, with heated flints, boring for ears: a hole drilled straight through the occiput, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... our entertainment, I promise we will be happy. Do come, Bertha!" He was taking all this trouble simply so as not to have a boring ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... have been still more afraid if he could have seen Noddy make his way to the hotel kitchen and bribe a kitchen maid to get him three large sugar cakes. Then he made his way to the dining-room, and boring tiny holes in the buns filled each of them with red ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... to naught; each fresh check leaves it young, alert, and full of illusions. Be of good cheer, Nature! Pursue, like the deaf and blind star-fish which vegetates in the bed of the ocean, thy obscure task of life; persevere; mend for the millionth time the broken meshes of the net; repair the boring-machine which sinks to the last limits of the attainable the well from which living water will spring up. Sight and sight again the aim which thou hast failed to hit throughout the ages; try to struggle through the scarcely perceptible ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... several good judges and breeders of American blood-stock, but I never could get them quite to agree in the absurdity of tying down a colt's head for the rest of his natural life, without regard to his peculiar propensities—star-gazing, boring, or neutral. The custom, of course, never could prevail where men were in the habit of crossing a country; but an American horse is scarcely ever put at anything beyond the ruins of a rail fence, and there are few, north of the Potomac, that I should like to ride ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a perfect dear, and I will help you all I can. Just come and tell me all of your difficulties and I'll try and smooth them away for you. I suppose you will find it easy to translate their French documents for them about this very boring mule deal. I have had to do it and I am glad to turn the burden of it all over to you. You may have some trouble with the English technicalities and perhaps you had best bring them in to me and I'll run over them to see that you get them straight. Only ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... powerful man, with bare arms, and blackened face. When they entered, he and two other men were making the axle of a wheel. They had a great lump of red-hot iron on the anvil, and were knocking a big hole through it—not boring it, but knocking it through with a big punch. One of the men, with a pair of tongs-like pincers, held the punch steady in the hole, while the other two struck the head of it with alternate blows ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... I didn't come, after all," she said. "It was rather boring waiting there all alone; but perhaps Sir Archie will kindly fall down again for my special benefit," and she laughed with the innocent, careless laughter, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... taken this time! The picture of that court he had seen, with the girl in the witness chair and those many rows of eyes avidly fixed upon her, came back to his mind so vividly they seemed for a moment right here in the room, these eyes of the town boring into his house. Angrily he shut out the scene. And alone in the darkness, Roger said to his daughter all the ugly furious things he had not said to her upstairs—until at last ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... truck. All that now remain are the chimney and timber frame. By this time each joint of the latter has been numbered and given its color code. With a simple derrick and ropes and pulleys, dismembering the frame commences. The pins that make the joints tight are removed by driving or boring. Roof rafters and purlins come first; then the yard arms that brace plate and summer beams, followed by these timbers themselves. Second floor joists come after them, followed by the corner posts. Each must be removed ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... strike back, nor would that have availed him much. Holliday had tested his strength and was contemptuous of it. Holliday was boring in and in with crushing blows that tore ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... preoccupation at the moment when he met the young man could have prevented him seeing it before. His knowledge of Albert told him that, if one so versed as that youth in the art of Swank had really possessed a cousin in America, he would long ago have been boring the servants' hall with fictions about the man's wealth and importance. For Albert not to lie about a thing, practically proved that thing non-existent. Such was the simple ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... if you possibly can," supplemented Mr. Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each other horribly—I can answer for myself—and it would be ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... appearance of the hardest quartzite. This is usually the case with the uppermost beds. In other localities, and more especially in the lowermost beds, the whole mass is honeycombed, as if drilled by worms or boring shells, the hard parts enclosing softer sands or clays. Occasionally the ferruginous materials prevail to such an extent, that some of these beds might be mistaken for bog ore, while others contain a large amount of clay, more regularly stratified, and alternating with strata of sandstone, thus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... boring me. I only came to see old Raffles perform. Soon I was looking wistfully for his return, and at length I saw him beckoning me from the ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... my cutter before she was stolen, and that I had had a gimlet to bore holes in the wood. To my joy I found that I had fixed a cork on the end of it and had thrust it into my pocket. There it was. I might, by boring a hole in the cask, reach the water. How anxiously I clutched the gimlet. How fearful I was that in attempting to bore a hole I might break it. Feeling as far as I could judge for the centre of the cask, I began ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... to find life in the whale unendurable; I was tired to death of it, and concentrated my thoughts on plans of escape. Our first idea was to excavate a passage through the beast's right side, and go out through it. We actually began boring, but gave it up when we had penetrated half a mile without getting through. We then determined to set fire to the forest, our object being the death of the whale, which would remove all difficulties. We started burning from the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... much. I was small for my age, and like most runts I was stronger than I looked, and gave many a driver boy a bad surprise. I never was whipped, though I was pummeled severely at times. When the fight grew warm enough I began to see red, and to cry like a baby, boring in and clinching in a mad sort of way; and these young roughs knew that a boy who fought and cried at the same time had to be killed before he would say enough. So I never said enough; and in my second year I found I had quite a reputation as a fighter—but ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... he continued, "it was because I hadn't any home, neither kith nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead, I said it. Am I boring you? If ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... 'sobbillato,' which might be also translated 'inveigled' or 'instigated.' But Varchi, the contemporary of Cellini, gives this verb the force of using pressure and boring on until somebody is driven to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... her chair and was leaning toward him, her face white and her gray eyes boring straight into the man's. She knew now who he was,—the man she had more reason to despise than all others on earth combined. Of the Harris family she knew nothing at all except that her father's lifelong regret had been the fact ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... all that forms the basis of a civilized society? The only guarantees that we can take are that she has no ships of war, and that her army is only sufficient to police her frontier. The building of a war vessel or the boring of a gun must be regarded as a casus belli. Then, and then only, shall Europe be safe from the madness that ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed, the dead body had been wrapped in the common Samoyed dress. In the grave were found besides the remains of an iron pot, an axe, knife, boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper ornaments, &c. Rolled-up pieces of bark also lay in the coffin, which were doubtless intended to be used in lighting fires in another world. Beside the grave lay a sleigh turned upside down, evidently placed there ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring two inches in diameter and eighteen inches in depth. There had already been so considerable a progress made in boring and excavating the holes that the writer's hopes of getting the beacon erected this year began to be more and more confirmed, although it was now advancing towards what was considered the latter end of the proper working season at the Bell Rock. The foreman joiner, Mr. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still there. Their stare became fascinated; it ran on as though nothing could ever happen to break it off. To Queed it seemed as if everything in the world had dropped away but those brilliant eyes, frightened yet unafraid, boring into his. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... pick. For one, I could just keep you doped. Three days in dope won't hurt you, and you'll certainly be no problem then. Another way—I'll let you stay awake, but we stay in our rooms. I can lock you in at night, and that window is escape-proof. I checked. It would be sort of boring, but we can have tapes and stuff brought up. I'd have the guns put away and I'd watch you like a hawk ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... engineer at the wheat ranch, who was always studying up these things with his inventions—and that was his opinion. No, Tom was not a well-digger, but it was generally known that he had "located" one or two, and had long ago advised the tapping of that flow by a second boring, in case of just such an emergency. He was coming again to-morrow. By the way, he had asked how the young lady visitor was, and hoped she had not ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... one woman. The native doctor said, that it was the devil that killed them: the woman described the process by feigned coughing. Their surgery was simple: they cut gashes with crystal. They treated a snake bite by boring the wound with a charred peg; stuffed it with fur, and then singed off the surplus to the level of the skin. They had faith in charms: thigh bones were especially useful, and were fastened on the head in a triangle: these relics were found very effectual. There were some ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... with great Britain, and you will wonder how small an object can nearly make nations go to war, and for what a petty thing we set several kings and great lords to studying geography and treaties and international law, and boring themselves, and filling enterprising newspapers with dozens of columns of dull history; and you will wonder the more at the stupid pertinacity of these English in clinging to the little island of San Juan when you reach Victoria, and see that we ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... chum, Mike Martin, now awkwardly stepped forward from the circle. His face was as red as his hair and he felt as if he were all feet and hands, while it seemed to him that all the eyes in the room were boring into him, so pitilessly they watched him. In reality, if he had looked up, he would have seen that most of the company were only eagerly interested to begin the game, and that the supercilious glances cast his way came from Herbert Montaigne ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... verdict should be rendered by disinterested persons. In the mean time the priests themselves seem to doubt the soundness of their own allegations; they call the secular arm to the aid of their arguments; they marshal on their side fines, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, boring and branding, with hot irons, and death at the stake, at this time in France, and in other and in most countries of Christendom; they use the scourge to drive men into paradise; they enlighten men by the blaze of the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Even then she boasted of Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling and Lake Calhoun; but, upon his grieved solicitation, declared that, after all, the Twin Cities had nothing to compare with the Arch—a sandstone tunnel full twenty feet high, miraculously boring through the railroad embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek, with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Mowbray," of tedious memory, an Edinburgh worthy, much employed by the country people, for he tired out everybody in office by repeated visits and drawling, endless prolixity, and gained every suit by dint of boring. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... stony. A rich black mould will produce a luxuriant bush, which will yield little fruit. Decomposing sandstone, and slate, known in Jamaica as rotten rock, mixed with vegetable mould, is one of the most favorable soils. The subsoil should be also carefully examined by a boring augur, for a stiff moist clay, or marly bottom retentive of moisture, is particularly injurious to the plant. A dark, rusty-colored sand, or a ferruginous marl on a substratum of limestone, kills the tree in a few years. In virgin lands, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... hotel-keeper and carmen and boatmen and guides that describe to my honour the scenery, and young girls that insist on my honour taking a taste of the goats' milk, and a thousand other creatures that insist on boring me and being paid for it, I am really thankful every night when I get to my room and find all the pieces of me safe in their places. However, I shall do very well when I get to my lodge, and in the meantime I am contented to do ill. I have hopes of these young paddies after all. I ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... headache," says Gwen, "and Gloire de Dijon roses always make my headaches worse.... Yes, it's very funny. Mr. Torrens and I have been boring one another half the afternoon. But I've written some letters. Do you know this in the new Opera—Verdi's?" She played a phrase or two of the Trovatore. For it was the new Opera that year, and we ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... anything like the amount of exertion required by an ordinary man, and, so long as he doesn't strain himself, or get very much excited, we may reasonably expect him to live for a good while yet. Besides, as the aneurism progresses there will come a steady, boring pain and increased shortness of breath, which will themselves help to keep ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... of forging or of casting, we may take a walk round the shops of the turners and smiths. In some, Whitworth's beautiful self-acting machines are planing or polishing or boring holes, under charge of an intelligent boy; in others lathes are ranged round the walls, and a double row of vices down the centre of the long rooms. Solid masses of cast or forged metal are carved by the keen powerful lathe tools like so much box- wood, and long shavings ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... on this job, have you?" he remarked tentatively, his eyes boring into hers. "You know, I've never been satisfied with that story of yours about my seeing you—where was it you said?—at ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... face and his loud and authoritative voice startled men into temporary submission, and before they could recover themselves he and his little company of hard-boring men ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... was set to work. The water tore through the nostril-pipe, boring a hole with such rapidity that the tall beam dropped into the socket with startling suddenness. Still breathing torrents, the pipe was withdrawn: the clutching sand seized, grappled the stake. It is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Billingsgate. Gluck tore up his unfinished score in rage when he learned that his rival was to compose an opera on the same libretto. La Harpe said: "The famous Gluck may puff his own compositions, but he can't prevent them from boring us to death." Thus the wags of Paris laughed and wrangled over the musical rivals. Berton, the new director, fancied he could soften the dispute and make the two composers friends; so at a dinner-party, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... received from Camille. He had almost forgotten this wound and was terrified when he found it on his skin, where it seemed to be gnawing into his flesh. He rapidly withdrew his hand so as not to feel the scar, but he was still conscious of its being there boring into and devouring his neck. Then, when he delicately scratched it with his nail, the terrible burning sensation increased twofold. So as not to tear the skin, he pressed his two hands between his doubled-up knees, and he remained thus, rigid and irritated, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... to know the lady well. She has a good heart, but was ever muddle-headed. She thanked that wag with a smile, and I heard her later in the evening boring most evidently that literary lion with elongated praise of the "Cloister and the Hearth" and "Adam Bede." They were among the few books she had ever read, and talking about them came easily to her. She told me afterwards that she had found that literary ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... in safety, and on the part of the men with a carelessness she could not understand. For after they had passed there was a spot between her shoulder-blades that seemed to tingle in expectation of a possible bullet boring its way through. But she would have died rather than let them know how ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... said, "that you must be la-boring under some strange mistake. There is no room for questioning that the territory here is England's—England's by right of conquest; ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht. Three times, indeed—in 1727, 1779, and 1792—France and Spain have disputed our title, but always ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... our arrangements, and seemed highly pleased with them. The men are extremely smart at present; the easy time and change of circumstances seems to have returned to them all the original keenness we had rather lost during our rather boring time ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... the mine goes on, but there are whisperings of something wrong, the yield is not as good as it had promised. The mining expert, who had gone back home, came out again with another expert to help him; they went about blasting and boring and examining all the ground. What was wrong? The copper is fine enough, nothing wrong with that, but thin, and no real depth in it; getting thicker to the southward, lying deep and fine just where the company's holding reached its limit—and beyond that was Almenning, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a railway accident, till you grow morbid on these points. If you live in the country, you may give in to the idea that your house will be broken into at night by burglars, till, every time you wake in the dark hours, you may fancy you hear the centre-bit at work boring through the window-shutters down stairs. A very clever woman once told me, that for a year she yielded so much to the fear that she had left, a spark behind her in any room into which she had gone with a lighted candle, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... well which was bored in Chicago. He declared by his clairvoyant sight that a stream of water could be found many hundreds of feet beneath the surface. The boring was done and the water found, and this well was the originator of the numerous other wells which now supply our parks and factories. James afterward went to the oil regions of Pennsylvania, where he was successful ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... considered that bishops properly belonged. But some bishops, and in particular such a comparatively bright bishop as the Bishop of Princhester, she also thought of as being just as comfortably accommodated in her second system, the "serious liberal lot," which was more fatiguing and less boring, which talked of books and things, visited the Bells, went to all first-nights when Granville Barker was the producer, and knew and valued people in the grey and earnest plains between the Cecils and the Sidney Webbs. And thirdly there were the smart intellectual lot, again ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... was well aware, found his conversation boring. But it always interested her. In fact Rose Otway was the one person in Witanbury who listened with real pleasure to what Jervis Blake had to say. Oddly enough, his talk almost always ran on military matters. Most soldiers—and Rose knew a good many officers, for Witanbury is a garrison ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... "but there is a far easier explanation—But, see here," he returned to his boyish humor, "this is my vacation. I came out here to escape 'shop,' and here we are wasting time on X-rays and spiritism, and boring our patient hostess besides. Miss Lambert, won't you play for us and clear the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... specimen, with the scuta, broad, smooth, thin, and fragile, without any ridge running from the umbo to the apex, and with the occludent margin reflexed. This seemed caused by the shell having been attacked by some boring animal, and from having supported Balani. In the same specimen the first cirrus on one side was monstrously thick and curled; the second cirrus had its posterior ramus in a rudimentary condition. In Mr. Cuming's ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... I spend my life making more money than I can spend, do I? I push my way against all decency into the company of my betters, boring them and myself for no earthly reason, do I? I live on crackers and milk because Ive spent my nervous energy piling up the means to buy an endless supply of steaks and chops my doctor forbids me to eat? I starve my employees half to death in order to give the money I steal from them to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "Hollow Horn" once upon a time was treated by boring a hole into the horn with a small gimlet and pouring Turpentine into the opening. This treatment is useless and harmful. It produces inflammation of the frontal sinuses of the head and chances are death of the ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... his points. "You're not tired of me—though I see I'm boring you hideously; put up with it a little longer, I've nearly finished—and you'd shed quite a respectable number of tears if I were to die young. Yes, I am young though as ugly as Satan. I believe you think I'm some sort of connection, don't you? Is that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... and was waiting in the empty room when he returned. He lost no time in getting to work, and it seemed to me as I watched him curiously in silence that he was repeating what he had already done at the Travis headquarters. He was boring into the wall, only this time he did it much more carefully, and it was evident that if he intended putting anything into this cavity it must be pretty large. The hole was square, and as I bent over I could see that he had cut through the plaster and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... his thanks and made off, shambling across the yard and out into the sun-flooded fields. He had to cross them to get out of range behind a hill spur before he turned into the woods. As he walked, feeling their eyes boring into his back, conscious of himself as hugely conspicuous in the untenanted landscape, he opened the paper and ate ravenously, tearing ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and began gathering the oil by digging trenches. At first it was bottled and sold for medicinal purposes at one dollar a gallon; then Drake suggested that a larger supply might be secured if a well was bored for it. A man familiar with salt well boring was employed, and in 1859 the first well was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... is Phineas Roebach, and I am in the employ of the Universal Oil Company. I am here—as I have been in many lands—boring for petroleum. You understand that my mission is semi-secret. If we find oil here we shall obtain a grant from the Government, or something ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... of loose pieces floating at a sufficient distance from each other, for a ship to be able to pick her way among them. Otherwise termed open ice; when she forces her way, pushing the ice aside, it is termed boring. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... all this," he said. "Don't you find it terribly boring? Every man is entitled to his ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... which eats seasoned oak wood, boring thousands of minute holes through it till it becomes a mere shell, and turning out a fine white powder known among country folk as "powder-post." When a shovel or a pitchfork-handle snaps suddenly, or an axe-helve or a rake's tail breaks off under no great ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... was a medium-sized man, with light hair and eyebrows, and a yellowish face, and a frame lean, though sinewy, and had only one good eye, the other pale like a fish's. His business eye always looked like it was boring a hole in some ingenious idea. As an arguer on the Hebe Maitland his style was airy and gorgeous, contrary to the style of Stevey Todd, who was ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... WASTE.—Examine Fig. 84; the shaded portion in the centre has to be cut away, and it will greatly facilitate the removal of this waste piece by boring a hole with a twist bit at the position shown. The twist bit should be about 1/8 in. less in diameter than the width between the gauge lines G. The easiest method of boring out this hole is shown at Fig. 85, which gives the correct position of ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... said suddenly, "that I had been one of those wonderful New Women, all brain and good works. How I should have talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking tea, and never boring you to try and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... close together. He caught the deep-drawn breath and looked quickly at her, his eyes alight and narrowed with an expression which was a curious mingling of quizzical humor and grim enjoyment. Her own eyes did not waver, though his were boring into hers steadily, as though he were trying to ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... all was quiet in the guard-house he had set to work, listening anxiously in the direction of the corridor during the pauses of his boring and levering. The wall was only the length of a brick thick, and after the first stone had been broken out bit by bit, it cost but little labour to widen the hole enough to let a ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "It's a pretty poor thing to scare a lot of Boy Scouts with, but I suppose it was the best he could do. It wasn't quite up to his standard of boring holes in boats, though. This is ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to us. And so the resistance they met with brought reaction in her, and recklessness and ruin on me! ... There—this, Mrs. Edlin, is how I go on to myself continually, as I lie here. I must be boring you awfully." ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... appear but little, small, inconsiderable things; things not worth engaging for; things not worth running those hazards for, that in the hour of trial may lie staring us in the face. Moreover, we shall not want false friends in every hole, such as will continually be boring our ears with that saying, Master, do good to thyself. At such times also, 'stars' do use to 'fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken'; and so every thing tends to weaken, or at least to lay stumbling-blocks in their way, who are commanded ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... at the first sign of daylight, for they wanted to go to the steel works, some miles away, in time to see the cannon taken out of the mould, and preparations made for boring the rifle channels. They found the manager, anxiously waiting ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... that is boring the wather with me eyes all the toime, Jack dear; and never a thing as could escape me aigle vision. I'm a broth of bhoy when it comes to steering a boat, ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... understand very well, anyway, and was awfully sleepy. We were a pretty long time choosing the six eggs, and I don't remember now just what they were; but they were certainly joyous eggs; and—By the way, I don't know why I'm boring a brand of hardened bachelors like you ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... saying that I'm boring you, eh? I can't help it. I shall be just the same to my dying day. The wound is too ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... beguiled the hours, when there was neither hunting nor shooting, in a workshop which was furnished with the best tools. Among the other occupations at the work-bench, he was particularly skilful in making and adjusting the locks of guns, and in boring and polishing the inside of their barrels to the utmost perfection: he had contrived and executed a tool for the enlarging the barrel of a gun in any particular part, so as to increase its effect ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... deviate into politics. What suggested this train of thought was the student-guide supplied me at Nanking by the American missionary college. There he was, complete American; and, I fear I must add, boring as only Americans can bore. Still, he showed me Nanking, and Nanking is worth seeing, though the interest of it is somewhat tragic. A wall 20 to 40 feet thick, 40 to 90 feet high, and 22 miles in circuit (I take these figures on trust) encloses an area larger than that of any other ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... with a new feeling; a shiver ran through her veins as if the cold breath of a spirit of evil had passed over her. A miner, boring down into the earth, strikes a hidden stone that brings him to a dead stand. So Angelique struck a hard, dark thought far down in the depths of her secret soul. She drew it to the light, and gazed on it shocked ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the street," he said, boring on to the pavement. "It's after office hours. And, ha! ha! what do you think? There's old farmer in there, afraid to move off his seat, and the girl with him, sticking to him tight, and a good girl too. She thinks we've had too much. We been to the Docks, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the statesman up and down Main Street afoot, into all the stores and offices, introducing him to the common people. At such times John Markley was the soul of cordiality; he seemed hungry for a kind look and a pleasant word with his old friends. About this time his defiant eyes began to lose their boring points, and to wander and hunt for something they had lost. When we had a State convention of the dominant party, the Markleys saw to it that the Governor and all the important people attending, with their wives, stopped ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... have grieved much if he had," said Clemantiny sarcastically, all the while watching Chester, until he felt as if she were boring into his very soul and reading ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
