"From pillar to post" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very much alone in our nursery, as my mother travelled from pillar to post, hunting for health for her child Pauline. Our nurse, Mrs. Hills—called "Missuls" for short—left us on my tenth birthday to become my sister's lady's-maid, and this removed ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... real good to-night," said Rhoda. "You see I'm awful tired of going round so from one place to another. It's just been from pillar to post ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... of persons quite as good as you go to such homes every day," insisted the hostess. "I should think you would prefer having a regular home and not driving from pillar to post, never knowing where you will land next and never sure whether your relations will have room for you or not. As it is, just now I am really afraid it will not be convenient for you to stay much longer with us. What with Lucy's wedding and the measles and everything! ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... was so badgered and worried and tortured by being knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr. George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... his protestations. "The decorators will be here any minute and then we'll begin to do things. You'll really be much happier at a club or on the streets, anywhere rather than here, for if you insist on staying, you'll be chased from pillar to post. You won't be able to find such a thing as a quiet corner in the whole apartment. Now go, just as quickly ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... girl, if she be pretty, is often haunted from pillar to post by her employer, and if he fails to get her to submit to his diabolical solicitations outside of the ball room, he will manage to get her to attend a dancing school, where he has the right to encircle her with his arms and press her to himself until ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr. Agent. You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire these men, even if they are able-bodied. Everybody is down on them. You said that to me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to post—from this town to that! They will be worse than beggars. And they must drag these women and little children about with them. I will expose ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... running about; And if you don't put it out, ( That's positive) will increase: And any may spy, With half of an eye, That it comes from our priests and Papistical fry. Ye have one of these fellows, With fiery bellows, Come hither to blow and to puff here; Who having been toss'd From pillar to post, At last vents his rascally stuff here: Which to such as are honest must sound very oddly, When they ought to preach nothing but what's very godly; As here from this place we charge you to do, As ye'll answer to man, besides ye know who. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... had been reduced he stood a moment, and pictured Sue coming out of the door to meet him. No man had ever suffered more inconvenience from his own charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done in letting Sue go. He had been knocked about from pillar to post at the hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken of for befriending him). He had ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... negro-slavery was more noble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute, strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its rights; it was half-starved that it might be weak; it was driven from pillar to post with a more cruel than slave-driver's whip, that it might never be able to perfect ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... too, to the most distinctive American humorist of the last half century, Samuel Langhorne Clemens—"Mark Twain." Born in Missouri, knocking about from pillar to post in his early years, serving as pilot's boy and afterwards as pilot on a Mississippi steamboat, as printer, editor, and what not, but finally "finding himself" and making an immense reputation by the publication of a burlesque book of European travel, "Innocents Abroad," he followed ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Susannah off to her room with a Bible and a smelling-bottle, Mrs. Purchase had set herself to reduce the household to order. "'Tisn't in nature to think of death," confessed Martha the dairy-girl, "when you'm worrited from pillar to post by a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... can be worse than this? Here are young women, women in distress, starving and almost in the pains of labour, driven about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, by day and by night, totally unable to obtain the smallest aid. Assuredly it would be difficult to find any thing to equal this in any other country claiming to rank among the civilized nations of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... first soiree the date for another had been fixed. Szilard did not appear even at this. Kengyelesy hunted for him from pillar to post, but could not discover what had become of him. Nobody had heard ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... himself there, earlier in the year.) "I thought he'd accomplish something," he said, "with his fashionable home and his—[**missing text?**] He's using money enough! He's down there, taking things easy, while the rest of us are driven from pillar to post." He attacked the Federal authorities, Governor West, the "whole gang." He cried: "I love my wives and my children—whom the Lord gave me. I love them more than my life—more than anything in the world—except ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... When Lola, hunted from pillar to post, eventually left Munich for Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His passport, however, bore the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... county. Us move to Mr. Wade Rawls' and work for him from 1876 to Jerry's death. Is I told you dat I marry Jerry? Well, I picked out Jerry Walker from a baker's dozen of boys, hot footin' it 'bout mammy's door step, and us never had a cross word all our lives. Us had nine chillun. Us moved 'round from pillar to post, always needy but always happy. Seem lak us never could save anything on his $7.06 a month and a peck of meal and three pounds of meat ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... not at home. But they hunted him from pillar to post, and caught him, at last, in the bar-parlor of "The Packsaddle." He knew Bayne well, and received him kindly, and, on his asking for a private interview, gave a wink to two persons who were with him: they got up directly, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... me, "that melodramatic things have happened to me and those near me. I'm not even sure that poor Richard's death was natural, though I watched over him like a hawk in those dreadful days when he was fearing every shadow, and we were flitting from pillar to post, with Esme. Through Richard two men were electrocuted. He used to get threatening letters forwarded from place to place, always signed with the same initials, and he wouldn't tell me what they meant. It was because of them that he hid Esme ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... (interchange) 148; displace &c 185; throw &c 284; drag &c 285; mail, post. shovel, ladle, decant, draft off, transfuse, infuse, siphon. Adj. transferred &c v.; drifted, movable; portable, portative^; mailable [U.S.]; contagious. Adv. from hand to hand, from pillar to post. on the way, by the way; on the road, on the wing, under way, in transit, on course; as one goes; in transitu [Lat.], en route, chemin faisant [Fr.], en passant [Fr.], in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... shelling the Germans from pillar to post, as it were, and strewing the ground with their dead. It was across and among these dead bodies that we infantry had to charge. They lay about in heaps, masses of bleeding flesh. It made me sick, even in the excitement ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... certainly genius." Madame Vauchelet nodded gravely at this pronouncement. It ought to be published, she said. But this supreme recompense of genius was apparently hard to achieve. The score was sent from publisher to publisher: "from pillar to post," said Hadria, "if one might venture on a phrase liable to misconstruction on the lips ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... francs-tireurs before his corps commander, to whom the partisans supposed, all along, that they were talking; if they should attempt to listen to all the yarns that were brought them by tramps and peasants, they would have their hands full and be driven from pillar to post without ever advancing a step. He directed the three men to remain with the column, however, since they were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... needed money badly, but that he could get no house in America to entertain the idea of purchasing five millions of bonds of his company although they were to be guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The old gentleman felt sure that he was being driven from pillar to post by the bankers because they had agreed among themselves to purchase the bonds only upon their own terms. He asked ninety cents on the dollar for them, but this the bankers considered preposterously high. Those were the days when ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... him, it was with an even slower step than usual. Peace of mind! How about his own peace of mind? Was he trailing this poor unfortunate from pillar to post, for the reward it would bring him? No. With his advancing years money had lost much of its attraction. Nor, if he knew himself, was he particularly affected by the glory which attends success. Duty, and duty only, drove him on—to elucidate his problem and merit the confidence put in him ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... excited sincere admiration in a country where women are illiterate; and the breadth of her understanding was such as to take in the details of government. She chose her agents with rare judgment, and shifted them from pillar to post, so that they might not forget their dependence on her will. Without a parallel in her own country, she has been sometimes compared with Catherine II. of Russia. She had the advantage in the decency of her private life; for though she is said to have had favourites they have never ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... rushed over to her nephew, knelt and wrapped him in her arms. "My little Hoddy! You used to love me; and I have always loved you. The thought of you, wandering from pillar to post, believing yourself hunted—it tore my old heart to pieces! For I knew you. You would suffer the torments of the damned for what you had done. So I set out to find you, even if it cost ten times sixteen thousand. My poor Hoddy! I had to talk harshly, or break down and have hysterics. I've ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath |
