"Nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ma'am. Take my word for it, this matter rests entirely with you. It's all in a nutshell. Encourage her to confide ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... "Trident." Yet there were many hearts there that grew faint and chill when they beheld the little white speck that seemed to be their only hope of rescue in that dark hour. "What hope was there that such a nutshell should save them all?" they thought, perchance, on seeing it approach. They little knew the wonderful vitality ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing. Without the advice of an experienced pilot, with no other compass than a book, which is not always very clear, because of its laconic adherence to set terms, our poor bark is bound to be wrecked on the first reef. One might as well put out to sea in a nutshell and defy the billows of the vasty deep. He does not use these actual words, but his gloomy estimate of the extreme difficulties to be encountered is enough to explain his refusal. I am quite ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... know what you are going to say: you mean that I had best look out for a military swell; but, after all, the matter lies in a nutshell. I am the insulted party, and draw pistols at ten paces. If that frightens him, he will make the governor ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... is the matter in a nutshell: Germany, wide-awake as ever, saw long ago the advantage to her of a growing Jewish population from the Pale in Turkey. She was perhaps a little overloaded with them herself, but in this immigration from Russia to Palestine she saw the formation of a colony that was well worth ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... of Analysis, described above, is an attempt very briefly to epitomize the chief elements of a great scheme,—to give, in a nutshell, the substance of what our grammarians have borrowed from the logicians, then mixed with something of their own, next amplified with small details, and, in some instances, branched out and extended to enormous bulk and length. Of course, they have not failed to set forth the comparative ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... get back to the Government. Look here, Luscombe,' and evidently he had forgotten the difference in our ranks, 'let me put the case into a nutshell. I was sent over here, to France, in a hurry. Never mind how I found out what I am going to tell you,—it is a fact. Two battalions of ours were urgently ordered here; our men here were hardly pressed, the Germans outnumbered ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... last forty years must be compressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at last, but its effects remained. Nearly a million of people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for those remaining was far from satisfactory. The Encumbered Estates Act, which had completed the ruin of many of the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... and upon which all else in his life merely served as commentary, was scored. Captain Pearson, in his court-martial, which was a formality in the British navy in case of defeat, explained Jones's victory in a nutshell: "It was clearly apparent," he said, "that the American ship was dominated by a commanding will of the most unalterable resolution," and again, "the extraordinary and unheard-of desperate stubbornness of my adversary had so depressed the spirits of my people that, when ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... greater activity, brought in pressed men in greater numbers in proportion to expenditure and so reduced the cost per head. In this logical though at first sight bewildering interrelation of the laws of supply and demand, we have in a nutshell the whole case for the cost of pressing as against the gang. Taking one year with another the century through, the impress service, on a moderate estimate, employed enough able-bodied men to man a first-rate ship of the line, and absorbed at least enough money ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... very assiduous in labor. While he was translating Homer, he says: "As soon as breakfast is over, I retire to my nutshell of a summer-house, which is my verse manufactory, and here I abide seldom less than three hours, and not often more." This little summer-house, which he called his boudoir, was not much bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opened into the garden, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... most important passage to get hold of in studying Browning. It may be said to gather up Browning's philosophy of life in a nutshell. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and she would have cracked like a nutshell against those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his apparent foolhardiness, "Needs must, when ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... a Persian fable that tells of a young prince who brought to his father a nutshell, which, when opened with a spring, contained a little tent of such ingenious construction, that when spread in the nursery the children could play under its folds; when opened in the council chamber the King and his counsellors could sit beneath its canopy; when placed in the court ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... "I slept badly, or rather, didn't sleep. I've got a doss-house all to myself. Look, see, there it is—the damned thing." He points to a trough on the ground level, where on a meager mattress of muck, there is just body-room for one. "Talk about home in a nutshell!" he declares, wagging the rough and rock-hard little head that looks as if it had never been finished. "I hardly snoozed. I'd just got off, but was woke up by the relief of the 129th that went by—not by the noise, but the smell. Ah, all those chaps with their ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... story you used to tell us about the good little girl who saved a cat from being drowned by some bad boys, and carried her home? and she turned out to be a fairy cat and gave that girl every thing she wished for—cakes and candy, and a lovely pink silk frock packed in a nutshell for her to wear ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the sufferer;" that the forms in use "were merely the changing external symptoms, often having scarcely a diurnal continuance before passing from one to another," and constituting a division useless as regards moral or medical treatment—he expressed in a nutshell all the objections since urged against the orthodox classification by the other alienists I have mentioned. These, however, substituted a mixed aetiological or pathogenetic classification, which Bell did not, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... a nutshell, an' jess so clar as apple jack: we owes a heap; we'se gittin' inter debt deeper an' deeper ebery yar; we lose money workin' de ole trees; we hain't got no new ones; an', dar's no use to talk,—master Robert won't put de hands inter de swamp. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had schooled herself to this meeting for Dick's sake, and to please him; she could not, however, pretend to any pleasure in the prospect. It was only natural that she should view Joan with distrust. Dick had allowed himself to become entangled; all unknowingly Mother had expressed the matter in a nutshell. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... fathers; you know very well, that to trust you implicitly, is a law of my life! I have always trusted you! Therefore, I am not disappointed; neither am I very much surprised. I am just perfectly happy. That is the whole story in a nutshell!" ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... a “nutshell,” was that the commanding officer of the district was furnished no more troops or supplies for this state of war than had been provided and furnished him for ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Odyssey,' said Lewis Carroll (of 'Alice in Wonderland') once in Christ Church common room: 'it is that they weren't really written by Homer, but by another person of the same name.' There you have the Iliad in a nutshell as regards the authenticity of great works. All we know about the supposed Homer (if anything) is that he was the reputed author of the two unapproachable Greek epics; and all we know directly about my old master, viewed ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox: they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with a large needle, (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much matter as can ly ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... magnanimous soul is always awake. The whole globe of the Earth is but a nutshell in comparison with its enjoyments. The Sun is its Lamp, the Sea its Fishpond, the Stars its Jewels, Men, Angels, its attendance, and God alone its sovereign delight and supreme complacency.... Nothing is great if compared with a Magnanimous soul but the Sovereign Lord of all ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... an ustrinum where corpses were cremated, and on the other side a second tomb, also decorated with painted stucco-work. Here was found a piece of agate in the shape of a nut, so beautifully carved that it was mistaken for a real nutshell. There was also a skeleton, the skull of which was found between the legs, and in its place there was a mask or plaster cast of the head, reproducing most vividly the features of the dead man. The cast is now preserved in the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... to say," I replied deliberately. "I 'll answer your questions so far as I think best, and then I 'll ask a few of you. The lady upstairs is Viola Henley, the wife of Philip Henley. She has come down here to take legal possession of this property. That is the situation in a nutshell. I am merely accompanying her to make sure that she gets ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... behold Nature's great display from the half submerged conning-tower of a U-boat, and to dive through the mountainous breakers until they close gurgling over our heads and hide us from all curious glances. Our little nutshell, in perpetual motion, is drawn down into the deep valleys of the ocean waves, or tossed upwards on the comb of the following breaker. We are soaked to the skin, and the spray covers us like a silvery veil; our boat as ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... English Grammar in a Nutshell Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage Etiquette of the Visiting-Card Evolution Theory, The Exercise, Physical Eyes, Care of the Eyes, Character Indicated by the Fables, Modern Facts about Sponges Facts about the Liberty ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... gradually become surfeited with his own emotions when the objects of them are never renewed, and he will end, I hope, by demanding the diversions of work and study. May he be able some day to discover that a problem of Euclid is more interesting than the wreck of a nutshell! Upon that day he will enter upon full convalescence, and I shall not be the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Under the influence of the Spirit, God's holiness reveals to man his sin, and God's love leads him to the feet of Jesus. This is the first step in Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutshell, deduction from the existence of God normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted Christ, his Lord ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... you make desperate love to Louise Merrick and so cut Arthur Weldon out of the deal entirely. My part of the comedy will be to attract him to my side again. Now you have the entire proposition in a nutshell." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... to put it in a nutshell, is that the family is all-important, and the individual, if she is a woman, is of no importance at all. He does not object to her being yoked to a plough, because then she is working for the family, but he would forbid ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... chairman of this—eh—char—that is to say, company, I was called upon to do. And I formed the opinion that the mind of the writer was—eh—warped." Lord Ferriby smiled sadly, and gave a final wave of the hand, as if to indicate that the whole matter lay in a nutshell, and that nutshell under his lordship's heel. "Warped or not," answered Cornish, "the man says that we have formed ourselves into a company, which company is bound to make huge profits, and those profits are naturally assumed to find ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... thing is in a nutshell. Numbers, as such, are abstractions and hard to be remembered. To make them hard to forget, we translate them into words or phrases. These are easily remembered and they always instantly give back the figures they ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... like what I see of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise the country. 'Beyond Hyde Park,' says Sir Topling Flutter, 'all is a desert.' All that part of the map that we do not see before us is blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, land to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams—which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream—and I hold ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a nutshell. But we must be getting near the place, according to what you said at the start. There are the three oaks growing in a clump. Now where's your ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... oar, what can be greater than the sun? Still he seems to us a foot broad, and Epicurus thinks he may be a little broader or narrower than he seems. With all his enormous speed, too, he appears to us to stand still (82). The whole question lies in a nutshell; of four propositions which prove my point only one is disputed viz. that every true sensation has side by side with it a false one indistinguishable from it (83). A man who has mistaken P. for Q. Geminus could have no infallible mode of recognising Cotta. You say that no such indistinguishable ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... years were over. I have told him—" And he launched off into a lengthy account of the interview of the night before, repeating his own arguments and his son's replies, while Norah listened with downcast eyes. "There!" he cried in conclusion, "that is the matter in a nutshell, and everyone must see that I am perfectly reasonable and within my rights. Now, my dear, you talk to him; he thinks a great deal of your opinion. Just tell him plainly that if he persists in his folly, he is ruining his ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... subject lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious pomological speculations; and from that time till now—Longfellow, thou reasonest well!—"things are not what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... a nutshell, I had the whole history of the phenomena from which Iceland arose. All take their rise in the fierce action of interior fires, and to believe that the central mass did not remain in a state of liquid fire, white hot, was simply and ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... difficulty, in a "nutshell," was that the commanding officer of the district was furnished no more troops or supplies for this state of war than had been provided and furnished him for a state of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... hash of that sixteenth chapter of Romilly (fancy, he had actually been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters!) and thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... finally became "lovers of Zion" (Hobebe Zion). Among the Russo-Jewish students in Vienna, Smolenskin, the militant Zionist, organized an academic society, Kadimah, a name which, meaning Eastward and Forward, contains the philosophy of Zionism in a nutshell. Seeing that the Alliance Israelite Universelle encouraged emigration to America, both he and Ben Yehudah published violent attacks on the French society, and endeavored to thwart its plans as far as possible.[9] The Hebrew weekly Ha-Meliz, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... what progress has been made since ague was compared to the flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton, who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient's neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! In chemistry, what strides! In astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy, what thanks must we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... possessing all are denied the right. While different men have different duties, different functions, different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parnassus to the bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutshell? Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in their specialties because they vote? Because some women are mothers, shall all women concentrate every thought in that direction? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the situation in a nutshell, as it were, he put his hands in his pockets and observed Frank covertly out of the corners of his eyes. Seeing how crestfallen he looked, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... water, helots who are occasionally flattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly looked upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-ling, discussing the Chengchiatun affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... perceptible benefits seems so to exceed the sum of its perceptible evils as to constitute a balance of advantage. Yet the magnificent innocence of the statesman or philosopher to whose understanding "the whole matter lies in a nutshell"—who thinks he can formulate a practical political or social policy within the four corners of an epigram—who fears nothing because he knows nothing—is constantly to the fore with a simple specific for ills whose causes are complex, constant and inscrutable. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... one leg negligently over the other. "It really comes to this, doesn't it? That you want me to marry a certain somebody, and that I think I cannot afford to marry her. Then it lies in the proverbial nutshell." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a nutshell," said Lavendar, filling his pipe. "Mrs. de Tracy is entirely within her legal rights when she asks Mrs. Prettyman to leave the cottage; legally right also when she declines to give compensation for the plum tree that has been a source of income; financially right moreover in selling cottage ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in a nutshell," said the attorney, who had by this time worked himself up to such a pitch of professional enthusiasm, that, intent upon his vision of a lawsuit, he totally forgot to observe the impression his ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... in a buttercup, cream in a blue-bell, Marigold butter and hollyhock cheese, Slices of strawberry served in a nutshell, And honey just brought by the ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... herself, viewed the present trial as heaven-sent to purify and strengthen. So your religious egotists are ever wont to read into the great waves of chance, as here and there a ripple from them sets their own little vessels shaking, as here and there some splash of foam, a puff of wind, strikes the nutshell which floats their lives, a personal, deliberate intervention, an event designed by the Everlasting to test their powers, ripen their characters, equip their souls ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... had set down the empty pitcher and drawn his breath, he began to criticise the liquor which it had lately contained.—"Sufficient single beer, old Pillory—and, as I take it, brewed at the rate of a nutshell of malt to a butt of Thames—as dead as a corpse, too, and yet it went hissing down my throat—bubbling, by Jove, like water upon hot iron.—You left us early, noble Master Grahame, but, good faith, we had a carouse to your honour—we ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... This in a nutshell embraces the dramatic opening and closing episodes of the World War on the soil of France. Bracketed between these two glorious victories were the agonies of martyred France, the deaths and life-long cripplings of millions of men, the up-rooting of arrogant militarism, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... leaving one of their own in its place. The man and his wife did not at first notice any change, but the wife gradually became suspicious, and she asked the advice of a wise woman, who told her to brew in a nutshell, with an eggshell as beer barrel, in the changeling's presence, who exclaimed that it had lived so many years as to have seen Rold Wood hewn down and grow up three times, but had never seen any one brew in a nutshell before. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... ribbons. Moon, stars and all other influences are just right for a successful termination of my seven years of servitude to the powers of darkness, and if I don't shake 'em off at the exact moment ordained by the heavens I'm committed to another seven years of wandering. There you have it in a nutshell. Marriage, home, a life of tranquil respectability with the women we love; that's ahead of us if we play the cards right. When you speak of calling sheriffs into consultation you make me slightly ill. Old sinners like Leary and me ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... other hand the life of a well-managed hotel, such as this is not without its agrements. Frivolous it may be (though not light); comfortable and restful it undoubtedly is. The against and the for in a nutshell as it were! Your last letter, in which you dwell on the dampness inevitable in old houses, and quote the Bishop's opinion, would, I think, have left me undisturbed in mind—I have recently taken up the 'new mind' cult, which is, of course, not antagonistic to our cherished Anglican ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... short of twenty years old, Salemina short of forty, I short of thirty. Francesca is in love, Salemina never has been in love, I never shall be in love. Francesca is rich, Salemina is well-to-do, I am poor. There we are in a nutshell. ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the whole thing in a nutshell," said Sam. "Dan has found out that there is absolutely no happiness or satisfaction in being dishonest. Even when he had money he didn't enjoy it—he told me so himself. He said there was many a day when he would have preferred being with the ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back—which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I don't wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the day. The doctor is coming to see me ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Nutshell boats was a pretty game. The tiny craft, made of English walnut shells, with paper sails, had been prepared beforehand, and the guests wrote their names on the sails, then loaded each boat with a cargo of a wish written on ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... truth which we have discovered concerning Progress in a nutshell, hiding or disregarding the internal contradiction. What is the nature, what is the kind of reality, which we have learned to ascribe to Progress (for we did pronounce it real and essentially capable ...
— Progress and History • Various
... humble-bee or cockchafer flew past his face; but it could be neither, for there were no insects amongst the ice. It passed him again and again, flying in circles around him, and he concluded that it must be North Wind herself, no bigger than Tom Thumb when his mother put him in the nutshell lined with flannel. But she was no longer vapoury and thin. She was solid, although tiny. A moment more, and she perched on ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... historical, with its good and bad, with its manifold inconsistencies, is what he wishes to set forth, in strong, picturesque, and popular lineaments, for the understanding of the average man. One of his favourite endeavours is to get the whole matter into a nutshell; to knock the four corners of the universe, one after another, about his readers' ears; to hurry him, in breathless phrases, hither and thither, back and forward, in time and space; to focus all this about his own momentary personality; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earth overarches them, and, as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe, it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great, that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... "'Tis in a nutshell," she said. "All my life I've put you afore everything on earth but my Maker, and I was minded so to continue. I've been everything any daughter ever was to a father, and you have stood to me for my waking and sleeping thought ever since I could think at all. And now you want me to go ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... this immense and turbid ocean, carrying within her the great central fire by which the engine was moved, which, in spite of winds and waves, carried us safely along; then the science which enabled the master of this curious nutshell of man's contriving to know just in what part of this waste of trackless waters we were. All these things I knew before, and had often thought of them, but was never so impressed with them; it was almost as if they were ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... read with the greatest pleasure THE GREAT ROUND WORLD, and think, if I may express myself so, that it tells all that is going on in a nutshell. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... being a devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance. Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a good exterior—there is all life in a nutshell. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pursued Olive vindictively, and a torrent of words poured out from her: "It was a pretty scheme your Miss Verney had planned! She was to egg me on to divorce you, so that she could get a clutch on your feelings and marry you and your money! Your money—that puts it in a nutshell! That's the kind of woman a man like you falls in love with! A woman who's too shrewd and too cunning to commit herself. Who provokes and tantalizes and lures on a man, and then stops him short at the very last moment. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... but these delicate arabesques were made in Vienna, and seemed to have been fashioned by the fairies who, the stories tell us, are condemned by a jealous Carabosse to collect the eyes of ants, or weave a fabric so diaphanous that a nutshell can contain it. Madame Rabourdin's graceful figure, made more slender still by the black draperies, was shown to advantage by a carefully cut dress, the two sides of which met at the shoulders in a single strap without ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of trying to carry a meeting like this off? I have been too astonished lately to hold on to my savoir faire. Here are my explosions in a nutshell. The announcement that the clown Gwymplane is the Prince of Vaucluse I am satisfied is authentic. He is ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... this marnin. mister tomas sais as i gov im mi prumass befor i cum to ave the apiness of see yu. butt i dant thinc i giv mor promass to him. nor 2 manni uthers. mi deerest deer and troo luv cuppid! i feer our nutshell song is blitid and its ros kwencht in its blum. them was plesent ours when the carnashuns and tullups was all in blo, wasunt them mi deer luv. mister tomas sais ass he can mari me in a munth and father sais i hot tu take im. iff so be as yu caun't du it beefor i thinc i shal take im ass father ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... actually exist in literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of "kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of "tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is a fact which the Hebrew ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... said Steve. "That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was this way. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play around with, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found that there was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... think there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves. Yes, there you have it in a nutshell. For my own part, I would rather grow fat after the Russian manner, or squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to be 'Hoppe and Company' at the end of five generations. I want the money for MYSELF, for in no way do I look upon my personality ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it back when I liked," retorted Sampson. "I wouldn't be much of a detective if I didn't do that—still, this is my view of the case in a nutshell. One of three things must have happened—that is, granted that Mr. Shaw did put the ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... English flock abroad in shoals, like the swallows quitting our cold country, to return again some time. France has been pretty well used up, so now we fall upon Germany. Stalkenberg was that year particularly full, for its size—you might have put it in a nutshell; and it derived its importance, name, and most else belonging to it, from its lord of the soil, the Baron von Stalkenberg. A stalwart old man was the baron, with grizzly hair, a grizzled beard, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a nutshell, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter, "Was your ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... attitude in this matter I do not ask as a favour, but challenge as a right, the support of all good American citizens, no matter where born and no matter of what creed or national origin." That puts the matter in a nutshell. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... was but a mere parade of it. It is strange how people are flocking to call upon him. Every one detests and hates him, yet they run to visit him in shoals as though they both admired and loved him. To put in a nutshell what I mean, people in paying court to Regulus are copying the example he set. He does not move from his gardens across the Tiber, where he has covered an immense quantity of ground with colossal porticos and littered the river bank with his statues, for, though he is ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Secretary's 50 cent per member—$270.00; secretary's expenses—$37.49; treasurer's expense—$96.37. My expenses rose due to the fact I sent out two notices that dues were due. The two years previously I had depended upon The Nutshell to let the members know and a lot of the members don't read the notice. The editor had it up there in the front lines, but it didn't bring them in too well. That made the postage bill $37 more than it was the year before. Prizes for the Persian walnut contest—$75.00; rent of hall, $60.00. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Miss Verinder has been in secret possession of the Moonstone from first to last; and she has taken Rosanna Spearman into her confidence, because she has calculated on our suspecting Rosanna Spearman of the theft. There is the whole case in a nutshell. Collar me again, Mr. Betteredge. If it's any vent to your ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... in a nutshell the whole history of the great movement for the conversion of the Jews. We dip ourselves in baptismal water and wipe ourselves with a Talith. We are not a race to be lured out of the fixed feelings ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "The plan is entirely Lieutenant Beverly's, sir. Sergeant Parmly has reason to get home before the La Bretagne reaches New York harbor, and she's already three days out. Learning this, our good friend here made a thrilling proposition, which we eagerly accepted. That's the story in a nutshell, Major Denning." ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... things are possible to us, even to the conquest of the world! Now, a lad of your intelligence ought to be able to see, without much persuasion, how tremendous an advantage it will be to belong to such a formidable band as we shall soon become, therefore I put it to you in a nutshell—Will you join us?" ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!—Permit me to hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams." Saying those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with the pitiless ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... never ungrudgingly. His censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from losing confidence. Even as ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with the Journal and the amusement and instruction she had gained from it; she even professed to have mastered the Hygroxeric Method, observing that a note by the Editor put the whole thing in a nutshell. Much pleased, yet vaguely disappointed, Mr Neeld concluded that she had no more to say about ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... put his case in a nutshell. "Our client," he contended, "was NOT the man against whom the warrant in this case had been duly issued; he was NOT the man named Guy Waring; he was NOT the man whom the witnesses deposed to having seen at Mambury; he was NOT the man who ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... rule for those who want everything in a nutshell. It may be summed up in another way. The way to have fine Asters is to do these six things: (1) Get the best seed; (2) start in a seasonable time; (3) give rich, mellow ground; (4) never allow them to parch; (5) keep insects down; and (6) stake ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... woman of Lady Turnour's type doesn't think she's making herself of enough importance unless she keeps people waiting. She changed her mind three times about her veil, and had her dressing-bag (a gorgeous affair, beside which mine is a mere nutshell) reopened at the last minute to get ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... you put things it would take a blind beetle not to see them. You certainly have put Anthony up in an entirely new light. I've nearly got gray hair wondering why he did not profit by our illustrious example here; now you've put the whole thing in a nutshell. It isn't half as much to sit and look at a parade as it is to ride in the band wagon. But from now on we'll see that Anthony is made part of ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... in a nutshell," said the doctor; "but you know there isn't a scarcity of children in the world. Never a day passes but I see half a dozen who need me, sorely. But with Nancy Ellen, NO CHILD will do unless she mothers it, and unfortunately, none comes ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... with reddish frizzled hair, grey eyes, and small, pretty features. She spoke as if she had more brains than the average, and had been better educated. Jack Drew was the only young man in Redclay she could talk to, or who could talk to a girl like her; and that was the whole trouble in a nutshell. The newspaper office was next to the bank, and I'd seen her hand cups of tea and cocoa over the fence to his office window more than once, and sometimes they yarned for ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... a grim little smile. "I suppose I wasn't exactly in a position to insist on a husband's fidelity, but when he began to be a filthy nuisance I got rid of him. Just before I went abroad this last time I divorced him, and gave him enough to keep him running for a while. My story in a nutshell is this," and she touched her fingers lightly as she epitomized her personal history: "married at eighteen, to a gentleman; a mother at twenty; at twenty-three, ran off with a blackguard; married ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... down there," answered the little old woman, pointing to a tiny shadow, no bigger than a nutshell, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... Tregeagle. He was a peculiarly nefarious agent, and very hard upon the tenants. His spirit is still supposed to roam over the moors, and not to be able to find peace till he has dipped the water out of Dozmare Pool with a nutshell. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... fine work. Here's the thing in a nutshell. You find the girl. Right. Of course, you've got to meet her once, just to establish the connexion. Then you get busy. First week, looks. Just look at her. Second week, letters. Write to her every day. Third week, flowers. Send her some every afternoon. Fourth ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... on this side about a week. If you want my history in a nutshell, it's this. Rich uncle. Poor nephew. Deceased uncle. Rich nephew. I'm a man with money now. Lots ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set up for five years. There is the whole affair in a nutshell." ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... your cowboy pard says," returned Henney. And then he spoke with real earnestness. "Listen, Neale. Here's the matter in a nutshell. You will be called upon to run these particular and difficult surveys, just as yesterday. But no more of the routine for you. Added to that, you will be sent forward and back, inspecting, figuring. You can ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... have it in a nutshell. I tell you what it is, we shall have to exclude all critics from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... note to Beaumanoir with a quiet laugh. "There you have the story in a nutshell," he said. "A few minutes ago I became aware that I am not Prince Michael's son. Although I strove to act fairly, my worthy stepfather is not content. He thinks to force my hand, because he fears the republican idea; but I may best ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... at least to play the man: so I mustered up courage, and informed the captain that I desired the topsail filled away. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders; he 'would go his own course, and had no idea of trusting himself with a d—d nutshell;' and then he went below for his pistols. I called my right-hand man of the crew, and told him my situation; I also informed him that I wanted the main topsail filled. He answered with a clear 'Ay, ay, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... fool, Against the grain, this fifteen-year: my son And that dead woman were too strong for me: They turned me false to my nature; broke me in Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach. Till then I'd jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will. Oh! amn't I the wiseacre, the downy owl, Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost? And yet, there's always some new twist to learn. Life's an old ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson |
