"Ready to hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words to express his gratitude as we hurried back to the hotel. In the excitement, I had completely forgotten the despatch from the Star, but now I suddenly realized that here, ready to hand, was the only way of getting out to the Key of ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... beings, in other words, because we have it in us to be rational beings. Again, culture, with the intelligence and choice it involves, counts for something too. It is easy to argue that, since there were the Asiatic steppes with the wild horses ready to hand in them, man was bound sooner or later to tame the horse and develop the characteristic culture of the nomad type. Yes, but why did man tame the horse later rather than sooner? And why did the American redskins never tame the bison, and adopt a pastoral life in their vast prairies? Or why do modern ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... their kindness. An odour in a box that had evidently travelled across the Atlantic close to the ship's boilers was traced to the pocket of a boy's suit, which contained the hardly-distinguishable remains of a ham sandwich, meant to be ready to hand for the hungry Belgian boy who got that suit. Broken pots of jam were quite frequent. But no matter. Soap and water and Belgian industry saved the suit, if not the sandwich. Sweaters and underclothes and overcoats almost new, and shiny old morning ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... waiting some time, when Sir David whispered to me that the birds were coming, and crouched down under the wall of the butt. His loader was kneeling behind him ready to hand him his second gun, with two cartridges stuck between his fingers to reload the first one. We were all intent on the grouse, and no one noticed that that wretched dog had worked his head out of his collar and was roaming about behind us. Just at that moment a mountain hare came lolloping ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... carefully avoided to expose, presenting only her full front. I had given Stofulus my Moore rifle, with orders to shoot her if she should spring upon me, but on no account to fire before me. Kleinboy was to stand ready to hand me my Purdey rifle, in case the two-grooved Dixon should not prove sufficient. My men as yet had been steady, but they were in a precious stew, their faces having assumed a ghastly paleness, and I had a painful feeling that I could place ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... divisions comfortably advancing from Belgrade on Vienna based on Salonika, and depending upon the Salonika-Belgrade railway for its food, for its munitions, and for its own means of transit from the Mediterranean to its launching place. Besides, there were no reserves of troops ready to hand for projecting into the Balkans at this juncture. Only a very few weeks had passed since those days of peril when Sir J. French and the "Old Contemptibles" had, thanks to resolute leadership and to a splendid heroism on the part of regimental officers and rank-and-file, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... gone, she takes the city lady aside, and talking softly, the mercer and his partner, seeing them talk together, withdrew, but waited at a distance to be ready to hand them to the coach. So they began ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... No one had lied about these creatures of hibernation. Piles of food were set out in earthenware bowls, similar to the bowls which contained the floating lights. Then there were other vessels, set ready to hand beside the food, and he conjectured their contents to be the necessary brew of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and the packet of sandwiches which lay ready to hand, and as she put on the cap she saw the lawyer, a middle-aged, but stout gentleman, conferring with the detective and smiling triumphantly and rubbing his hands at the news of her presence in the house. She smiled too—a smile of pleasant anticipation. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... yielding little to the motion of the water, yet she is under steam, the aim of her guns is altered every moment, some oscillation is unavoidable, and she can only estimate the range of her adversary. Great skill is required, and not only required, I am glad to say, but ready to hand, on the part of the seamen gunners; and low trajectory guns must be provided ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... within the club-house precincts. They were opened and emptied elsewhere. There's our clew and if the man you've got up from New York is worth his salt, he has his task ready to hand." ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... painters. With Albrecht all was ready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into the fixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; without which, as Cicero said, though some things may be well done by help of nature, yet they cannot always be ready to hand, because they are done by chance. He first worked his principles out for his own use; afterwards with his generous and open nature he attempted to explain them in books, written to the illustrious and most learned Wilibald ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of the fairy scenes in Shakespeare is akin to the spirit of Asbjornson's "Huldre-Eventyr." There is in them a community of feeling, of fancy, of ideas. And whereas Madhus had difficulty with the sunny romance of Italy, Eggen in the story of Puck found material ready to hand. The passage translated begins Act II, Sc. 1, and runs through Act II to Oberon's words immediately before the entrance ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... countenance of an old man with a white beard and an apostolic head—a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron constitution which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem of sorrows. There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... outset; it imitated while trying to invent. What has been said above concerning the chronological development of the imagination would be tiresome repetition. The need of creating followed from the first the line of least resistance, where it found certain materials ready to hand. But in order to arrive to full consciousness of itself it needed more time, more ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... difficulty in procuring just what was wanted: for the valley contained many valuable sorts of timber; and several kinds that had been already cut for other purposes, now well seasoned and ready to hand, were found lying about ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... "they are coming up." We ran for our weapons, concealing them as well as we could, and then stood on the defensive, Schillie on one side of the path and I on the other, the rest all ready to hand us the guns. "Shoot, Schillie, shoot," I said, "hit the foremost man, and he'll ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... consequence, seriously exposed to oblique gun fire. Again, no attempt had been made to provide any flooring for the trenches, and the Battalion spent many happy hours working under the August sun as amateur bricklayers, with the material ready to hand from the village, in the hope, which the winter was to bring utterly to naught, of ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... scattered mansions some whose polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour, and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by way of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable. Tired of the parlours and drawing-rooms of our friends, we have ready to hand a refuge from the clash of wits or the small talk of the day amid the solemn beauties of our venerable minster, whose silvern chimes daily 'knoll us to prayer,' and in the shady walks of whose tranquil graveyard we muse with softened heart, and ever and ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... red. "And if you go over there to my coat, you'll find it in my pocket, all ready to hand back to you. I don't know how I come to keep it in my pocket. Must ha' missed it, when I ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... his being questioned as to this, "that we have every chance of riding out the gale, which cannot continue many hours longer with the same fury; and even if she should part from her anchor, the storm-sails have been laid ready to hand, and can be bent in a very short time. The direction of the wind being nor'-east, we could sail up the Forth to Leith Roads; but if this should appear doubtful, after passing the May we can steer for Tyningham Sands, on the western side ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... is ready, that unless the defences had been built in former times it would be impossible to do without them now; but this does not touch the argument, which is not that demonstration is unwise but that as long as a demonstration is still felt necessary, and therefore kept ready to hand, the subject of such demonstration is not yet securely known. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse; and unless a matter can hold its own without the brag and self-assertion of continual demonstration, it is still more or less of a parvenu, which we ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... miles out, the sail was taken in and, following the professor's example, Colin dropped his line over the stern. The shining copper and nickel spoon sank slowly, and the boy paid out about a hundred feet of line. Taking up the oars and with the rod ready to hand, Colin rowed slowly, parallel with the shore. Two or three times the boy had a sensation that the boat was being followed by some mysterious denizen of the sea, but though in the distance there seemed a strange ripple on the water, nothing definite appeared, and he forgot it for the moment as the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... wager," Vergilius calmly answered, laying off his robe and seizing a lance. He entered the arena and closed its gate behind him. "Drive the beast in upon me, son of Herod; and you, Gracus, be ready to hand me another lance." ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... with some of the exterior offices, show them to be of somewhat later date than the main building. They have, in fact, as Mr. Clark remarks, more of an unfinished than a partially destroyed appearance. The squared and jointed stones, so easily removable and ready to hand, {16} proved no doubt a tempting quarry to subsequent owners of Hawarden, who perhaps shared the faults of a period when neither the architectural nor historical value of ancient remains ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched forward almost before a shot from Dan's rifle ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... thee boldness to come to God. Shall Jesus Christ be interceding in heaven? Oh, then, be thou a praying man on earth; yea, take courage to pray. Think thus with thyself—I go to God, to God, before whose throne the Lord Jesus is ready to hand my petitions to him; yea, 'he ever lives to make intercession for me.' This is a great encouragement to come to God by prayers and supplications for ourselves, and by intercessions for our families, our ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hour, but was probably five minutes, the letter, whatever its nature, was judged complete; and with the same stealthy but unhurried movements the writer sought and obtained an envelope from the many which lay ready to hand and slipped the missive in with deft fingers. An address added, the abominable thing was complete; and having quietly put everything in order, so that even the most acute eyes could discover nothing amiss, the writer ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... exclusive theme, I might still have delivered these lectures, but should scarcely have sought for them a wider audience than their first, gladly leaving the matter in their hands, whose studies in language had been fuller and riper than my own. But abundant and ready to hand as are the materials for such a book, I did not; while yet it seems to me that the subject is one to which it is beyond measure desirable that their attention, who are teaching, or shall have hereafter to teach, others should be directed; so that they shall learn to regard language as one of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... professional calling that agents, merchants, officials and the professional classes find employment, so that if in exile we surround ourselves with such luxuries and enjoyments as are reserved for the wealthy at home it is because they are ready to hand at but little cost, and that they serve in a degree to compensate us for the sweet pleasures of home-life which are forfeited by those who leave Old England to push ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... up the task with renewed zest. Since my clothing day I had received abundant lights on religious perfection, chiefly concerning the vow of poverty. Whilst I was a postulant I liked to have nice things to use and to find everything needful ready to hand. Jesus bore with me patiently, for He gives His light little by little. At the beginning of my spiritual life, about the age of fourteen, I used to ask myself how, in days to come, I should more clearly understand the true ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... this, if his eye is not wary enough, or if his conscience forbids him to obey his eyes' warnings, Wilson is not for him. It is true that Mr. Skelton has tried to make a "Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae," in which the skipping is done ready to hand. But, with all the respect due to the author of Thalatta, the process is not, at least speaking according to my judgment, successful. No one can really taste that eccentric book unless he reads it as a whole; its humours arbitrarily separated and cut-and-dried are nearly unintelligible. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... rapid, skillful preparations. It meant so much, this operating at a country house, she explained to Ellen. It meant the working out of all manner of difficult details, that the final conditions might as closely as possible resemble those which were to be had, ready to hand, in the operating-room ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... not bound by the assigned theme if I am not so minded, but that I have leave to choose such topic as best shall please me. And lest any suppose that I crave this grace as one that has not stories ready to hand, I am henceforth content that mine be always the last." The queen, knowing him to be a merry and facetious fellow, and feeling sure that he only craved this favour in order that, if the company were jaded, he might have ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... energy would be given out before that fly-wheel would come to rest. The earth's rotation is a reservoir from whence the tides draw the energy they require for doing work. Hence it is that though the tides are caused by the moon, yet whenever they require energy they draw on the supply ready to hand in the rotation of the earth. The earth differs from the fly-wheel of an engine in a very important point. As the energy is withdrawn from the fly-wheel by the machines in the mill, so it is restored ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... fearfully say to such as have by long wrestling with the spirit been able to see truth, when the inward eye has been purged from the grossness of passion, for which to Him be praise and power. Amen! I herewith enclose you the proposal formally made, and will be ready to hand over the two hundred Christian manifestations of my gratitude at the proper season. As to Lord Cumber being a loser by the transaction, such a loss must have been, we are bound to hope, shaped out for him as a punishment inflicted for gracious purposes. It is ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said Cedarquist. "Each with his particular enemy. We are well met, indeed, the farmer and the manufacturer, both in the same grist between the two millstones of the lethargy of the Public and the aggression of the Trust, the two great evils of modern America. Pres, my boy, there is your epic poem ready to hand." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... place? Late in the eighteenth century two things happened; the discovery of the potential inherent in coal and its derivative, steam, with electricity yet unexploited but ready to hand, and the application of this to industrial purposes, together with the initiating of a long and astounding series of discoveries and inventions all applicable to industrial purposes. With a sort of vertiginous rapidity the whole industrial process was transformed ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... to say why a squatter's cabin is not there. There is no mystery about this: though there might appear to be, since the clearing is found ready to hand. The explanation is simple: the glade is a mile distant from water—the nearest being that of the creek already mentioned as running past the cabin of the squatter. Thus Nature, as if jealous of this pretty wild-wood garden, protects it ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... owes to it allegiance, yet its supremacy, though thus disavowed, cannot be overthrown. The Conference at The Hague has facilitated future recourse to arbitration, by providing means through which, a case arising, a court is more easily constituted, and rules governing its procedure are ready to hand; but it has refrained from any engagements binding states to have recourse to the tribunal thus created. The responsibility of the state to its own conscience remains unimpeached and independent. The progress thus made and thus limited is to a halting place, at which, whether ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... earnest and confidential voice. It was as if something subtle in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith in "pronunciamientos." All at once he began to talk, like an expert revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand in the intact army at Cayta, which could be brought back in a few days to Sulaco if only Decoud managed to make his way at once down the coast. For the military chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to expect from Montero, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Conquest of England was but one instance of Norman activity: Sicily, Italy, Constantinople, even Antioch, and the Holy Land itself, showed in time Norman states, Norman laws, Norman civilisation, and all alike felt the impulse of Norman energy and inspiration. England lay ready to hand for Norman invasion—the hope of peaceable succession to the saintly Edward the Confessor had to be abandoned by William; the gradual permeation of sluggish England with Norman earls, churchmen, courtiers, had been comprehended ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the history of the Brethren, and he had not yet studied Comenius's "Account of Discipline." He knew but little of the Brethren's past, and the little that he knew was wrong; and, having no other plan to guide him, he took as his model the constitution lying ready to hand in the average German village of the day, and adapted that simple constitution to the special needs of the exiles.77 He had no desire to make Herrnhut independent. It was still to be a part of his estate, and conform to the laws of the land; and still to be the home of a "Church within the Church," ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... boulders of these rocks have also been found in our own neighbourhood; and doubtless more remain to reward the explorer. {91b} I have dwelt at some length on this particular formation—the boulder clay—because it is the most ready to hand; it lies on the surface, in many parts around us, within the ken of the ordinary visitor to Woodhall Spa. It may give an additional interest to his rambles in search of health, to know that he may, at any moment, pick up a boulder which has travelled further, and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... down at the head of the table with the Comtesse on his right. Jellyband was bustling round, filling glasses and putting chairs straight. Sally waited, ready to hand round the soup. Mr. Harry Waite's friends had at last succeeded in taking him out of the room, for his temper was growing more and more violent under the Vicomte's ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... by native reformers like Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya long before the advent of European ideas. Whatever the origin or original advantages of the caste system, it has long operated to repress individuality.[9] It is a vast boycotting agency ready to hand to crush social non-conformity.[10] One can easily understand that if society is rigidly organised for certain social necessities (marriage for example) into a number of mutually exclusive sets or circles, admission to all of which is by birth only, an individual cast out from any set must ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... ingloriously flee the field, but his donkey is too heavily laden to accompany him: he looks apprehensively at my rapidly approaching figure, and then, as if a happy thought suddenly occurs to him, he quickly takes the finest bunch of grapes ready to hand and holds them, out toward me while I am yet a good fifty yards away. The grapes are luscious, and the bunch weighs fully an oke, but I should feel uncomfortably like a highwayman, guilty of intimidating the man out of his property, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... lawyer entered the heavily-curtained, softly carpeted room. Their footsteps made no sound as they crossed the floor. The nurses withdrew and they approached the bedside. Bertha had ink and paper ready to hand. The lawyer held out his ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... queer," said Monteith, "and isn't it significant, too? Here I am, born in Canada, sticking out against reciprocity and anxious to guard our Imperial connection and ready to hand our Navy clean over to the Imperial authorities, and on the other hand, there you are, born in the Old Country, you don't appear to care a darn about Imperial connections. You let that take care of itself, and you stick up for Canadian autonomy to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... still sitting in the high-backed chairs, spread white doilies over their laps, and then took their small glasses of wine and delicate little cakes, but the gentlemen ate and drank standing, and they all discussed the last game very earnestly. Only Lois, waiting by the tray, ready to hand the cake, was silent. It was a peculiarity of Ashurst that even after childhood had passed young people were still expected to be seen, and not heard; so her silence would only have been thought decorous, had any one noticed ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of exactly the kind of man he wanted, and from his plans and specifications we figured out that what Homer was looking for was a cross between a galley slave and a he-angel, some one who would know just what he wanted before he did, and be ready to hand it out whenever called for. And he was game to pay the price, whatever ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... She would often go back in thought to these days, and incidents would flash into memory that half amused and half shamed her. Some of her escapades she would describe with whimsical zest, and trivial as they were they served to show that, even then, her native wit and resource were always ready to hand. But very early the Change came. An old widow, living in a room in the back lands, used to watch the children running about the doors, and in her anxiety for their welfare sought to gather some of the girls together and talk to them, young as they were, about the matters ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... me admit that I have looked into it. Is it a crime to be acquainted with one's own likeness and to carry it with one wherever one goes ready to hand within the compass of a small mirror, instead of keeping it hidden away in some one place? Are you ignorant of the fact that there is nothing more pleasing for a man to look upon than his own image? At any rate ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... number of navigable streams soon led to shipbuilding in the interior. It was obviously cheaper to build the vessel at the edge of the forest, where all the material grew ready to hand, and sail the completed craft to the seaboard, than to first transport the material thither in the rough. But American resourcefulness before long went even further. As the forests receded from the banks of the streams before ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... a personal god. When he doesn't have one ready to hand, he makes one up—and look at the havoc that has caused. A god of vengeance, a god who cheers you on to kill your enemies.... You've studied history. Tell me about the gods of various nations. Tell me about Thor and Baal and the original ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... anachronism; and Medenham would as soon think of shearing a limb as of profiting by the chance that threw Cynthia in his way. Of course, a less scrupulous wooer might have devised a hundred plausible methods of revealing his identity—was not Mrs. Devar, marriage-broker and adroit sycophant, ready to hand and purchasable?—and there was small room for doubt that a girl's natural vanity would be fluttered into a blaze of romance by learning that her chauffeur was heir to an old and well-endowed peerage. But honor forbade, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... appointed to examine into the cost of establishing government armor works is to be ready to hand in its report ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... mines as a receiver until such time as the Commission might make its report, and until I, as President, might issue further orders in view of this report. I had to find a man who possessed the necessary good sense, judgment, and nerve to act in such event. He was ready to hand in the person of Major-General Schofield. I sent for him, telling him that if I had to make use of him it would be because the crisis was only less serious than that of the Civil War, that the action taken would be practically a war measure, and that if I sent him he must act in a purely military ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of satires is of necessity satirical, and Sotheby, like "Wordswords and Co.," made excellent "copy." If he had not written the "anonymous note," he was, from Byron's point of view, ridiculous and a bore, and "ready to hand" to be tossed up in rhyme as Botherby. (For a brief account of Sotheby, see Poetical Works, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the fact that Nature does not habitually supply the means, and suggest the modes of investigation, as in the sciences dealing with time, extension, and force; and partly to the fact that the great majority of the materials with which chemistry deals, instead of being ready to hand, are made known only by the arts in their slow growth; and partly to the fact that even when known, their chemical properties are not self-exhibited, but have to be ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... places, with a bad cut over one eye and several splinters in his left hand. Feeling in his pocket, he found several matches which Leroy had given him on leaving the prison cave, and he lit one of these and set fire to a few dried leaves which happened to be ready to hand. ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... be done? I believe it can. And I believe that it can be done by the Salvation Army, because it has ready to hand an organisation of men and women, numerous enough and zealous enough to grapple with the enormous undertaking. The work may prove beyond our powers. But this is not so manifest as to preclude us from wishing to make the attempt. That in ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... straight Wherethrough to mass themselves and struggle abroad. But contrariwise, when such a tenuous film Of outside colour is thrown off, there's naught Can rend it, since 'tis placed along the front Ready to hand. Lastly those images Which to our eyes in mirrors do appear, In water, or in any shining surface, Must be, since furnished with like look of things, Fashioned from images of things sent out. There are, then, tenuous effigies of forms, Like unto ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... in Mr Powell was released with great force. He jumped. The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches ready to hand. Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under the companion slide. He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to strike a light. But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with one arm, his fingers were damp and stiff, his hands trembled a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... is true, find statements and narratives of other men ready to hand; one person cannot be an eye-and-ear witness of everything. But, merely as an ingredient, they make use only of such aids as the poet does of that heritage of an already-formed language to which he owes so much; historiographers bind ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... an unhealthy district by all accounts; so that, when the moment for advice on that topic arrives, you will have an excuse ready to hand. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... that the London solicitors were ready to hand over the money, and Mavis was talking to ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the problem of the distribution of satisfactions in the life of the individual, we find ready to hand a variety of unwise saws—"A short life and a merry one," ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... strange and restless alliance of doctrine with temperament appears to be of its essence; wherefore, I shall not hesitate to make of it a light wherewith to take a hasty look about me. Here are two labels ready to hand—"temperamental" and "doctrinaire." I am under no illusion as to the inadequacy and fallibility of both; neither shall I imagine that, once applied, they are bound to stick. On the contrary, you will see, in ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... unscrupulous faction even these elaborate provisions Papacy might be useless. The Papacy needed a champion in the flesh, who should have nothing to gain and everything to lose by attempting to become its master. Such a protector was ready to hand in the Normans, who, recently settled in Southern Italy, felt themselves insecure in the title by which they held their possessions. Southern Italy was divided between the three Lombard duchies of Benevento, Capua and ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... is there to hinder a big bold experiment? General Booth will have in England largely to make his agriculturists before he can put them upon the land. Here in India we have millions of skilled destitutes ready to hand, and it will be possible within a very short period with a few bold strokes to relieve the congested labor market from one end of India to the other in a manner that can hardly ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... England. But it is none the less essential to remember that, as in 1688 and as in 1798 a great and militant foreign Power used the weapon of Irish sedition against England, so in 1912 the same instrument lies ready to hand. For the Home Rule conspiracy of to-day is nothing but the lees of the evil heritage bequeathed ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... I drew a picture of that scene and heard myself telling her I was nothing but a fawn-colored four-flush I could see my future putting on the mitts and getting ready to hand me one. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... asleep while we were talking, with Blaireau at his master's feet, the hidalgo's sword across his knees near the dog, the light between us, my pistols ready to hand, my hunting-knife under my pillow, and the bolts shot. Nothing disturbed our repose. When the sun awakened us the cocks were crowing merrily in the courtyard, and the labourers were cracking their rustic jokes as they yoked the oxen ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... were a party of Gallas, mostly women, habited in silk and gauze dresses, with their hair prettily ornamented to increase their personal attractions, which were far superior to those of the negroes. Close to the group stood a man who acted as auctioneer, ready to hand his goods over to the highest bidder. The purchasers were chiefly Arabs, who walked about surveying the hapless slaves, and ordering those to whom they took a fancy to be paraded out before them, after which they examined the mouths and limbs of any they thought ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... known this word more than once objected to as pedantic. But pedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way terms when common ones are ready to hand. There is no single word in English to express the lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word does. And Greek is a recognised and standing source of words for English. If geography, why not rhyparography?—or, if any one prefers it, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... from the province chosen as an example, i.e., alchemy. But in two fables I shall work out the problem of multiple interpretation. In the choice of the fables I am influenced by the fact that a psychoanalytic elaboration (Rank's) lies ready to hand, and that both are subjected to an anagogic interpretation by Hitchcock, who wrote the book on alchemy. This enables me to take the matter up briefly because I can simply refer to the detailed treatment in the above mentioned ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... is brother, and sister, and mother.' He was anxious to promote a union between all the Evangelical clergy, but it must be on the condition that the points of difference between them should not be discussed. He was quite ready to hand over his opponents to Fletcher, or Sellon, or Olivers, or anyone whom he judged strong enough to take them in hand. He prided himself on the fact that Methodism required no agreement on disputed points of doctrine among its members. 'Are you in earnest about your soul?' That was the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Make him over to you)—Ver. 1086. "Vobis propino." The word "propino" was properly applied to the act of tasting a cup of wine, and then handing it to another; he means that he has had his taste of the Captain, and is now ready to hand him over to them.] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the alert, much of the time apparently praying. Not once did he touch the weapons that lay ready to hand upon the folded burka ... and when at last the dawn came, pale and yellow, through the trees, showing the outlines of the individual box and azalea bushes, he got up earlier than usual and began to make the fire for coffee. In the fuller light which ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... are so sensitive and alert that the touch of a passing leaflet on the hook produces some sort of excitement. Every cast goes out with a cluster of hopes in pursuit, and dreams as to possibilities; you keep looking round to be satisfied that the gaff is ready to hand, and everything in the boat shipshape for action. As it was after luncheon to-day, you think of anything but a fish taking hold; you swish on monotonously and mechanically; you muse of friends at home and abroad, of the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... younger sister Polly, who gave promise of some day growing into the goodly proportions of her mother. Mr Deane, with full wig, lace coat, and sword by his side, stood in the old oak hall, accompanied by his son Jasper, ready to hand the ladies from their sedan-chairs as they were brought into the hall. The last to arrive, who was received with all due honour, was a Dr Nathaniel Deane, a cousin of Mr Deane's, the only physician, and one of the greatest ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... different breed, and escape being impossible while Bunster lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was that he could never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day and night his revolvers were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass behind his back, as Mauki learned after having been knocked down several times. Bunster knew that he had more to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-faced, Malaita ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the imagination of crowds we saw that it is particularly open to the impressions produced by images. These images do not always lie ready to hand, but it is possible to evoke them by the judicious employment of words and formulas. Handled with art, they possess in sober truth the mysterious power formerly attributed to them by the adepts of magic. They cause the birth in the minds of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... Expurgatorius, as unfit to meet the eyes of the faithful! You are a low creature, Florian Varillo,—and unscrupulous as I am myself, I despise you for meanness greater than even I am capable of! But you are a convenient tool, ready to hand, and I use you for the Church's service! If you were to refuse to do as I bid you, I would brand you through the world as the murderer you are! So realize to the full how thoroughly I have you in my power. Now understand me,—you must leave this place to-morrow. I will send my carriage ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... what was in that package; but he knew better than to monkey with it, because he always thought something of his own skin. He knew Angel Jack, and he knew what would happen if he didn't have that package ready to hand back the day Angel Jack got out of Sing Sing. Understand? But yesterday Angel Jack died-without a will; and old Jake appointed himself sole executor-without bonds! He opened that package, figured he'd begin turning it into money—and that's how we get our own back again. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... interpretation and generalization from the action of one pigeon? In this instance, no doubt, it would have been difficult for me to make a mistake, but there are many cases which are not so obvious and where the interpretation is nevertheless made, and then the misunderstanding is ready to hand. Once my wife and I saw from our seats in the car a chimney-sweep who stood in a railroad station. As he bent over, looking for a lost coin, my very myopic wife cried out, "Look at the beautiful Newfoundland dog.'' Now this is a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... showed itself to be of immense strength. The hollow sound caused by rolling over a drawbridge was twice heard, and the carriage crossed two courts before stopping at the foot of a broad flight of stone steps, where stood Sir William Fitzwilliam and Sir Amias Paulett ready to hand ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take charge of your own business?" said lie. "I am ready to hand over my trust at ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... all on deck. They were densely crowded aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees. Two or three Mormon agents stood ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them forward when they had passed. By what successful means, a special aptitude for organisation had been infused into these people, I am, of course, unable to report. But I know that, even now, there was no ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... marry her, he, Guffey, was for it. There was nothing like the influence of a good woman, and Guffey much preferred his operatives should be married men, living a settled and respectable life. They could be trusted then, and sometimes when a woman operative was needed, they had a partner ready to hand. If Peter had got married long ago, he might have had a good sum of money in the bank ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... which they hewed with their sharp scimiters, frequently severing the steel top from the ashpole, and then breaking through and engaging in hand-to-hand conflict with the knights. Behind the latter sat their squires, with extra spears and arms ready to hand to their masters; and in close combat, the heavy maces with their spike ends were weapons before which the light-clad horsemen went down like ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... the keys of the castle chambers, knotted them on a string, and after casting them over her left shoulder for luck—more for her father's sake than for the new Queen's regard—she stood at the castle gate ready to hand over the keys to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... my entire outfit of clothing, and had filled numerous shelves with the library I had brought along. Everything was in order and place, from my shaving outfit in the drawer beside the wash- basin, and my sea-boots and oilskins hung ready to hand, to my writing materials on the desk, before which a swing arm-chair, leather-upholstered and screwed solidly to the floor, invited me. My pyjamas and dressing-gown were out. My slippers, in their accustomed place by the bed, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... was the custom of penmen to grind their India ink themselves; but, besides the difficulty of always ensuring the proper consistency, it was a cumbersome method, and is now little resorted to, especially as numerous excellent prepared inks are ready to hand. The better known of these prepared inks are, "Higgins' American" (general and waterproof), Bourgeois' "Encre de Chine Liquide," "Carter's," "Winsor & Newton's," and "Rowney's." Higgins' and Carter's have ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... askance at the many blacks who toiled for them and belonged to them. In the living-room, where were the eating-table, the billiard-table, and the phonograph, stood stands of rifles, and in each bedroom, beside each bed, ready to hand, had been revolvers and rifles. As well, Mister Haggin and Derby and Bob had always carried revolvers in their belts when they left the house to go among ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... shown all the devices which a year of experience has suggested to the quick brains of our Allies. It is ground upon which one cannot talk with freedom. Every form of bomb, catapult, and trench mortar was ready to hand. Every method of cross-fire had been thought out to an exact degree. There was something, however, about their disposition of a machine gun which disturbed the Commandant. He called for the officer of the gun. His thin lips got thinner and his grey eyes more austere as we waited. ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which clothes our mind in the first heavy cloak ready to hand, so that all the sunbeams of the world cannot persuade us to throw it off, much less to assume another! The man who is exclusively a nationalist is a snail forever chained to his house. Psyche had wings given her for a never-ending, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... there ain't no good to be got, never, by going off the regular line." Whereupon Bozzle scratched his head and again read the letter. A distinct promise of a hundred pounds was made to him, if he would have the child ready to hand over to Trevelyan on Trevelyan's ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... be futile to attempt to deny that we have ready to hand in the politics of the British Empire—that Empire which is swept along in "the too vast orb of her fate"—an ideal political training-ground in which we might put woman to school. The woman voter would there be able to ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... parentage are such that I can reward you as I should wish. I give you a discharge now from your regiment and appoint you ensign. You will at present form one of my staff; and glad am I to have so dashing and able a young officer ready to hand for any perilous ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... people could write, with the view of exalting themselves, and depressing the rest of the society amongst which they lived. The Brahmins chose to assert that the castes were of divine origin. They wrote that down and handed it on. We came to India, and finding these statements ready to hand, have simply swallowed them down, and added them to the number of illusions existing as regards India. But the facts really are, that castes and orders of men sprang up, we don't exactly know how. Brahmin writers described the castes, or at least part of them, and, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... five. He had brought up with him a pair of opera-glasses, with the intention of taking them to bits, so he had informed Foljambe, and washing their lenses, but he did not at once proceed about this, merely holding them ready to hand for use. Hermy and Ursy had gone back to their golf again after lunch, and so callers would be told that they were all out. Thus he could wash the lenses, when he chose ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... in spite of their green paint, looked more like domestic fire-sticks than anything else. The somewhat suggestive name of Frogmore was inscribed on the small gate, and I remembered that I quite shivered as I walked up the sloppy path, with my usual inquiry ready to hand. This time, though, I was right, and when, a few minutes later, I was sitting before a roaring fire, imbibing hot tea, and listening to my Aunt's account of her latest complaint (did I tell you she was hypochondriacal?) I felt that really and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... in times of mental stress, can find ready to hand among his or her personal acquaintances an expert counsellor, prepared at a moment's notice to listen with sympathy and advise with tact and skill. Everyone's world is full of friends, relatives, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of this genealogist is a most interesting room. Many of the books necessary for his researches are of folio size and must be ready to hand; so they are ranged round the apartment at the level of one's waist. On entering the room one is struck by this belt of massive volumes, the more so when their owner takes them up casually and turns to page after page without ever troubling to ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... was coming now, and they had no doubt whatever as to the result. Their most formidable opponents would be the men who had come on board with the bey's superintendent, as these, no doubt, would be fully armed. As for the sailors, they might have arms on board, but these would not be ready to hand, and it was really only with the guards ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... asleep on the instant. Frobisher, after regarding the recumbent form for a long minute or more, silently tiptoed away to his post of observation, having reached which, he extinguished the lantern, making sure, first of all, that his matches were ready to hand in his pocket, so that the light might not prove a convenient target for any prowling sharpshooter ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... is bewildered by the sight of men who seem to have all the material for a good and useful and happy life ready to hand, but who yet attempt the wrong things, or are pushed into attempting them, by not taking the measure of their powers. Of course, there is a great nobleness about people who ardently undertake the impossible; but what can one make of the people, and they are very numerous, who have not the ardent ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson |
