"Wherewithal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorry, as I certainly ought to be, when your letters are short, I feel quite glad; I rejoice that I am not much in your debt, when I have not wherewithal to pay. Nothing happens worth telling you: we have had some long days in the House, but unentertaining; Mr. Pitt has got the gout in his oratory, I mean in his head, and does not come out: we are sunk quite into argument—but you know, when any thing is as it ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... alms; half into the pockets of his mendicant brethren. They hear the gold jingle before it is counted, and run with outstretched palms. Each is in the depths of misfortune; on the eve of ascending the fatal slope; lost, unless the helpful hand of Lampron will provide, saved if he will lend wherewithal to buy a block of marble, to pay a model, to dine that evening. He lends—I should say gives; the words mean the same in many societies. Of all that he has gained, fame alone remains, and even this he tries to do without—modest, retiring, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... taste in gowns and jewelry, but her social position was impregnable, and her avowed mission in life was to bring together Society (meaning the caste of money) with the Arts (meaning those humble souls content to sell their dreams for the wherewithal ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... in order to leave them at the house of one of his tenants, a respectable widow whom he had trained as a nurse, and to whose kind care he now confided them with strict orders for their comfort, and the wherewithal ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... interest—what they should have for dinner—what schools the children should attend—or the casual mention of the most common news of the day. He provided liberally for his family, what they should eat and drink, and wherewithal they should be clothed and instructed—but he took no pains to gain their affections or their confidence, to enlarge their ideas and awaken within them the thirst for knowledge, and plant within them the deathless ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... creditors and said, 'Whence shall he provide for his subsistence?' So he ordered thee other three hundred thousand, and we have sent thee, of our own money, a million dirhems each, so that thou hast now three millions and three hundred thousand dirhems, wherewithal to order thine affair ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... of being that gave him the firm hold upon life which the true teacher must always have. Of his own spiritual condition and contentment he says: "Never did I complain of my forlorn condition but on one occasion, when my feet were bare, and I had not wherewithal to shoe them. Soon after, meeting a man without feet, I was thankful for the bounty of Providence to myself, and with perfect resignation submitted to my want ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... not tell the whole story. I think the cap was nevertheless an advantage to us. It was the first thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted mittens, for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there. And you know that that industry has continued and is likely to continue and increase, to a much greater value, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... hard work scraping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser; but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped—only Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd's mind that it was not honorable to ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... about setting out, but at my request he waited to assist at my consecration, and in great poverty he has delayed his journey seven or eight days, the expenses of which I would have willingly paid if I had had the wherewithal. I humbly beg Your Highness to recompense him for what I owe him: I shall esteem it a favour to myself. Although no occasion should offer, I was thinking to ask Your Highness to graciously grant him some relief, so that that church, destitute of pastor ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... anything like a fair value for their estates. I know of a score at least of such properties which are so deeply mortgaged that the owners can scarce afford to live in their own homes, and would gladly take a sum that would suffice to pay off the mortgage and give them the wherewithal to live upon, either abroad or in Virginia, to which colony many loyal gentlemen have already gone to settle. If you will call tomorrow I will give you a list of such estates, with their size, the amount of their revenues, and the price at which their owners would, I know, be glad to sell, for ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... came on me great misadventure, whereby I lost the best of mine oxen, Roger, the best of my team. Him go I seeking, and have neither eaten nor drunken these three days, nor may I go to the town, lest they cast me into prison, seeing that I have not wherewithal to pay. Out of all the wealth of the world have I no more than ye see on my body. A poor mother bare me, that had no more but one wretched bed; this have they taken from under her, and she lies in the very straw. This ails me more than mine own ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... the wherewithal to pay for my room," he said. "But I surrendered, because, after all, I am an honest man, and I would rather suffer some trouble myself than see an innocent gentleman ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... time-honoured and a good old custom. Perhaps, for several reasons, it was more prevalent among diggers than with the comparatively settled bushmen of to-day—the poor, hopeless, wandering swaggy doesn't count in the matter, for he has neither the wherewithal nor the opportunity to honour the old custom; also his movements are too sadly uncertain to permit of his being honoured by it. We refer to the remailing of newspapers and journals from one ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a good deal bored. To obtain the wherewithal to enjoy this rather expensive world, people ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... to the bishop and prebendaries from the royal treasury, or from tithes. Second: Inasmuch as, on the one hand, the tithes are not paid, nor, on the other, has the royal treasury at Manila the wherewithal to pay the bishop or prebendaries, or provide for curates or the said helpers, they cannot exist and live as their station demands; and neither in their houses and persons, nor in the service of the church and the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... pride of youth, you feel that you have thoroughly categorized me, particularly since I am willing to admit that, though I shall have abundance of the clinking iron men to buy my share of our chow, I chance just for the leaden-footed second to lack the wherewithal to pay my railroad fare back to Blewett; and the bumpers and side-door Pullman of the argonauts like me not. Too damn dusty. But your analysis is unsynthetic, though you will ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... maybe, it is better, 'nd, maybe, I'm to blame— I'd like to be a-livin' in the mountains jest the same— I'd like to live that life again when skies wuz fair 'nd blue, When things wuz run wide open 'nd men wuz brave 'nd true; When brawny arms the flinty ribs of Red Hoss Mountain smote For wherewithal to pay the price ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... this he had also hammered out a philosophy of life, an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical and sensible one from his point of view. When I asked him what he lived for, he immediately answered, "Booze." A voyage to sea (for a man must live and get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and the big drunk at the end. After that, haphazard little drunks, sponged in the "pubs" from mates with a few coppers left, like myself, and when sponging was played out another trip to sea and a repetition of the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Curious Case of H. Hyrtl, esq."[20] is a slight yarn in the mellow Stevenson manner, with a kindly old gentleman as the messenger of the supernatural who provides the wherewithal for a marriage between an impoverished artist, who is painting Heliogabolus's feast of roses, and his sweet young thing. Quite a departure this from the usual Saltus manner; nevertheless there are two deaths, one by shock, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... people rose once more against their rulers. It was the case of Wat Tyler over again. A tax-gatherer demanded a small sum—it was but about fivepence—of a poor old woman. Small as it was, she had not wherewithal to pay. He abused her, and seized some of her furniture. She raised an outcry. Her neighbours came flocking in and took her part. The tax-gatherer used threats, and was answered with a volley of stones. Troops were sent to support him in the execution ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... were all glad enough to step up and take a snifter with the stranger, who after so long a voyage they reckoned must have a pocketful of the wherewithal. ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... house and sought the protection of her lover. Accompanied by a chaperon, they left for France. After some romantic adventures, they were married in March, 1772, at a little village near Calais; but it was a wedding without the wherewithal to maintain a home, so the bride entered a convent, and, later, the house of an English physician, until literature should be remunerative. The eloping lady's father sought the runaways; and, after some explanations, they returned with ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... Couples all naked, hidden in the back of an unfurnished alcove, with their naked children; entire populations which no longer go to church on Sunday, because they are naked; bodies kept a week before they are buried, because the deceased has left neither a shroud in which to lay him out nor the wherewithal to pay for the coffin and the undertaker (and the bishop enjoys an income of from four to five hundred thousand francs); families heaped up over sewers, living in rooms occupied by pigs, and beginning to rot while yet alive, or dwelling in holes, like Albinoes; ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... pertinacity, and finally driven out to become a homeless and friendless wanderer upon the face of the earth. My name, sir, is Percival Wax, born and reared under the auspices of riches, but now forced by the reverses of remorseless fate to importune you for the wherewithal to ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... argued the point with him; and insisted he had better stay to take charge of his aunt, in case she should be disturbed by these strangers. Lance replied, "She would have one with her, who would protect her well enough; for there was wherewithal to buy protection amongst them. But for himself, he was resolved to follow ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... inability of the people there to purchase those metals. In a country where the wages of labour are so much higher, and the price of provisions so much lower than in England, the greater part of the people must surely have wherewithal to purchase a greater quantity, if it were either necessary or convenient for them to do so. The scarcity of those metals, therefore, must be the effect of choice, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... on his own appetite; rather would he make distribution of the whole, retaining neither portion for himself. In his view of the matter this doubling of the king's share was not for the sake of surfeiting, but that the king might have the wherewithal to honour whom he wished. And so, too, sleep (2) he treated not as a master, but as a slave, subservient to higher concerns. The very couch he lay upon must be sorrier than that of any of his company ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... there was a sort of invisible coat of mail, of heavenly temper, and proof against the assaults of the Devil, around his sacred person! After a while, Dr. Mather concluded to prepare an account of these extraordinary circumstances, wherewithal to entertain his congregation in a sermon. She seemed to be quite displeased at the thought of his making public the doings of her master, the Evil One, attempted to prevent his writing the intended sermon, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and hence they are not received there. By joining the royal hospital with the hospital of the Confraternity of La Misericordia a place may be provided—which will be of great importance, help, and benefit to the necessities of poor and needy women who have not wherewithal to care for themselves in their sicknesses. It must be no little that they suffer in these regions for lack thereof, and because of their poverty; for even in health there is no little to be undergone, and many are the evils and misfortunes which may result ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... pirates and their prisoners toiled hard at the refitting of the ships. Lumber was not easy to come by in that desolate region and when they had used up all their spare planking, Bonnet took the Royal James out over the bar to hunt for the wherewithal to do his patching. After a cruise of a day and a night to the southward they sighted a small fishing shallop which they quickly overtook, and captured without a fight. The two men in the shallop jumped overboard and swam ashore when they saw the black flag, and Bonnet was too much occupied ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... was examined, and at first persisted in saying that he had only returned from exile because he had not the wherewithal to live abroad. But when put to the torture he was made to endure such agony that, despite his courage and constancy, he confessed that he had formed a plan to introduce a band of Huguenot soldiers with their officers into the Cevennes by way ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the selection of the pieces of stalk and the mode in which they are thrust into the body, it is surprising what a life-like tortoise may be thus produced. While the work of art in question is being handed round on a plate for admiration, the artist may further distinguish himself, if the wherewithal is ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... plantation drew upon the outside world for many articles, especially luxuries, and the owner had to find the wherewithal to make payment. The almost universal answer to this problem was—tobacco. It was not an ideal answer, and historians have scolded the departed planters vigorously for doing the sum in that way, yet the planters were victims of circumstances. They had no ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... out of Kersis (all which are Northerne regions and full of woods) and also out of many other countries of the North, which are subiect vnto them, the inhabitants bring them rich and costly skins of diuers sortes (which I neuer saw in our countries) wherewithal they are clad in winter. And alwaies against winter they make themselues two gownes, one with the fur inward to their skin, and another with the furre outward, to defend them from wind and snow, which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... children; and hence their most responsible duty, as the stewards of God, is to attend to their salvation. You should "give them the bread of life in due season." It will be of no avail for you to inquire, "What shall they eat, and what shall they drink, and wherewithal shall they be clothed;" if you neglect this their highest interest and your greatest trust? "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" It is not the wealth, nor the magnificence of life which will make your home happy; these are but the outward and fleeting ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... condition from the life. Parson Adams is the most excellent of men. His cassock is ten years old; over it he dons a coarse white overcoat, and travels on foot to London to sell nine volumes of sermons, wherewithal to buy food for his family. He engages the innkeeper in serious talk; he does desperate battle to defend a young woman who has fallen into the hands of ruffians on the highway; and when he is arrested, his manuscript Eschylus is mistaken for a book of ciphers unfolding a dreadful ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... ports in the Mediterranean or the ocean, that vast creation of vessels, arsenals, foundries, military houses and hospitals which we had seen springing up in all parts. He had procured by his application, his careful calculations, the wherewithal to build innumerable fortresses, aqueducts, fountains, bridges, the Observatory of Paris, the Royal Hospital of the Invalides, the chateaus of the Tuileries and of Vincennes, the engine and chateau of Marly, that prodigious chateau of Versailles, with its Trianon of marble, which by itself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... considerable. His indirect, and far more certain power, is great indeed. He stands in need of nothing towards dignity,—of nothing towards splendor,—of nothing towards authority,—of nothing at all towards consideration abroad. When was it that a king of England wanted wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even feared, in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... money had been going out and none coming in. For even when Denasia had been making twenty-five pounds a week, they had lived and dressed up to the last shilling; so that a month's enforced idleness and illness placed them deeply in debt and uncomfortably pressed for the wherewithal ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stomach, which at that time would have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her humble purse at a time—be it remembered!—when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... religion of every description, processions, prelates, and often princes and princesses, carriages, litters, caleches, equipages, cavalcades accompanied by trumpeters, gay troops of cavaliers, and ladies with plumes in their hats and rich apparel wherewithal to make themselves attractive; and at intervals you shall hear all manner of songs, concerts, and musical instruments, both civil and military, all done with a modest and devout cheerfulness of demeanour, by which I am reminded of nothing so strongly as of the words ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... was surely driving them asunder. For its sake she was ready to put the seas and continents between them, and treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence and lack ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... and customs, which, more than prayer-books and printed services, tell us what our fathers believed, what we still believe, and how we stand towards that other life, that inner life, that is not concerned with what we eat and what we drink, and wherewithal we ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... certainly planning another supper, and, what is far worse, are adding to the discredit of such an act by resorting to dishonest means of procuring the wherewithal for it. Oh, it is shocking, shocking! And yet Marion cannot be convinced that her girls are capable of deceit. Poor child, poor child, it is fortunate for her that there is someone at hand to come to her rescue at such a crisis," and Mrs. Stone reached the bottom of the stairs ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal To shape out nobler fortunes or contend Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend The allotted pattern of things temporal Or alter it a jot or e'er let fall A single stitch thereof, until at last The web and its drear weavers be overcast And predetermined ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... brought to the pinching turn of his fate. As soon as he had eaten all of the food left in the lodge, he was obliged to pick berries, and live off of such roots as he could dig with his slender hands. As he wandered about in search of wherewithal to stay his hunger, he often looked up to heaven, and saw the gray clouds going up and down. And then he looked about upon the wide earth, but he never saw sister nor brother ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won't help me. But if I could awaken her pity!—if you could give me the wherewithal—" ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the hospital, this fellow with fawning eagerness had pressed his goods upon the wants of the poor clergyman. He had done so, feeling that he should be paid from the hospital funds, and flattering himself that a man with fourteen children, and money wherewithal to clothe them, could not but be an excellent customer. As soon as the second rumour reached him, he applied for his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger of the students, and the general buzz and hum of the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to pay her bill. How pleasant was all the bustle to her now that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy had won for her ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... faith and of his country. The cities shut their gates against him; the people cursed him; even the scanty band of cavaliers who had hitherto followed his ill-starred banner began to desert him, for he had not wherewithal to reward nor even to support them. His spirits sank with his fortune, and he feared that in a little time he should not have a spot of earth whereon to plant his standard nor an ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... attempt the swim from the wreck to the shore, by which time we were both so ravenously hungry that we were prepared to take quite an appreciable amount of risk, if by doing so we could procure the wherewithal to appease our craving for food. And while waiting for the sea to go down we employed our time usefully in cutting adrift the rigging by which the broken masts remained attached to the wreck, thus giving the wreckage a chance to drive ashore upon ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... we can only remotely imagine. But as for Himself, our Lord never once had to blush in secret at His own motives. He never once had to hang down His head at the discovery of His own selfish aims and by-ends. Happy man! The thought of what He should eat or what He should drink or wherewithal He should be clothed never troubled His head. The thought of success, as His poor-spirited disciples counted success, the thought of honour and power and praise, never once rose in His heart. All these things, and all things like them, had no attraction for Him; they ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... breakfast that is to come, included—and there is wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unselfish affection, something that neither mother nor sister can give—the utmost bliss of love. Poor Coralie, after giving up everything for my sake, may perhaps have died for me—for me, who at this moment have not the wherewithal to bury her. She could have solaced my life; you, and you alone, my dear good angels, can console me for her death. God has forgiven her, I think, the innocent girl, for she died like a Christian. Oh, this Paris! Eve, Paris is the glory and the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... other motive than that of industry to inspire him. I have demonstrated that all over the West Indies, even when fatigued with working the allotted hours for the profit of his master, he can work again for wages for him who chooses to hire him and has wherewithal to pay him; I have also most distinctly shown that the experience of Antigua and the Bermudas is demonstrative to show that without any state of preparation, without any indenture of apprenticeship at all, he is fit to be intrusted with his ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... curious thing happened. By the terms of the treaty made with the town the garrison of English and Burgundian soldiery were to be allowed to carry away their "goods" with them. This was well, for otherwise how would they buy the wherewithal to live? Very well; these people were all to go out by the one gate, and at the time set for them to depart we young fellows went to that gate, along with the Dwarf, to see the march-out. Presently here ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... reward in view in the form of extra privileges, finds it hard to descend from his fancied elevation to the lot of a simple apprentice; and his disappointment is not soothed by the discovery that with all his learning he has not learned wherewithal to give ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... upon him, he clanged the bell for Tee-ka-mee, and that faithful servitor, divining the order, brought the aged factor wherewithal to warm himself. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... were always considerate and accommodating towards him during his periodic outbursts of alcoholic craving. He owed much to the care they took of him during his fits of debauchery; and he was not unmindful of it when he had the wherewithal to compensate them. Like most of those wayward inebriates who followed the sea as a calling, he was a perfect sailor; and even his capricious sensual habits did not prevent him being sought to rejoin vessels ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... dictators, the reason of which I conceive to be from an evil custom now grown as strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put their children to be bred up apprentices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such who are so poor, that when they come to be men they have not wherewithal to set up in it, and so can only farm some small parcel of ground, the rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence of the tenant; whilst they who are proprietors of the land are either too proud or, for want of that kind of education, too ignorant to improve ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... cheese; but his rhymes were not worth a crust. He then tried painting with as little success; and as a last resource, began to search for the philosopher's stone and tell fortunes. This was a happier idea; he soon increased in substance, and had wherewithal to live comfortably. He therefore took unto himself his wife Petronella, and began to save money; but continued to all outward appearance as poor and miserable as before. In the course of a few years, he became desperately addicted to the study of alchymy, and thought of nothing but the philosopher's ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... belief in the old myths about the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, and has learned to smile at many of the superstitions of his uneducated countrymen. But Hinduism as a religion that tells a man not only what he shall eat, what he shall drink, and wherewithal he shall be clothed, but tells him how to perform innumerable acts that men of other nations never think have anything to do with religion at all, Hinduism as an intricate social code, stands largely unaffected ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... would be attended with infinite misery and affliction. The superannuated wretch, thunderstruck with this prediction, held up his hands, and in the first transports of his apprehension, exclaimed, "Lord have mercy upon me! I have not wherewithal to purchase such a long lease, and I have long outlived all my friends; what then must become of me, sinner that I am, one hundred and twenty years hence!" Cadwallader, who enjoyed his terror, under pretence of alleviating his concern, told him that what he had prognosticated did not deprive ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the pulling of the first thread, into bunches of entanglement more hopelessly perverse than the Gordian knot, or the snarls in a child's hair. To the inexperienced victim, desirous of securing the wherewithal to sew a button on, nothing seems easier than to pull a thread out of the bunch of loose filament that lies before him. Rash man! That simple mesh hat a baffling power like unto the Labyrinth of Arsino, and long labor of fingers and teeth aided by heated and improper language, frequently fails ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... home well pleased, not only that he had got wherewithal so fully to satisfy his friends, but also to think that no person in Bagdad could possibly know that the prince and Schemselnihar had been in his other house when it was robbed. It is true, he had acquainted the thieves with it, but on their secrecy he thought he might very well ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Turpin; "just tighten her girths, Grasshopper, and bring her after me, and thou shalt have wherewithal to chirp over thy cups ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... twenty! Yes," continued he, raising his voice, to the astonished multitude, "you are the real sovereigns of Castile, enjoying all the rights and revenues of royalty, while I, stripped of my patrimony, have scarcely wherewithal to procure the necessaries of life." Then giving a concerted signal, his guards entered the apartment, followed by the public executioner bearing along with him the implements of death. The dismayed nobles, not relishing the turn the jest appeared likely to take, fell on their knees ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... said Ursula. "Do you not know that one general meeting day, God having ordered them to be seated, they answered Him that they had not the wherewithal." ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... that Bickley has been advising for me, and I should be very grateful if you would both come as my guests. You, Bickley, make so much money out of cutting people about, that you can arrange your own affairs during your absence. But as for you, Bastin, I will see to the wherewithal for the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... of philosophy, of understanding, of great fundamental principle, and the masses of the hard-working people of this nation, men and women, do not think upon principles. They can only think on the one eternal struggle wherewithal to be fed, to be clothed, and to be sheltered. Therefore I ask you not to compel us to have this question settled by what ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... said Jack, issuing from the hatchway; "here are our stores: a ham, two Dutch cheeses, two callabashes full of Rockhouse malaga, and there is plenty of fresh water in the gourds; with these, we have wherewithal to defy ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones in his nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what they please, and laying up the residue for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... forth and grow, nor need the little rattles, Nor must be treated to the humouring nurse's Dear, broken chatter; nor seek they divers clothes To suit the changing skies; nor need, in fine, Nor arms, nor lofty ramparts, wherewithal Their own to guard—because the earth herself And nature, artificer of the world, bring forth Aboundingly all things ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... and when M. Desmoulin had lighted a cigar, his friend a pipe, and myself a cigarette, a regular Council of War was held. [N.B.—M. Zola gave up tobacco in his young days, when it was a question of his spending twopence per diem on himself, or of allowing his mother the wherewithal to buy an extra pound ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... why, I have my trunks full. As soon as they arrive, I shall have wherewithal to dress myself like a prince. Come, laugh, then, a little. No? Well! seriously, my girl, I do not refuse, while waiting for Gringalet and Cut-in-half to fill my money-box. Then I will return it. Adieu, my good Jeanne; the next time you come, may I love my name of Pique Vinaigre, if I do ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... drifted toward Concho. After all, he was not equipped to ride, as he had no saddle, bridle, chaps, boots, and not even a first-class rope. Pete had too much pride to acknowledge his lack of riding-gear or the wherewithal to purchase it, even should he tie up with the Concho boys. So when Andy White, again visiting the sheep-camp, told Pete that the Concho foreman had offered no encouragement in regard to an extra hand, Pete nodded as though ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to walk towards the stairs that she could not see; as she did so she heard his keys jingling, and knew from the sound that he must be hunting the wherewithal for illumination. He struck a match and adjusted it in the small hole at the end of the box, and as he did so ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... "I and my merry men can sup alone." And, indeed, having had the pick of the plunder of about 28,000 men, they had wherewithal to make themselves pretty comfortable. The prisoners (25,403) were all without difficulty induced to assume the white cockade. Most of them had those marks of loyalty ready sewn in their flannel-waistcoats, where they swore they had worn them ever since 1830. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... braving adverse gales—joyous in fine weather, defiant in the tempest—yes, you know or feel something about this. But to enable the good ship to pursue her way, she must be 'provided.' She must not only have wherewithal to feed crew and passengers, but every special notion which can be conceived of in the ship's 'husbandry.' From out a ship chandler's establishment comes everything, directly or indirectly, which shall furnish ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... corruptions. A scheme of perfection to be realised in a Monarchy, far beyond the visionary Republic of Plato. The whole scenery was exactly disposed to captivate those good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure to crafty politicians. Indeed, there was wherewithal to charm everybody, except those few who are not much pleased with professions of supernatural virtue, who know of what stuff such professions are made, for what purposes they are designed, and in what they are sure constantly ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... sparkling cup, too, and the fruit, turned into bitter ashes; and the pleasant shady grass became a thorny and a troublesome brake: so, pushing by her with the help of his staff, he began to mend his pace; and looking down into the book of light, there shone out, as in letters of fire, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... memorandum, and will order you, for the good of my soul, for whose salvation it will be employed, to pay me a portion of what you owe me, if it please you, and I conjure you for the honour of Jesus, to whom I shall pray to-morrow at my death, that you leave me the wherewithal to found a mass and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... surprised if a poacher is caught, that he incurs the penalty," replied the Roundhead. "So now there's an end of our argument. If you go into the kitchen, you will find wherewithal to refresh the outward man, and if you wish to remain till Oswald Partridge comes home, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... made the Church a present, by the way;) He then threw off the garments which disguised him, And borrowed the Count's smallclothes for a day: His friends the more for his long absence prized him, Finding he'd wherewithal to make them gay, With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them, For stories—but I don't ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... in our society, for the good reason that the towns and villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The banks hasten to lend him another L20,000, especially if he has a reputation for "business ability"; and with this round sum he can command the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... I give you credit for that. One word of this and I go to durance vile. Silence, and the whole of us profit and get the wherewithal to live. I often think, Ewart, that the public, as they call it—the British public—are an extraordinary people. They are so confoundedly honest. But, nowadays, there surely isn't any honesty in life—at least, I've never found ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... I ask no why. I see the trouble. It's your aunts. Why, I'll take them with you, of course! I'll take them into my care and love as you have them in yours, and keep them there while they and I live. I can do it, I've got the wherewithal! Things have happened to me fast since I first saw you turn that corner behind us. I've inherited property, and only yesterday I was taken into one of the best law firms in the city. I'll prove all that to you and your aunts to-morrow. Aline, unspeakable ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... the Sydney-Cove's crew, until several of them died. Small runs or pools of water are to be found almost every where under the high parts of Cape-Barren Island, and it is probable there may be some upon Clarke's Island; but at the Passage Isles we found it difficult to obtain wherewithal to satisfy our thirst. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... pass through many States, in the two senses of the word. Possibly you may find yourself in a state of thirst, but although you are surrounded by drinks galore you cannot get the wherewithal to quench it, for you are passing through a proclaimed State, and drinking in that is illegal. Or you may be passing through a State free from the temperance faddist, where intoxicating beverages are to be had for paying for them, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Australians back a short two hundred yards they could give the Sultan the resounding prestige of a Peninsula freed from the Giaour. But that would require more Turks than the Turks could feed, whereas we know we could do it now, as we are—given the wherewithal—trench mortars, hand grenades and bombs, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... then, as reincarnated, required solid transportation, after the manner of human beings? They became angry. A raft was a raft, substantial, necessary; and there was no reason why a god who had ten thousand temples for his own should stoop to rob a poor man of his wherewithal to travel in safety. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... I sing, To profit wherewithal, Clip folly's wanton wing, And keep her within call. I've little else to give, But thou canst easy try; The lesson how to live Is but ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the best. Thou wilt find trouble in purveying these necessaries; and then must come the gim-cracks for the second course,—gods, goddesses, fates, furies, battles, marriages, music, and the maypole. Hast thou within thee wherewithal?" ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... distinct, she always had to wear a cap owing to some slight affection of the head, so that I have no recollection of her as a young and pretty mother. Her trying position at the head of a numerous family (of which I was the seventh surviving member), the difficulty of obtaining the wherewithal to rear them, and of keeping up appearances on very limited resources, did not conduce to evolve that tender sweetness and solicitude which are usually associated with motherhood. I hardly ever recollect her having fondled me. Indeed, demonstrations of affection were not common in our family, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... demurred Loring. "And I hate to spoil sport, but I've got a good thing which must be put through to-night or not at all. I ran in to get Mitchell to handle it for me. I've got the opportunity, but not the wherewithal." He made the candid admission with a ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... they had, and even the most precious things that had been laid up as treasures by them, for a very small matter, and swallowed down pieces of gold, that they might not be found out by the robbers; and when they had escaped to the Romans, went to stool, and had wherewithal to provide plentifully for themselves, for Titus let a great number of them go away into the country, whither they pleased. And the main reasons why they were so ready to desert were these: That now they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... hard to be consistent in this world, uncle. My mother once made a resolution to use nothing polluted by Intemperance or Oppression, but finding that it required her to take constant thought "what we should eat and drink, and wherewithal we should be clothed," she was fain to relax ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... of sharing in the distribution of his estate; but in spite of this abuse of power there is among Negroes and Bantus a definite and acknowledged Law, to which an appeal can be made by persons of all classes, provided they have the wherewithal to set the machinery of it in motion. The difficulty the children and widows have in sharing in the distribution of the estate of the father and husband arises, I fancy, in the principle of the husband's brothers being the true heir, which has sunk into a fossilised ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... he wants to be better stored, the great mint-masters of this kind of terms, I mean the Schoolmen and Metaphysicians (under which I think the disputing natural and moral philosophers of these latter ages may be comprehended) have wherewithal abundantly ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... of character and taste, as well as a sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong her in the sight of gods and women, though men ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... sisters. I, too, was reduced to extreme destitution. I lived at the little farm on brown bread, milk, and eggs, and had in secret sold successively in the neighboring town all the books and clothes I had brought from Paris, to procure wherewithal to pay the postage of Julie's letters, for which I would have sold my ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... his estates to find the wherewithal for Vincent's schemes of charity, and he would have stripped himself of all that he had, had not Vincent himself forbidden it. His sword, which had served him in all his duels, and to which he was very much attached, he broke in pieces ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... but at length we entered the great city. Nothing but disappointment awaited us. In vain I applied at the Navy Office. I had satisfied the board at Surgeon's Hall, it seemed nothing but money could help me at the Navy Office, and by that time I had not wherewithal to purchase a dinner. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... taunt a suitor with having taken no head, but few of them will make the taking of a head an essential condition of the bestowal of their favour or of marriage. A mother will remark to a youth who is hanging about her daughter, BISI DALAM, BISI DELUAR BULI DI TANYA ANAK AKU (When you have the wherewithal to adorn both the interior and the exterior of a room (I.E. jars within the room and heads without in the gallery) you can then ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... "O Shaykh, what be thine occupation?" and the poor man answered, "O my lord, I am a fisherman with a family to keep and I have been out between mid-day and this time; and not a thing hath Allah made my portion wherewithal to feed my family. I cannot even pawn myself to buy them a supper and I hate and disgust my life and I hanker after death." Quoth the Caliph, "Say me, wilt thou return with us to Tigris' bank and cast thy net on my luck, and whatsoever turneth up I will buy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... signify much to you," said I, "seeing I have wherewithal in the locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that hereafter; so, old boy, let's have some grog, and then say if you can ship me with one of them cowers that are lying ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... was smitten, as with physical pain, by a craving for her presence, for the gleam of her eyes, for the greatness of sympathy and comprehension that inhabited her generous and beautiful frame. The need of her was imperious. He stopped at a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, called for the wherewithal to write, and like a poet in the fine frenzy of inspiration, poured out his soul to her over the heels of the armies ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... sacrificed to the Eatua? His answer was No, only bad men. I asked him several more questions, and all his answers seemed to tend to this one point, that men for certain crimes were condemned to be sacrificed to the gods, provided they had not wherewithal to redeem themselves. This, I think, implies, that on some occasions, human sacrifices are considered as necessary, particularly when they take such men as have, by the laws of their country, forfeited their lives, and have nothing ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... woman, whatever her station in life. No position in life is more responsible than that of the person who arranges the bills of fare and selects the food for the household; and what higher mission can one conceive than to intelligently prepare the wherewithal to make shoulders strong to bear life's burdens and heads clear to solve its intricate problems? what worthier work than to help in the building up of bodies into pure temples fit for guests of noble ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the ghost of Mame goes on, as she crosses the room with a wooden spoon in her hand, "one must say that she had good taste in dress. That's no harm, no; but certainly they must have the wherewithal. She was always a child. I remember she was twenty-six when they carried her away. Ah, how she loved hats! But she had handsome ways, for all that, when she said, 'Come along with us, Josephine!' So I brought you up, I ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... a little courage. Did you not say that fortune awaits us? And have we not now the wherewithal to constrain fortune? Burgundy, then, to... to toast ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the suburban drawing-room. It was the Woolsack, and the svelte figure, swinging towards it with the easy stride of superlative grace and comparative youth, was the LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR! Before him, at respectful distance, went his Purse-bearer, ready to produce the wherewithal should his Lordship desire a pick-me-up by the way. Behind him came the Mace-bearer, and, a foot further in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and if those are rendered uneasy these must share in the calamity, but even of this inferior sort no small proportion contribute largely to excises, as labourers and out-servants, which likewise affect the common seamen, who must thereupon raise their wages or they will not have wherewithal to keep their families left at home, and the high wages of seamen is another burden upon our foreign traffic. As to the cottagers, who are about a fifth part of the whole people, some duties reach even them, as those upon malt, leather, and salt, but not much because ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... included Mr. Irwine in a general statement concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?—careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks, preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral office ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Nature had given him liberally of the wherewithal for indulgence in that relaxation, and Durnovo smiled rather constrainedly. Joseph was grabbing at the long reedy grass, bringing the canoe to a standstill, and it was some moments before his extensive mouth submitted ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... fact that he himself was growing old too; that the time of reckless daring was past for both of them, and that they had to seek refuge in prudent cunning. They wanted peace; they were disposed to reform; they were ready even to retrench, so as to have the wherewithal to bribe the evil days away, if bribed away they could be. Babalatchi sighed for the second time that night as he squatted again at his master's feet and tendered him his betel-nut box in mute sympathy. And they sat there in close yet silent communion ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteenpence, and so on; but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascal-raggamuffins, and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when he was bound ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... have never had an active part in the enjoyment of the classic art of eating. So far, they always provided the wherewithal, and looked on, holding the bag. Modern hotels, because of their commercial character, have done little to perpetuate it. They merely have commercialized the art. Beyond exercising ordinary salesmanship, our maitres d'hotel have not educated our nouveaux riches ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... that they are, after all, the external decorations of an inward discipline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of material things, but rather a keen sense of moral and physical efficiency, which pays due heed to wherewithal ye shall be clothed, at any rate outside of Palestine. Those who dream and discuss may wear anything or nothing. It mattered not what Socrates wore. But men of action must wear the easy armor that fits them best for their particular task. Men who toil either at their pleasure or at their ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... them money. Don't dole them out poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these things. When your Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people cash, for it is the warp of civilization, whatever the woof may be. The imagination ought to play upon ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... in Berkshire, where himself and his family were ensconced in a small red house near the Stockbridge Bowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means of obtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the world to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "'There was wherewithal,' he said, 'to become an honest man; I should have become so; it is so easy when rich! yet how many rich men are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... came off to welcome them, and brought all sorts of wines and spirits, and provisions from the shore, far more indeed than the crew could by possibility consume. The wine and spirits, however, seemed to be most welcome, and the crew, having an abundance of wherewithal to carouse, sat down to make themselves happy. Never have I heard a set of human beings jabber away at the rate they did; they laughed, and sang, and pledged ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... overjoyed at this, and gave them a good supper; but they were so much afraid that they could not eat. As for the Ogre, he sat down again to drink, being highly pleased that he had the wherewithal to treat his friends. He drank a dozen glasses more than ordinary, which got up into his head and obliged ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. "Why, so I haven't," he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. "I guess," he continued, hastily, "this is worth a dollar or two." He drew a chain up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... " it reduces this family to nothing : all they can hope is, by the help of their parents and friends, to get together wherewithal to purchase a cottage in America, and live ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... wherewithal to still the cravings of hunger, the youth might now be seen daily roaming about the streets, idle and listless. One day in this sad condition he was loitering about in the great square of the city, when his attention was attracted by a crowd of people, who seemed to be gathered around ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... that freedom, but be entangled again in the yoke of bondage, and become a slave, if not to open and profligate sins, still surely to an evil and tormenting conscience, to superstitious anxieties as to whether he shall be saved or damned, which make him at last ask, 'Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with this, that and the other fantastical action, or great sacrifice of mine?' or at last, perhaps, the old question, 'Shall I give my firstborn for ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... eating rushes close to us. How was I, single-handed, to regain possession? That was the burning question. A diplomatic course commanded itself as the only possible one. There were six men who expected rewards, but the wherewithal was held in seisin by other six. The fight, if there were one, should be between the two parties. I would hope to prove, that when thieves fall out honest men come by ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... have got so far as this, that the ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss overhead, and finished mediaevally with ultramarine blue and gilding,—and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of bookshelves which require only experienced carvers, and the wherewithal to pay them, to be the divinest things ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
