"Pottage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old and noble, and Don Ippolito was paid from its purse rather than its pride. But the slender salary was a help; these patricians were very good to him; many a time he dined with them, and so spared the cost of his own pottage at home; they always gave him coffee when he came, and that was a saving; at the proper seasons little presents from them were not wanting. In a word, his condition was not privation. He did his duty as a ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... find one but Jacob that had any, And no grant would he make for ought that I could say, Yet no man alive with fairer words could him pray. But the best red pottage he hath, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... little consort near were about forty more of the same sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly. Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well considered before it came out, and never interrupting one another in a yarn, as did the younger harum-scarum chaps in ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... meat, or rost Beef, a few stew'd Prunes, a race of green Ginger, a Flap-jack, a Kan of fresh water brewed with a little Cynamon and Sugar be not better than a little poor John, or salt fish, with Oil and Mustard, or Bisket, Butter, Cheese, or Oatmeal-pottage on Fish-dayes, or on Flesh-dayes, Salt, Beef, Pork and Pease, with six shillings beer, this is your ordinary ship's allowance, and good for them are well if well conditioned [not such bad diet for a healthy man if of good quality] which is not alwayes as Sea-men can [too well] ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... be thought on! For, in good earnest, a person at all thoughtful of himself and conscience, had much better choose to live with nothing but beans and pease pottage, so that he might have the command of his thoughts and time; than to have his Second and Third Courses, and to obey the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... admiring his steadfastness in refusing to sacrifice his existence to the first person who spoke him civilly. We may wish there had been more of rugged simplicity in his way of dealing with temptations to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; less of mere irritability. But then this irritability is one side of soft temperament. The soft temperament is easily agitated, and this unpleasant disturbance does not stir up true anger nor lasting indignation, but only sends quick currents ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was wealthy in his own right and heir to more wealth. But—she could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound—sold for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that men and women did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Wealth will enter in, and with Wealth comes jolly Mirth and gentle Peace. May all the corn-bins be full and the mass of dough always overflow the kneading-trough. Now (set before us) cheerful barley-pottage, full ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... pottage. Plumm pottage. Calves' head and bacon. Boiled beef, a clod. Goose. Two baked puddings. Pig. Three dishes of minced Plumm pottage. pies. Roast beef, sirloin. Two capons. Veale, a loin. Two dishes ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... occasion he was in the field hunting. He returned hungry and faint. He found that Jacob had prepared a pot of lentils. When Esau smelled this appetizing food he said to Jacob: "Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint". And Jacob said: "Sell me this day thy birthright". "And Esau said, Behold I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... am sure of—that, had such a measure been proposed by a political speculator previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have been scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon men being generally somewhat worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights, and without the mess of pottage." However, on this memorable day, thus it was the union was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without a muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh. Perhaps there might be a little pause—a silence like that which follows an earthquake; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... worthless, perhaps rather contemptible by a later one—that of falling in love with Rachel, and the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first person who had offered ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... in the second year of Darius, this word of Jehovah came by Haggai the prophet: Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: 'Ask of the priests a decision, saying, "If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any food, shall it become holy?"' And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by reason of a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... a hob-nailed shoe, He stirred into his pottage; Some Irish stew, a pound of glue, ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... Jones, his physician, tells me that in point of fact he has had for the past ten years an unbroken series of favorites, proteges, heirs presumptive; but that each, in turn, by some fatally false movement, has spilled his pottage. The doctor declares, moreover, that they were mostly very common people. Gradually the old man seems to have developed a preference for two or three strictly exquisite intimates, over a throng of your vulgar ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... suppose to some minds, fascinatingly, notorious. But now I was hail-fellow-well-met with him, a bird of his own feather, a rogue of his own kidney, to whom he threw open the gates of his bediamonded and befrilled Alsatia. A pestilential fellow! As if I would mortgage my birthright for such a mess of pottage. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... for the solemn occasion of receiving his parting blessing, which should secure the privileges and pre-eminence of the first-born. The hunter went into the fields, and Rebekah recollected that Jacob had purchased the birthright of his brother for a mess of pottage one day when he came in from the chase faint with hunger and exhaustion. She determined by a stroke of management to secure the patriarchal benediction. She sent him to the flocks after two kids, which ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... this God's Universe an awful Fact and Reality. He has faults enough. The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart, practising for a mess of pottage such blasphemous swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, continual high-treason against his Maker and Self, we will not ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the olden time, fruit was brought in baskets, which stood beside the table. The dishes consisted of fish; meat boiled, roasted, and dressed in various ways; game, poultry, and a profusion of vegetables and fruit, particularly figs and grapes, during the season; and a soup, or "pottage of lentils," as with the modern Egyptians, was ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... entered the Spanish-Texan Territory at Nacogdoches, going through the land buying horses, and lending their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which the Texans made. For though the Americans were few in number and much scattered, they were like the salt in a pottage, and men caught fire and the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... This policy may change its opposition from the tyrannical to the insidious; it can know no other change. Yet do I meet persons who call themselves Americans,—miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright,—who think that a mess of pottage can satisfy the wants of man, and that the Viennese listening to Strauss's waltzes, the Lombard peasant supping full of his polenta, is happy enough. Alas: I have the more reason to be ashamed of my countrymen that it is not among the poor, who have so much, toil ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... REICHSHOFRATH (Imperial Aulic Council at Vienna; chief Court of the Empire in such cases); openly protesting there, That their Papa had no power to make such a bargain, selling their birthright for immediate pottage; and that, in brief, they would not stand by it at all;—and summoned Friedrich Wilhelm to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... own profit; and there is something honorable and philosophical in being a rascal for one's own sake: that is doing things upon principle—upon a grand scale. But a pimp is a thing that defiles itself for another—a pipkin that is put on the fire for another man's pottage! a napkin, that every guest wipes his hands upon! and the scullion says, "by your leave" too. A pimp! I would rather he had called me parricide! But the man was drunk, and did not know what he said; and, besides, I disguised myself. Had he seen it had been Sosia ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... portion the flocks between them. Laban retains the white ones, as most numerous: Jacob has to put up with the spotted ones, as the mere refuse. But he is able here, too, to secure his own advantage: and as by a paltry mess (/of pottage/) he had procured the birthright, and, by a disguise, his father's blessing, he manages by art and sympathy to appropriate to himself the best and largest part of the herds; and on this side also he becomes the truly ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... instead of those produced externally by mustard. If a teaspoonful is sprinkled within the palms and its volatile vapours are inhaled through the mouth and nose, this [22] will dispel an incipient catarrh. The name Pulsatilla is a diminutive of the Latin puls, a pottage, as made from pulse, and used at sacrificial feasts. The title Anemone signifies "wind-flower." Pliny says this flower never opens but when the wind is blowing. The title has been misapprehended as "an emony." Turner says gardeners call the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait! beside, I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: With him I proved no bargain-driver; With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... place were employed in boiling sorrel and different kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square. These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so many dried cakes. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Bonner. As to poor Clary, Sir Thomas was very decided that if there were any truth in the suspicion which had been now roused in his mind as to Ralph the heir, the thing must be put an end to at once. Ralph who had been the heir was now in possession of that mess of pottage for which he had sold his inheritance,—so said Sir Thomas to his daughter,—and would undoubtedly consume that, as he had consumed the other mess which should have lasted him till the inheritance was his own. And he told to Patience the whole story ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... fire to boil their pottage, Two poor old Dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage; But she, poor woman! housed alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came, The long, warm, lightsome summer day, Then at her door the canty dame Would ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... at Frejus, the next in Paris. There, they all adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with him and kill him—click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, or flying out of windows, or drafted among his followers, where they ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... perhaps be permitted to state his personal view of her action. While the negotiations lasted, her position was scarcely a dignified one. It seemed that she was willing, not, indeed, to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage, but to buy her birthright at the cost of complicity in monstrous crime. Neither Italy nor Europe would have profited in the long run by the substitution of "Belgia Irredenta" for "Italia Irredenta." But now that she has ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... be best accomplished. The first thing was to provide plenty of meat for a sacrifice, and with this view the best hunters were dispatched to the forest, in quest of those animals supposed to be most acceptable to the mighty guest. The women were directed to prepare tasmanane and pottage in the best manner. All the idols were brought out, examined, and put in order. As a grand dance was always supposed to be an agreeable entertainment to the Great Spirit, one was ordered, not only for his gratification, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... powder with wooden beetles. The meal is kneaded into cakes, which they lay on a broad hot stone, covering it up with other heated stones, which thus serve instead of ovens. Besides these cakes, they make several kinds of pottage from their maize, and also of beans and pease, both of which they have in abundance. They have also a variety of fruits, such as musk-melons and very large cucumbers. They have likewise large vessels in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... bowl of hot pottage and a warm cake for thee, Naomi. Eat all of it," she commanded. "And talk not to me of robbers. In truth, there are as many robbers in the khan at Bethlehem as upon the length of Jerusalem highway. The caravan to Egypt will pay for straw for six camels and ten mules, will they, when ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... or whet-stone, along with him, for the entertainment of the company — My uncle says, he never desires to meet with more than one wit at a time — One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish; but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage — And now I'm afraid I have given you an unconscionable mess, without any flavour at all; for which, I suppose, you will bestow ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed down through all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!—that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... his eyes on hers. "I know—and you know—what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman—supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the true Swadeshi spirit of her women she may yet be saved. They, at any rate, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city. A regular government was established ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... worldly consolations and exhortations Goodwife Dolly brought him to rise and accept his bowl of pottage, though he could not swallow much, and soon put it ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unworthy the confidence of any people. I believe such men would, if they had the power, and were it to their temporal interest, sell their country's independence, and barter away every man's birthright for a mess of pottage. Well ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your active service, but in that manner ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait, beside! 175 I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor; 180 With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... saddle-cloths to the Buccaneers, as tradition says they dressed their meat under their saddles. However that may be, the beef is good. Here the common mode of using it is to cut it in small squares, and boil it in the mandioc pottage, which is the principal food of the poorer ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... it," answers Floyd, in a tone not to be mistaken, since it implies the young man would dispose of his birthright any day for a mess of pottage. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... pottage, sell true bliss For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown; Thus, Esau-like, our Father's blessing miss, Then wash with fruitless tears ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... great step-sisterhood; and even the silent Lida Bowman, wife of Dick, came from her fastness and for once in a year met her old friends who knew her in the town's early days before she went to South Harvey to share the red pottage of the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... there are dishes of the salacacabia of the Romans; one is made of parsley, pennyroyal, cheese, pine-tops, honey, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen livers; the other is much the same as the soup-maigre of this country. Then there is a loin of veal boiled with fennel and caraway-seed, on a pottage composed of pickle, oil, honey, and flour, and a curious hachis of the lights, liver, and blood of a hare, together with a dish of roasted pigeons. Monsieur le baron, shall I help you to a plate ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... a French street of licensed vice, where strong young fellows were tossing away their birthright for a mess of pottage. He passed on the main street of the city two young Americans from a medical unit who were reeling along in the possession of two harpies. They were shouting to all the passers by, trying to hold up ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... moment engaged in dilating upon the peril through which the country had recently passed, and thanking God that Canada had loyally stood by the Empire and had refused to sell her heritage for a mess of pottage. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... birthright?" said Berry. "We know they had birthrights. And I'd sooner be a birthright than a wine-cooler any day. Besides, Jonah could go as a mess of pottage. There's an idea for you. Talk ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Soul! how glad am I to find thee in my Arms again— and well— When left you Paris? Paris, that City of Pottage and Crab-Wine, swarming with Lacquies and Philies, whose Government is carried on by most Hands, not most Voices— And prithee how ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Obeah-man to swear to his good character, they could not well refuse, under penalty of finding some fine morning a white cock's head—sign of all supernatural plagues—in their garden path, the beak pointing to their door; or an Obeah bottle under their doorstep; and either Brinvilliers in their pottage, or such an expectation of it, and of plague and ruin to them and all their worldly belongings, in their foolish souls, as would be likely enough to kill them, in a few months, of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... life, and saw that she was beautiful beyond all beautiful things, from this love and beauty there sprang up the feeling of jealousy, which is a tempest in the sea of love, a piece of soot that falls into the pottage of the bliss of lovers—which is a serpent that bites, a worm that gnaws, a gall that poisons, a frost that kills, making life always restless, the mind unstable, the heart ever suspicious. So, calling the fairy, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... not your own! Lessons learned by heart! They've already put their uniform on you too. You, too, are rejoicing; you, too, are basking in the sunshine. Chere, chere, for what a mess of pottage you have sold them ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Union was immense; the number estimated at fifty thousand. Thirty thousand of them, at least, expectants, or thinking themselves worthy of office. But, alas! for the ingratitude of man, they were, almost to a man, sent home without getting their share of the pottage.... There has yet been no change in the head of the Indian Bureau, although there are three candidates ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... not sell her birthright for a mess of pottage. She had fought too long for freedom to be bribed to the support of slavery. She had at last a free vote, and rejected the Lecompton Constitution, land grant and all, by a majority of more than ten thousand. The struggle was over. The pro-slavery men were defeated. The North was victorious. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... fancy, it easier to write than to sew for bread, or because they covet the applause and adulation heaped upon successful genius, or desire mere notoriety, generally barter their birthright of quiet, life-long happiness in the peaceful seclusion of home for a nauseous mess of poisoned pottage that will not appease their hunger; and they go down to untimely graves disappointed, embittered, hating the public for whose praises they toiled, cheated out of the price for which they bargained away fireside joys and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... said, "my market is made. I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. Whatever regrets or grief I may have are just. To contemplate a girl like Judith having any interest in me, is ghastly. Judith is yours, whether she realizes it or not. Will you stay ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... named Adom; which appellation he got on the following occasion:—One day returning from the toil of hunting very hungry, [it was when he was a child in age,] he lighted on his brother when he was getting ready lentile-pottage for his dinner, which was of a very red color; on which account he the more earnestly longed for it, and desired him to give him some of it to eat: but he made advantage of his brother's hunger, and forced him to resign up to ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the Mount he never visited his friends, nor saw his native land once he had departed from her. He loved the Blessed Virgin with singleness of heart, and on the seventh day of the week he abstained from one portion of pottage out of devotion to her. In these three desires he was heard of the Lord before his death, namely, to die on an high day, and amid the Brothers—for he greatly loved them—and to have a short death struggle; which things were so brought to pass by our good Lord even as he had ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... child's infancy. Similarly, moral tendencies are transmitted, and the Bible gives us many examples of the fact. The luxury-loving Isaac, who must have his savoury food, just as his son, Esau, who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, Rebekah, who, like her brother Laban is shrewd and cunning, sees her tendency repeated in her son Jacob, who needed a life of discipline and prayer to set ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same, so in all our class-work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental "mess of pottage" that can be taken which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if nothing is assimilated on which the mind could truly thrive, no fault is found with the provision, nor is resultant ignorance considered to be ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the same fire to boil their pottage, Two poor old dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage, But she, poor woman, dwelt alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came, The long, warm, lightsome summer-day, Then at her door the canty dame Would ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... was very different from what it was at home. The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... manor, in the reign of Henry III. held it by this service, viz. to make the king a mess of pottage at his coronation; and so lately as the reign of Charles II. this service was ordered by the court of claims, and accepted by the king at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... I had never received my lord of Essex's honor of knighthood. She is quite disfavored[141] and unattired, and these troubles waste her much. She disregarded every costly cover that cometh to the table, and taketh little but manchet and succory pottage. Every new message from the city doth disturb her, and she frowns on all the ladies. I had a sharp message from her, brought by my lord Buckhurst, namely thus. 'Go tell that witty fellow my godson to get home; it ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind. For a mess of pottage we ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Satyr poured out a mess of smoking pottage and laid it before the Traveller, who at once commenced blowing at it with ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Take Sheeps-heads, Wooll and all, hack, hew, and bruise them into pieces, make Pottage of it, with Oatmeal, and Penny-Royal, and give ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... of divination and sorcery in order to protect themselves and others from diabolical influence. They were both considered as highly, if not equally, criminal. Fuller, in his "Profane State," thus speaks of them: "Better is it to lap one's pottage like a dog, than to eat it mannerly, with a spoon of the Devil's giving. Black witches hurt and do mischief; but, in deeds of darkness, there is no difference of colors. The white and the black are both guilty alike ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... into the front room, my child; leave Anna to prepare our pottage of lentiles, and I will tell you my dream," said Hadassah, leading the way into what might, in a European dwelling, have been called the sitting-room. This, with the place which they had just quitted, and two sleeping apartments ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... expedient, and, in the mean time decline this your judgment simpliciter now as before, and appeal to the ordinary assembly of the church, for reasons before produced in write. Pity yourselves for the Lord's sake; lose not your own dear souls, I beseech you for Esau's pottage: Remember Balaam, who was cast away by the deceit of the wages of unrighteousness; forget not how miserable Judas was, who lost himself for a trifle of money, that never did him good. Better be pined to death by hunger, than for ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... my platter of this pottage, and though it tasted of nothing in my experience—a kind of sweet, cloying meat—I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not so fast as that the young "Gulliver" ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... of the anxieties and perplexities of daily experience could be eliminated at once and struck off the balance, never to return again, if life were but viewed aright, and held in the scale of true valuations. Nothing is more idle than to sell one's soul for a mess of pottage; for the pottage is not worth the price. Seen in the most practical, every-day light, it is a bad bargain. Not only is it true that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesseth, but, conversely, as ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... is of old date and is thus mentioned by Leo Africanus in early sixth century. "It is made of a lump of Dow, first set upon the fire, in a vessel full of holes and afterwards tempered with Butter and Pottage." So says good Master John Pory, "A Geographical Historie of Africa, by John Leo, a Moor," London, 1600, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... great American tradition. The raiment becomes him badly. Speaking in slang and following the baseball scores does not make an American. If he sells his birthright let it be for something more than a mess of pottage. Even if he should succeed in assimilating himself with the other races, whether it be by the accumulation of wealth or baptism or successful denial of his origin, yet we doubt whether he can become really happy—for he is neither fish nor flesh nor fowl. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... to think that they showed no quarter to a fallen foe. Corker had been distilled venom on the particular morning with which this chapter deals on the subject of Jim's Greek. Herodotus, as translated by Jim with the help of a well-thumbed Bohn's crib, had emerged as a most unalluring mess of pottage, and Dr. Moore had picked out Bohn's plums from Jim's paste with unerring accuracy. Whilst Cotton was wishing the roof would fall down on Corker's head and kill him, the other fellows in the Fifth were enjoying the fun. Gus Todd, though, felt for his old friend more than ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... have come down on a special mission from some great chief to his brethren on the Otonabee, and the squaws have cooked some in honour of the guests. That pot that sends up such a savoury steam is venison-pottage, or soup, or stew, or any name you choose to give the Indian mess that is concocted of venison, wild rice, and herbs. Those tired hounds that lie stretched before the fire have been out, and now they enjoy the privilege of the fire, some praise from the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... rather have been the hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt in the promise, rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds with him an essentially noble nature—no brother with his mess of pottage could mulct him of that. And he had a fine revenge; for when Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother was near with four hundred men, and made division of his flocks and herds, his man-servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... honest, industrious tradesman loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalents, drinking water in place of ale, eating his saltless pottage, petitioning for encouragement to his manufactories, and answered ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "Red Pottage," in the presence of a large number of people, including the late Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But the incident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would have thought ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... The fiery sun is setting, and long pencils of color, from palettes of painted glass, touch with rose and gold the low brow and downcast eyes and dainty bosom of a bust of Clyte. Beebe and Moonshee are preparing below in the open air their evening meal; and the smoke of their pottage is borne slowly, heavily on the hot still air, stirred only by the careless laughter of girls plunging and paddling in the dimpled lake. The blended gloom and brightness without enter, and interweave themselves with the blended gloom and brightness ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... him. Once De Wet gets south as far as Britstown he's a dead bird. But we shall be messed about by too many generals. See, how many have we?—Five. That's enough in the way of cooks to spoil any pottage. But personally I don't think De Wet will be the good little fly and walk into our pretty parlour. They don't ask me for opinions; but if I was running this show, I would have halted Plumer on the railway, left the J as it is, and collected an infernal 'push' of men north of the Orange ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... his birthright for a mess of pottage, mother. I will not sell my honor for a sum of money, however acceptable that sum might be. It would never prosper with me, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of pottage," the young man answered gloomily. "It is the cause of my sadness: for that miserable money, and more that is to come, I have ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... basis, or rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or snail-pottage; here is one ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... forth mustard and brawn, pottage, beef, mutton, stewed pheasant, swan, capon, pig, venison, hake, custard, leach, lombard, blanchmanger, and jelly; for standard, venison, roast kid, fawn, and coney, bustard, stork, crane, peacock with his tail, hern-shaw, bittern, woodcock, partridge, plovers, rabbits, great birds, larks, doucers, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... rough, fine-hearted Reynolds," said Mr. Procter, "the one whom you've had threatened with arrest because he harangued too freely on the street corner." He paused to finish impressively: "I see now that the man who throws away his spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage hates the one who keeps his in the ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Swiss Protestant minister and author, is of the opinion that coffee (and not lentils, as others have supposed) was the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright; also that the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given Ruth ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Pease Pottage, in the recesses of St. Leonard's Forest, and two miles from the main route, is Holmbush Beacon Tower. This should be visited for the sake of the magnificent woodland views; in the distance are the south Downs visible from Butser Hill behind Portsmouth ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts with his birthright and does not get even the pottage in return ? It is not necessary to inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... deruely at his dome dy[gh]t hit bylyue. 632 [Sidenote: Abraham appears bare-headed before his guests.] e burne to be bare-heued buske[gh] hy{m} e{n}ne, [Sidenote: He casts a clean cloth on the green, and sets before them cakes, butter, milk, and pottage.] Cleche[gh] to a clene cloe & keste[gh] on e grene, rwe ryftyly {er}-on o re erue kake[gh], & bry{n}ge[gh] butt{er} wyth-al, & by e bred sette[gh] 636 Mete; messe[gh] of mylke he merkke[gh] bytwene, Sye{n} potage & polment i{n} plater honest; As ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... previously seeking, or at least expecting, promotion, & failing in a laudable way,—in defence of his own kindred & the home of his bosom companion!—he resorted to Yankeedom, and sold as it were his birthright for a mess of Abolition pottage. This helps confirm my view, that many take positions in Lincoln's Army with the expectation of military promotion, & the hope of an easy conquest of the South. Oh, how deluded! But as for many of them, "God forgive them, for they know ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage! Don't touch that paper, Crewe, or ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... not hewn small enough. Cicely, look to the pottage, that it boil not over. Al'ce, thou idle jade!"—with a sound box on the ear,—"thou hast left out the onions in thy blanch-porre! Margery! Madge! Why, Madge, I say! Where is Mistress Margery, maidens? Joan, lass, hie ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... now and then we go together, and at good housewives' fires we warm and dress our fairy children. If we find clean water and clean towels, we leave them money, either in their basins or in their shoes; but if we find no clean water in their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milk, or beer, or whate'er we find: for the sluts that leave not such things fitting, we wash their faces and hands with a gilded child's clout, or else carry them to some river, and duck them over head and ears. We often use to dwell in some great hill, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... cooks with a saucepan that only they can use because they have the knack of cooking their food without burning the bamboo. I have often tried to do the same but the result has always been that pot and pottage ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Dogs. Take Sheeps-heads, Wooll and all, hack, and bruise them into pieces, make Pottage of it with Oatmeal, and Penny-Royal, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... that money is a sacred thing; but even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the Faith may be still more sacred. For the rest of us, the issue was formulated by Gladstone sixty years ago: "You have our decision: take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright of the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Punjabis 'a hell' during the Martial Law period. These act constitute a complete series of continuing wrongs against India which if India has any sense of honour, she must right at the sacrifice of all the material wealth she possesses. If she does not, she will have bartered her soul for a 'mess of pottage.' ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... that I would not sell myself to the devil of the flesh and of this present world. What! Barter my birthright of immortality for the mess of pottage of a few brief years of union? Pay out my high hopes to their last bright coin for this dinner of mingled herbs? Drain the well of faith dug with so many prayers and labours, that its waters may suffice to nourish a rose planted in the sand, whose blooms must ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... formed a pretty sight, with their hair all tied on the tops of their heads with red, green, and blue ribbons. One teacher asked a row of eight children, "Where does rice grow?" The whole eight opened their mouths wide, filled as they were with the pottage, and replied in concert, in a sing-song, "It grows in the water." Then the teacher gave the order, "Hands up!" and it was pretty to see all those little arms fly up, which a few months ago were all in swaddling-clothes, and all those little ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... state wherein righteousness and justice should rule. Sovereignty over a state may be initiated by force but it can never be made the permanent basis on which sovereignty rests. "States have been defrauded of their birthright with scarcely the grace of a contract for a mess of pottage, but the possession may be kept only by a return to justice. The strongest is not strong enough to be always master, unless he transform his strength into right ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... stewed with them to ameliorate the broth, says very little for their succulence. The sweetness, as well as the greenness of the "case to the botanical collection," may fairly be doubted. We should have an ill opinion of the pottage that needed an old portmanteau to improve its consistency, and strongly mistrust the nutritious qualities of the meagre wallabi-broth, which followed so closely on the heels of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... blood, causeth troublesome and terrible dreames, offendeth the eyes, dulleth the sight, &c." Nor does Parkinson give a much more favourable account. "Our dainty eye now refuseth them wholly, in all sorts except the poorest; they are used with us sometimes in Lent to make pottage, and is a great and generall feeding in Wales with the vulgar gentlemen." It was even used as the proverbial expression of worthlessness, as in the "Roumaunt of the Rose," where the author says, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... mingled ever with the grander passion of seeing life as a ruined thing; her birthright to aspiring cleanness sold for a mess of quick-lunch pottage. And as she walked in a mist of agony, a dumb, blind creature heroically distraught, she could scarce distinguish between sordidness and the great betrayals, so chill and thick ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or a little more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess of pottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown our own feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... inaccurately; then, benefiting by his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... killed more, I will have a coat made out of them." "But what shall we do with the body?" said she, for as yet men had not begun to eat animal food, but lived on vegetables alone. "Cut it in two," he answered, "and season our pottage with one half of it at a time." She did so. The boy, who was of a very small stature, continued his efforts, and succeeded in killing ten birds, out of the skins of which his sister ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... they'll drive liberty from out the land; but when a brave people, like the Americans, from their infancy us'd to liberty (not as a gift, but who inherit it as a birth-right, but not as a mess of pottage, to be bought by, or sold to, ev'ry hungry glutton of a minister) find attempts made to reduce them to slavery, they generally take some desperate successful measure for their deliverance. I should not be at all surpris'd to hear of independency ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... brothers, and sight especially, the tricky Jacob of the family, is keen upon the business of seizing the entire inheritance, while smell, like hairy Esau, comes late to the blessing, hungry from the hills, and willing to trade its inheritance for a mess of pottage. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... to have a feeling, which she never expressed to anybody, that her gold dollar was somehow like Esau's birthright, and something dreadful would happen to her if she parted with it. She felt safer, because a "mess of pottage" didn't sound attractive to her, and she did not think she would ever be tempted to spend her gold ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... come subdued reflection in which he had weighed himself against the trimly clad English gentleman and—found that he was wanting. What had he to offer her by comparison with that which the other man might offer? What was his "mess of pottage" to the birthright that the other had preserved? How could he dare go, naked and unkempt, to that fair thing who had once been his jungle-fellow and propose the thing that had been in his mind when first the realization of his love had swept over him? He shuddered as he thought of the irreparable ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vision such a cock's head In the path—and it was white! Saw Brinvilliers {334} in his pottage: Faltered, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... imagination. He had not dreamed of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is generally boiled maize, or Indian corn, mixed with kidney beans or Sometimes without.... Also they mix with the said pottage several sorts of roots, as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts, and other roots, and pompions, and squashes, and also several sorts of nuts or masts, as oak-acorns, chesnuts, walnuts: These husked and dried, and powdered, they thicken their pottage therewith."— ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... world, be rolled And sphered to perfect freedom, ere the old Incrusted statutes that our God defy Be crushed in its rotation, and those die That lived defiance through them. Then man's gold No more shall manhood buy, or men be sold For pottage messes. We may not be nigh To see the glory, but if true and bold Our hands may haste what ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one cup of water for us all to drink from, and each one has a wooden spoon. But Abu Hanna, you will see, prefers to eat without a spoon. After the blessing is asked in Arabic, Abu Hanna says, "tefudduloo," which means help yourselves. Here is kibby, and camel stew, and Esau's pottage, and olives, and rice, and figs cooked in dibbs, and chicken boiled to pieces, and white fresh cheese, and curdled milk, and ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... among soldiers than by any precise recollection of the way, and he sat down to warm himself before the brazier of red coals which Alric shovelled out of the camp-fire that burned outside. His men gave him a pottage of beans, with bread and wine, as it was Christmas Eve and a fast-day, and there was nothing else, for all the fish brought up from the sea had been bought early in the day for the great nobles, long before Gilbert had come into the lines. But he neither knew nor cared, and he ate ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... esteemed them not. They have left us a priceless heritage. Is there to be found among us now one who would so dishonor the memory of these sainted dead; one so lost to love of country and loyalty to his race, as to offer to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage? When we were slaves, Garrison labored to make us free; when our manhood was denied, he proclaimed it. Shall we in the day of freedom be less loyal to our country and true to ourselves than were the friends who stood for us in our night of woe? Many victories ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and diet, gratis. The diet is very good and wholesome, being commonly boiled beef, mutton, or veal, and broth, with bread, for dinners on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, the other days bread, cheese, and butter, or on Saturdays pease-pottage, rice-milk, furmity, or other pottage, and for supper they have usually broth or milk pottage, always with bread. And there is farther care taken, that some of the committee go on a Saturday weekly to the said hospital to ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... quantity than is given in other cases:—viz. of the decoction, five ounces, of common oil, three ounces, of sugar, two ounces, and of cassia fistula, one ounce. But if she will not take a clyster, one or two yolks of new laid eggs, or a little peas-pottage warm, a little salt and sugar, and supped a little before meat, will be very convenient. But if her belly be distended and stretched with wind a little fennel seed and aniseed reduced to a powder and mixed with honey and sugar made after the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... somersaults—an art at which bears excel. At night it slept by Juon's side and made itself cosey by burying its snout in his bosom. When meal-time came, the bear sat down beside Juon, for he knew that every second slice of cheese would be his. He also fetched fire-wood to put under the pot in which the maize-pottage was boiling. Then, too, he explored the woods in search of wild honey and brought back his booty to share it with Juon. When it was very hot he carried his pelisse after him, a pelt more or less made very little difference to him. Juon had nobody to speak ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... of his own comfort, but now he sent his servant to take a mantle to the mother because she looked like his daughter at home, who had named her boy for him. And there was a peevish clerk who had paid for the last bowl of pottage they had, who gave it to the little family ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Davis, is a considerable sum of money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... good deal of feeling into their crying of special editions when I reached the streets again; but I was not inclined to waste further pence upon the Sunday News' moralizings over the evolution of canards. I took a mess of some adulterated pottage at a foreign restaurant in Notting Hill, as I had no wish to return to Bloomsbury before the Demonstration. The waiter—either a Swiss ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... received, that four masses per annum should be said for them during life, at the four chief feasts, and 300 per annum for either or both after death, for ever; on the anniversary of Hugh, the Abbot bound himself to feed the poor with bread, beer, pottage, and one mess from the kitchen, for ever. (Rot. Pat., 20 Edward the Second) In the Appendix to the companion volume, In All Time of our Tribulation, will be found an account of the petitions of the two ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight, Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break, prithee. What ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... friend and close comrade; yet now he walks free and lives in ease, while my poor husband is in slavery. Why is it thus? Because he over yonder was false to his oath, to his friends, and to his king. He sold them all, like Esau, for a mess of pottage. Mark him well, my child, and beware of his like; for in these days they are not a few, and woe to any who ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... man, comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearers know it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in their heart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal, and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a mess of pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have a lurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many a slaveholder in America probably had for the clerical defenders of the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... Infant are a bell, a flask, a spoon to eat pottage with, and a cape. Trowle the servant has nought to offer but a pair of his wife's old hose; four boys follow with presents of a bottle, a hood, a pipe, and a nut-hook. Quaint are the words of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... heel—at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and ran very heartily after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He pissed in his shoes, shit in his shirt, and wiped his nose on his sleeve—he did let his snot and snivel fall in his pottage, and dabbled, paddled, and slobbered everywhere—he would drink in his slipper, and ordinarily rub his belly against a pannier. He sharpened his teeth with a top, washed his hands with his broth, and combed his head with a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... interested and unblushing liar is a higher being than the moral cur whose likes and dislikes are at the beck and call of bullies that stand between him and his own soul; such a creature gives up the most sacred of all his rights for something more unsubstantial than a mess of pottage—a mental serf too abject even to know that he is being wronged. Wretched emasculator of his own reason, whose jejune timidity and want of vitality are thus omnipresent in the most secret ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... When they were at table, and Kraka's son and stepson were about to eat together, she put before them a small dish containing a piebald mess, part looking pitchy, but spotted with specks of yellow, while part was whitish: the pottage having taken a different hue answering to the different appearance of the snakes. And when each had tasted a single morsel, Erik, judging the feast not by the colours but by the inward strengthening effected, turned the dish around very quickly, and transferred to himself ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... diabolical pursuit, which a great part of our christian community are engaged in. Now, brethren, I need not enlarge on this point. You that have been observing, have already seen the trap under the bait; and although some of our population have been foolish enough to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, yet I doubt whether the Colonization Society will entrap many more. It is too bare-faced, and contrary to all reason, to suppose, that there is any good design in this project. If they are willing to restore four-fold for what they have taken by ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... consisting of honey and I know not what barbarian cheese, and of many and costly drugs fetched from foreign parts. If to make up this composition so many ingredients were requisite, and so difficult to come by and so expensive, Hesiod might have kept his breath to cool his pottage, and never blessed the world with the discovery. And yet I admire how your landlord, when he went to perform the great purification for the Delians not long since, could overlook the monuments and patterns of the first aliment which the people brought into the temple,—and, among other cheap fruits ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... secretaries, all dine at four tables, on the quarters of a single pullet: The victuals of the under servants were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in the other scale: A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and then ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... occasion to try them; when, if they prove their abilities, I will promote them; but if not, I will put them to death." He then allotted them an apartment, with an allowance of three cakes of bread and a mess of pottage daily; but placed spies over them, fearing lest ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... another; but commerce is an exchange between friends; and there is no desire but that it should be just, any more than there would be between members of the same family.[49] The moment there is a bargain over the pottage, the family relation is dissolved:—typically, "the days of mourning for my father are at hand." Whereupon follows the resolve, "then will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... conspiring with the King against his comfort, and then ordered the boots to be chopped into little pieces, stewed and seasoned. Then sending for the culprit shoemaker, he ordered him to eat his own boots, thus converted into a pottage; and with this punishment the unfortunate mechanic, who had thought his life forfeited, was sufficiently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... baffled her. Why should they care for the same things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie Villines ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... nearly starved, and finding his younger brother cooking some lentils, begged a portion of it for himself. Jacob seized the chance to make a sharp bargain. He offered his brother the food—which is called in the quaint Bible language a "mess of pottage"—making him promise in return that he would let their father give his blessing to the younger instead of the older son. Esau was a careless fellow, too hungry to think what he was saying, ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. "For what are you selling us?"—they seemed to say. "Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—and we must pay! ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there are now three: nor should we overlook the rasher and the sausage. It is the earliest place where we get some of our familiar articles of diet—beef, mutton, pork, veal—under their modern names; and about the same time such terms present themselves as "a broth," "a browis," "a pottage," "a mess." ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... that three years was of age, Unto him said: "Father, why do ye weep? When will the gaoler bring us our pottage? Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep? I am so hungry that I cannot sleep. Now woulde God that I might sleep for ever! Then should not hunger in my belly creep. There is no thing save bread ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair; and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth the dealers offered him a set of false teeth and an auburn wig; if he demanded peace ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "For pottage and puddings and custards and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies! We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon, If it was not for pumpkin ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... treatment like any other of His Majesty's soldiers; the regimental surgeons had quite sufficient science to cure him. And it regularly happened that after a four or five days' course of a platter of coarse barley pottage, and half an ounce of plain black commissariat bread, the young gentleman was so completely cured of every bodily ailment that he had never the faintest wish ever afterwards to divert himself in the hospital, but preferred instead to attend to his ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and who gained the rewards of the world because they sought "first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." As it was, their favorite measure, "negro suffrage," was defeated for that time, and several of those who sold their birthright of truth and justice for a miserable mess of pottage in the shape of office and emoluments, lost even the poor reward for which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... method of prayer was employed by the early Christians, until the splendid vision of the Christ became obscured and finally lost to the Church by its bargaining with Constantine for a mess of pottage, namely, temporal power. Then began to rise that great worldly institution, the so-called Holy Church. In the first half of the sixth century Justinian closed the schools of philosophy at Athens. For a while Judaizing Christianity continued its conflict with Gnosticism. And then ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... all are nearly alike in composition and nutritive value. They have long been esteemed as an article of diet. That they were in ordinary use among the Hebrews is shown by the frequent mention of them in Scripture. It is thought that the red pottage of Esau was made from the red ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... reign of Edward the First, 1299. But at that time, what were the wages of the labourer? The ploughman's wages were about five shillings a-year, fifteen shillings by the present scale; a maid for making "pottage" received ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... not believe that any have ever achieved. But there they stand all down the ages! Ecclesiastics help the deception and keep up the illusion by calling it Miracle or "Special Providence," and so prevent man from entering his birthright, to possess it; and so we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. It is like the dissipated, poverty-stricken spendthrift, who shuts his eyes and refuses to believe that any, by industry, economy, integrity and hard work have secured a competency. And so he cries, "Come on, boys! let's have ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... provided for that before they had remained halfe a yeare in this new Collony they fell into extreame want, not havinge anything left to sustein them save a little ill conditioned Barley, which ground to meal & pottage made thereof, one smale ladle full was allowed each person for a meale, without bread or aught else whatsoever, so that had not God, by his great providence, moved the Indians, then our utter enemies, to bringe us reliefe, we had all utterlie by famine ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... certain West End corner, where they both descended. Little Mr. Constable's sensations were, if anything, less enviable, and he had not Mr. Plimpton's recuperative powers. He had sold that night, for a mess of pottage, the friendship and respect of three generations. And he had fought, for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... time it were that thou shouldst dine, And thou wilt not, I will go to mine.' 'I bid thee (said he) vere up the pot.' 'A ha! (she said) I trow thou dote,' Up she goeth for fear, at last, No question mooved where it should stand Upon his hed the pottage she cast, And heeld the pot stil in her hand. Said and swore, he might her trust, She would with the pottage do ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown |
