"Chisel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... square. The floor at some time had been varnished, and the cracks, or joints of the trap, had been filled and sealed with the varnish. I now hoped I had found the habitation of my troublesome and noisy guest. I procured a chisel and cut the varnished joint, and found that there was a trap door, as I supposed. By the aid of a long screwdriver I was able to move the door, but at that moment a repetition of the noise, immediately under me, made me hesitate for a moment to try ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... tried a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit the little English lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket a chisel and hammer, and falls to work like a professional burglar, actually bursting ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... specimen, is the small rock temple, which, being hewn out of the solid stone, is still in complete preservation. This is a small chamber in the face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has been shaped into an arched doorway. The interior is not more than perhaps twenty-five feet by eighteen, and is simply fitted up with an altar and the three figures ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... to snatch as much as we can from oblivion—such is our natural love of immortality; but it is here that letters obtain the noblest triumphs; it is here that the swarthy daughters of Cadmus may hang their trophies on high; for when all the pride of the chisel and the pomp of heraldry yield to the silent touches of time, a single line, a half-worn-out inscription, remain faithful to their trust. Blest be the man that first introduced these strangers into our ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the end of a long hot day's labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone, and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and Cure, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... asleep, when the soldiers, informed by the spies, entered his chamber, bound him, and marched him off on foot by night, to Alais. He was thrown into gaol, and was afterwards judged and condemned to death. His friends in Alais, however, secretly contrived to get an iron chisel passed to him in prison. He raised the stone of a chamber which communicated with his dungeon, descended to the ground, and silently leapt the wall. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... me of it,' he said slowly. 'I wish it hadn't. It weighs some few thousand tons—unless you cut it out with a cold chisel.' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... regard his achievement merely as a graceful conceit. Art is, therefore, an imitation of nature; but it is an intellectual and not a mechanical imitation; and the performances of the camera and the music-box are not to be classed with those of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's chisel. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the rock the rough and rudest stone, It needs no sculptor, it is Washington; But if you chisel, let the strokes be rude, And on his bosom ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... justice?" cried the Breton. "Justice, this is it!" and he advanced to the lawyer and the doctors, threatening them with his chisel. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... carpenter's tool-basket, and taking from it an old chisel, a screw-driver, and a pair of pincers, went back to the room we ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... as silently as the winds since the first rock was riven where its foundations were to be laid, and still all day on the clean air sounds the lonely clink of drill and chisel as the blasting and the shaping of the stone goes on. The snows of winters have drifted deep above its rough beginnings; the suns of many a spring have melted the snows away. Well nigh a generation of human lives has already measured its brief span about the cornerstones. ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... "but I think he's hardly writing Merlin's history: though it's true enough that old saying about Merlin: he wrote it all with his fore finger: and yet they tell me it is cut as deep into the rock as if it had been done with chisel and mallet. But he must clear the moss off the face of the rock before he'll read that. And it's not every man that will read it when ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... rude: an adze of stone, a chisel or gouge of bone—generally that of a man's arm between the wrist and elbow—a rasp of coral, and the sting of a sting-ray, with coral sand as a file or polisher. With these tools they built their houses and canoes, hewed stone, and felled, clove, carved, and polished timber. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... which stands on the south-east portion of Sahal, a little island lying in the First Cataract, two or three miles to the south of Elephantine Island and the modern town of Aswan. The inscription is not cut into the rock in the ordinary way, but was "stunned" on it with a blunted chisel, and is, in some lights, quite invisible to anyone standing near the rock, unless he is aware of its existence. It is in full view of the river-path which leads from Mahallah to Philae, and yet it escaped the notice of scores of travellers who have searched the rocks ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... chisel Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well, In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle - Pits, where ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... banks of a creek, beside a country road, or in an old orchard, will answer the purpose. Soft wood trees seem to be preferred, however. In the prairie states it occasionally selects strange nesting sites. It has been known to chisel through the weather boarding of a dwelling house, barns, and other buildings, and to nest in the hollow space between this and the cross beams; its nests have also been found in gate posts, in church towers, and in burrows of Kingfishers and bank swallows, in perpendicular ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... bearing on his person, in his honorable scars and deficient limbs, the decorations which exalt and ennoble him in the eyes of his countrymen. Many a chivalrous deed will be recounted with pride and satisfaction, and handed down to immortality by the pen of history and poetry, and by the pencil and chisel of art. Even the undistinguished services of those who have fought in the war for the Union, and who have passed unchallenged through the fiery ordeal, will be cherished by their children, and transmitted to their remoter posterity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a chisel instead." Crossing to the fire I found my iron red-hot, and taking it betwixt two flat pieces of wood that served me for tongs I laid it upon my stone anvil, and fell forthwith to beating and shaping it with the hammer-back of my hatchet until I had ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... take: newspapers for wrapping samples, notebook and pencil, geologist's pick, cold chisel, magnifying glass, compass, heavy gloves, a knife, and a knapsack. Later on, you may want a Geiger counter for ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... pliable than jelly—as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from depths In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself, And whence all baser substance may be worked; Refine it off to air, you may—condense it 105 Down to the diamond—is not metal there, When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips? —Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach, Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep? Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised 110 By the swift implement sent home at once, Flushes and glowings radiate and hover About its track? Phene? what—why ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... as to cover the freshly-raised walls, generally placing the carved side against the crude brick, and leaving the back exposed to receive fresh sculptures, but sometimes exposing the old sculpture, which, however, in such cases, it was probably intended to remove by the chisel. This process was still going on, when either Esarhaddon died and the works were stopped, or the palace was destroyed by fire. Scarcely any of the new sculptures had been executed. The only exceptions ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... more than one scientific meeting. It is still in the possession of Mr. Daft, who would doubtless be glad to show it to any one wishing to see it.—N.B.—the term “celt” is not connected with the name Celtic or Keltic, but is frem a Latin word celtis, or celtes; meaning a chisel, and used in the Vulgate, Job xix., 24, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the fields and the woods. Walking one day by the sea he picked up the backbone of a great fish, and from 20 it he invented the saw. Seeing how a certain bird carved holes in the trunks of trees, he learned how to make and use the chisel. Then he invented the wheel which potters use in molding clay; and he made of a forked stick the first pair of compasses for drawing circles; and he studied out many other curious and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Mason-bee's nests. The pebbles in the waste-lands supply me with plenty of buildings of the Chalicodoma of the Walls; the byres scattered here and there in the fields give me, under their dilapidated roofs, in fragments broken off with the chisel, the edifices of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I am anxious not to complete the destruction of my home hives, already so sorely tried by my experiments; they have taught me much and can teach me more. Alien colonies, picked up more or less everywhere, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... though rarely, I have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet black eyes, shaded by their long dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... tools of the carpenter were the ax, adze, handsaw, chisels of various kinds (which were struck with a wooden mallet), the drill, and two sorts of planes (one resembling a chisel, the other apparently of stone, acting as a rasp on the surface of the wood, which was afterwards polished by a smooth body, probably also of stone); and these, with the ruler, plummet, and right angle, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... it was new?" The Elgin Marbles are allowed by common consent to be the perfection of art. But how much of our feeling of reverence is inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel. Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... become! But a brick yielded at last, and with trembling fingers I detached it. Darkness within, yet beyond question there was a cavity there, not a solid wall; and with infinite care we removed another brick. Still the hole was too small to admit enough light from the dimly illuminated cell. With a chisel we pried at the sides of a large block of masonry, perhaps eight bricks in size. It moved, and we softly slid ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... without a decent cause: There was an Irish lady,[149] to whose bust I ne'er saw justice done, and yet she was A frequent model; and if e'er she must Yield to stern Time and Nature's wrinkling laws, They will destroy a face which mortal thought Ne'er compassed, nor less mortal chisel wrought. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... bravely are strongest; The humble and poor become great; And so from these brown-handed children Shall grow mighty rulers of state. The pen of the author and statesman,— The noble and wise of the land,— The sword, and the chisel, and palette, Shall be held in the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... the valley with the usual noise and hurly burly. A travelling native carpenter is here, and all the village are bringing their ploughs to be mended, he is very clever with his hoe-shaped hatchet fashioning the hard walnut wood so correctly with it, that the chisel is hardly necessary for the few finishing touches. I have seen him make some wooden ladles very rapidly, and he has provided me with a new set of tent pegs and mallet and a wooden roller, by means of which I hope to avoid the digital process in the manufacture ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... road would give a child forty cents for. He knew its value. I should say Vladimir and Elisabeth had tapped the same till. Helen, go and see if you can find out anything more from the child or his mother. And Roger, get a chisel and hammer and hatchet and perhaps you and Mr. Schuler and I can take down these boards and see what there is ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes A lucid mirror, in which nature sees All her reflected features. Bacon there Gives more than female beauty to a stone, And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips. Nor does the chisel occupy alone The powers of sculpture, but the style as much; Each province of her art her equal care. With nice incision of her guided steel She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil So sterile ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... term whow, indeed, conveyed to them the idea not of their quality, but only of their use; for it is the same by which they distinguish a tool, commonly made of bone, which they use both as an auger and a chisel. However, their knowing that we had whow to sell was a proof that their connections extended as far north as Cape Kidnappers, which was distant no less than forty-five leagues; for that was the southermost place on this side the coast ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... suit of greasy overalls, and went into the grimy vitals of the destroyer, a wrench in one hand, a chisel in the other. In about ten minutes he had solved the problem, explained it to the mechanics gathered about him, and then demonstrated just how simple the remedial measures were. All torpedo boat officers ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... exquisitely executed. The mouldings are still so sharp, that they seem as lately from the chisel of the mason. The south transept window and door are the most perfect of the ruins. The day light of the window is twenty-four feet by sixteen, divided by four mullions. The tracery and cuspings are all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... refugees. Such a cove my eagle eye detected in a man who entered the shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows of age, and who requested Poll to shave him clean. He was a sailor-man to look at; but his profile, David, might have been carved by a Grecian chisel out of an iceberg, and that steel grey eye of his might have struck a chill, even through a chink, into any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of Montague Tigg. The task of rasping so hirsute a customer seemed to sit heavy on the soul of Poll, and threatened to exhaust the ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... not harder than Porphyry or Agate, the Chisel of my love, drove by the Mallet of my fidelity, would have made some impression on thee. I, that have shaped as I pleased the most untoward of substances, hoped by the Compass of reason, the Plummet of discretion, the Saw of constancy, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... and so forth, but they are all of American pattern. There's nothing in the nature of a trademark to be found from end to end of the place; even the iron sluice-gate at the bottom of the brick tunnel has had the makers' name chipped off, apparently with a cold chisel. So you see they were prepared ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... X-ray rooms and operating theatre against whose walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of instruments for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in certain cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate tool ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... of stone, thou knowest, so soft in the quarry, that it may in manner be cut with a knife; but if the opportunity not be taken, and it is exposed to the air for any time, it will become as hard as marble, and then with difficulty it yields to the chisel.* So this lady, not taken at the moment, after a turn or two across the room, gained more resolution! and then she declared, as she had done once before, that she would wait the issue of Miss Howe's answer to the letter she had sent her from hence, and take her measures accordingly—leaving it to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... vision is presented to us which by its wavy or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a landscape with soft gradations of raising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight which seems to influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large we experience an attraction to embrace it with our lips as we did in our early infancy the bosom of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... breathable and there seemed to be plenty of it, as if some efficient means of artificial ventilation had been provided; nevertheless, it was nothing else than a cavern that we were exploring, and though there were traces of chisel and adze work on the walls, the only ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... She grasped the chisel and inserted it in the crack, pushing on it with all her might. But the door resisted, and Cynthia was just uttering the ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... formerly belonged to the Villa-Ludovisi, whence it was removed to the Museum of the Capitol by Clement XII. It is from the chisel of AGASIAS, a sculptor of Ephesus, who lived 450 years before the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... seeds for food, and saved a portion of them for next year's crop. When minerals were discovered, and fire was applied to them, and the minerals were smelted into metal, man made an immense stride. He could then fabricate hard tools, chisel stone, build houses, and proceed by unwearying industry to devise the manifold means and ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... satisfied, he rose to his knees, and took from his vest pocket a small diamond ring. Holding this firmly between his thumb and forefinger, he described a semi-circle on the heavy window-glass. He listened again, intently. Then he took a small cold-chisel from still another pocket, and having cut away the putty at the base of the semicircle, smote the face of the glass one ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... meanwhile, was looking with concern upon his companion's grave face, whose flawless profile might have emerged into life under the thought-laden chisel of Lysippus. He wondered what he could say or do to drive away this melancholy. The youth had been so bright that day at the entertainment of the Duchess; he seemed to have stepped straight out of a sunny dialogue of Plato. Serious trouble now shone out of his ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a dream, why not the way to sharpen a chisel? ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... private life. It seemed, however, that Sarah's ambition was to gain personal notoriety even more than theatrical fame; and by her performances of one kind or another outside the theatre make herself the talk of society. She affected to paint, to chisel, and to write; sent pictures to the Salon, published eccentric books, and exhibited busts. She would receive her friends palette in hand, and in the dress of a male artist. She had a luxurious coffin made for her, covered with velvet, in which she loved to recline; and she more ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Ajax, and Diomed, are not the only inmates of Elysium. Socrates, and Plato, and Homer, Apelles and Zeuxis, are all there too. The poet and the philosopher, the painter and the sculptor, rank as high through pen, pencil, and chisel, as the warrior by his blade and his bloody exploits. Art, in the North, finds no existence, and strikes no sympathizing chord in the bosoms of the sturdy Northmen. Art, to be perfect, requires a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... down three hundred feet of limestone terraces, one below the other, as straight as if a carpenter had ruled them with his ruler and then cut them out with his chisel. There was no ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Committee of the Falkland Islands suggest that whales should be marked by a small projectile. This is much better than screwing the monster into a vice and carving its name and address on it with a chisel. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... talkin' and the blacksmith was makin' a rod and he took it out of the forge and put it on the anvil and it sputtered sparks, and he pounded it around, and finally he took a chisel and cut off a piece, and I watched it grow from dull red till it got black and looked like a piece of licorice. So I went and picked it up. Gee! but it just cooked my fingers, and I yelled. "Thar's your ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the characters and incidents become more and more interesting in themselves, the moral, which these were to show forth, falls more and more into neglect. An architect may command a wreath of vine-leaves round the cornice of a monument; but if, as each leaf came from the chisel, it took proper life and fluttered freely on the wall, and if the vine grew, and the building were hidden over with foliage and fruit, the architect would stand in much the same situation as the writer of allegories. The "Faery Queen" was an allegory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... buildings," replied Jack, showing a thin steel wedge and a small steel cold chisel. "It just happened to strike me that they might have forgotten something, so I took a look around and ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... just finished a hole when the little boy came, and he went ahead to the next round hole, and he put the edge of the chisel carefully against the wood, and he struck ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... casehardened. Such parts are found to be quite as durable as if made of forged steel, and are, of course, less costly. As to the automatic tools now used in the construction of the machines, it may be said that scarcely a file, hammer, or chisel touches the frame or parts while they are being assembled to work together. The interchangeable system of construction is, of course, the only one possible for the accurate production of the millions of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... the use of the Mallet and Chisel; the development of the energies and intellect, of the individual and the people. Genius may place itself at the head of an unintellectual, uneducated, unenergetic nation; but in a free country, to cultivate the intellect of those who elect, is the only ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... spoken of engaging and disengaging frictions; we do not know how we can better explain this term than by illustrating the idea with a grindstone. Suppose two men are grinding on the same stone; each has, say, a cold chisel to grind, as shown at Fig. 17, where G represents the grindstone and N N' the cold chisels. The grindstone is supposed to be revolving in the direction of the arrow. The chisels N and N' are both being ground, but the chisel N' is being cut much the more rapidly, as each particle ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... was the identical 'Mutual Admiration Society,' which at present converts its consistent servile members into Damon and Pythias, but punishes any violation of its canons with hatred dire and inextinguishable. Were I blessed with the genius of Praxiteles or of Angelo, I would chisel and bequeath to the world a noble statue,—typical of that rare, fearless friendship, which, walking through the lazaretto of diseased and morbid natures, bears not honied draughts alone, but ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... on a near-by shelf I see some tools—a chisel and a hammer. What is to prevent me from knocking his brains out? Once he is dead I have but to smash the phials and his invention dies with him. The warships can approach, land their men upon the island, demolish Back Cup with their shells. Ker ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... there should be carried such carpenter's tools as a hand- saw, auger, gimblet, chisel, shaving-knife, &c., an axe, hammer, and hatchet. The last weapon every man should have in his belt, with a hunter's or ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... disobedience to orders, from the highest to the lowest, brought about the worst results, and all that now remains to tell the story of the failure of this vast undertaking is a monument to the memory of the foolhardy heroes, from the chisel of Charles Summers, erected on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... seized with a profound sadness, and I begin to write, but at the first lines I perceive that, without suspecting it, the historian's chisel has superseded the novelist's pen in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... expression. The area of a workman's studio you might cover with a napkin, or say, a small table-cloth. The carver takes the model and whacks it out in granite without any pointing or other help than his hand and eye and a pointed iron chisel and hammer, and he loses very little indeed of the character of the model, in fact, as little as some well paid ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... only in painting and in the use of colour, under which title are comprised all forms, and all bodies upright or not upright, palpable or impalpable, visible or invisible, but also in the highest perfection of bodies in the round, with the point of his chisel. And from a plant so beautiful and so fruitful, through his labours, there have already spread branches so many and so noble, that, besides having filled the world in such unwonted profusion with the most luscious fruits, they have also given the final form to these three most noble arts. And so ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... raised hearth of a rather pretentious fireplace, or place of fire, for it resembled not at all the tiny little cooking hearth of desert Indians. A stone hatchet lay beside it, and, what was much more surprising, two iron instruments of white man's manufacturing, a wedge and a long chisel. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! —Love, while able to acquaint her While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art. Gone, music too! The air was stirred By happy wings: Terpander's* bird *[Footnote: Terpander, a famous ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... breathed? Her eye seems to have motion in it.' 'I must draw the curtain, my liege,' said Paulina. 'You are so transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives.' 'O, sweet Paulina,' said Leontes, 'make me think so twenty years together! Still methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.' 'Good my lord, forbear!' said Paulina. 'The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?' 'No, not these ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... making much headway," observed Sam, after pegging away for a while. "Wish we had a hammer and a cold chisel." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... one of the machinists, and a pleasant-faced young man, came aft with an ensign, a hammer, chisel, and paint pot. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away, and the long toil of drill and chisel only in too much danger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... game. One player goes out. The others decide on some workman to represent, each pretending to do some different task belonging to his employment. Thus, if they choose a carpenter, one will plane, one will saw, one will hammer, one will chisel, and so on. Their occupation has then to be guessed. It is perhaps more interesting if each player chooses a ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a stifled groan. Some tools lay on a shelf hard by. He grasped a chisel and went to his task with ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?—for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit! What greater sarcasm can Mr. Ruskin pass upon himself than that he preaches to young men what he cannot perform! Why, unsatisfied with his own conscious power, should he choose to become the type of incompetence ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... has ever done anything worth doing has done less highfalutin than Morris. He was always the craftsman who kept close to his material, and thought more about the block and the chisel than about aesthetic ecstasy. The thrills and ecstasies of life, he seems to have felt, must come as by-products out of doing one's job as well as one could: they were not things, he thought, to aim at, or even talk about overmuch. I do not agree with Morris, but that is beside the point. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... consoled myself each night with the anticipation of opening day. The end of the fortnight arrived at last. I promised my sable cohort such a spread in the playhouse as it and they had never beheld. Barratier, Mariposa's brother, borrowed a hammer and chisel from "the shop," and pried off the lid. All crowded close to peep in. The box was almost full. Sticks of peppermint candy, with ribbons of red and white winding about them (a barber's pole reminds me of them to this hour); lollipops, also of peppermint, that would ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... trains, tribes, or circles of action. Thus when any one at first begins to use the tools in turning wood or metals in a lathe, he wills the motions of his hand or fingers, till at length these actions become so connected with the effect, that he seems only to will the point of the chisel. These are caused by volition, connected by association like those above described, and afterwards become parts of our diurnal trains or circles ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Art of God." He ought to study, therefore, the sculpture, the paintings, the music, of the Great Artist, and understand the principles on which He produces the beautiful in form, in colour, or in sound. The humblest mason who plies his chisel on the highest pinnacle of a great building, or who fashions the lowliest hut, should have an eye to Him who makes all things very good, and for conscience' sake, ay, for God's sake, he should, to the very best of his ability, work in the spirit of the Great Architect, who bestows the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... of this huge carnivorous dinosaur were found in England nearly a century ago, and the descriptions by Dean Buckland and Sir Richard Owen and the restorations due to the imaginative chisel of Waterhouse Hawkins, have made it familiar to most English readers. Unfortunately it was, and still remains, very imperfectly known. It was very closely related to the American Allosaurus and unquestionably similar in appearance ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... that merely illustrates the personal character of its heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that indifference, the living men are set before us—the image cut with half a dozen strokes of the chisel. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... found pure, and in an almost workable state; and at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a sword; whilst tempered steel could answer all these purposes. Hence we find the early warlike nations making the backs of their swords of gold or copper, and economizing their steel to form the cutting edge. This is illustrated by many ancient Scandinavian weapons in the museum ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... He was tall and thin and Mephistophelian, though not of the dark complexion which is commonly associated with Mephistopheles. His clean-shaven face got its marked character, not from its coloring but from its cut; Nature's chisel would seem to have been more freely used than her brush in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe, the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed rather than strong. The chin did not support ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... this region—Catholic Jesuits—is of something over two hundred years. That record preserves matters of less interest than this would be, but not this. Then again we say it would have scarcely less interest as a work of the chisel, than a petrifaction. ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... off as easily as the first and with no ill effects. Jason pushed a sharp chisel between the upper case and the baseplate where he had removed the solder, and when he leaned on it the case shifted slightly, held down only by ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... cylindrical shafts about 18 inches deep by 6 inches diameter with smooth perpendicular sides. There is no adjunct to the flippers which appears to be of service in the digging, yet the holes are such that a man would find it impossible to make without the use of a chisel. Whether they are dug with the flippers, or bored, or bitten out with the bill, does not appear to be known. Eggs varying in numbers from 120 to 150 are deposited in each shaft, and covered loosely with the spoil ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... did not condescend an answer. Newton went into the shop, and returned with a chisel and hammer. Taking a chair to stand upon, he very coolly ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... at such a place. There are no exposures of rock at the foot of this rapid; but along its upper part runs a ledge of asphalt-like rock as smooth as a street pavement, with an outer edge as neatly rounded as if done with a chisel. This was the finest bit of tracking path on the river, excepting, perhaps, the great pavement beneath the cliff ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... any other. Nevertheless, he thought it would be good fun, and at all events would do no harm, to cut a hole there, and see what was underneath. Accordingly, he quietly procured a saw and a hammer and chisel, and one day, when the family were away from home, he locked himself into his room, and went to work. The job was not an easy one, the tough oak wood being almost enough to turn the edge of his chisel, and there being no purchase at all for the ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... shall not carry vermin that are themselves plague-carriers. In the donkey-engine section of the for'ard house is a complete fumigating apparatus. The mutineers had merely to lay and fasten the pipes aft across the coal, to chisel a hole through the double-deck of steel and wood under the cabin, and to connect up and begin to pump. Buckwheat had fallen asleep and been awakened by the strangling sulphur fumes. We in the high place had been smoked out by our rascals like ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... thousands. When he reached the summit, he deliberately seated himself on the highest stone, with one leg on each side of the vane; and while his clothes were visibly fluttered in a strong breeze at such an eminence, he, with a hammer and chisel, displaced the cross that had caused such alarm, It flew spinning to the earth, and, borne away by the wind, fell in a neighbouring field, where it sank twenty inches into the soil. The air was now rent with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... manly beauty—one of those productions of the American race which are very rare, but which, when seen, are the nearest approach to physical and mental perfection that is ever attained in this world. He was about five feet ten inches in height, and with body and limbs in as perfect proportion as the chisel of Phidias ever carved from marble. Even his long, black hair, which hung luxuriantly and loosely about his shoulders, was of softer texture than is the rule with his people. Several stained eagle feathers slanted upward and outward from the crown, and a double row of brilliant ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... my chisel; my sword, wrapped in a cloth to muffle the strokes, furnished me a maul. Full half the day was before me. The rough paving stones below held out the hope of escape or death. How to reach the street after the bars were removed, I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... engine be started so that we could move out of the path of the oncoming steamer. The moment the engine started to turn, however, there was a grinding sound of tortured steel, and when it had been stopped, we found that some one had placed a cold-chisel in one of ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their hardened surfaces facing. In reducing the food, the teeth of the lower jaw move against those of the upper, while the food is held by the tongue and cheeks between the grinding surfaces. The front teeth are thin and chisel-shaped. They do not meet so squarely as do the back ones, but their edges glide over each other, like the blades of scissors—a condition that adapts them to cutting off and separating the food (D, Fig. 65). The back teeth are broad and irregular, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... steady growth to greatness and honor. To write history was to write poetry, art, philosophy, religion, life. The pen that sketched the rise, the progress, and the fate of nations, was in fact the chisel of a sculptor, whose ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... novel it would look like the most exaggerated caricature. The Rococo, however, can bear the strongest laying on of color and the most distorted forms. It was not without some reason that, in those days, they loved to chisel or carve on every house door and on the neck of every violin a hideous face which is making grimaces and sticking out its tongue. Many of the figures in Moliere's and Holberg's comedies, and in the innumerable farces written in imitation of them in the eighteenth century, now appear to us ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Cano was with the pencil, he loved the chisel above all his other artistic implements. He was so fond of sculpture that, when wearied with painting, he would take his tools, and block out a piece of carving. A disciple one day remarking that to lay down a pencil ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Dunmore, except for one thing. Arnold Rivers must have heard, somehow, that Lane Fleming had been shot with a Confederate .36 that he'd bought somewhere that day, and that the revolver was in the hands of this coroner of yours. So Arnold, with his big chisel well ground, went to see if he could manage to get it out of the coroner for a few dollars. And when he saw it, lo! it was the .36 Colt that he'd sold to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... quite easy for them to slip this hasp back with an ordinary knife. The rest isn't difficult to guess. They must have made some noise while they were breaking into the safe; well, not 'breaking into' it, for they must have opened it with a key, because there wasn't even the mark of an ordinary chisel on the safe. You noticed that, my lord, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... when sufficient fuel is obtainable for the purpose. Earthen crucibles are employed to liquefy the metals, and the castings are made in clay moulds. For the inlaid work, in which the Tibetans greatly excel, they use hammer and chisel. Inlaid ornamentation is frequently to be seen on the sheaths of Tibetan swords, the leaf pattern, varied scrolls and geometrical combinations being most commonly preferred. The process of hardening metals is still in its infancy, and Tibetan blades are ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the position he suggested, I looked up. Away back in the days before the white man was a power to be reckoned with in the Indian's scheme of things, some warrior had stood upon that self-same ledge and hacked out with a flint chisel what he and his fellows doubtless considered a work of art. Uncanny-looking animals, and uncannier figures that might have passed for anything from an articulated skeleton to a Missing Link, cavorted in a long line across that tribal picture-gallery. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the water, sir, and will need a chisel, or some tool of that sort. Just call out to one of the men, sir, if you please, to pass me a chisel from my tool-chest. A good stout one ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del scalpello,"—"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts attained by ministry of the chisel." ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... these beautiful labours of long ago, that not only to him and his fellows of the proud nineteenth century, when fiery words are flashing through the seas, and steam fights like a demon with time, were the living years pregnant with the glories of art; but that the Egyptian, with his rude bronze chisel, cut his native rocks with no unskilful hand, before the Son of God ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... reckless manner, in order that a few selected specimens may survive, and be the parents of the next generation. It is as though individual lives were of no more consideration than are the senseless chips which fall from the chisel of the artist who is elaborating some ideal form from a rude block" (loc. cit., page 119).); but surely Nature does not more carefully regard races than individuals, as (I believe I have misunderstood ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... they do? You're right! Hah! they dance Spanish dances. I've seen black eyes that went through you like a sword; I've seen blue eyes that drilled through you like an auger; and I've seen gray ones that bit through you like a cold-chisel; and I've seen—now, there's Miss Garnet's, that just see through you without going through you at all—O I don't like any of 'em! but Fannie Halliday's eyes—Miss Fannie, I should say—they seem to say, 'Come out o' that. I'm not looking at all, but I know you're there!' ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... itself, is studded with enormous nails placed in geometric figures. The arch is semicircular. On it are carved the arms of the Guaisnics as clean-cut and clear as though the sculptor had just laid down his chisel. This escutcheon would delight a lover of the heraldic art by a simplicity which proves the pride and the antiquity of the family. It is as it was in the days when the crusaders of the Christian world invented these symbols by which to recognize ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... man came into one of the police stations of the city, and complained that his house had been robbed. He had pursued the thief without success, but the latter had dropped a chisel, and had torn up and thrown away a piece of paper in his flight. The captain commanding the station and an experienced Detective were present when the complaint was made. They carefully examined the owner of the house as to the mode by which the entrance had ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... when Anderson took hold of him and placed the wounded finger on a block, and Dad faced him with the hammer and a blunt, rusty old chisel, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... long that too much bread will be poison to you now." And she at once dropped her hand, laid her bread upon the plate, and gazed into his eyes like a submissive child. And if any words could express—But neither chisel, nor brush, nor mighty speech is capable of expressing what is sometimes seen in glances of maidens, nor the tender feeling which takes possession of him ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of herbage; his nostril wide expanded, his lips slavering from intense excitement; his whole form motionless, and sharply drawn, and rigid, even to the straight stern and lifted foot, as a block wrought to mimic life by some skilful sculptor's chisel; and, scarce ten yards behind, his liver-colored comrade backs him—as firm, as stationary, as immovable, but in his attitude, how different! Chase feels the hot scent steaming up under his very nostril; feels it in every nerve, and quivers with anxiety to dash on his prey, even while perfectly ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Lenore, revived her, soothed her, gave her of the same cordial to drink, and placed her once more in her dais-seat. Her veil was thrown back, her wide blue eyes fixed on me in intense strain, her face and lips still blanched more bitterly beneath that hue, her features sharp as chisel-graven death. Ah, God! must I endure that too? Was she to hear me,—she, not knowing why, never knowing why,—she in whom that look of aching passion and pity was to die out and freeze and fade in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of your hand. (Aside.) Millicent said "strength and the admiration of strength is his keynote." (Aloud.) You must see for yourself that your hand isn't a weak one, and see how the lines are cut—as if with a chisel. (Aside.) He's purring already ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... The face of nature hath renewed its youth; Still have I seen no change come over thine, That looked a grave amid a blooming world. Thou'rt like some moonless image, carved in stone By sculptor's chisel, that doth ever keep ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... workmen by ropes over the brow of the cliffs, lowering them down until they were opposite the point to be operated upon, and, after making fast the ropes which held them, leave them there to work for hours with hammer and chisel. There was one piece of roadbed, not more than ten rods in length, where the track seemed to run on a narrow shelf barely wide enough for the cars to pass, which is said to have required seven years to render available. We can well conceive it to have been so, for the whole road ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... those days factories. The master of a craft worked, surrounded by his craftsmen and apprentices. Every wheel and spring were made upon the premises, fashioned and finished with chisel and file; and there was an interest in the work far beyond any which it possesses in the present day, when watches are turned out wholesale, the separate parts being prepared by machinery, and the work of the artisan consisting solely in the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... no guns, and could not shoot their game, whatever it was; but each of them had a biliong. This was the implement Achang had bought in Sarawak. It looked something like a pickaxe with only one arm, the end of which was fashioned like a mortising chisel, and ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... judge. She had an expressive mouth, eyes instinct with love, flesh of dazzling whiteness. And add to these details, which would have filled a painter's soul with rapture, all the marvelous charms of the Venuses worshiped and copied by the chisel of the Greeks. The artist did not tire of admiring the inimitable grace with which the arms were attached to the body, the wonderful roundness of the throat, the graceful curves described by the eyebrows and the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... over himself to the smithy the very next day, and get the parts I needed cut on the lathe. "All you need do is to give me the measurements," he said. "And you must want some tools, surely? Saw and drills; right! Screws, yes, and a fine chisel ... is that all?" ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... period, inscriptions were engraved, carved or impressed with sharp instruments, and of patterns characteristic of a graving tool, chisel or other form which could be adapted to particular substances like stone, leaves, metal or ivory plates, wax or ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... approach destroys the charm. It is found to be a "sham." The lines of the mouldings, mullions, etc., are warped by the heat attendant upon the process of the manufacture. The exquisite sharpness of outline produced by the chisel is wanting, and there is (in consequence of the impossibility of undercutting) an absence of that effect of light and shade which is the characteristic of the mediaeval carvings. The greatest shock is, however, experienced on an examination of the interior. What at first sight appear to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... time," he said, in speaking of Don Giovanni, "in the sacred earth of Hellene we find a fragment, an arm, the debris of a torso, scratched and damaged by the ravages of time; it is only the shadow of the god that the sculptor's chisel once created; but the charm is somehow still there, the sublime style is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland |
