"Sharpen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she needed most to finish her sandals were scissors. They would cost so much to buy she would have to manage without them. Fortunately she had her knife, and with the help of a stone to sharpen the point she could make it fine enough to trim ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... and with the force of the pressure there flies off a knife, with its point, and edge on each tide, as neatly as if one were to make them of a turnip with a sharp knife, or of iron in the fire. Then they sharpen it on a stone, using a hone to give it a very fine edge; and in a very short time these workmen will make more than twenty knives in the aforesaid manner. They come out of the same shape as our barbers' lancets, except that they have a rib up the middle, and have ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of that identical stranger, seen with Doe at the fire among the assailants at the memorable ruin, whose appearance had awakened the first suspicion that there was more in the attack than proceeded from ordinary causes. This was a discovery well fitted to increase the interest, and sharpen the curiosity, of the man of peace: who peering in upon the pair from the chink, gave all his faculties to the duty of listening and observing. The visage of Doe, dark and sullen at the best, was now peculiarly moody; and he sat gazing into the fire, apparently ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... would be an easy business, or that the man would be able to hit upon a scheme at once; but now that he has gone so far as to agree to carry notes, the thought that he may, if he succeeds, soon have his little farm in Brittany, will sharpen ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... fast thinker. Years of teaching Roman history to classes of dozing students, interested only in easy credits, are not reckoned to sharpen one's wits. However, I instantly realized what must have happened. I tapped the ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... "We must sharpen it up. It's bad to have a dull conscience; so you may stay here till dinner-time, and talk about it with Nan. I trust you both not to untie yourselves ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... surface of the paper becomes roughened, so that it will soil easier and be harder to clean. In order to produce fine pencil lines without requiring a very frequent sharpening of the pencil it is best to sharpen the pencil as in Figures 7 and 8, so that the edge shall be long in the direction in which it is moved, which is denoted by the arrow in Figure 7. But when very fine work is to be done, as in the case of Patent Office drawings, a long, round point is preferable, because the eye can see ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... partakers of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife is ground upon a wheel, the sparks fly fast from the edge held down upon the swiftly-revolving emery disc, but that is the only way to sharpen the dull blade. Friction, often very severe friction, and heat are indispensable to polish the shaft and turn the steel into a mirror that will flash back the sunshine. So when God holds us to His grindstone, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... coarse wretch! Yes, but he is a lion. Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has endured for two centuries, and we still continue wondering at him, and admiring him. What a strength in that arm! What splendor of will hidden behind that tawny beard, and those honest eyes! Sharpen your pen, my good critic, shoot a feather into him; hit him, and make him wince. Yes, you may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too; but, for all that, he is a lion—a mighty, conquering, generous, rampageous Leo Belgicus—monarch of his wood. And he is not ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all you have done, to put yourself in my power!' cried she. 'Well, you sha'n't escape me THIS time!' And she took down a large knife and began to sharpen it.' ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... a while," he answered. He sat down facing her. "At six o'clock I found out you were here. At eight—as soon as I could get away—I came out. I told you how I spent the evening. If I had needed anything to sharpen my longing for you that would have done it—but I think I had reached about the limit of what I could bear in that line already. It has been one constant augmenting thirst for a draught that was out of my reach. I shouldn't have kept my promise not to write you another day after ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... black Lords; and Dwarfs obscene With lavish tongues; and Trolls; and treacherous Things Like loose-lipp'd Councillors and cruel Kings Who sharpen lies and daggers subterrene: And flashed their evil eyes and weeping cried, "We ruled the world for Peace. By ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... mingled with his worst and most inhuman acts, and the slightness of the occasions upon which he delighted to hang his most memorable atrocities, aggravated their impression at the time, and must have contributed greatly to sharpen the sword of vengeance. His palace happened to be contiguous to the circus. Some seats, it seems, were open indiscriminately to the public; consequently, the only way in which they could be appropriated, was by taking possession of them as early as the midnight preceding any great exhibitions. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... bided, and this have I wotted for long; But I knew that her heart is as mine to remember the grief and the wrong, So the days of thy sister I told not, in her life would I have no part, Lest a foe for thy life I should fashion, and sharpen a sword for thine heart: But now is the day of our deeds, and no longer durst I refrain, Lest I put the Gods' hands from me, and make their gifts but vain. Yea, the woman is of the Niblungs, and often I ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... division of the south have not been beaten—but they have been dispersed. To you it belongs to revenge this insult. You are valiant, and have known long ago the path to glory. Sharpen well your bayonets and your swords. The campaign of Peru shall finish in this year. Your old general ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the illustrious prisoner as a defender of their rights, and sympathized with him. To sharpen this sympathy, the adepts of the Italian vente everywhere represented their chief as a martyr to his love of the people, and a victim of monarchy. Most injurious charges were everywhere circulated against Fernando IV. It was said that he had inherited the hatred of Carlos III. to the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Rou will be before thee! My horse paws without. Farewell to thee, Norman; sharpen thy swords, hew out thy vessels, and ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... others, whose honourable careers would in some instances have been more brilliant if Marshal MacMahon's dismissal of his ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... deeds done than a more showy one bought in a shop. Those that are spun with the view of splitting their opponent often have, instead of a spike, a flattened bit of iron like a little chisel, which the boys sharpen on a stone, and with these they do great execution. Sometimes somebody's foot is seriously wounded in case of a miss-fire. Now and then, for a change, a boy will play with ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to those lively comparisons to a bandbox and a lion in curlpapers. He interposed the glove of warning and the tear of sensibility between us and the proper ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... all that was possible of the affairs of his customers. This was the part of wisdom in a cautious banker; and he was distressed when checks that were not self-explanatory passed through the receiving-teller's window. A small bank is a good place in which to sharpen one's detective sense. Every check tells a story and is ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Venus, and she resolved to cast down her earthly rival. One day, therefore, she called hither her son Love (Cupid, some name him), and bade him sharpen his weapons. He is an archer more to be dreaded than Apollo, for Apollo's arrows take life, but Love's bring joy or sorrow for a whole ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... cannot do it," said Rabbit. "Your teeth are too blunt to bite anything. Let me sharpen them for you so they are like mine. My teeth are so sharp I can cut through a stick ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... to sharpen his appetite, for in a moment he dragged out from the grass something which startled me. Was it feathers or fur or ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... receives a good salary, I'm told. Well, what should you get but disgrace and misery if you took a wife you hated into your family (for I know very well that you do hate me)? No, no! I believe now that a man like you would murder anyone for money—sharpen a razor and come up behind his best friend and cut his throat like a sheep—I've read of such people. Everyone seems money-mad nowadays. No, no! I may be shameless, but you are far worse. I don't say a word about ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... thee, O Lord, for having sent me this young man, as a whetstone on which to sharpen ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... and with his hands full of business, having two persons' cards to manage as well as his own; for though it was impossible for Fanny not to feel herself mistress of the rules of the game in three minutes, he had yet to inspirit her play, sharpen her avarice, and harden her heart, which, especially in any competition with William, was a work of some difficulty; and as for Lady Bertram, he must continue in charge of all her fame and fortune through the whole evening; and if quick enough to keep her from looking at her cards when the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... thought of another—Varina Pemberton, the girl who might have been a pleasant companion in happier, easier circumstances. She had banished him, threatened him, wheedled him out of victory. She, too, would be slipping back to the beast. Her body would warp, her skin grow hairy, her teeth lengthen and sharpen—Ugh! That, ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... disposition. I think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... exercises the Oyler boys are privileged to make anything which appeals to them and for which they can supply the material. The school machines are theirs, subject to their use at any time. Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home knives and hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, hall stands, stools, sleds, cane chairs, and repair or make any product which fancy or home necessity ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... Your only wearing is your paduasoy.' Not, sir, my only, I have better still, And this, you see, is but my dishabille. Wild to get loose, his patience I provoke, Mistake, confound, object at all he spoke. But as coarse iron, sharpen'd, mangles more, And itch most hurts when anger'd to a sore; So when you plague a fool, 'tis still the curse, 120 You only make ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the peasant, smiling. "A minute here, a minute there. The time costs nothing. What am I doing? Nothing. I digest. To pass the time I sharpen the knife. I am like this. I say it is ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... boy, remember me when I come in Paul's Churchyard to buy a Ronsard and [a] Dubartas in French, and Aretine in Italian; and our hardest writers in Spanish; they will sharpen my wits gallantly. I do relish these tongues in some sort. O, now I do remember, I hear a report of a poet newly come out in Hebrew; it is a pretty harsh tongue, and telleth[97] a gentleman traveller: but ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the sale of his goods,—much to educate him in all manner of expedients to baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could never meet his expenses. And the jobber's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... into play. The sheep, left to himself, would still give a practical illustration of the doctrine of Malthus. If, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to think more and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole, the better for the wolf, in this sense at least: that the sheep of a wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less capable animals and more subject to disease and starvation ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... treasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come so successfully to this point that I was resolved, if my hopes were to miscarry, the misfortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on my part; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen my watchfulness, though I was perfectly conscious there was a million to one against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieve Wilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour's nodding doze by the furnace below. He went to his cabin; ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... strongly, without consulting Mr. S., and he does not think a new stove necessary." "What, pray," said I, "does he know about stoves, sitting in his easy-chair in Washington? If he had a dull old knife with broken blades, he would soon get a new one with which to sharpen his pens and pencils, and, if he attempted to cook a meal—granting he knew how—on your old stove, he would set it out of doors the next hour. Now my advice to you is to buy a new ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Nahum Beals, "the time will come when you will all thank God that you belong to the poor and down-trodden of this earth, and not to the rich and great—the time will come. There's knives to sharpen to-day, and wood for scaffolds as plenty as in the days of the French Revolution, and the hand that marks the time of day on the clock of men's patience with wrong and oppression has near gone round to ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were mowing in a field as a Wanderer went by clad in a dark blue cloak and carrying a wanderer's staff in his hand. One of the thralls spoke to the Wanderer: "Tell them in the house of Baugi up yonder that I can mow no more until a whetstone to sharpen my scythe is sent to me." "Here is a whetstone," said the Wanderer, and he took one from his belt. The thrall who had spoken whetted his scythe with it and began to mow. The grass went down before his scythe as if the wind had cut it. "Give us the whetstone, give us the whetstone," ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... all of them painted with red earth, armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint knives. They appeared anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted and they seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them string his bow and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and suspend it on the wrist of his right hand. Further testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight was impossible, so without hesitation I stepped back about five ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... God, how bitter are his words! They cut Like sharpen'd swords and burn like hissing flames! What is his will? His speech, though witless, ay, And senseless too, insults and threatens me.— It warns me too—of what?—Oh God, I quake! If but Brangaene came, or Dinas came! They come not and this creeping fear—how ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... them, and it is wonderful how much skill can be attained in their use. Any boy with a little mechanical ingenuity can make a pair of skis (pronounced skees). They can be made from two barrel staves. Select staves of straight grained wood. Sharpen the ends of each and score each end by cutting grooves in the wood, as shown in the cut, Fig. 7. A pocket knife or small gouge will suffice for this work. Then smear the end of the staves with oil and hold them close to a hot fire until they can be bent so as to tip the toes upward, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... was in his usual conversational mood. He released his Majesty's nose for a moment, and, as he turned to sharpen his razor, remarked, ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... and extravagance of illustration; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... had performed those of stableman. He kept on scolding and harrying the people who should have been at his command:—"Step around lively, Sam. Tell the gentleman the black bottle is in the fireplace cupboard if he wants to sharpen his appetite. Where is that little nigger that picks up chips? Bring me some more wood from the wood-pile! I'll teach you to go to sleep behind ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... you—-might do, Mr. Driggs," hinted Tom Reade. "You might lend us a grindstone, if you have one to spare. Then we can sharpen our knives right on the spot and ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... your Improved Tories," he wrote, "I think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father, and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a group of people in Dublin to form ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the long grass the sun was not yet risen, but there were already many colours in the eastern sky, and I made haste to sharpen my scythe, so that I might get to the cutting before the dew should dry. Some say that it is best to wait till all the dew has risen, so as to get the grass quite dry from the very first. But, though it is an advantage to get the grass quite dry, yet it is not worth while ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... without reference to a side to be supported. No studies give such a power of distinguishing as metaphysical, and in their natural and unperverted tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such studies are wanted to counteract the operation of legal studies and practice, which sharpen, indeed, but, like a grinding-stone, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... everlasting scryne The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still, Of Faerie knights[*] and fairest Tanaquill,[*] Whom that most noble Briton Prince[*] so long 15 Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill, That I must rue his undeserved wrong: O helpe thou my weake wit, and sharpen ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... almost capering. "Splendid!" he cried. "Splendid! That will sharpen his temper if it don't his wits. The Squire's house was tried, you say?" He turned on the farmer again. "Hullo, my friend! I understood there were ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... naturally shrewd, calculating and agreeable, possessing in a peculiar degree the art of pleasing; and these qualities will give them creditable positions in the business interests of the country in a few years. But they must have time to collect their wits, to sharpen their intelligence, to train their moral sense and the feeling of social responsibility, to fully comprehend all that the change from chattel slavery to absolute freedom implies. Men cannot awaken from ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... he comes, his little bell tinkling, and inviting those who have knives or scissors that want sharpening to give him a call, as he won't charge them much, and will sharpen the ladies' scissors, so that they will cut like razors. See that little dog, how he watches the operation, and then there is a little boy hastening with his mother's scissors, no doubt as well pleased with the importance of his errand, ...
— The Skating Party and Other Stories • Unknown
... their grandmother, as pussy began to sharpen her claws on the sofa. "It seems to me her nature is very much the same. Do you let her ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... judgment of her lover be impartial? Yes, if her instincts be pure and harmonious, and her worldly knowledge that of a child. Her discrimination between right and wrong would be at once accurate and involuntary, like the test of poison. Love for the criminal would but sharpen her intuition. The sentence would not be spoken, but would be readable in eyes untainted alike ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... he spoke, "I do not know what to make of them. They might have been made by a carding-machine; but that supposition is untenable. It is within the bounds of possibility that they might have been made by a wild animal if it had taken care to sharpen its claws. That too is, I take it, impossible. By the way, have you any strange pets here in the house; anything of an exceptional kind, such as a tiger-cat or anything out of the common?" Miss Trelawny smiled a sad smile which made my heart ache, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... Robespierre passed within earshot, and the Jacobin leader realized fully that behind the {213} docile votes and silent faces currents of rage and protest were stirring. For this, as for every ill, there was but one remedy, to sharpen ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... been of a sort to sharpen his perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable sign of his being under the charm, that this information was very soberly offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive to my experimental observations on vulgar topics—the hot weather, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... speech of the Advocate-General Blancmesnil which followed, the opinions taken, the order given, sometimes reiterated to keep the two double doors open, did not surprise anybody; served only as the preface to all the rest; to sharpen curiosity more and more as the moment approached in which it ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... but I don't see no nonsense in it. I've sharpened scythes till they cut like razors, and if you don't believe it, look at our lawn. Think, then, if I take my best rubber with me, I can't sharpen a sword?" ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... slaves in 1861, when the Dutch Government placed the liberated population under police surveillance, compelling each individual to prove honest acquirement of the slender means necessary for subsistence. Contact with the world begins to sharpen native intelligence, already heightened by the fusion of European blood with the island race, and external cleanliness being enforced systematically in Dutch territory, the concrete cottages which alternate ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... hand, and rolling the wheel with the other, he kept his foot rising and falling, just as if he were at work with a genuine treadle. He looked very sober, and said, "Please, madam, have you any scissors to sharpen?" ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... clever girls who rambled over Scotland cross the border to the Emerald Isle, and again they sharpen their wits against new conditions, and revel in the land of laughter ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and man's workmanship. Greater [larger] things can be reasonably well appreciated with a less scrupulous though broader attention; but in order to estimate the brilliancy of the diamond eyes of a little agate bust, for instance, you have to screw your mind down to them and nothing else. You must sharpen your faculties of observation to a point, and touch the object exactly on the right spot, or you do not appreciate it at all. It is a troublesome process when there are a thousand such objects ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... o' property, this 'ere farm," he said, surveying the scene around him with the air of a connoisseur. "None o' yer stun pastur land where the sheep can't get their noses down through the rocks without a file to sharpen 'em! Deacon Pitkin did a putty fair stroke o' business when he swapped off his old place for this 'ere. That are old place was all swamp land and stun pastur; wa'n't good for raisin' nothin' but juniper bushes and bull frogs. ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news. Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the grindstone, or to wait, hungry and humble, for the refuse of the food ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... would bring the spear to a long Dyak village house, deliver his message, and return, leaving the spear to be carried on by one of the men in that house to the next village, and so on. At once the men in that house would get their war-boats ready. They would furbish up their arms, and sharpen their weapons, and decorate ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... for murderers; they represented to him the difficulty of getting these two persons assassinated, and, for their own parts, notwithstanding their engagements, declined the enterprise. This disappointment, instead of allaying, served to sharpen the resentment of the Venetian: he had found means to attach to his interest the father of Hortensia, and, by various arguments, to inspire him with a resolution to become the murderer of his own daughter. With this old man, no less malevolent and vindictive than himself, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.' CHAP. IX. Tsze-kung asked about the practice of virtue. The Master said, 'The mechanic, who wishes to do his work well, must first sharpen his tools. When you are living in any state, take service with the most worthy among its great officers, and make friends of the most virtuous among its scholars.' CHAP. X. 1. Yen Yuan asked how the government ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... cheap labour may make bad labour, and at last no labour at all. It was as if a man who wanted something from an enemy, should at last reduce the enemy to come knocking at his door in the despair of winter, should keep him waiting in the snow to sharpen the bargain; and then come out to find the man dead ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... from the cliffs, and the snow wound white arms around the dark green cypress boughs, Carl still found beautiful pictures everywhere, and Greta plenty of play in building snow-houses and statues. And, moreover, Carl had lately discovered in the brooks some colored stones, which were soft enough to sharpen sufficiently to give a blue tint to his skies, and green to his trees; and thus he made pictures that Nurse Heine said were more wonderful than those in the chapel of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the room before long to get ready for his meeting, but Erica still lingered over her new treasure, putting it down at length with great reluctance to prepare her notebook and sharpen her pencil. "Isn't that a delightful bit where Hiawatha was angry," she said; "it has been running in my head ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... no more than sharpen punctuation. The eighth in general continues to trim little excesses, though the loss is scarcely noticeable. Richardson further reduces Hill's praise of the book and his own praise of Hill, feeling his way toward a detached ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... job done," Dick said, "but a very hot one. Now, Surajah, sharpen three or four pieces of wood, and drive them down into the ground at the foot of that strut; then it will be as firm ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... And we sharpen our wits up with passions for hones, Melt down loadstars for magnets, use women for whetstones, Learn to bear with dead calms by remembering cyclones, Snap strings short with sharp thumbnails, till silence begets tones, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the wilderness, where the struggle against savage and beast of prey sharpen the wits and teach the pioneer the need for rapid decisions, lost no time in executing his commission. As soon as word could reach Lyon, he informed his old comrade of the work he had in mind for him. The next post told Mordecai ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... of thine, That used to serve thy cup of wine, Whose beauty was so rare? When last in Raby towers we met, The boy I closely eyed, And often marked his cheeks were wet, With tears he fain would hide: His was no rugged horse-boy's hand, To burnish shield or sharpen brand, Or saddle battle-steed; But meeter seemed for lady fair, To fan her cheek or curl her hair, Or through embroidery, rich and rare, The slender silk to lead: His skin was fair, his ringlets gold, His bosom—when he sighed - The ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the foot of the one to whom they wish to do honor, and in rubbing it gently over their face. They have among their possessions some saws not made of iron, but of a large shell that is called here taclobo, [7] which they sharpen by rubbing against certain stones. They have also one of iron, as long as a finger. They were much astonished on the occasion of a trading-vessel being built at Guivam, to see the great variety of tools for carpentry which were used. They looked at all these, one after another, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... now often used by ornithologists is the umbrella blind, which is easy to construct. Take a stout umbrella, remove the handle, and insert the end in a hollow brass rod five feet long. Sharpen the rod at the other end and thrust it into the ground. Over the raised umbrella throw a dark green cloth cut and sewed so as to make a curtain that will reach the ground all round. A {19} draw-string will make ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... that—a furlong on—why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140 Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... on the contrary, high honour to the humanity of his temper—I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation. "Just God!" said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, "what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... attractive and made up to date," said Ned. "The man who owns these outfits is working up some good routes. If you have anything to sharpen, now, I'll show you the ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... years. The old man, when I took him my watch to regulate the other day—for on week-days he is a watch-maker—began to ask questions, as eagerly as a child, about the village news. It turned out that, for a whole week, he had not been down to sharpen his knife upon the bridge. He has given up his glass of beer, too, and altogether the zeal of his ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ministry seemed to flow, as from vessel to vessel, until it rose into such dominion as to declare the gracious presence of Him who is ever worthy to be honored and adored for thus condescending to own us on such important occasions. Iron is said to sharpen iron; and I thought it was a little the case with me at this season, feeling very desirous to enjoy that within myself which I ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... well," said the Sagamore, having thus secured another guardian for the sister whom he tenderly loved. "He shall stay, but Sassacus will return to the river of the Pequots, and will speak a loud word in the ears of his tribe, and they shall fill their quivers with arrows, and sharpen their tomahawks, and many will come back with him to ask for Neebin. Sassacus will go alone, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... perceived. She had never to fight a daily and exhausting battle for her private opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her conclusion silently ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... weeks ago, and now, on this soft, pearly evening, she was waiting eagerly for the sky to deepen, and the light of the stars to sharpen, and the orange to fall over the wall. For the Druze had come many times, and no one had discovered the lovers, screened by masses of roses in the buttress-sheltered corner of the wall. In fact, for the last weeks no one had had time or thought for anything but Buldoula, who ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Miss Kitty had to stay there for a time after that, to let the birds know that they couldn't frighten her away. She scared them almost out of their wits by threatening to climb up where their nests were. But she didn't do more than sharpen her claws against a tree-trunk. That alone was enough to throw them into ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... The wind carried me off my feet, and landed me high up on the side of a big building, and there I had to stick until the wind went down! Fact, and if you don't believe it, some day I'll show you one of the bricks from that same building. I keep it to sharpen my penknife on." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... hands in a gesture of impatience. "That isn't the only important thing in the world," he pointed out sarcastically. If the inner hurt served to sharpen his voice, he did not know it. "Don Andres wants ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the seen, he felt it deeply, but everybody knows that beauty affects folks differently, it always seems to sharpen up my dear companion's appetite, and three cookies in as many minutes wuz offered up on the shrine of his vivid ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... of Lory and Raven, though Lory's lasted little longer than Jack's joy of his white mount. Of course Jack was too game to let on he knew he'd been done, but not too busy to sharpen a rowel for Lory. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... we must sharpen our wits in due proportion: though, at present, I suspect it is arms we shall want. I know the room well, and there is a lot of creeping ivy and such plants under the window; the greatest difficulty will be with the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... mar the reputation that was beginning to attach to him. Fontenoy was content; and the scantiness of the majority by which the Resolution was defeated served at once to make the prospects of the Maxwell Bill, which was to be brought in after Easter, more doubtful, and to sharpen ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the better is the cock in condition: thirdly, take his wings and spread them forth by the length of the first rising feather, and clip the rest slope-wise with sharp points, that in his rising he may therewith endanger the eye of his adversary; fourthly, scrape, smooth, and sharpen his spurs with a pen-knife; fifthly, and lastly, see that there be no feathers on the crown of his head for his adversary to take hold of; then, with your spittle moistening his head all over, turn him into the pit ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and spears driven from the stalls A bearded lion goes, his noble heart Abhors retreat, and slow he quits the prey; 135 So Menelaus with slow steps forsook Patroclus, and arrived in front, at length, Of his own phalanx, stood, with sharpen'd eyes Seeking vast Ajax, son of Telamon. Him leftward, soon, of all the field he mark'd 140 Encouraging aloud his band, whose hearts With terrors irresistible himself Phoebus had fill'd. He ran, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... a toy. I cannot speak at all, I find, The shining something in my mind That shows so much that, if I took My thoughts all down, 'twould make a book. God's Word, which lately seem'd above The simpleness of human love, To my death-sharpen'd hearing tells Of little or of nothing else; And many things I hoped were true, When first they came, like songs, from you, Now rise with witness past the reach Of doubt, and I to you can teach, As if with felt authority And as things seen, what you taught me. Yet how? ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... shave with that (handing knife to the President). That is the sort of edge to use in all our grafting work, the sort of edge that will bring terror to the heart of the mother of boys. I find very few people who really can sharpen a knife. I have been surprised at the small proportion of people who are really able to do it. They put on a feather edge, or they leave a round edge, or at any rate they are unable apparently to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... and prayed that so I might reduce this grosser material frame, and sharpen and quicken every nerve, and stimulate every fibre of the brain. So alone could I most nearly approach to the commune of spirits. Thus had those saints and prophets of old done when they had entered upon the search after ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... that bright purity could resist the corrosion of the world's breath; and half thinking that it would be better for the spirit to pass away, with its lustre upon it, than stay till self-interest should sharpen the eye, and the lines of diplomacy write themselves on that fair brow. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in two of the other Evangelists, and the condensed account of it which we have in this Gospel, by its omission of Peter's walking on the water, and of some other smaller but graphic details that the other Evangelists give us, serves to sharpen the symbolical meaning of the whole story, and to bring that as its great purpose and signification ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the regulation, after the war, of International Finance, it remains to consider what can be done to amend the evils from which it suffers, and likewise what, if anything, can be done to strengthen our financial weapon, and sharpen its edge to help us in the difficult fight that will follow the present war, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... of its younger members, or to the examination of the state of their wardrobe, leaving the later portion of the morning for reading, or for some amusing recreation. "Recreation," says Bishop Hall, "is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which would otherwise grow dull and blunt. He, therefore, that spends his whole time in recreation is ever whetting, never mowing; his grass may grow and his steed starve; as, contrarily, he that always toils and never recreates, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... lines of the strange old face seemed to sharpen. There was a growing eagerness in the pale ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... machinist; nor have we any desire to present a lot of useful articles as samples of what to make. The object is to show the boy what are the requirements necessary to make him a machinist; how to hold, handle, sharpen and grind the various tools; the proper ones to use for each particular character of work; how the various machines are handled and cared for; the best materials to use; and suggest the numerous things which can be done in a shop which will pave the way for making his ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... such contests generally begin with the harvests. During the season of tillage all is quiet; but, when the crops begin to ripen, the governor begins to rise in his demands for revenue, and the Rajput landholders and cultivators to sharpen their swords and burnish their spears. One hundred of them always consider themselves a match for one thousand of the king's troops in a fair field, because they have all one heart and soul, while the king's troops ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a court, that if far less intellectual and refined than those of later days, was yet more calculated to dazzle the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm the senses,—for round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent, intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,—Sibyll had ample leisure in her solitary home to muse over the incidents that had preceded the departure of the young guest. Though she had rejected ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mellow hour; Fill your pipe, and taste the wine— Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it— I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van Arden, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... on once more tasting bread and butter! The very thought of the treat in store served to sharpen my appetite, and render the long fast more irksome. I could now fully realise all Mrs. Bowdich's longings for English bread and butter, after her three years' travel through the burning African deserts, with ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... parts of the world they have not any other. T.—Really, I should like to try to make a house; do you think, Harry, that you and I could make one? H.—Yes, if I had wood and clay enough, I think I could, and a small hatchet to sharpen the stakes and make ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... round stick about an inch in diameter and three feet long, and sharpen one end of it. At frequent intervals about the grounds drive the stick to the depth of about two feet. Make many such holes, and into these ram a mixture of finely powdered manure, hardwood ashes, and bone meal. Cover the holes with loam, and on the top of each put a piece of sod and ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... hatchet shows it will peel. There is plenty of smaller timber standing around; long, slim poles, with a tuft of foliage on top. Five minutes suffice to drop one of these, cut a twelve-foot pole from it, sharpen the pole at each end, jam one end into the ground and the other into the rough back of a scraggy hemlock and there is your ridge pole. Now go—with your hatchet—for the bushiest and most promising young hemlocks within reach. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... obstinate a pertinacity. And though there was not the smallest evidence of such utter abandonment of honour, though it was probably but a calumnious whisper, yet the mere suspicion of such practices served to sharpen the aversion of his enemies, and justify the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... done under the influence of any kind of stimulants is unhealthy work, and tends to no good. I never use any kind of stimulant for intellectual work—only a glass of wine during dinner to sharpen the appetite. As to smoking generally, it is a vile and odious practice; but I do not know that, unless carried to excess, it is in any way unhealthy. Instead of stimulants, literary men should seek for aid in a pleasant variety of occupation, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever the British Raj were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... in slices about 1 inch thick, from half as large as the hand to four times that size. Sharpen a stick or branch of convenient length, say from 2 to 4 feet long, and weave the point of the stick through the steak several times so that it may be readily turned over a few brisk coals or on the windward side of a small fire. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... feminine, and things of moods. The razor you sharpen to-day may not be sharp, though manipulated upon hone or strap with all persistence and all skill. The razor you sharpen to-morrow may be far more tractable. Furthermore, the razor which is comparatively dull to-day may be sharp ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... them out, tearing away the rock and stopping their work at drilling that they might muck away the refuse. The stope began to take on the appearance of a vast chamber, as day after day, banging away at their drill holes, stopping only to sharpen the bits or to rest their aching muscles, they pursued into the entrails of the hills the vagrant vein which had escaped them. And day after day, each, without mentioning it to the other, was tortured by the thought ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the State—if you recognise, even in the reverses and calamities I have known and mastered, the protecting hand of the Saviour of Nations—if those reverses were but the mercies of Him who chasteneth—necessary, it may be, to correct my earlier daring and sharpen yet more my intellect—if, in a word, thou believest me one whom, whatever be his faults, God hath preserved for the sake of Rome, forget that you are a Colonna—remember only that ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... former, and then pointing out what are taken for irreconcileable discrepancies, are beside the mark. Nor does the supposition that the one night in the den (of Dan. vi.) was increased to six, nor that the detail of withholding the lions' usual food to sharpen their appetites (in Θ only), were added for the purpose of heightening the effect, carry much weight. The omission of Daniel's speech, with the detail[71] of the angel closing the lions' mouths (vv. 21, 22), tells in the opposite direction. It is no more ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... of the end of a gun-barrel, something like a carpenter's gouge, and this had a bone handle, with which she kept scraping off the inside of the skin of its fibres, so as to make it soft and pliable. She had a stone to sharpen the tool with, and as she leaned over, tugging away, the perspiration rolled off her face in streams. Poor old creature, I felt sorry for her, as the work might have been done by several big, lazy, half-grown Indian boys I saw ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... intemperate use of the words by some whites among us have inspired them with hopes of success." "While the fiery Hotspurs of the State vociferate their French babble of the natural equality of man, the insulted negro will be constantly stimulated to cast away his cords and to sharpen his pike." "It is, moreover, believed, though not positively known, that a great many of our profligate and abandoned whites (who are distinguished by the burlesque appellation of Democrats) are implicated with the blacks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... at Dunbar. There was indeed equal fanaticism in both armies; but the difference was, the English were soldiers as well as preachers, and their General used fanaticism as an engine to move others, not as the rule of his own actions. He wore piety as a mask; he used it to sharpen his sword, but he never converted it into a pilot. Supreme power was the port at which he aimed, and profound worldly wisdom, and the most acute penetration into the character and designs of others, assisted him to steer his vessel with astonishing security ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... less than the real value of the article in Such things as is calculated to do them Service. Such as Blue & white heeds, with which they trade with the nativs above; files which they make use of to Sharpen their tools, fish hooks of different Sises and tobacco- Tobacco and blue beeds they do prefur ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... state admits only of a kind of negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no danger, or none inadequate to our powers of opposition. Death, indeed, continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unseen, unless we sharpen our sight ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... travel along it, side by side, through good or evil fortune. Holbrook would naturally be jealous of any friendship between his wife and you; while such a friendship could not fail to keep alive bitter thoughts in your mind—could not fail to sharpen the regret which you fancy just now is to be life-long. I have no doubt I seem to speak in ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and there is no reason why people should throw away their time and trouble more than their money. There are plenty of things that most boys would give their ears to know, these and these only are the proper things for them to sharpen their ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... harassed by Samson," but they continued their hostility, capturing the Ark of the Covenant in the days of Eli, and finally bringing Israel so completely under their power that they had to go to the Philistines to sharpen their tools. ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... fell to thinking of Sexberga, and those thoughts were pleasant enough. And idly I began to sharpen my seax again on a great square stone that was handy in the wall as I sat, but it was very soft, and crumbled away under the steel without ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... Gregory made no reply, any more than to the courteous offer of old Albert Drawslot, the chief park-keeper, who proposed to blow vinegar in his nose, to sharpen his wit, as he had done that blessed morning to Bragger, the old hound, whose scent was failing. There was, indeed, little time for reply, for the bugles, after a lively flourish, were now silent, and Peretto, with ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... any designs that might be had upon Pat, his mother went to sharpen her own wits for whatever the morrow might ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... stick-that-speaks of the palefaces. Grey Wolf was a great chief. The village in the Blue Mountains mourned very much. Nicotee, his squaw, went wailing into the land of shadows. His son hath seen but seven moons of corn, but he dreams of the day when he shall sharpen the hatchet against the slayers of his father.... The Chickahominies have told Black Wolf that his brother was wounded and not slain by the palefaces. They brought him captive to their great board wigwams. There they tied him not to the torture stake; they knew ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... fought with every weapon that wit, logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos and indignation could sharpen, form, devise or use. He often apologized, and the apology was an insult. He often recanted, and the recantation was a thousand times worse than the thing recanted. He took it back by giving more. In the name of eulogy he flayed his victim. In his praise there was poison. He often advanced ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... make up his mind which one he wanted. The former made all sorts of signs to him across the table, and, in the midst of studying her French verbs, she seemed to be suddenly seized with a desire for lead-pencils, for she began to sharpen all that she could get together, one after the other. Oscar was writing out his speech. Any one would have thought that he was composing a drama and acting it out as he went along; he kept throwing up his head, ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first to gain the favor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and seemed to stiffen, ever so slightly. A shade of aggressive contempt came on Hubert's keen brown face that towered up so near the low oak ceiling; while Mr. Buxton's eyelids just drooped, and his features seemed to sharpen. There was an unpleasant ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... it very remarkable, that although we found no kind of metal in any of these islands, yet, the inhabitants of all of them, the moment they got a piece of iron in their possession, began to sharpen it, but made no such attempt on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... that Cyril Boden did his best to sharpen in her. With the invincible optimism of his kind, he scoffed at the misgivings which she confided to him, and to him only, on the score of Felicia's lack of training, her touchy and passionate temper, and the little unscrupulous ways that ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are always sacred to me," she said quite seriously. "Most people have their own little failings and idiosyncrasies, but one need not make copy out of them. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Herrick, that there is too little sense of honour in these matters? To raise a laugh, or to sharpen their own wit, many people will expose their ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... though some labour will be required to sharpen them," exclaimed the captain. "We could then easily fix them in handles; and they will be of the greatest use, if not for cutting down the trees, at all events for scoring the trunks for the wedges, and for smoothing the planks when split. You must search ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... sofa and watched Paul's face sharpen in his concentration, it occurred to her that the point of the whole matter was that for her and Paul the suitable and leisurely time for mutual discussion had never come. That was all! That was the whole trouble! It was not any inherent lack of common ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... I view'd th' interminable host, The prospect seem'd at last in dimness lost: But still the wish remain'd their doom to know, As, watchful, I survey'd the passing show. As each majestic form emerged to light, Thither, intent, I turn'd my sharpen'd sight; And soon a noble pair my notice drew, That, hand in hand approaching, met my view. In gentle parley, and communion sweet— With looks of love, they seem'd mine eyes to meet; Yet strange was their attire—their tongue unknown Spoke them the natives of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... a wife of eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that person's society. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a wasting frame seemed only to sharpen the wits of the indomitable warrior. New Songs (1844) contains, along with negligible cynical pieces, a number of love songs no whit inferior to those of the Book of Songs, romances, and scorching political satires. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... turned on the admission of negro delegates from the South. Roosevelt believed that an attempt to create a negro Progressive Party, as such, would alienate the Southern whites and would certainly sharpen their hostility towards the blacks. Therefore, he advised that the negro delegates ought to be approved by the White Progressives in their several districts. In other words, the Progressive Party in the South should be ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... forge for Ernest their most tremendous thunderbolts with which to smite the foes of the provinces, those enemies being of course the English and the Hollanders. Venus, the while, timidly presented an arrow to her husband, which he was requested to sharpen, in order that when the wars were over Cupid, therewith might pierce the heart of some beautiful virgin, whose charms should reward Ernest—fortunately for the female world, still a bachelor—for his victories ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... orders were sent to the guard, through the grates of their prison, that the instant the shipping should fire upon the town, they were to kill them, together with the other prisoners confined with them. The guard, on receiving these orders, began to sharpen the instruments with which they intended to kill them, and moved them about their heads to show with how much skill and pleasure they would attend to their orders. Upon the floor where they intended to butcher them, a large quantity of sand was spread to receive the blood. The gloom and silence ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... abominable practice of killing fish by means of dynamite. It is very well to say that the law forbids it; but the administrators of the law are not always a terror to evil-doers, and perhaps the timely present of a dish of fine trout does not sharpen the energies of the officials. Another mode of destroying fish is practised by the Wallacks. There grows in this locality a poisonous plant, of which they make a decoction and throw it into the river, thereby killing great numbers of fish ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... liked to enjoy a reputation for enlightenment, but no regard for civilization beyond the power it gave him to extend his dominions. His subjects were merely his instruments. All he learned in other countries was to sharpen them and keep them in order, that he might use them to the best advantage. His ambition was not of the highest or noblest kind. The page he has left in history is interesting and instructive, but there is nothing in it to warrant the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to work to sharpen her wits, to follow the strait road. At first with some stumbling, of course, and frequent backslidings. Intellectual curiosity could not, she discovered, be awakened to order; and she often caught herself napping. Thus though she speedily became one of the most troublesome askers-why, her desire ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... efforts to squash my toes in his desire to find a fair resting place for his feet. (p. 186) "I'm 'ungry. Call this the best fed army in the world. Dog and maggot all the bloomin' time. I need all the hemery paper given to clean my bayonet, to sharpen my teeth to eat the stuff. How are we goin' to sleep ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... that board off before you put it up." Then Juggins looked round for a saw, and when he got it he had hardly made more than a stroke or two with it before he stopped. "This saw," he said, "needs to be filed up a bit." So he went and hunted up a file to sharpen the saw, but found that before he could use the file he needed to put a proper handle on it, and to make a handle he went to look for a sapling in the bush, but to cut the sapling he found that he needed to sharpen up the axe. To do this, of course, he had to fix the grindstone ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... more valuable than many volumes, J.B. Say has already remarked that there are two ways of removing the disorder introduced by hypocrisy into an honorable family; to reform Tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of Orgon. Moliere, that great painter of human life, seems constantly to have had in view the second process as the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the corners of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... "I have prayed against this on my knees every night of my life, and it is come upon me at last. Sharpen your knife, Abner." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... afeard, Leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many cuts d'take to sharpen a spar," ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... its isolation, the women living on our farms are thought to be the especial victims of this lack of social opportunity. No doubt there is much of truth in the popular opinion. Modern city life unquestionably tends to enliven, to sharpen, to put a razor-edge on capacity. Naturally the women as well as the men of the city are thus stimulated. An instance of the opportunities constantly presented to the city women is the rapid multiplication of women's clubs, ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... them about the organization of work during the Revolution, and they answer that the division of labour must be maintained; that if you sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go on sharpening them after. True, you will not have to work more than five hours a day, but you will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others will make designs for machines that will enable you to sharpen hundreds of millions of pins during your life-time; and others again will be specialists in the higher branches of literature, science, and art, etc. You were ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... which constitutes a distinct industry, are either of larch, Spanish chestnut, ash, willow, birch, or beech—larch or chestnut being preferred. Women clear the poles of the bark, and men sharpen them at one end, which is dipped in creosote before being used. The ground is cleared, and the poles are stuck in against the old ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... physical in love, and happy enough not to know these preferences which sharpen the appetite for it, at the same time that they increase the difficulty of satisfying such appetite, men, in a state of nature, must be subject to fewer and less violent fits of that passion, and of course ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Crooke states, [294] "is undoubtedly of great antiquity. In the Veda we read, 'Sharpen us like the razor in the hands of the barber'; and again, 'Driven by the wind, Agni shaves the hair of the earth like the barber shaving a beard.'" In early times they must have enjoyed considerable dignity; Upali the barber was the first propounder of the law of the Buddhist ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it. If they all understood the thing itself, and understood each other, there could be no lack of sympathy; yet there has been misunderstanding, conflict occasionally, and some otherwise worthy teachers have used the kindergarten as a sort of intellectual cuttle-fish to sharpen their conversational ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin |
