"Clod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A clod, skilfully hurled, struck her right ear, filling it with sand and cutting off the thread of her narrative rather abruptly. Sayap wheeled around to see whence the blow had come. The other girls all laughed, but she was angry. Her wrath was raised to the highest pitch ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... readily and without obstruction, it will be evident that all the land there about is in good order: but if some part harder than the rest resists the pressure, it will be clear that the ploughing has been badly done. When the ploughmen see this done from time to time they are not guilty of clod hopping. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and well-meaning—stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... against your reign, and this is a species of jubilation to find that the majority of Australian men are with us, because in the vote they have furnished us with a means of redress," and Carry finished her previously prepared speech by throwing a clod of dirt on him. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... 16. Neck, clod or sticking-piece used for stocks, gravies, soups, mince-pie meat, hashes, bologna ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits were ascending to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ancient channels bring their streams, The soft mud fries beneath the scorching sun; And midst the fresh-turn'd earth unnumber'd forms The tiller finds: some scarcely half conceiv'd; Imperfect some, their bodies wanting limbs: And oft he beings sees with parts alive, The rest a clod of earth: for where with heat Due moisture kindly mixes, life will spring: From these in concord all things are produc'd. Though fire with water strives; yet vapour warm, Discordant mixture, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... fickle Fortune's power, And to a million of mishaps Is casual every hour: And Death in time doth change It to a clod of clay; Whenas the mind, which is divine, Runs never ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... his hopes, his chance of an education, that plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless clod ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more about him than you do. And so I ask you whether it is common-sense to tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who matter to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... poor, for whom thy ceaseless thought Is as the sun, that warms the earthy clod Into a flush of blossom beauty-fraught, Waking in hearts by poverty distraught Glimpses in life of Heaven ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry! Pindar gives the following account of the origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... "Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers And groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Vil Holland is the veriest clod! Too lazy to do the honest work for which he is fitted, he roams the hills ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... hacked at the wall of earth in front of him. Now and then the pick would encounter a stone or some other hard substance. In the last few days they had come upon frequent pieces of old brick. Detroit Jim had rejoiced over these signs. For the old man every falling clod of earth seemed to bring him nearer to freedom. They also took ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... stretching away to the cloudy November sky, and the lords and ladies gay, and the hounds, and the frosty-faced, short-tempered old huntsman, the very perfection of his kind; and the poor cockney snobs on their hired screws, and the meek clod-hopping labourers looking on excited and bewildered, happy for a moment at beholding so much happiness in ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... he is bidden, but I want him to carry himself like the man and monarch he was made to be. I want him to stay where he is put, yet not as if he were put there, but as if he had taken his position deliberately. But, of all things, to have a man act as if he were a clod just emerged for the first time from his own barnyard! Upon this occasion, however, I was too much absorbed in my errand to note anybody's demeanor, and I threaded straightway the crowd of customers, went up to the counter, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... she is, and she charmed me, and I got no sleep for her for three nights, and one night at half-past eleven o'clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went out and found a "walking toad" under a clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I could not rest; she is a bad old woman; she put this toad under there to charm me, and her daughter is just as bad, gentlemen. She would bewitch any one; she charmed me, and I got no rest day or night for her, till I ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of him—the dull clod, who is called the son of Pharaoh. Moreover, he is my half-brother, and it is not meet that I should wed my brother. For nature cries aloud against ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... and the other ceremonies of their religion. The origin of this act among the people of Tuscany, is related by Cicero in the following manner: "A peasant," says he, "ploughing in the field, his ploughshare running pretty deep in the earth, turned up a clod, from whence sprung a child, who taught him and the other Tuscans the art of divination." (Cicero, De Divinat. l. 2.) This fable, undoubtedly means no more, than that this child, said to spring from the clod of earth, was a youth of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... soul-breathing form of genius, and the clod of the valley, there was now no difference; and the "end and object" of a man's brief existence was now accomplished in him who, while yet all young and ardent, had viewed the bitter perspective of humanity with a philosophic eye and pronounced even ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... the ship, at the instant of her final disaster, and very many fragments were thrown around her; a few even on her decks. Among the last was a human body, which was cast a great distance in the air, and fell, like a heavy clod, across the gunwale of the sloop. This proved to be the body of Waally, one of the arms having been cut away by a shot, three hours before! Thus perished a constant and most wily enemy of the colony, and who had, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... keep Christ's commandments. He warned me of Folly, that traitor, and bad me beware, And thus he went his way: But I have falsely me forsworn, Alas the day that I was born! For body and soul I have forlorn. I clang, as a clod in clay, In London many a day; At the passage I would play, I thought to borrow and never pay. Then was I sought and set in stocks, In Newgate I lay under locks, If I said aught, I caught many knocks. Alas where was Manhood tho? Alas, my lewdness ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... word nature to everything; as Epicurus does, who acknowledges no cause, but atoms, a vacuum, and their accidents. But when we[155] say that nature forms and governs the world, we do not apply it to a clod of earth, or piece of stone, or anything of that sort, whose parts have not the necessary cohesion,[156] but to a tree, in which there is not the appearance of chance, but of order and a ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... pains shot through his brain. But for the moment these physical pangs were as nothing; disappointment, self-reproach moved him. To have allowed himself to go down like that; to have been caught by such a simple trick! Clumsy clod!—and at a moment when—He laughed fiercely; from his head the blood flowed; he did not feel that ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... weeping and imploring her sympathy. Too late, she sobbed on Noreen's shoulder, she had found her soul-mate, the man destined for her through the past aeons, the one man who could make her happy and whose existence she alone could complete. Why had she met Dermot too late? Why was she tied to a clod, mated to a clown? Why were two lives to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... there met us, as it fell, Aristius, my good friend, who knew him well. We stop: inquiries and replies go round: "Where do you hail from?" "Whither are you bound?" There as he stood, impassive as a clod, I pull at his limp arms, frown, wink, and nod, To urge him to release me. With a smile He feigns stupidity: I burn with bile. "Something there was you said you wished to tell To me in private." "Ay, I mind ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... fairest prospect is but so much earth and so much timber! To whom music is but an arrangement of harmonious sounds, and man himself but a being erect upon two legs! Oh, thou Casual Observer, what a dull, gross, self-contented clod art thou, who, having eyes and ears, art blind and deaf to aught ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... growth are required before it attains to the stature of a giant of the forest. A man does not become an Angel by the mere fact of dying and entering a new world any more than an animal advances to be a man by the same process. But in time all that lives, mounts the ladder of Being from the clod to the God. There is no limitation possible to the spirit, and so at various stages in its unfoldment the Human Spirit works with the other nature forces, according to the stage of intelligence which it has attained. It creates, changes and remodels the earth upon which it is ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... been awakened from my sleep—the dull stupor of materialism into which I was fast sinking. Then I might, in the end, have conquered even the last fear, that of 'something after death,' and have perished like a soulless clod, satisfied that there was no hereafter. Now, if there should be? I whirl and whirl; I can find no rest. I would I knew for certain that I was mad. But it ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... attacks of stubble, thistles, and all other lacerating specimens of botany, and their exuberant figures were clad in buskins, and many-coloured garments, that were not long enough to conceal their greaves and clod-hopping boots. Altogether, these young women, when engaged at their ordinary avocations by the side of a spring, formed no unpicturesque subject for the sketcher's pencil, and might have been advantageously transferred to canvas ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... lifebelt. "The children! That's just the root of the whole intolerable situation. This hasn't been a home for the last three or four years; it's been nothing but a nursery. And about all I've been is a retriever for a creche, a clod-hopper to tiptoe about the sacred circle and see to it there's enough flannel to cover their backs and enough food to put into their stomachs. I'm an accident, of course, an intruder to be faced with fortitude and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... length the hounds show symptoms of fatigue, and it is already late in the day, the time has come for the huntsman to look for his hare that lies dead-beat; nor must he wittingly leave any patch of green or clod of earth untested. (41) Backwards and forwards he must try and try again the ground, (42) to be sure that nothing has been overlooked. The fact is, the little creature lies in a small compass, and from fatigue and fear will not get up. As he leads the hounds on he will cheer and encourage ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... trees in the Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings. Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... this darkness. Well, the devil never blesses a man better, when he purses up angels by owl-light. I ran through a hedge to take the boy, but I stuck in the ditch, and lost the boy. [Falls.] 'Swounds, a plague on that clod, that molehill, that ditch, or what the devil so e'er it were, for a man cannot see what it was! Well, I would not, for the price of my sword and buckler, anybody should see me in this taking, for it would make me but cut off their legs for laughing ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies! Ay, Isabella, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible, warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... truly said, "is like the silent influence of light which gives color to all nature; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, and far more fruitful. It pushes its way silently and persistently like the tiniest daffodil in spring, which raises the clod and thrusts it aside by the ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... lance with him, to challenge him in disguise to single combat, and prove my skill in arms against him. Ah, foolish heart, whither fled thy presumption? Could I but exchange my youth with all its aspirations for the clod of earth under his feet, I should deem it a most precious grace. I know not in what whirlpool of thought I was lost, when suddenly I saw him vanish through the trees. O foolish woman, neither didst thou greet him, nor speak a word, nor beg forgiveness, ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... shall know why man restrains his fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; when the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, is now a victim, and now Egypt's god: then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend his actions', passions', being's use ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... fearful. Roberts was mortally wounded. Congreve has left an account which shows what a modern rifle fire at a thousand yards is like. 'My first bullet went through my left sleeve and made the joint of my elbow bleed, next a clod of earth caught me smack on the right arm, then my horse got one, then my right leg one, then my horse another, and that settled us.' The gallant fellow managed to crawl to the group of castaways in the donga. Roberts insisted on ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this woman's lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Progress! Maximilian smiled scornfully on himself. He was only a clod of grit caught in the world's great wheels. The foreign substance had wrought a discordant screech for a moment, and then was mercilessly ground into powder and thrust out of the bearings. He pondered on the first days of the Family Group, when there was extenuation; more, when ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... a clod shine. You can not make a mollusk aspire. You must have the material to work ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Almost do I regret—almost do I regret that I did not do it sooner—it has been crowned with such success. You have held me in your arms—your arms. Oh, you will never know what that first embrace meant to me. I am not a clod. I am not iron nor stone. I am a woman—a warm, ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall.' I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... as the bitter lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... attract his attention," said Sam. Catching up a clod of grass and dirt he threw it against one of the ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... bought at Concord before going to Europe, and of which his occupancy had as yet been brief. He was to occupy it only four years. I have insisted upon the fact of his being an intense American, and of his looking at all things, during his residence in Europe, from the standpoint of that little clod of western earth which he carried about with him as the good Mohammedan carries the strip of carpet on which he kneels down to face towards Mecca. But it does not appear, nevertheless, that he found himself treading with any great exhilaration the larger section of his native soil upon which, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... hallowed ground? Has earth a clod Its Maker meant not should be trod By man, the image of his God, Erect and free, Unscourged by superstition's rod ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of wealth, fashion, extravagance, and youth. He was no more than three-and-twenty himself. He ought to have been fired by the sight of all this beauty, and all this happiness. Nobody in the world can look half so happy as a lovely girl finely dressed. But he sat there like a clod, dull and insensate. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sportlessly, as poverty is apt to play, in the dank shadows of the narrow street. They seemed incited to mirth and ribaldry by the sight of Ronald's new friend, and one even ventured to hurl a clod at him; but this striking Ronald instead, and he facing promptly to the hostile quarter from whence it came, caused a sudden slinking of the crowd into unknown holes, like a horde of rats, and the street was for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... wished to laugh sarcastically, a laugh of withering scorn. He wished to reply in polished tones, "Skylarkin'! You poor, dull clod, what do you know of my ambitions, my ideals? You, with your petty life devoted to gaining a few paltry dollars!" But he did not say this, or even register the emotion that would justly accompany such a subtitle. He merely rejoined, "All right, sir, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... sentences, 'Have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known? What is that instruction? As, my dear, by one clod of clay all that is made of clay is known, the modification (i.e. the effect) being a name merely which has its origin in speech, while the truth is that it is clay merely,' &c. Now if the term 'Sat' denoted the pradhana, which is merely the cause of the aggregate ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... of their singing, while the gravediggers stood with the red earth ready on their spades, but before a clod fell on ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... instigated by his appetites, a person who has suffered hardship and tasted bitterness will engage in dangerous enterprises; and, indifferent to the consequences, and unawed by future punishments, he will not discriminate between what is lawful and what is forbid:—Should a clod of earth be thrown at the head of a dog, he would jump up in joy, and take it for a bone; or were two people carrying a corpse on a bier, a greedy man would fancy it a tray of victuals. Whereas the worldly opulent are regarded with the benevolent eye of Providence, and in their enjoyments ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... earth's hardness. Every relief is a promise, a pledge as well as a passing meal. The frost at length had brought with it brightness and persuasion and rousing. In the fields it was swelling and breaking the clods; and for the heart of man, it did something to break up that clod too. A sense of friendly pleasure filled all the human creatures. The children ran about like wild things; the air seemed to intoxicate them. The mother went out walking with the girls, and they talked of their father and Christian ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... begun shortly after the rains, when the soil is easily plowed or dug. It should then be turned up roughly to a depth of a foot or fifteen inches. A month later the clods should be broken with the mallet or clod crusher, and the plow put through the ground a second time. When the soil has weathered a few weeks, the scarifier or cultivator should be run over it once monthly until May. At that time good decayed cow dung or poudrette ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... If suddenly a clod of earth should rise, And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love, How one would tremble, and in what ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... gracious regard on our fortunes. We are not come to deal slaughter through Libyan homes, or to drive plundered spoils to the coast. Such violence sits not in our mind, nor is a conquered people so insolent. There is a place Greeks name Hesperia, an ancient land, mighty in arms and foison of the clod; Oenotrian men dwelt therein; now rumour is that a younger race from their captain's name have called it Italy. Thither lay our course . . . when Orion rising on us through the cloudrack with sudden surf bore us ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... I have taken the common clay And wrought it cunningly In the shape of a god that was digged a clod, The ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... and a loafer from Sage Butte threw a clod. Then another growl, more angry than the first, broke out as Grant, moving forward into a prominent place, nodded to the auctioneer. His rugged face was impassive, and he ignored the crowd. A number of the farmers ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Howell, Esq., for I read 'em, I put 'em away and docket 'em, and remember 'em. I know his affairs better than he does: his income to a shilling, pay his tradesmen, wear his coats if I like. I may call Mr. Milliken what I please; but not YOU, you little scamp of a clod-hopping ploughboy. Know your station and do your business, or you don't wear THEM buttons long, I promise you. ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should settle down at last into a mere mechanical, a plodding, every-day merchant, whose finest fancies are given to the condition of the money-market, who governs his actions by a decline of Erie, and narrows his ideas down to the requirements of filthy lucre, like a mere 'wintry clod of earth'! Ay, poor Clarian, poor anybody, when we wake from our bright youth-dream and tread the rough pathway of a reality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air—and it was the bird with the red breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to the ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Southland, the first wind of Spring danced merrily into Madame Francesca's sleeping garden, thrilling all the life beneath the sod. With the first beam of sun, the ice began to drip from the imprisoned trees and every fibre of shrub and tree to quiver with aspiration, as though a clod should ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... was all there was in the ravine, except the bare rocks, wet and glistening. There were no huts, no Rackbirds, nothing. Even the vines and bushes which had been growing up the sides of the stream were all gone. Not a weed, not a stick, not a clod of earth, was left—nothing but a great, rocky ravine, washed bare ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... her fall, began to recover her equine senses. Sniffing the air and opening her wild bright eyes, she soon perceived her loved mistress lying flung about three yards distant from where she herself had rolled over and over on the thick wet clod of the field. With a supreme effort the gallant beast attempted to rise,—and presently, with much plunging and kicking, in which struggles however, she with an almost human intelligence pushed herself farther away from that ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of speech. We dealt liberally in jeers at any exhibition of bathos or fustian; in laughter and applause at any touch of eloquence or wit. What better training was there than this? I have always had a fond lingering desire to be an orator, but when before an audience found myself as cold as a clod. Toward essay writing and reading our attitude was somewhat different. Yet here we looked for and were only satisfied with eloquence—good, resounding periods with plentiful classical allusion and quotations of poetry. We always expected at least ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... massacre and mutilation and starvation; but that is the way of world—conquerors the world over—and has absolutely nothing to do with this tale. The point I am trying to get at is, if you can gaze unmoved at this sepulcher you are a clod. And if you can get away from its vicinity without being held up and gouged by small ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... been called a "Clod hopper." As he read the following, he wondered whether or not Uncle Zed had not also been so designated, and had written this ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... are anointed and blessed. They are to feel, even in the event of possible recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable soil. A wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them. And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... lay, Lavarcam went to the camp of the Sons of Usna, and to Naoise she told the story of the love that Deirdre bore him, and counselled him to come to the place where she was hidden, and behold her beauty. And Naoise, who had seen how even a rough clod of a hind could achieve the noble chivalry of a race of kings for her dear sake, felt his heart throb within him. "I will come," he ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... it that the wond'rous essence, Which gave such vigour to these strong nerved limbs Has leaped from its enclosure, and compelled This noble workmanship of nature, thus To sink Into a cold inactive clod? Nay sneak not off thus cowardly—poor fools Ye are as destitute of information As is the lifeless subject of ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... not even speak of ill on such a day," said her neighbour. "Look at the sky's blueness and the spring bursting forth in every branch and clod—and the very skylarks singing ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I live while consciousness is not mine, while to all appearances I am a clod. And may not this same state of being, though but alternate with me, be continually that of many dumb, passive objects we so carelessly regard? Trust me, there are more things alive than those that crawl, or fly, or swim. Think you, my ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hands and knees the Willow was peering over the edge. Bush McTaggart had disappeared. He had gone down like the great clod he was. The water of her pool had closed over him with a dull splash that was like a chuckle of triumph. He appeared now, beating out with his arms and legs to keep himself afloat, while the Willow's voice came to him ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Bungler. — N. bungler; blunderer, blunderhead[obs3]; marplot, fumbler, lubber, duffer, dauber, stick; bad hand, poor hand, poor shot; butterfingers[obs3]. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby[obs3], lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot[obs3]. land lubber; fresh water sailor, fair weather sailor; horse marine; fish out of water, ass in lion's skin, jackdaw in peacock's feathers; quack &c. (deceiver) 548; lord of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Fighter,"[48] a work which passed under the approving eye of the old war horse himself and is full of his characteristic pecksniffery.[49] His beginnings, it appears, were very modest. When he arrived in New York from the Connecticut hinterland, he was a penniless and uneducated clod-hopper, just out of the Union army, and his first job was that of a porter in a wholesale dry-goods house. But he had in him several qualities of the traditional Yankee which almost always insure success, and it ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... soon beneath the sod Doth perish and decay, Though cherished body is but clod, Yet in his soul man is a God, To do and live alway. So hence with gloom and banish fear, Come Mirth and Jollity, Since, though we pine in dungeon drear, Though these, our bodies, languish here, We ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... then an officer's voice called from the near traverse. "Is anybody hit there!" A sergeant shouted back "No, sir," and was immediately remonstrated with by an indignant private busily engaged in scraping the remains of a mud clod from his eye. ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... eyes on the ground—walking so slowly, and with his lean frame so bent that I might have supposed him ill if I had not remarked the steady movement of his head from right to left, and the alert touch with which he now and again displaced a clod of earth or a cluster of leaves. By-and-by he rose stiffly, and looked round him suspiciously; but by that time I had slipped behind a trunk, and was not to be seen; and after a brief interval he went back to his task, stooping over it more closely, if possible, than before, and applying ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... features would be the height, shape, and features of the future husband or wife. The taste of the custock, that is, the heart of the stem, was an infallible indication of his or her temper; and a clod of earth adhering to the root signified, in proportion to its size, the amount of property which he or she would bring to the common stock. Then the kail-stock or runt, as it was called in Ayrshire, was placed over the lintel of the door; and the baptismal name ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, and remorseless, I feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place; man to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me; I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality. I ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... the snow-drops still were sleeping Beneath the silent sod; They felt their new life pulsing Within the dark, cold clod. ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... Dumuzi was the ground in spring whose garment withered at the first approach of summer, Damkina was the leafy mould in union with fertilizing moisture, Esharra was the field whence sprang the crops, Ishtar was the clod which again grew green after the heat of the dog days and the winter frosts. All these beings had been forced to submit in a greater or less degree to the fate which among most primitive races awaits ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had turned up a clod of earth with something sticking on it, and Ben sprang forward ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... impolicy of such a campaign, appears very clearly, as early as the fifth number of the Journal:—"when Hercules undertook to cleanse the Stables of Augeas (a Work not much unlike my present Undertaking) should any little clod of Dirt more filthy perhaps than all the rest have chanced to bedawb him, how unworthy his Spirit would it have been to have polluted his Hands, by seizing the dirty clod, and crumbling it to Pieces. He should have known that such Accidents were incident to such an Undertaking: which though ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... little encouragement in his labour. Not only that the sparrows noisily criticized his work, and the chestnuts scornfully whisked their tails under his nose, but the harrows also objected, and resisted at every little stone or clod of earth. The tired horses continually stumbled, and when Slimak cried 'Woa, my lads!' and they went on, the harrows again resisted and pulled them back. When the worried harrows moved on for a bit, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... this earthly clod and comes to light again in the second part in the time of Albrechtsberger. The already existing Fux, nota cambiata, is now dealt with in conjunction with Albrechtsberger. The alternating subjects of the Canon are most ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... son, sheer o'er the ample disk Of Ajax, thrust a lance home to his neck, 1020 And the Achaians for the life appall'd Of Ajax, bade them, ceasing, share the prize. But the huge falchion with its sheath and belt— Achilles them on Diomede bestow'd. The hero, next, an iron clod produced 1025 Rough from the forge, and wont to task the might Of King Eetion; but, when him he slew, Pelides, glorious chief, with other spoils From Thebes convey'd it in his fleet to Troy. He stood erect, and to the Greeks he cried. 1030 Come forth who also shall this prize ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the innumerable theories which the first attempt to reduce them into practice certainly destroys. If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science; yet we see the plough driven, the clod broken, the manure spread, the seeds scattered, and the harvest reaped, by men whom those that feed upon their industry will never be persuaded to admit into the same rank with heroes, or with sages; and who, after all the confessions which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... loin is the best piece for broiling—a steak from the round or shoulder clod is good and comes cheaper. If the beef is not very tender, it should be laid on a board and pounded, before broiling or frying it. Wash it in cold water, then lay it on a gridiron, place it on a hot bed of coals, and broil it as quick as possible without burning it. If broiled slow, it will not be ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... lose much thought and time conquering my anger. It fills my thought. When I taught you Indian verbs the other day the rain dripped from your hair. And I sat like a clod. What could I do? I could not shelter you for fear of rousing suspicion in the men. Mademoiselle, I cannot stand it. I must let the men know that you are a woman. And then I must marry you ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... I have; zeemed to turn it over and find it under this here clod I'm breaking up with the hoe. Wish I'd looked when ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... though he was dead, and choked him in the lake. But Crumb-snatcher was fighting to avenge his dead comrades, and hit Leeky before he reached the land; and he fell forward at the blow and his soul went down to Hades. And seeing this, the Cabbage-climber took a clod of mud and hurled it at the Mouse, plastering all his forehead and nearly blinding him. Thereat Crumb-snatcher was enraged and caught up in his strong hand a huge stone that lay upon the ground, a heavy burden for the soil: with that he hit Cabbage-climber below the knee and splintered his whole ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... forefathers, and was mine; but now for the first time I heard a clergyman wrestling in mental agony, and interceding with the God who hath said, "Repent before the night cometh, in which no man can work," for a sinful creature, whose worn—out frame was now as a clod of the valley. But I had little time for consideration, as presently all the negro servants of the establishment set up a loud howl, as if they had lost their nearest and dearest. "Oh, our poor dear young mistress ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... he dig in a ditch, or blaze a trail, Where the dreams of men may run? No clod of earth shall shoulder him From his place ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... is getting to be more and more trying. It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I had already six of them per week before. This morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,—this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings,—most of all in that perpetual auto da fe where young womanhood is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... your predicament must have recourse to artificial means. Nitre in broth, for instance,—about three grains to ten (cattle fed upon nitre grow fat); or earthy odors,—such as exist in cucumbers and cabbage. A certain great lord had a clod of fresh earth, laid in a napkin, put under his nose every morning after sleep. Light anointing of the head with oil, mixed with roses and salt, is not bade but, upon the whole, I prescribe the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great-hearted frog, took up a clod of mud and flung it full at a mouse that was coming furiously upon him. That mouse's helmet was knocked off and his forehead was plastered with the clod of mud, so ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... bitten lip of hate, When in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... necessary acts, who is regardless of personal appearance and attire, whose senses are all collected (for devotion to the true objects of life), whose purposes are never left unaccomplished,[914] who bears himself with equal friendliness towards all creatures, who regards a clod of earth and a lump of gold with an equal eye, who is equally disposed towards friend and foe, who is possessed of patience, who takes praise and blame equally,[915] who is free from longing with respect to all objects of desire, who practises Brahmacharya, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... gnome, whose name was Clod. "The earth has a soft carpet, of a new kind of emerald; overhead is a blue roof, made of turquoise; but I am told that there is a crack in it, and sometimes water comes pouring down in torrents. But the worst ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... "We're going back. We'll face it together and we'll conquer it together. You won't be alone now. Darling, don't you see—it's because you aren't a clod, because you're sensitive and imaginative that you experience fear. It's not anything to be ashamed of. You were simply the first man on Earth to develop a new and completely different kind of ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... fell upon the air like sighs—like the distant tones of a bell tolling a requiem—a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod of earth ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... have felt the ineffable sting Of life, though I be art's valet. I have painted the cloud and the clod, Who should have possessed ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and by no one is it supposed that either he or Mrs. Reid have part in the publication of these details. He showed wisdom in a preference for his own household over the proffered royal quarters which would have been assigned him. He is chosen for his fitness, but were he the veriest clod the dignity of his position would still carry with it a sufficient measure of respect. Our desire to embellish its importance is absurd, and the hysteria of the dailies is calculated to place a dignified gentleman in a ridiculous light. Mrs. Reid's name and cultivation will doubtless enable ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... felt afraid of the awful fellow. I must get away from this, I must hide myself. I lay down, very slowly, deep in the ditch. I now felt that I had been long, long dead and that I was lying here alone, waiting for I forget what. That keeper: was there such a person? He now seemed to me an awesome clod of earth, which came rolling down, slowly but steadily, and which would fall heavily upon me. Then he turned into a lovely white ashplant, which stood there waving its boughs in a stately manner. I would let him go past and then ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... it; another sees it spoil'd Ere it is gotten. Thus the world Is all to piecemeals cut, and hurl'd By factious hands. It is a ball Which Fate and force divide 'twixt all The sons of men. But, O good God! While these for dust fight, and a clod, Grant that poor I may smile, and be At rest ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... a terrible moment when the first clod of the valley fell on my sister's coffin. God sustained me under the shock! I neither groaned nor wept. When Mr. Hardinge returned the customary thanks to those who had assembled to assist me "in burying my dead out of my sight," I had even sufficient fortitude ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... relations are indispensable to the existence of human life, and perhaps of the earth itself. Who, that can conceive the idea of a world without a sun, but must connect with it the extinction of light and heat, of all animal life, of all vegetation and production, leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to the primitive state of chaos, or to be consumed by elemental fire? The influence of the moon—of the planets, our next-door neighbors of the solar system—of the fixed stars, scattered ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... overestimate the one or the other. Traces, at least, of a similar mode of thought persisted by the Greek Fathers of the Church, and disappeared, if ever, with the predominance of Latin theology. To the oriental the idea of evolution is natural. The earth is to him no inert, resistant clod; she brings forth ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... homage dost thou crave, No anchorite's seclusion wouldst thou ask, Thou lov'st no misanthrope or sullen slave, But only those who, faithful to life's task, Must yet at times look upward from the clod, And seek through thee acquaintanceship ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... not June Is out of tune With love and God; The rose his rival reigns, The stars reject his pains, His home the clod! ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... is supposed to be in Court. If it is moveable, it is actually there. If it be immoveable, a fragment or sample of it is brought in its place; land, for instance, is represented by a clod, a house by a single brick. In the example selected by Gaius, the suit is for a slave. The proceeding begins by the plaintiff's advancing with a rod, which, as Gaius expressly tells, symbolised a spear. He lays hold of the slave and asserts a right to ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Sunday use, was of coarse, strong harn, to suit the tear and wear of barn and field. His shoes came from rustic tanpits, for most farmers then prepared their own leather; were armed, sole and heel, with heavy, broad-headed nails, to endure the clod and the road: as hats were then little in use, save among small lairds or country gentry, westland heads were commonly covered with a coarse, broad, blue bonnet, with a stopple on its flat crown, made in thousands at Kilmarnock, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... shot bump grab fled ship blot lump drab sled whip spot pump slab sped slip plot jump stab then drip trot hump brag bent spit clog bulk cram best crib frog just clan hemp gift plod drug clad vest king stop shut dash west grit clod hush ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with his fingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod in his hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work. Festival-day though it was to his Schwotzer neighbors, he was eager to spear this virgin ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... that! A poor clod of a fellow that can't work, and will be hanging upon you every day, keeping you from working—that you will never be ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a clod, or hard unirrigated land. Cuzquini is to break clods of earth, or to level. Montesinos derives the name of the city from the verb "to level," or from the heaps of clods, of earth called cuzco. Cusquic-Raymi is ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... performed without ulterior purpose may be taken to symbolize some sort of fortune. When the Calif Omar sent an embassy to the Persian King Yezdegird summoning him to embrace Islam, the angry king commanded that a clod of earth should be brought and that the ambassadors should bear it out of the city, which they accordingly did; and this act was taken both by Arabs and by Persians as a presage of Moslem victory—the invaders had a portion of Persian soil.[1628] An element of magic, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... sang a little clod of clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a pebble of the brook Warbled ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... little region altered. At the first few drops, all the ants would hasten, the throbbing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain came down heavier, the column melted away, those near each end hurrying to shelter and those in the center crawling beneath fallen leaves and bits of clod and sticks. A moment before, hundreds of ants were trudging around a tiny pool, the water lined with ant handrails, and in shallow places, veritable formicine pontoons,—large ants which stood up to their bodies in water, with the booty-laden host passing over them. Now, all ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... have for you at this moment. Well, I married you and we lived together as happily as most young couples do. I knew that I had a good wife, and you didn't know, or even suspect, what a brainless, heartless clod you had for your husband. Our married life glided by without anything particular happening to disturb it. But the thing became monotonous to me, and I had the senseless vagabond's desire for change. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... simple,more natural than nature, than earth, than sea,or sun. It is beyond telling more natural that I should have a soul than not, that there should be immortality; I think there is much more than immortality. It is matter which is the supernatural, and difficult of under-standing. Why this clod of earth I hold in my hand? Why this water which drops sparkling from my fingers dipped in the brook? Why are they at all? When? How? What for? Matter is beyond understanding, mysterious, impenetrable; I touch it easily, comprehend it, no. Soul, mind—the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... from upwind, and the rhino naturally runs away upwind. He opens fire, and has another thrilling adventure to relate. As a matter of fact, if he had approached from the other side, and then aroused the animal with a clod of earth, the beast would probably have "charged" away in identically the same direction. I am convinced from a fairly varied experience that this is the basis for most of the thrilling experiences ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... I asked indignantly. "The thing you have seen and felt has been in this world long enough for every man to understand. Eve used it upon Adam. I can't understand? Damme, sir, do you think I am a clod? I have felt it ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... old story of the city chap who was showing his farmer uncle the sights of New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried to astonish him by saying "This land is worth $500,000 an acre." The old farmer dug his toe into the ground, kicked out a clod, broke it open, looked at it, spit on it and squeezed it in his hand and then said, "Don't you believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty poor soil I call it." Both ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the other, the two black-and-white hunters pacing beside him. Now he stooped and caught up a pinch of soil and spat upon it three times. Then he threw the tiny clod of earth at the witch doctor. It struck Lumbrilo just above the heart and the man reeled under what might ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... paralysis; years, the memory of which fills my soul with sorrow and shame. I went to the capitals of the old world to see life, but in seeing life I became acquainted with death, the death of true manliness and self-respect. You look astonished; but I tell you, Alf, there is many a poor clod-hopper, on whom are the dust and grime of unremitting toil, who feels more self-respect and true manliness than many of us with our family prestige, social position, and proud ancestral halls. After I had lived abroad for years, I ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... wind the merry horn, And from its covert starts the fearful prey, Who, warm'd with youth's blood in his swelling veins, Would, like a lifeless clod, outstretched lie, Shut out from all the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... came clod, clod, clod, And when he opened the door, He croaked so harsh, 'twas as much as she could To keep from laughing the more, the more, To keep from laughing ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... miscreant; stone him with many stones; clod him with clods; pot him with pots; let the culprit feel your sticks; leave him no way out. At him, Plato! come, Chrysippus, let him have it! Shoulder to shoulder, close ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... happened again; but just as he had a clod poised for throwing, a window went up and a woman called: "For pity sake, little boy, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... a monkey. Yet there is a spark of the divine in him and in all these arts and institutions which he with the aid of the cosmic forces has evolved. Surely a juster judgment may find a sublimity in this age-long march from the clod toward the millennium that could never belong to the spectacular but very provincial myths of the Semites. The emotions ever lag behind the intellect; and our hearts may still yearn for the neighborly and passionate battle-god ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... seven years since. As an invading body, perhaps, one would have preferred the Germans; but only because experience had taught them already what it would teach in twelve months to the Berkshire or Cambridge 'clod.' There, to us, was the true test of England's military qualities; her young men had come by tens of thousands, of their own free will, to be made soldiers of by her country gentlemen, and treated by them the while as ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... all the Deities confound you; you stink of garlick, you filth unmistakeable, you clod, you he-goat, you pig-sty, you mixture of dog ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... "When clod-hoppers and such scum mingle with their betters," he bawled out, "one of us must retire from the foul contamination. But this I tell you, the first of you that budges, or even growls, I'll break ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... cultivators, to slide over the ground and cut off large weeds. Another indispensable tool in a large vineyard is a one-horse grape-hoe, to supplement the work of which there must be heavy hand-hoes. Very often the surface soil must be pulverized, and a clod-crusher, roller or a float becomes a necessity. A full complement of bright, sharp tools at the command of the grape-grower goes far toward success ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... of every creature born of woman. Be sure, O soul! if none of these experiences have ever been realized by you, that you are but just now entering upon the inevitable rounds which must attend your connection with, and relationship to this earthly sphere of being. Such are as the insensate clod, having as yet neither spiritual sense, nor moral responsibility. Nature's processes are slow; but be sure that the goal is appointed, and that God will be there and will ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... popular sentimental repugnance to a scientific discussion of love. Because I dissect love, and weigh and calculate, it is denied that I am capable of experiencing love. It is too radiant and glorious a thing for a dull clod like me to know. And because I cannot experience love and be made mad by it, my fitness to describe its phenomena is likewise denied. Only the lover may describe love. And only the lunatic, I suppose, may compose a medical ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he overheard people say ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... less than they are taught now. They should receive more practical knowledge than they do now, without a doubt, and less of that which is simply ornamental, but they cannot know too much. An intelligent gardener is better than a clod-hopper, and an educated nurse is better than an ignorant one; but if the gardener and the nurse have been spoiled for their business and their condition, by the sentiments which they have imbibed with their knowledge, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... real value is the moss to the stone, except in the picturesque aspect? Do you know that a great many of these time revered and honored adages are the greatest humbugs in the world?" asked the audacious young iconoclast. "Who wants to be a stone or a clod, or even a bit of velvet moss? They go to make up the world, it is true; but is that narrow, torpid, insensate life any pattern for human souls and active bodies? I think a man's business in this world is to find ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... wives by looking in on them at their butter-making in the sweet dairies; and Nature is lashing everything—grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human creatures—more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod, but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities for joy and pain, as of no more account than a couple of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with it rapidly crumbles and spreads about the new-turned soil. Now they trample the bed thoroughly, throwing out any stones or pebbles discovered by their feet, and frequently using the kay-kay further to break up some small clod of earth. Finally a large section of the sementera is prepared, and the toilers form in line abreast and slowly tread back and forth over the plat, making the bed soft and smooth beneath the water ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god: Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend His actions', passions', being's, use and end; Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why This hour a slave, the next ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... irony: "My dear Kapellmeister, I am not as those who would serve Art with a bottle of champagne under each arm. I want no fumes in my brain and no clod between my fingers when I meet ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... creatures everywhere stir the earth and the waters. Life and matter become, as it were, a new creation, and one can believe anything when he sees how many forms life and matter can assume under the mellowing rays of the sun. The clod becomes a flower; the egg a reptile, fish, or bird. The cunning woodchuck, that looks out of his hole on the awakening earth and blue sky, seems almost to have a sense of the miracle that has been wrought. The boy who throws a stone at him, to drive him back into the earth, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Hardly had the last clod been thrown on poor Braddock's grave, when his army was seized with a second and most unaccountable panic; for no one could tell from whence or how it came. With those horrid yells still sounding in their ears, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady |
