"Faggot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at it till she had ignited the tinder, then thrust it with her own hand in the midst of the straw surrounding the faggots, fanned it with her apron till it burst into a vivid flame, and then ran across the courtyard to the other side of the faggot heap to set it alight there also. Her wild and tangled tresses ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... And at that sound, the son of Radha, deprived of his senses by anger, waving his well-shaped arms, said these words,—'O Vikarna, many opposite and inconsistent conditions are noticeable in this assembly. Like fire produced from a faggot, consuming the faggot itself, this thy ire will consume thee. These personages here, though urged by Krishna, have not uttered a word. They all regard the daughter of Drupada to have been properly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... then entire body were lost to Betty above; she had set the rifle aside and was kneeling, her hands clasped in her excitement. Now she could see only his head and the torch held high; he looked up and smiled at her and waved the faggot. Then she saw only the dimly burning fire and the hand clutching it. And dimmer and dimmer grew his light until she strained her eyes to catch a glint of it and could not tell if it were being extinguished ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... jacket on a stone that stuck out of the wall and went out for the wood, glad to be away from the heat and smoke, and after climbing up among the firs I collected and brought back a good faggot, with which the fire was fed till Shock declared ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... be, big or little, we organise it. We have found out that that is the only way to get the most out of it that is in it. We know the weakness of individual sticks, and the strength of the concentrated faggot. Suppose you try a scheme like this, for instance. In England and America put every Jew on the census-book as a Jew (in case you have not been doing that). Get up volunteer regiments composed of Jews solely, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no worse than the torch, the faggot and the stake, perhaps better. I hear two sliding wolves now, Dagaeoga, but I know that neither is the giant leader. As before, he keeps under cover, while he sends forward others ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the custom of burning a faggot of ash at Christmas, is traced back to the fact that "the Divine Infant at Bethlehem was first washed and dressed by a fire ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... nothing, The Jew has still deserved the faggot—for 'Twere better it here died in misery Than for eternal woe to live. Besides, Why should the Jew forestall the hand of God? God, if he wills to save, can save ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... in the charge of the widowed Queen Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she frequently "lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre," and even a crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... you not in a Chimney seen A sullen Faggot, wet and green, How coyly it receives the Heat, And at both Ends doth fume and sweat; So fares it with the harmless Maid When first upon her Back she's laid. But the kind experienc'd Dame Cracks and rejoices ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... connection of Scotland with the services in India. But, politically, Scotland, till the Reform Bill, had scarcely a recognisable existence. The electorate was tiny, and great landholders controlled the votes, whether genuine or created by legal fiction—"faggot votes." Municipal administration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was terribly corrupt, and reform was demanded, but the French Revolution, producing associations of Friends of the People, who were prosecuted and grievously ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... to force our way in," Red Roy replied; "each man who climbs shall carry with him a faggot of wood, and we will smoke them ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... your aid in his war with the Teules. What did I tell you then? I told you that if the people of Anahuac would not stand together against the white men, they must be broken one by one like the sticks of an unbound faggot, and cast into the flames. Did I speak lies? Nay, I spoke truth, for through the treason of her tribes, and chiefly through the treason of the Tlascalans, Anahuac is fallen, and Tenoctitlan is a ruin sown with dead like ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... America till the time of our own New England clipper ships, the Basque coast was the backbone of Spanish trade. The three provinces were the only ones which kept their privileges and their municipal liberties all through the process of the centralizing of the Spanish monarchy with cross and faggot, which historians call the great period of Spain. The rocky inlets in the mountains were full of shipyards that turned out privateers and merchantmen manned by lanky broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... charged with magic That caught and held my idleness near hers. Resentful of her power, my spirit chafed Against its own deep pity, as though it were Raised ghost and she the witch had bid it haunt me. What's more I knew this slave by rights should glean And faggot drift-wood, not lounge there and waste My father's food dreaming his time away. For then as now the common-minded rich Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... external signs of it, he collects expressions of it from other writers, he searches for similes, he composes, exaggerates, heaps term on term, figure on figure, till we groan beneath the cold, disjointed heap; but it is all faggot and no fire, the life breath is not in it, his passion has the form of the Leviathan, but it never makes the deep boil, he fastens us all at anchor in the scaly rind of it, our sympathies remain as idle as a painted ship ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Tristan and his guards went down from the town to where the faggot burned, near the road upon a rock was a chantry, it stood at a cliff's edge steep and sheer, and it turned to the sea-breeze; in the apse of it were windows glazed. Then Tristan said to those ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... same moment Kaufmann pointed to something that looked like a faggot of wood on the snow. 'T was the hut. It seemed as if they could get to it in a few strides, but, in point of fact, it took a good half-hour's walking. One of the guides went on ahead to light the fire. Darkness had now come on; ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a faggot of sticks, and said to his eldest son: "Break it." The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the Bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. "Untie the faggots," said the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... onion, One medium sized carrot, One medium sized turnip, One faggot of soup herbs, Also one and one-half ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... and a third faggot, each blazing fiercely, and each directed towards a fresh part of the heap, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... See, they are coming with torch and faggot." Scores of Indians were revealed in the blaze, hastening down the hill; and troops of squaws were perceived dragging loads of brush wood. Then one of the posts gave way and another was seen to totter. In the gloom of the Fort, the paling of many a ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... sunbeams. As for the timber of the roof itself and its framing, so exceeding great and high it was, that the tale tells how that none might see the fashion of it from the hall-floor unless he were to raise aloft a blazing faggot on a long pole: since no lack of timber was there among the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... which decayeth not with the decay of the body, and which is truly a fatal disease! It hath neither beginning nor end. Dwelling within the heart, it destroyeth creatures, like a fire of incorporeal origin. And as a faggot of wood is consumed by the fire that is fed by itself, even so doth a person of impure soul find destruction from the covetousness born of his heart. And as creatures endued with life have ever a dread of death, so men ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... customs, such as the annual feast of the first fruits, resemble those of the Jews. At the beginning of this century there arose a warrior king, called Chaka, who gathered up the scattered tribes of the Zulus as a woodman gathers sticks, and as of the frail brushwood the woodman makes a stout faggot, that none can break, so of these tribes Chaka fashioned a nation so powerful that no other black people ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... "The little faggot's game," old Joe went on, "is as clear as mud in a wineglass. He fires with blank cartridge; like as he'd say 'What'll you do?' What did he want? That we should retarn his civility with grape? Of course; that if it should come to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... impossible to follow; but this was soon lost, and the Pole Star was their only guide. When the time came to call a halt, the Prince, who had after much consideration decided on his plan of action, caused a few twigs from the faggot he had brought with him to be planted in the snow, and then he sprinkled over them a pinch of the magic powder he had collected from the enchanted boat. To his great joy they instantly began to sprout and grow, and in a marvellously short time the camp was surrounded by a perfect grove ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... 25.—I do not pity Joan of Arc: that heroic woman only paid the price which all must pay for celebrity in some shape or other: the sword or the faggot, the scaffold or the field, public hatred or private heart-break; what matter? The noble Bedford could not rise above the age in which he lived: but that was the age of gallantry and chivalry, as well as superstition: and could Charles, the lover ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... was very simple. It was one of those things which are forgotten as life becomes civilised, but for want of which one may perish when one returns to barbarity, as in war. The old man began by placing stout poles in tripods over the camp-fires, lashing them firmly at the top with faggot-binders. Then he took the hide of one of the slaughtered cattle, gathering it up at the corners, so as to form a sort of bag. He cut some long narrow strips from the hide of the legs, with which to tie the four corners together. Then he lashed the four ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... say is," cried her neighbour, "my cats were never near your faggot rick. They didn't go into your place at all last night; they were both asleep by my kitchen fire from three in the afternoon till after we'd had our supper. Me and my husband both saw them. You can ask ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... lives) of their forbears of many, many centuries back. Certain it is that nothing else in his life had been quite so full of hostile significance for Finn as this fact of his having been driven out from the camp in the clear patch with a faggot of burning wood. This was man's message to him; thus, then, he was sent to his place, and his ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... were doing, God being willing to manifest how displeasing these Cruelties are to His Divine Majesty, the whole City, that was the Stage on which they were acted, was consumed by fire; and the rest of the Captains following his example, destroy'd all the Lords of that Region by Fire and Faggot. ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... me Smithfield and Old Bailey,—fire and faggot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite down upon ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to his head butler, and by and by up there comes an ould faggot ov a Cuillean, that was enough to frighten a ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... 1555, peace was concluded between the religions, and continued until the Thirty Years' War. It abolished the faggot and the stake. The Catholics gained nothing by this, for no Lutherans had thought that it could be lawful to put people of the old religion to death. The Lutherans obtained security that they should ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... destroying them is to hang a portion of some animal substance, such as the entrails of a fowl, fish, &c., to the end of a pole, thrust through and protruding from the branches; the ants will run along the pole and collect in immense quantities around the bait, when, by a lighted faggot, they can be burned by thousands. This repeated once or twice a day for a week or so, will soon rid the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widow'd, solitary thing That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; 130 She, wretched matron, forc'd in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... poor man; 'the string is broke! What shall I do to gather them together again? I have been all day making this little faggot.' ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the Roman enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the workman of the Parisian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the performance ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Ranger, Besides another and hotter post, That renders him not averse to a roast,— Creeping into the Furnace almost, Has made himself as warm as a toast— When, unsuspicious of any danger, And least of all of any such maggot As treating a body like a faggot, All at once he is seized and shoven In pastime cruel, Like so much fuel, Headlong ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Burrell, were opposed by two Whigs, James More Molyneux and Philip Carteret Webb, a London lawyer. Molyneux and Webb were elected by 73 votes to 45, but some at least of the 73 (perhaps also some of the 45) would not have borne strict investigation. Eight of the winning votes were faggot votes manufactured out of the Cow Inn, of Haslemere, which inspired Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, to a ballad of forty-two verses, entitled The Cow of Haslemere, or The Conjurer's Secretary at Oxford. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... favor of it argued that this limitation would certainly be imposed in committee of the House, which though it was in all probability prepared to give the vote to women possessed of independence, dreaded the extension of faggot votes which would have been the almost inevitable consequence of admitting married women; while the result would be the same whether the limitation clause was introduced by the promoters of the bill or by a parliamentary committee, and it would be more likely to obtain support ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... reaching it, that it was a lonely place with no very great accommodation in the way of apartments—that portion of its resources being all comprised in one public room with a sanded floor, and a chair or two. However, a large faggot and a plentiful supply of coals being heaped upon the fire, the appearance of things was not long in mending; and, by the time they had washed off all effaceable marks of the late accident, the room was warm and light, which was a most agreeable ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... betwixt two meadows green, Though fresh-cut faggot ends Of hazel made some amends With a gleam as if flowers they ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... to his whistle; And read it like a jocund lover, With great applause t' himself, twice over; 340 Subscrib'd his name, but at a fit And humble distance to his wit; And dated it with wond'rous art, Giv'n from the bottom of his heart; Then seal'd it with his Coat of Love, 345 A smoaking faggot — and above, Upon a scroll — I burn, and weep; And near it — For her Ladyship; Of all her sex most excellent, These to her gentle hands present. 350 Then gave it to his faithful Squire, With lessons how t' observe and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... mentions two instances of public penance being performed here; in 1534 by some of the adherents of Elizabeth Barton, well known as the holy maid of Kent, and in 1536 by Sir Thomas Newman, a priest, who "bare a faggot at Paules crosse for ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... As a faggot sparkles on the hearth, Not less if unattended and alone, Than when both young and old sit gathered round, And take delight in its activity; Even so this happy creature of herself Is all-sufficient; Solitude to her Is ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... they could not come out to fetch Water. They cut down Wood also, and made bundles of Faggots therewith, which they piled up round about their Fort at some distance, and every night removed them nearer and nearer. So that their works became higher than the Fort. Their main intent by these Faggot-works, was to have brought them just under the Fort, and then to have set it on Fire, the Walls of the Fort being for the most part of Wood. There was also a Bo-gahah Tree growing just by the Fort: on which they ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... was wonderful with what ease these two retired seamen, without instruction, dropped into the farm-master's routine. So (if in other words) Dinah remarked, glancing out of the mullioned window of the kitchen as she fetched a fresh faggot for the hearth on which her mistress had already begun to set out the heavy-cake and potato-cake ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... day he said to the old faggot-maker, "How is it that one gets to see a fairy?" The old man answered, "There are some to whom it comes by nature; but for others three things are needed—a handful of courage, a mouthful of silence, and a capful of moonshine. But if you would ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... a little boy, poorly clad, was seen coming up the avenue; and Gottfried exclaimed—'Here comes Heinrich!' and running out of the room, he presently returned, leading by the hand Heinrich, the little faggot-maker, whose mother, a poor but pious widow, lived in a hut ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... impartiall hand of Nature, That all things gave in her originall Without these definite terms of Mine and Thine, 100 Beene turn'd unjustly to the hand of Fortune, Had all preserv'd her in her prime like D'Ambois; No envie, no disjunction had dissolv'd, Or pluck'd one stick out of the golden faggot In which the world of Saturne bound our lifes, 105 Had all beene held together with the nerves, The genius, and th'ingenious soule of D'Ambois. Let my hand therefore be the Hermean rod To part and reconcile, and so conserve you, As my combin'd ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... no faggot for burning, Allen-a-Dale has no furrow for turning, Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning, Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning; Come, read me my riddle! come, hearken my tale! And tell me the craft of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... faggot towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she struck flint on steel, caught ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ladder vrom the rick, We stole towards the house, An' crope in roun' behind en, lik' A cat upon a mouse. Then, looken roun', Dick whisper'd "How Is theaese job to be done, min: Why we do want a faggot now, Vor stoppen ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... sake, one makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in happy time, is that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its tangled dingles, its nuts and its honeysuckles;—and, carrying away a faggot of those sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint's: of whom, and of whose doings, we ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... a piece of bark from a faggot beside the fire and rolled it between his fingers. She stood looking at him intently, her lips a little parted, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... excitement was at its height, appeared greatly terrified, and clung to Alday's wife, trembling and crying piteously. No notice was taken of the poor little thing, and at length she crept away into a corner to conceal herself behind a faggot of wood. Her hiding-place was close to my seat, and after a little coaxing I induced her to leave it and come to me. She was a most forlorn little thing, with a white, thin face and large, dark, pathetic eyes. Her ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the following poems have appeared in the 'S. Barnabas' Parish Magazine.' For my godchildren and my people I have made them up into a little bundle of sticks—a Christmas faggot to feed the fires in the winter palace of ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... was keen-witted, and knew perfectly what he was about, now roused himself, and began to make miniature faggots of thin canes, ten in each faggot, and shortly he presented ten of these small bundles, which together contained one hundred, to me, saying each stick represented a cloth, and the amount of the "honga" required by the King of Uhha was ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of a wind-furnace until the whole mass becomes of a welding heat, when it is taken from the fire and drawn out under a forge-hammer,—the process of welding being repeated, after which the steel is reduced to the required sizes. The article called FAGGOT steel is made after a somewhat ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... heard of. Then there is slaughter among the young lambs. A child going to school, or an old woman carrying home a faggot from the forest is found torn and partly devoured, and the news spreads that the demon wolf has returned to the neighbourhood. Great hunts have over and over again been got up specially to slay him, but he seems to lead a charmed life. He has been ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... toiling, all covered with dust, But reach home with his faggot ere night he must, Panting and weary he walks quite slow, How to get home he does not know. At last quite exhausted with toil and trouble, With the weight of the burden and his years, bent double. He puts down his faggot, and thinks of his pains, What is his work, and ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... bringing all religion into contempt, and that he had inculcated therein the doctrine that there was no future state nor rewards for the righteous nor punishments for the wicked. She made no reply, but going into another room, returned with her apron full of dry brushwood and faggot; all of this she piled upon the fire, and produced a bright blaze. She then took the book from my hand, and placed it upon the flaming pile; then sitting down, took her rosary out of her pocket, and told her beads till the volume was consumed. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... low, and the blaze of the last faggot was almost expiring, burning in small blue flames, which now and then lengthened up into little white gleams. My uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his nightcap drawn almost down to his nose. His fancy was already wandering, and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... table and some benches of wood, all black and shining with grease and dirt. But indeed the walls, the ceiling, and all else about us was beyond everything for blackness, and this was easily to be understood, for a wench coming in with a cauldron lights a faggot of wood in a corner, where was no chimney to carry off the smoke, but only a hole in the wall with a kind of eaves over it, so that presently the place was so filled with the fumes 'twas difficult ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... all those who, during days and nights of patient labour, I saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of the night and coming back again to joy? What has become of the smouldering faggot which an ardent ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... grand she had become; but when she came to the entrance of the village, and the young husbandmen and maids stood there chatting, and her own mother appeared among them, sitting on a stone to rest, and with a faggot of sticks before her that she had picked up in the wood, then Inge turned back, for she felt ashamed that she, who was so finely dressed, should have for a mother a ragged woman, who picked up wood in the forest. She did not turn back out of pity ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling for a long time; how some ravens perched on the house-top and began croaking in an unusual manner; and how, when his servant was breaking up a faggot, some sparks of fire flew out of the same; whereupon, "by an unlooked-for step I married a wife, and from that time divers misfortunes have attended me."[52] Lucia, the wife of his choice, was the eldest ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Heaven for his good fortune, in stumbling upon this homely habitation, and determined to pass the night under the protection of the old cottager, who gave him to understand, that her husband, who was a faggot-maker, had gone to the next town to dispose of his merchandise; and that, in all probability, he would not return till next morning, on account of the tempestuous night. Ferdinand sounded the beldame with a thousand artful interrogations, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... I must take you with me," he said. "To be able to swim a little is a good deal better than not to be able to swim at all, for by making a faggot you will gain such support as will enable you to ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... his nose, and for my mother who sees nothing but what she will see. Well, he had fallen in with those who deem this same Mary our only lawful Queen, and would fain set her on the throne to bring back fire and faggot by the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whatever, nothing at all, nothing on earth; not a particle &c (smallness) 32; all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, man of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, faggot voter; nominis umbra [Lat.], nonentity; flash in the pan, vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]. shadow; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; dream &c (imagination) 515; ignis fatuus &c (luminary) 423 [Lat.]; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and God's-Book, 'which every born man,' till once the soul and eyesight are extinguished in him, 'can and must, with his own eyes, see the God's-Finger writing!' To discredit this, is an infidelity like no other. Such infidelity you would punish, if not by fire and faggot, which are difficult to manage in our times, yet by the most peremptory order, To hold its peace till it got something wiser to say. Why should the blessed Silence be broken into noises, to communicate only the like of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... innkeeper effectually dispelled the clouds which had been fast clearing off from Essper's intellect. Giving one wide stare, and then rubbing his eyes, the truth lighted upon him, and so he sent the Bohemian's lantern at his landlord's head. The postmaster seized the poker and the postmistress a faggot, and as the Bohemian, who had now recovered himself, had entered in the rear, Essper George stood a fair chance of receiving a thorough drubbing, had not his master, roused by the suspicious noises and angry sounds ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... absurdities and impossibility with as much ease as their every day food. They would not now forgive the tampering with the axioms of eternal truth; they regarded cheat and imposture with a very different eye; and they had recourse to the stake and the faggot, for the purpose of proving that they would no longer be trifled with. They treated the offenders as the most atrocious of criminals, and thus, though by a very indirect and circuitous method, led the way to the total dispersion of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... told me, and I remember it well, how the reason was, that in this season we might press and make the wine, and in winter whiff it up. Hark you, my masters, you that love the wine, Cop's body, follow me; for Sanct Anthony burn me as freely as a faggot, if they get leave to taste one drop of the liquor that will not now come and fight for relief of the vine. Hog's belly, the goods of the church! Ha, no, no. What the devil, Sanct Thomas of England was well ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Curse your claws! Why do you fix them on me, you crab? You won't pick up the fiend-spawn so easily, I can tell you. Bring the light there, will you? (One runs out for the light.) A trap! a trap! and a stair, down in the wall! The hell-faggot's gone! After him, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... (said he;) that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot well be separated. But, to bind one's self to one man, or one set of men, (who may be right to-day and wrong ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell |
