"Fillip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "many rude games attend it. Blindfolded youths strike at thin vessels of water hung from the branch of a tree. At Lakemba, the men arm themselves with branches of the cocoa-nut, and carry on a sham fight. At Ono, they wrestle. At Mbau, they fillip small stones from the end of a bamboo with sufficient force to make the person hit wince again. On Vanua Levu, there is a ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... CARLYLE,—I have heard, this morning, from my Father, that you are to set out on Tuesday for Scotland: so I have determined to fillip away some spurt of ink in your direction, which may reach you before you move ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... came in easy tones from the stooping draughtsman, "I have an imagination which only needs a slight fillip from a mind like yours to send it in the desired direction. I shall not draw an exact reproduction of your idea, but I think you will see that I understand it very well. How's that for ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... and out in high feather,—occasionally pinching Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... half-crowns rained upon them by their admirers and flatterers, that they would look at a shilling, for which many an honest labourer was happy to toil for ten hours under a broiling sun, with the utmost contempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it into the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was given them, as would occasionally happen—for how could they receive from those who had nothing? and nobody was bound to give them anything, as they had certain wages from their employers—then ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of their sister; on the contrary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much greater interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had when I first knew Titbull's. And whenever ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... at home, like a good little girl of whom her mother wished to make a lady. When she did happen to go out, she must not be long, or else it was, "Where have you been? Tell me at once!" At the theater, when Pa lost his temper, she could reckon on a mighty fillip, and then it was over: Pa was sorry, rather than otherwise. Ma, on the contrary, would nag for hours; muttered inarticulate phrases about "devil," "wild bull," and "taming her;" there was no end to it. Lily champed the bit! A star, indeed! Was that being a star? ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... This fillip had the desired effect. Everybody began to talk at once and in five minutes Esther's step-mother knew all about the new doctor and the broken motor. When they paused for ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... patriotic and successful demonstration of the hatred of the Belgians for their temporary masters and of their determination to hinder them by every means in their power. It gave the spirit of the people a fillip, and, despite the redoubled severity of the Germans, the Liegeois went about their businesses with a prouder air, as if conscious that, though temporarily overcome, they were ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... rule, But nothing 'gainst the truth of that brief record. Why, those few lines contain the history Of all things human: hear—"Sardanapalus, The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes, 250 In one day built Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip."[10] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... 1889 a great fillip was given to the extension of railways in Ireland by the passing of the Light Railways (Ireland) Act. It was familiarly known as "Balfour's Act." Mr. Balfour was then Chief Secretary of Ireland, and it was due to him that it was passed. The Act ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... up,—though not on the play, let me tell you! On slighter joys, a fillip to the taste. A juggler, "all complete" in black small-clothes and white kid gloves, stood there ready to burn up our handkerchiefs, change our watches into rabbits, and make omelets in our best go-to-meeting hats. I cannot remember all the wonderful ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... in Paris. It is Grace the cricketer for whom the hundred thousand subscribe their shilling: fancy a writer thus rewarded, even after scoring his century of popular novels. The winning of the Derby gives a new fillip to the monarchy itself. A Victor Hugo in London is a thought a faire rire. A Goethe at the court of Victoria, or directing Drury Lane Theatre, is of a comic-opera incongruity. Our neighbours across the border have a national celebration of Burns' birthday—they think ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to high-mettled lads, American, and English as well, that forest quarters, to be the most jovial quarters on earth, need not be made a shambles. Sensation may reach its finest pitch, excitement be an unfailing fillip, and fun the leaven which leavens the camping-trip from start to finish, even though the triumph of killing for triumph's sake be ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... as Captain Renfrew came home from town, he chanced to walk just behind the octoroon, and quite unconsciously the girl delivered an added fillip to the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... tears, And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve". Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, "You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?"—"But I would die," said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul; Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; "O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"—"Alas!" she said, "But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town, And I repeal it"; and nodding as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... performance Lilian Rosenberg saw only Shiel, thought only of Shiel. The interest she had taken in him, the interest she had so confidently asserted was only interest, had grown apace—had grown out of all recognition. It needed only a fillip now to convert that interest into something warmer; and the fillip ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the blade between the first and second fingers of the right hand, and fillip it with a jerk so that the knife turns once around in the air and strikes the point into ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... was not only a great pleasure; it gave him a fillip for the time, and he writes to Sir M. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... produce a corresponding degree of depression; when, therefore, the nervous system has been over-excited by alcoholic liquors, the usual amount of nervous energy which is necessary to give tone to the muscular system is wanting, and then a stimulus gives a fillip to the nervous centres, which restores the nervous powers to the extremities. When this state of things, however, has been permitted to go on, and the brain has been frequently brought under alcoholic influence, its structure ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... dismay. It was not only Bob Evers who was misconstruing my little attentions to Mrs. Lascelles. I was more or less prepared for that. But here were outsiders talking about us—the three of us! So far from putting a stop to the talk, I had given it a regular fillip: here were Quinby and his friends as keen as possible to see what would happen next, if not betting on a row. The situation had taken a sudden turn for the worse. I forgot the pleasant hours that I had passed ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... a bunch of water-cress, re-enforced after the family had taken their seals by a form of smoking cornbread, was the simple fare set forth. But the early rising, and two hours of work, brought hunger to the table which required nothing more elaborate as a fillip to tempt the appetite. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... made it more a hand-to-hand contest, where every elector was worthy of consideration; and though women were debarred from entering the State Parliament, yet they were now beings worth fawning upon for a vote, and their addition to the ranks of the electors gave matters a decided fillip. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... earth high upon the mountain-side. Cannot you almost behold the scene? May we not, with the brush of fancy, paint for our mental vision many a strange, weird picture? Here we see, high on the mountain-front, a mass of crystal salt—many millions of tons—thrown, by a mere fillip of terrestrial power, thirty thousand feet above the ocean level, to rest and sparkle like a gem on the bosom of that old mountain-god, Olympus. Then, still higher, on the very summit—for even here, in the glare of this great ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... percussion, concussion, collision, occursion|, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole[obs3], appulse[obs3], shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c. (attack) 716; beating &c. (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; slam, bang; hit, whack, thwack; cuff &c. 972; squash, dowse, swap, whap[obs3], punch, thump, pelt, kick, punce|, calcitration[obs3]; ruade[obs3]; arietation|; cut, thrust, lunge, yerk|; carom, carrom[obs3], clip *, jab, plug*, sidewinder* ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fancying it has occasion for some instruction, some detail, some figures, or some explanation, it presents itself, hat in hand, at the door of the departments to consult the ministers, the usher receives it in the antechamber, and with a roar of laughter, gives it a fillip on the nose. Such are the duties of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... are pierced with holes, through which issue pipes which carry the air all over the body. You know what is said of spendthrifts?-that they burn the candle at both ends. It is so with the blood of birds. That fillip which in our case it receives in the lungs, and which sends it back full of vigor into the arteries, is repeated in the bird at the other end of the arteries as well. The capillaries, those delicate vessels at the end of the arteries, plunge from all sides ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... yet, why was he here? What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes? Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another's secret. And the governor knew, D'Herouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone. Love? A fillip of her finger for love! Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV. Such a way ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... I recollect, they were actually fired to give the car a fillip when it reached the dead-point on its ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... order really bore in part the character of a manifesto; to the people of the North, whose confidence must be kept and their spirit sustained, it said that the administration meant action at once; to commanding officers it was a fillip, warning them to bestir themselves, obstacles to the contrary notwithstanding. It was a reveille. Further, in a general way it undoubtedly laid out a sound plan of campaign, substantially in accordance with that which ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... paper with a fillip, and gave himself tip to the lecture. But the tall stranger, half rising with a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "My appetite needs no fillip. It is disgraceful to try and make me eat more than I do already. I am getting hideously stout. I found my maid in tears to-night because I positively could not get into ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... character has wrought itself into the clothes, habitual attitude, etc. Is not the popularity of the small full-length portrait-photographs owing to the predominance they give to this passive imprint of the mind's past action upon externals over its momentary and elusive presence? It is to the fillip received from the startling likeness of trivial details, exciting us to supply what is deficient in more important points, that is to be ascribed the leniency to the photograph on the part of near relatives and friends, who are usually hard to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... some rather broad joking, which offended and irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She could be friends with the Paul Abbey ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... felt slighted by Bella's declaration that she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella's return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson's courtship, or whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she made a dash at her stately parent ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... us to drive, but I, hoping to give matters an onward fillip, spoke so warmly in favour of a morning stroll in the promenade "to see people" that he gave in, and Bee's attentions to me while garbing ourselves were so marked that I almost hoped I had ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... guests as I had not met before, and relating over the dinner-table, with much gusto, the story of my abduction and escape. Then I produced Morillo's letter of defiance, which I took with me to show him, and which added a fillip to the conversation that lasted us until the cloth was drawn. We sat rather late over our wine, and when we rose to go the admiral invited me into his library ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for hire. He took it, and leveled it at Mademoiselle Lalage, who was singing some trivial couplets much better than they deserved. Catching sight of him presently, she greeted him with a flash of her dark eye that made him writhe as though his heart had received a fillip from a ponderable missile. She did not spare these roguish glances. They darted everywhere; and Conolly, looking about him to note their effect, saw rows of callow young faces with parted lips and an expression which seemed to have been caught and fixed at the climax of a blissful ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... often quoted and emphasised, “the Cartesian manner of explaining the formation of all things.” “I cannot forgive Descartes,” he said. “He would willingly in all his philosophy have done without God, if he could; but he could not get on without letting him give the world a fillip to set it agoing: after that, he has nothing more to do with God.” Whether he had studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of Arnauld and others for his philosophy. He even spoke of it as “useless, uncertain, and troublesome—nay, as ridiculous.” {177} He has added, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... liquor—on which latter article my esteemed employers made something like a thousand per cent, profit. Of course I had had a big pull over Krause, whose stock of trade was almost exhausted when I landed, whilst I had come ashore with half a schooner-load. But apart from this, it was a fillip to my vanity to think that even if Krause had had his store packed from floor to roof with trade, the natives would rather have come to me than to him, for as I have said, they all—even those in his own village of Taritai—disliked him for his domineering German-like manner, and his contemptuous ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... every excess of venery capable of being enjoyed by three women and one youth. In fact, we all indulged rather too freely, if I may judge from the fact that, at least to Miss Frankland and myself, the rod had almost become a necessity, and occasionally even my sisters admitted it gave them a fillip. Under the able tutorship of Miss Frank-land we became the most perfect adepts in every voluptuous indulgence of lubricity. But I must also give her the credit of never neglecting our education. Indeed, I may say it gained ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... reproached, not altogether jestingly. He even looked across at the gap through the hills to which she was pointing. Then he saw the disdain in her blue eyes. He took the cigarette from his lips, eyed it regretfully, and flung it away with a petulant fillip. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... is not something a man may do with a fillip of his finger and thumb. However bold the operations, the convenances must be observed. When really large designs are entertained, the manipulator sets to before the preceding election and has his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... send it forth to the world. The rest of his leisure was given to politics. Chests of volumes were arriving from London, and his library shelves began to make a respectable appearance; as a matter of principle, he bought largely from the local bookseller, who rejoiced at the sudden fillip to his stagnant trade, and went about declaring that Mr. Denzil Quarrier was evidently the man for ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... secret order, ruthlessly suppressed by Sanders, and practised by trembling men, each afraid of the other despite their oaths; and the fillip it received when the news went forth—"Sandi has gone—there is ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... a fillip from an accidental meeting with Kilmeny, the first since the night of her engagement. Joyce and Moya were coming out of a stationer's when they came face ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... that when he was a very young man, I think only fifteen, serving under Prince Eugene of Savoy, he was sitting in a company at table with a Prince of Wirtemberg. The Prince took up a glass of wine, and, by a fillip, made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly, might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier: to have taken no notice of it might have been considered ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... uneasy sense that I am bound, so to speak, to pay for my entertainment by being brisk, lively, or sympathetic. The immediate consequence is, that I get as near to all three qualities as I ever get. We simply live our own lives quietly, in company. My presence gives a little fillip to the proceedings; and I myself get all the benefit of change of scene, together ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... farmers to cast about for some other means of subsistence, and to rely more than they had hitherto done upon the possibilities of stock-breeding. It was in particular the misfortunes of the later 'seventies that gave the needed fillip to that branch of stock-farming concerned with the production of milk, butter and cheese, and from this period may be said to date the revival of the dairying industry, which received a powerful impetus through the introduction of the centrifugal cream separator, and was fostered by the British Dairy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tears; and then in soft caresses and inarticulate sounds of love. Once or twice she began, 'It is such a pleasure,' and there she stopped short. But the eloquence of these five words sank deep into Cynthia's heart. She had returned just at the right time, when Molly wanted the gentle fillip of the society of a fresh and yet a familiar person. Cynthia's tact made her talkative or silent, gay or grave, as the varying humour of Molly required. She listened, too, with the semblance, if not the reality, of unwearied interest, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... now on a visit, and will come here at midday to-morrow, and go back to London with us on Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday I read in London, and on Wednesday start off again. To-night is No. 68 out of one hundred. I am very tired of it, but I could have no such good fillip as you among the audience, and that will carry me on gayly to the end. So please to look sharp in the matter of landing on the bosom of the used-up, worn-out, and rotten old Parient. I rather think that when the 12th ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... The Zouave wished more and more fervently that he had not come to the house, but resolved to prolong his visit in the hope that Corona might return. Sant' Ilario was unaccountably silent, but his father kept up a lively conversation, needing only an occasional remark from Gouache to give a fillip to his eloquence. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... happy day. Debate spasmodically dull. Prince ARTHUR could not lift it out of the rut, nor GRANDOLPH either. Only Mr. G. shone with effulgent light through gloom of evening. Principal result of manoeuvre, beyond giving fillip to majority, is that a day will be filched from meagre holidays, and House must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... Roustan misunderstood me, though his hint Serves as a fillip to a flaccid brain.... —How gild the sunset sky of majesty Better than by the act esteemed of yore? Plutarchian heroes outstayed not their fame, And what nor Brutus nor Themistocles Nor Cato nor Mark Antony survived, Why, why should I? ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... defence of one's person, which is a species of excusable homicide; because, although cases may happen where these also are commendable, yet most frequently they are done on too slight appearance of danger; as in return for a blow, kick, fillip, &c; or on a person's getting into a house, not anirno furandi, but perhaps veneris causa, &c. Bracton says, 'Si quis furem noctupnum occiderit, ita demum impune foret, si parcere ei sine periculo suo non potuit; si autem potuit, aliter erit.' ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... across the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the hedges. My prison bars are but a sixteenth of an inch thick; I could snap them with a fillip—only the window-pane, to me as impenetrable as the twenty-foot wall of the Tower of London. A cart has just gone past bearing a strange load among the carts of spring; they are talking of poling the hops. In it there sat an ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of summer, Nature proffers us this her virgin fruit; more rich and sumptuous are to follow, but the wild delicacy and fillip of the strawberry are never repeated,—that keen feathered edge greets the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... demand gave the final fillip to the lad's nerves, and, taking tightly hold of the spell above Joe's head with both hands, he raised his own legs till they came level with Joe's loins, and bestriding him as if on horseback, he crooked his legs and ankles round the sides of the ladder, held on by forcing his toes round a spell, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... were to provide ready-made farms to be paid for upon easy terms, and if, along with this, facilities for marketing, for terminals, for slaughter-houses, and for agencies for bringing the produce of the farms to the markets were provided, not only would agriculture be given a fillip which it badly needs but the congestion of our cities and the immigration problem would be open to easy solution. Then for many generations to come land would be available in abundance. For America could support many times its present population ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... said, without noticing that I had taken leave of her. "Mother Anastasia did not intend to leave here until to-morrow, and she went away early this morning. She has some pressing business on hand, and ten chances to one she has gone to fillip your young lady out of your sight and hearing. Don't you see that it would not look at all well for one of her sisters to marry, or even to receive the attentions of a gentleman, immediately after she had ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... expect. It warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on all that has gone before. So the trip to Europe may not do much in the way of instructing the wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives it a fillip which makes it feel young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sailed across the sea and spent a summer month in North Virginia—later, New England. Weymouth had powerful backers, and with him sailed old adventurers who had been with Raleigh. Coming home to England with five Indians in his company, Weymouth and his voyage gave to public interest the needed fillip towards action. Here was the peace with Spain, and here was the new interest in Virginia. "Go to!" said Mother England. "It is time to place ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my Laziness, which has been intolerable. But I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gather'd my Jargonels, but my Windsor Pears are backward. The ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... rock, tiptoed around the corner, sent a mechanical glance upward toward the swaying branches of an overhanging tree, pulled out his six feet of silk line with a sweep of his arm, and with a delicate fillip, sent the fly skittering over the glassy center ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... proposing Lingard next,' he murmurs, and the little irritation caused by the well-meant suggestion throws him back for the next six hours. Presently he tries Macaulay, whom some flatterer has fulsomely called 'as good as a novel,' but, though the trial of Warren Hastings gives him a fillip, the rout of Sedgemoor does away with the effect of it, and, happening upon the character of Halifax, he suffers a severe relapse. As a bedfellow, Macaulay is too declamatory, though, at the same time, strange to say, he does not always succeed in keeping one awake. To the sick man Carlyle is preferable; ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... have to lay aside a cherished prejudice and lend this lady the light of my countenance, although I loathe card-parties. I abhor cards, outside of draw-poker on shipboard, with a crook of sorts sitting in to lend the game a fillip. Despite the fact that poor Mrs. Scarboro couldn't lay hands on a decent crook to save her life, I think I shall go, and thereby acquire merit," he concluded, with the air ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... pleasant to receive a fillip of excitement when suffering from the dull routine of everyday life! The anthems and Te Deums were in themselves delightful, but they had been heard so often! Mr. Slope was certainly not delightful, but he was new, and, moreover, clever. They had long thought it slow, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of the blood? Apparently not! She wants instead a fortune-teller, a madcap like Ydo Carrothers. She spent the whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers from her youth up, and that she would be a handful for any one. I'd as lief undertake to chaperone ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the tables of the great, were mostly dung stupid with not knowing what to think. A council meeting or two was held in the gloamings, to take such a serious business into consideration; some expressing their fears and inward down-sinking, while others cheered them up with a fillip of pleasant consolation. Scarcely a word of the matter, for which they were summoned together by the town-officer—and which was about the mending of the old bell-rope—was discussed by any of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... had been knocked from the bedtime pipe that Blount left his chair and the secluded corner of the veranda to go down among the parked automobiles on the lawn. His one recreation—and it was the only one in which he found the precious fillip of enthusiasm—was motoring. There was a choice collection of fine cars in the grouping on the lawn, and Blount had just awakened a sleepy chauffeur to ask him to uncover and exhibit the engine of a freshly imported Italian ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Leighton. "Nothing wins a woman of the world so quickly as the unexpected. The unexpected adds to the ancient lure of curiosity the touch of tartness that gives life to a jaded palate. Satiated women are the most grateful for such a fillip, and once a woman's grateful, she's generous. A generous man will give a beggar a copper, but a generous woman will give away all her coppers, and throw in herself ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... together, and gave him a fillip on the head. "You heartless fellow!" she cried. "You're like the dog, that bit L T'ung-pin. You have no idea of what's right and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... for the corner-stone of my philosophy: I would not give a denier for the man Who, on such provocation as this earth Yields, could not chuck his babe beneath the chin, And send it with a fillip ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... and leave the miniatures to you. According to the characters concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiled under the incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One man may discover a symptom in the way a shawl is put on, while another needs to receive a fillip to his intellect, in order to notice the indifference of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... to her cupboard to take out her own teapot, and her eye fell upon a small medicine bottle marked "Brandy." Milly was a convinced teetotaller; all the more reason, thought Tims, why a dose of alcohol should give her nerves and circulation a fillip, only she must not know of it, or she would certainly refuse ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... woods will be open so long as Kate and I have anything to say in the matter. The Glen and our people have not had the same politics, but we 've lived at peace, as neighbours ought to do, with never a lawsuit even to give a fillip to life." ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... dissecting love of laying bare its heart. He has been inhaling its delicious soul this half hour: let us see what he does with it." And as they looked they saw Reyburn lift the half-forgotten flower, whose pale bloom had begun to tarnish ever so little, glance at it lightly and give it a careless fillip to the marble floor of the hall where he was walking up and down, and where, as he came back, he set his heel upon it without knowing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... traits, with which he supposed that they could not have credited him even in imagination. Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his improperly "imputed" righteousness—often the greatest burden he has ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... liking. Besides, the sun, which had come out with summer insistence, chose that particular spot for its midday siesta, and lay there at full length, while the air was preternaturally still. It was a stupidly drowsy heat that gave no fillip to ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... only thinking what a fillip it gave acquaintance to be in doubt whether a person was a sinner or ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of the new tax on imported films the Cinema industry in England has received a new fillip, and a wave of enterprise is passing over the studios. In place of the familiar—almost too familiar— American dramas we are to have English. No more of those square-jawed stern American business men at their desks, with the telephone ever in their hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... always exceedingly cheerful on her return—a little too much so, I tried to think. She ignored the past as completely as possible, and while her manner was kind to me she had regained her old-time delicate brusqueness, and rarely lost a chance to give me a friendly fillip. Indeed I had never known her to be so brilliant, and her spirits seemed unflagging. Mr. Yocomb was delighted and in his large appetite for fun applauded and joined in every phase of our home gayety. There was too much hilarity for me, and my ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... on the Sea. In awesome quiet of unsoothing sounds we feel, over a dual elemental motion, a quick fillip as of sudden lapping wave, while a shadowy air rises slowly in hollow intervals. Midst trembling whispers descending (like the soughing wind), a strange note, as of distant trumpet, strikes in gentle insistence—out of the other ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Nicholas, who had charge of the schooner, had returned with an European prisoner; but that neither he nor Gustave would give her any further information, although she had requested it in the name of her mistress. This was quite an event, and gave a fillip to the inertness of Madame de Fontanges, whose curiosity ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... comet of 1843 gave an additional fillip to the movement. To the excitement caused by it the Harvard College Observatory—called the "American Pulkowa"—directly owed its origin; and the example was not ineffective elsewhere. The United States Naval Observatory was built in 1844, Lieutenant Maury being its first Director. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... liner. Would he catch up with it? He strained his eyes. Exultation flooded through him as he realized that the distance was rapidly lessening between them. The added impetus of his leap over the Gorm had given him the required extra fillip of speed. By now, ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... etchings in it out in time to appear with the work on Etching. I am sure this new edition of the 'Painter's Camp' will be something jolly. It's nice to think I shall have two beautiful books out at Christmas. It will give my reputation a fillip. It appears that Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, and George Eliot are amongst my most assiduous readers. Isn't it pleasant to have ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... rupture, angry with that intensity of anger which only those who love—or who think they do—and who are thwarted in it ever know, and all the angrier because he had no one and could have no one to vent it on, until he got to the front and got at the Huns, at that last fillip from Cassy he saw some one on whom he could vent it, and yet to whom none the less he felt strangely grateful. For, whatever Paliser had done or omitted, at any rate, he had ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... London before she appeared at dear old Praddy's studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger than forty-three; and I shouldn't wonder but that her presence once more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza. I am convinced that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far more—and far more quickly than in those that direct princely and public ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... to his friends and continued his ride toward the rear. The column passed slowly on in silence. Now and then gusts of rain lashed across his face, but he liked the feeling. It was a fillip to his blood, and his nerves began to recover from the tremendous strain and excitement of ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nothing whatever while he was at Lucknow; General Pollock did all he could, but it was not much; and Colonel Richmond does nothing. There the Buduk decoits, Thugs, and poisoners, remain without sentences, and will do so till Richmond goes, unless you give him a fillip. If you tell him to apply for an assistant to aid him in the conduct of the trials, and tell him to nominate his own, he may go to work, and I earnestly pray you to do something, or the Oude Turae will become what it had ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... our outing last night, and I shall say something nice about you and your loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and see you on Sunday, as long as he doesn't make love to you, and he can take you to the Zoo—don't see him in your sitting-room. That will give him just the extra fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and then by those stimulating lions' and tigers' cages you can plight your troth. It will be quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday to Sedgwick, and you must come back to Park Street ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... was Stebbings who had been arrested. He had thought much about what he would do in such a case, and kept his wits about him. Of course, the "Scandalous Disclosures" heading was premature—inserted, indeed, to give a fillip to the sale of the paper. But the disclosures would certainly come very soon, and there was no ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... cracksmen are finding it slow— For all the seasiders are back And a great many more didn't go— Here's excellent news from the front And joy in Bill Sikes's brigade; Things are looking up since The German CROWN PRINCE Has been giving a fillip ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... I had time to do it I would relieve you of your difficulty. I would juggle away my Chatillon like a nutmeg out of a thimble. I would fillip him ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "Did he come in the 'One Hoss Shay'?" the name of his most familiar poem in the lighter vein. The whole visit to England pleased and wearied him. He likened it to the shass caffy of Mr. Henry Foker—the fillip at the end of the long banquet of life. He went to see the Derby, for he was fond of horses, of racing, and, in a sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had the great boldness once, audax juventa, to ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... guilt in the innocence. There were other marble terraces, sweeping more purple prospects, on which he would have known what to think, and would have enjoyed thereby at least the small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between a given appearance and a taken meaning. The inquiring mind, in these present conditions, might, it was true, be more sharply challenged; but the result of its attention and its ingenuity, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... stream along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the children came and looked over the side as we paddled by. We had never known all this while how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'em good. It gives a fillip to their jaded senses. 'Twas here that I made my start, Labret—here that I delivered my first speech as though for a joke; here it was that I first began to hate the dogs who sat amongst us with all their fine clothes and perfumes and rottenness ... and I am very glad indeed, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... hurry the bottle round for five or six rounds without prosing yourself or permitting others to prose. A slight fillip of wine inclines people to be pleased, and removes the nervousness which prevents men from speaking—disposes them, in short, to be amusing and to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mistakes, afterwards to be regretted, when rage caused him utterly to lose control of his wits. And, though he was startled and not exactly pleased, he was not in a rage now. The eyelashes and the figure gave an agreeable fillip to his humour. Howsoever she had come, she was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... course of Max's punishing onslaught, in which he was leaping in and out with unceasing agility, he—stumbled! This was just what Pelle was waiting for, and then, like the fillip of a spring-board, the heavy boot went toward ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... not been honored with any such intimate association with the German Emperor as would enable me to say whether he has a highly developed sense of humor or not. I can only say for myself, that if I had lived through his Majesty's last twenty-five years, I should need no other fillip to digestion than my chuckles over the prophecies ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... impossible for her to feel anything but bitterness and hopeless disappointment. For weeks she had been working hard, without the fillip of congenial atmosphere, doggedly sticking to it in spite of depression and discouragement, and now that the results of her labour were ready to be given to the world, she was strung up to a high pitch and ill-prepared to ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... him; and a couple of choice bottles were quickly disposed of. Ormond, like myself, had been a sailor. We spoke of the lands, scenes, and adventures, each had passed through, while a fresh bottle was called to fillip our memories. There is nothing so nourishing to friendship as wine! Before sundown our electric memories had circled the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... practice of snuffing powdered tobacco into the nose. Even Chesterfield opposes it, when after characterizing all use of tobacco or snuff, in any form, as both vulgar and filthy, he adds: 'Besides, snuff-takers are generally very dull and shallow people, and have recourse to it merely as a fillip to the brain; by all means, therefore, avoid the filthy custom.' This censure, though rather severe, is equally applicable to smoking ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Dallas Anderson | |comical as a London clubman with a keener | |relish in life than he is willing to | |betray, and William McVey wise, paternal | |and weighty in that kind of a part. | | | | "The Best People" is a pleasant spring | |fillip. | ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... just as I was losing all patience, I received a fillip that awoke me to alertness, and set all my ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... himself at the teller's window, lighting a cigar, puffing like a tugboat. "To open a small account—two of 'em. Checks for collection," he announced. Tone and manner were breezily self-assertive; the president, from his desk, turned and looked. He indorsed, blotting with a swift dab, and a final fillip through the window. "Chicago, thirty-three hundred—credit to Britt & Stratton. Here's our signature. Denver, eight hundred, to private account H.E. Stratton. He'll be here next week. I'll bring him around and identify. Draw on this ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a little fillip of excitement. One evening, as I was leaning over the railings, more than forty yards from the nearest sentry, a short man with a red moustache walked quickly down the street, followed by two colley dogs. As he passed, but without ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... He stopped to fillip the ash forming upon the ignited end of his cigar, performing the operation with nicety, using the extreme tip of his middle-finger nail over the salver attached for the purpose ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Nero was, in the prime of his manhood, almost as supernatural as his crimes; that he could with his outstretched finger bore a hole through a sound apple (integrum malum digito terebraret), and wound the head of a child or even a youth with a fillip, (caput pueri, vel etiam adolescentis, talitro vulneraret.) His excesses must, however, have enervated his frame long before his death ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... their calculations; something for them, mentally, to chew on. Mystification is a good thing sometimes. It gives the brain a fillip, stirs memory, puts the gears of imagination in mesh. One man, an old, tobacco-chewing fellow, began to stare harder at the face on the floor. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... shackles of the business treadmill; discarding care with the ubiquitous umbrella and winter flannels; taking fortune boldly by the hand; returning to first principles; living for the moment; for the trial of skill, endurance, and strength; staking enough in the balances to bring a fillip to the heart and the ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... think I must get him down here for a week or two," she thought. "Just to give me a fillip ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... you do it, Mr. Napoleon Jastrow?" she asked, giving him the exact fillip on the side ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... ponderous dresses in which later on the patrician dames portrayed by Veronese and his school loved to array themselves. A bright note of red in the upper jewel of one earring, now, no doubt, cruder than was originally intended, gives a fillip to the whole, after a fashion ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... thanked, I hear none harm of him now. And of all that ever came in my hands for heresy, as help me God, saving [as I said] the sure keeping of them, had never any of them stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fillip ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... more ardent prayer offered up to heaven, than that which I then preferred for my country. "Now then," (said I to a gentleman who was standing near me,) "we are out of our country." "Not yet, not yet!" he replied, and pointed to the sea; "This, too, is a Briton's country." This bon mot gave a fillip to my spirits, I rose and looked round on my fellow-passengers, who were all on the deck. We were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady, a French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... change gave a pleasant fillip to my spirits. I returned home, found no monster in my bed, and slept quietly till near noon the next day. I arose with a slight headache and a great admiration of punch; resolving, if I did not catch the measles from ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... friendly hand put the foaming pewter through the stage, to be swallowed at a draught, and success was won!... Malibran, however, had not overestimated her own strength. She knew that it wanted but this fillip to carry her through. She had resolved to have an encore, and she had it, in such a fashion as made the roof of 'Old Drury' ring as it had never rung before. On the repetition of the opera and afterwards, a different arrangement of the stage was ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... morning on our little trip, Polly," said the old gentleman, catching her infectious spirit, and giving the old horse a fillip with the whip. "Meantime, not a word, my ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... quarter. Gaston's large, solid body, strong face, and penetrating eyes were not to be sneered out of sight. The Frenchman, an envious, disappointed artist, had had in his mind a bloodless duel, to give a fillip to an unacquired fame. He had, however, been drinking. He flung an insolent glance to meet Gaston's steady look, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seating capacity for a few chosen patrons. Once he has quit the public cafe with its fine music and its bad waiters the uninitiated traveler has a pretty lonesome time of it in Vienna. Until all hours he may roam the principal streets seeking that fillip of wickedness which will give zest to life and provide him with something to brag about when he gets back among the home folks again. He does not find it. Charades would provide a much more exciting means of spending the evening; and, in comparison with the sights he witnesses, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... fishery were exercising themselves in darting their harpoons, most of whom were drunk. One of them, Herman Rogaar by name, a hero among these people, for his dexterity with his snickasnee, came up, and passed some of his coarse jests upon my Turkish sabre, and offered to fillip me on the nose. I pushed him from me, and the fellow threw down his cap, drew his snickasnee, challenged me, called me monkey-tail, and asked whether I chose a straight, a circular, or ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... secret, something hidden, about him, and in a way this had added to her interest in him. It had seized hold of her imagination, kept him vividly before her mind as nothing else could have done, and now Olga Lermontof's strange hints and innuendos gave a fresh fillip to her desire to know in what way Max ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... first roseate dawn of complete success and universal applause, new qualities came to view in Oscar. Praise gave him the fillip needed in order to make him surpass himself. His talk took on a sort of autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range; he now used pathos as well as humour and generally brought in a story or apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. His little weaknesses, too, began to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that Fillip of Existence spend About THE SECRET—quick about it, Friend! A Hair perhaps divides the False and True, And upon what, ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the direction ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... she entered, was lovely enough. The young men and young women she saw there were interesting, and she was not wanting for admirers. The most aggressive of these youths—the most forceful—recognized in this maiden a fillip to life, a sting to existence. She was as a honey-jar surrounded ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sending it on with a contemptuous fillip of the forefinger and thumb. "Glass and paste, mon ami. Not worth five francs ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... noticed or unnoticed; it matters very little which it is. There is a fillip, no doubt—and we should not be men and women if we did not feel it—in the recognition of what we have tried to do. And sometimes it comes to us; but the absence of it is no reason for slackening our work. And this man, so patiently and persistently 'pegging ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre, the Slaughterer, if you look at me like that again, I'll fillip the dust ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... form of specie; nor without it could large commerce be developed, nor large industry financed, nor was investment possible. Moreover the rise of prices consequent on the increase of the precious metals gave a powerful stimulus to manufacture and a {517} fillip to the merchant and to the entrepreneur such as they have rarely received before or since. It was, in short, the development of the power of money that gave ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... assume cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but squalls never. The thousandth squall in one's experience is as interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the tyro who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly condemned by the neighbouring clergy. April, May, June, passed; and it is no overstatement to say that by the end of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... begun to talk in a wild way about his estate in Ireland, and his owld grandmother; and either the influence of these thoughts, or Hardy's visit, had given him such a fillip that from that day he began to revive. Nevertheless he had received a very severe shake, and, not very long after, was invalided home. Meanwhile, as we have said, busy preparations were being made by General Graham—who had ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... she had taken a resolve to go home, to linger no more, she was free to tease him as much as she could. To feel that she could, gave her a fillip, and added a fresh charm ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a noble object accomplished, gives a fillip to the spirits, an exhilaration to the feelings, like that imparted by Champagne, only more permanent. It is, indeed, admirably well said by one wise to discern the truth of things, and able to give to his thought a vigorous expression, that "a man feels relieved and gay when he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... threadbare frock uniform coat, bearing on the left breast four tarnished and lack-lustre stars. Then came the incident of the immortal signal. "We must give the fleet," said Nelson to Blackwood, "something by way of a fillip." After musing a while, he said, "Suppose we signal, 'Nelson confides that every man will do his duty'?" Some one suggested "England" instead of "Nelson," and Nelson at once caught at the improvement. The signal-officer explained that the word "confide" would have to be spelt, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator, whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger—could this be possible? could it be that Barkilphedro should miss his aim? To be a lever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... round applauded to the very echo, and thought it the most capital joke they had ever heard — the very acme of wit — the very essence of humour. Another circumstance, of a similar kind, gave an additional fillip to the phrase, and infused new life and vigour into it, just as it was dying away. The scene occurred in the chief criminal court of the kingdom. A prisoner stood at the bar; the offence with which he had been charged was clearly proved against him; his counsel had been heard, not in his defence, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... helps by advertising to the consumer in magazines and newspapers, always featuring the name of his brands; and he supplies the grocer with educational pamphlets and booklets on the growing, preparation, and merits of coffee in general, with an added fillip about the desirability of his particular brand. Through his salesmen the packer shows the grocer how to display the coffee on the counter and in the window, and often supplies him with placards and cut-outs ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a full-moon night because his now-invisible grid suit didn't require dark. He picked a fairly early hour, too, because what matter if a few yawps gawked as the Tiara vanished? And that one of those yawps would be Jason, stodgily on his bench, gave Lonnie an extra fillip. Perhaps it was just for this he'd let Jason plug along on a cold trail ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... day—almost at that minute—he passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began to descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sank in esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downwards; and, having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the velocity of his descent in both aspects ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... came, Radie,' said a sweet voice, which somehow made her shiver, close to her ear. 'This kind of thing will do you good; and you really wanted a little fillip. Shall I take you ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and the park sloppy, and the church abominably open to draughts, still there was a crowd. The young ladies in that part of the world had been slow in marrying lately, and it was felt that the present occasion might give a little fillip to the neighbourhood. This was the second Suffolk young lady that Mr. Smirkie had married, and he was therefore entitled to popularity. He certainly had done as much as he could, and there was probably no one around who had ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... lose one's money. It was thus he gauged the importance of his acquaintances; it was thus he hoped some day to be gauged. And he trusted and believed that the time would come when he could give his fillip to the upper rim of fortune's wheel, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without the stimulus." [But the variety of interests which filled his mind prevented him from feeling the void of inaction after a busy life. And just as he was at the turning-point in health, he received a fillip which started him again into vigorous activity—the mental tonic bracing up his body and clearing away the depression and languor which had so ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... episodes which discovered before the autumn was over the heart of Mr. Cyrus Worthington at her feet hardly deserves record in her history but for the fillip which it gave to her spirits. Tribute is tribute, and Mr. Worthington was a warrantable gentleman. The tarnish she had discerned upon her armour, the foxmarks upon her fair page, dispersed under his ardent breath; she realised herself desirable and loveworthy; she arose from the thicket in ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and adjudged below par. If that is all—why, these are the mere everyday risks of the young journalist's life. Without them we should be dull and dissatisfied. Our work would lose its fire. Men such as ourselves, Comrade Windsor, need a certain stimulus, a certain fillip, if they are to keep up their high standards. The knowledge that a low-browed gentleman is waiting round the corner with a sand-bag poised in air will just supply that stimulus. Also that fillip. It will give our output precisely the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... an everlasting appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which daily association is so delightful—an association which is a constant fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of men and things, and in deep drafts on memory's storehouse for odd incidents and unexpected illuminations. A long silence from "Allison's ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... not thirty Members present whilst the Woluminous WEBB goes all the way back to the Tipperary riots in search of text for dreary observations; then fearsome speeches by FLYNN and P.J. POWER. Some fillip to proceedings when JORDAN ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... pretty one! You forget it was all for love of you. I didn't want to see you the wife of an old dotard you didn't care a fillip for." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws—a "pinchbug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be. German composition makes an appeal to the individual, and the more strongly a pupil is conscious of his various qualities, the more personally will he do his German composition. This 'personal doing' is urged on with yet an additional fillip in some public schools by the choice of the subject, the strongest proof of which is, in my opinion, that even in the lower classes the non-pedagogic subject is set, by means of which the pupil is led to give a description of his life and of his development. Now, one has only to read the titles ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... one held my head, so that I should not be able to wriggle. And another placed his left forefinger and thumb at my nose. (It seemed he was left-handed.) He curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me on the nose. And how, do you think? Each time I saw my father in the other world. Murderers, slaughterers! What had they against my nose? What had it done to them? Whom had it bothered? What had they seen on it—a nose ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... convalescents, sixty in number, among whom were five officers. "He has brightened up a deal the last four days, and his wound looks distinctly more healthy. I have a strong hope that all those splinters have worked out now, and your being here has given him a fillip, so that he is altogether better and more cheerful. I hope by the spring he will be able to rejoin us. I can tell you I am mighty glad to be off again myself. It has been pretty hard work here, for I have had, for the last fortnight, a hundred and twenty men on my hands. At first there ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... been her favourite gown. The smile faded away. The hand that dangled the garment before his eyes suddenly became motionless, as if paralysed. In the next instant, she recovered herself, and, giving the lace a quick fillip that sent its odour of sachet leaping to his nostrils, responded ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... by this fillip, resumed his petulance, and proceeded in this manner:—"Hark ye, friend, I might, as Mrs. Gobble very justly observes, trounce you for your audacious behaviour; but I scorn to take such advantages. Howsomever, I shall make you give an account of yourself ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a bron-bitle, or brand-bitle, a heavy mallet for cleaving wood. Shaks. Hen. IV. "fillip me with a three man beetle." ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... supplied me with the one thing I had sorely missed, without being quite conscious of it. He has been able to give me mental companionship, at a time when my mind was starving for an idea or two beyond the daily drudgery of farm-work. He has given a fillip to existence, loath as I am to acknowledge it. He's served to knock the moss off my soul by more or less indirectly reminding me that all work and no play could make Chaddie McKail ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... lost all charms for the gambler. How tame are the children's caresses and a wife's devotion to the gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There must be louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose; an excitement to drive the heart faster and fillip the blood and fire the imagination. No home, however bright, can keep back the gamester. The sweet call of love bounds back from his iron soul, and all endearments are consumed in the flame of his passion. The family Bible will go after all other ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... new though temporary fillip to the entertainments of the evening. For after leading to some noisy proceedings, which were not intelligible, it ended in the unsteady departure of the two gentlemen of the world, and the slumber of Mr Jonas upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "Fillip his nose with a gold-piece, Richie," quoth the Templar. "Take up the papers, and now wend we merrily to dine thou ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
