"Finger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dubh and Donn, sons of Eirrge, determined to go on with the battle, and it is how they fought, Dubh in the front of the whole army, and Donn behind all, guarding the rear. But Derg saw that, and he put his finger into the thong of his spear and made a cast at the one that was nearest him, and it broke his back and went on into the body of the other, so that the one cast made an end of the two. And that ended the battle, and all that was left of the great ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... ae answer to that, Henry Bertram," said the sibyl.—"Iswore my tongue should never tell, but I never said my finger should never show. Go on and meet your fortune, or turn back and lose it—that's a' ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Time's finger on the dial of my life Points to high noon! and yet the half-spent day Leaves less than half remaining, for the dark, Bleak shadows of the grave ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... one of those chains, a ring, in whose collet he represented the figure of part of the rock where he had been detained—or rather, as Pliny says, set it in a bit of the same rock, and put it on his finger. This was the first ring and the first stone. But we otherwise learn, that the use of rings is very ancient, and the Egyptians were the first inventors of them; which seems confirmed by the person of Joseph, who, as we read (Genesis, chap, xi.) ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... will act to make that process easier and quicker for every state that asks our help. And I want to add, as we make these changes, we work together to improve this system, that our intention is not scapegoating and finger-pointing. If you read the papers or watch TV you know there's been a rise these days in a certain kind of ugliness: racist comments, anti-Semitism, an increased sense of division. Really, this is not us. This is not who we are. And this is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... different races occupy the same cars, separated only by absurdly inadequate little open-mesh wire screens, so tiny and light that a conductor can move them from one seat to another with the strength of his little finger. Needless to add, these screens would serve to obscure neither sound, sight, nor smell of drunken rowdies who sat behind them! In summer cars black and white passengers may be separated not even by a make-believe screen; they are ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Watt, "with observing the growth of its little soul, and particularly with its numberless instincts, which formerly passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing my attention to the finger of God, which I discern in every awkward movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life and growth and power. I regret indeed that I have not time to make infancy and the development of its powers ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the pitying angel, "Nay, repent That wild vow! Look, the dial-finger's bent Down to the last ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... some on the outside, others on the inside, of an erect hollow cylinder, some six inches in height. The oldest leaves were outside, the youngest within, so that the appearance presented was as if the summit of the axis had been pushed or drawn in, much as the finger of a tight glove might be invaginated in withdrawing ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... the best that Downey could raise in the time I allotted him. When I really finger the money, we shall ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... impossible task. Far away over the earth, winding into all the natural trends of the mountain base, ran the highway, merrily tripping over huge boulders, into hollows and out of them, almost underground, but always, with its long white extended finger, beckoning me on by the narrow ribbon in the distance. True, although I was absolutely destitute of company, I had always the road with me, yet ever far from me. I could not catch it up, and sometimes, dreaming triumphantly that I ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... months, during which time no rain fell. The heat of the sun was so intense that every screw in their boxes was drawn, and all horn handles and combs split into fine laminae. The lead dropped from their pencils, their finger-nails became as brittle as glass, and their hair, and the wool on their sheep, ceased to grow. Scurvy attacked them all, and Mr. Poole, the second in command, died. In order to avoid the scorching rays of the sun, they had excavated an underground ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... wasted forms and haggard faces, on which lines are traced by the icy finger of Disappointment, and garments, growing ragged, ill protect from the keen draughts that play through these passages hearts aching with the sickness of hope deferred. The pockets, though tightly buttoned, are lank and light. They step briskly and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... trial. With prudence make your best defence; but should Severity her iron jurisdiction Extend too far, and give thee up condemn'd To angry laws, thy queen will not forget thee. Yet, lest you then should want a faithful friend (For friends will fly you in the time of need) Here, from my finger, take this ring, a pledge Of mercy; having this, you ne'er shall need An advocate with me, for whensoe'er You give, or send it back, by heaven, I swear, As I do hope for mercy on my soul, That I will ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... authorities make the British Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are about the same—400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these figures. Even ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Cameron; she had no mother, had had no mother since she could remember. The mother Elliott could not remember had been a very lovely person, and as broad-minded as she was charming. Elliott had her mother's charm, a personal magnetism that twined people around her little finger, but she was essentially narrow-minded. With Elliott it was a matter of upbringing, of coming-up rather, since within somewhat wide limits her upbringing had, after all, been largely in her own hands. Henry Cameron had had neither the heart nor ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... was levelled at her; Lopez had taken deadly aim; his finger was on the trigger; she felt that her last hour had come, and that naught could avail her ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... containing 2 pints of water. Four of these were given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary. The executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the finger and thumb.] ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... generation had been glorified in the War of the Revolution, or the boys of the next generation when they went gold-seeking in California in 1849. The West, in short, means simply the retreating horizon, the beckoning finger of opportunity. Like Boston, it has been not a place, but ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Carlylean sense of those terms. To the "beautiful souls" of the older generation, who had habitually, in conversation and literature, shed pathetic tears over the defects of Russian social and political organisation without ever moving a finger to correct them—especially the landed proprietors who talked and wrote about civilisation, culture, and justice while living comfortably on the revenues provided for them by their unfortunate serfs—these had the strongest aversion; and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... he gave the other a hug and both started for the porch. As they passed the door of his mother's room, the lad put one finger on his lips; but the mother had heard and, inside, a woman in black, who had been standing before a mirror with her hands to her throat, let them fall suddenly until they were clasped for an instant across her breast. But she gave no sign that she had heard, at breakfast an hour later, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... after the vernal equinox, the tobacco plants are carefully drawn while the ground is soft; carried to the field where they are to be planted, and one dropped upon every hill, which is done by the negro children. The most skilful slaves then begin planting them, by making a hole with their finger in each hill, inserting the plant with the taproot carefully placed straight down, and pressing the earth on each side of it. This is continued as long as the ground is wet enough to enable the plants sufficiently grown to draw and set; and it requires ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... seem not a breath of air in motion, yet the tide of scent is never still. One's moistened finger may reveal no cool side, since there is not the vestige of a breeze; but faint odors arrive, become stronger, and die away, or are wholly dissipated by an onrush of others, so musky or so sweet that one can almost taste them. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... friend at this time he says, 'He was walking with a friend, and in a moment, without any apparent pain, "God's finger ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... expedition Mrs Waters declared she would bear him company; and for which she was able to furnish him with money, a very material article to Mr Northerton, she having then in her pocket three bank-notes to the amount of L90, besides some cash, and a diamond ring of pretty considerable value on her finger. All which she, with the utmost confidence, revealed to this wicked man, little suspecting she should by these means inspire him with a design of robbing her. Now, as they must, by taking horses from Worcester, have furnished any pursuers with the means of hereafter ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... many medical friends, he would now and then accompany them on their hospital rounds, or share with them the labors of the dissecting room. It chanced that during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of rapid consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen and inflamed. "I would have that finger off, Wood, if I were you," said one of the surgeons, a day or two afterwards, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... felt sorry and disappointed at this postponement, though she said nothing, but prepared to obey her aunt. With Mabel, however, this was quite an unexpected pleasure, and so rapidly did she gather up her work, without folding it neatly together, that the needle ran into her finger, and brought the blood so quickly that two or three large spots were deposited on ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... her brother a son,[96] and from her union with Shechem, the son of Hamor, sprang a daughter, Asenath by name, afterward the wife of Joseph. When this daughter was born to Dinah, her brethren, the sons of Jacob, wanted to kill her, that the finger of men might not point at the fruit of sin in their father's house. But Jacob took a piece of tin, inscribed the Holy Name upon it, and bound it about the neck of the girl, and he put her under a thornbush, and abandoned her there. An angel carried the babe down to Egypt, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... seconds young Hastings did all in his power to fight back. He was rapidly losing consciousness, however, and poor Jack lay unable to lend as much as a finger's weight to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... Mitchell said, with a defiant air. "Nor what may happen to us before we return. We may meet our destinies. I have no doubt they are lurking for us behind some of the trees. Just you meet the evening train of Wednesday, two weeks hence, and see if you can not discover the finger of fate having been busy with us. Wonderful things ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... a beauty. No one but a rich man could have given a ring like that. And on your finger it ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... moment, as if considering whether or not he should say more; then he gazed abstractedly at his carefully kept finger nails, and his right hand wandered to his waistcoat pocket. Then, looking up, he extended ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... he thought of his appearance before the bar of God to answer for the atrocious sin, he shrunk from accepting the challenge. But when he thought of the ridicule to which he would be exposed if he declined; that others would call him a coward, and point at him the finger of scorn, he was afraid to refuse. He was such a coward that he did not dare to meet the ridicule of contemptible men. He had so little moral courage, that he had rather become a murderer, or expose himself to be shot, than boldly to disregard the opinions and the sneers of the unprincipled ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... sash; Ted'n possible. Us have all been laughing because she couldn' come by one nohow." And Cherry Cotton elbowed her way through the ring of curious folk to where Loveday stood. Suddenly Cherry gave a scream, and pointed an accusing finger at Loveday. ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... but he will revive quickly," Brion said, pointing at the huddled body. As the eyes turned automatically to follow his finger, he began walking slowly towards the exit. "I did not want to do this, but he forced me to, because he wouldn't listen to reason. Now I have something else to show you, something that I hoped it would not ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us, threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer pointed his finger. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... as of old filtered into the room, and Colonel Woodville lay just as before in bed with his great bald head upon the pillow. Miss Woodville sat beside the bed, reading aloud from Addison. Dick's step was light, but the colonel heard him and held up a finger. The lad paused until Miss Woodville, finishing a long sentence, closed the book. Then the colonel, raising a little the great white thatch of his ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the alluring voice and finger of the old guide, was drawn to a spot under the tower where sleeps the Lady Cornbury, dead now as I tell this, hardly two hundred years. Also I was told of that Lord Cornbury, her husband, once governor ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... of an egg, break it with a fork, and, having first cleaned the leather with dry flannel, apply the egg with a soft sponge. Where the leather is rubbed or decayed, rub a little paste with the finger into the parts affected, to fill up the broken grain, otherwise the glair would sink in and turn it black. To produce a polished surface, a hot iron must be rubbed over the leather. The following is, however, an easier, if not a better, method. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... thing to make one sad, to have a son who could twist the rulers round his little finger, and break the very laws of the Republic? Nay, but cause for much stateliness!" said a matron with two sons in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... lady had spoken, Zobeide took a rich diamond ring out of her casket, and putting it on her finger, and embracing her in a transport of joy, said, "How infinitely am I beholden to you, my good mother! I should never have thought of so ingenious a contrivance. It cannot fail of success, and I begin to recover my peace. I leave the care of the wooden figure ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... the funeral ceremonies, had to open his mouth, to put in the usual small bit of gold, Ganges water, and leaf of the toolsee-tree; and, to their horror, they there found the first joint of a man's finger. This confirmed all their suspicions, that he had been murdered during the night, and they sent off the joint of the finger to the minister, demanding vengeance on the murderer. Aga Meer was delighted at this proof of his rival's guilt, and would have had him seized and tried for the murder ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a hungry dog wou'd lap) Well stuff'd with Fat from Bacon fry'd, Or with Mollossus dulcify'd. Then out our Landlord pulls a Pouch, As greasy as the Leather Couch On which he sat, and straight begun To load with Weed his Indian Gun; In length, scarce longer than one's Finger. His Pipe smoak'd out with aweful Grace, With aspect grave and solemn pace; The reverend Sire walks to a Chest, Of all his Furniture the best, Closely confined within a Room, Which seldom felt the weight of Broom; From thence he lugs a Cag of Rum, And nodding to me, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... them. Make them understand you!" And she pointed them out one by one with her finger: "You! You! Wresmak, here, and you, Klowoski, and you, Zam—you other Polish fellow. Want check-weighman. Want to get all weight. Get all our ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... 'Nothing,' I said sadly, 'that I can put my finger on. But I hope to discover a few later. The sun may ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and over the mountains, but it ran also through the great realm of books, and every log schoolhouse was a station or a junction on it; or rather, as they had things in these days, a milestone or a finger-post. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... tutor close, a finger lifted in caution; but still kept looking at me—and all the while stared at me with eyes of frightened width—in a way that saw me not at all. "Parson," he whispered, "they wasn't ar another man landed by the mail-boat the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... round mechanically on her finger; and among them was a wedding-ring! Her voice had become low and abstracted, and now she seemed to have forgotten my presence, and was looking out upon the humming darkness round us, through which now and again there rang a boatswain's whistle, or the loud laugh of Blackburn, telling ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were of me. The very day that he was taken from us, and when he was just rising from the table of his boarding-house to go whence he never returned, some one noticed the seal ring, which you may remember to have seen on his finger, and said, How beautiful that ring is! Yes, he said, and best of all, it was my mother's gift to me. That ring, taken from the lifeless hand a few hours later, was sent to me. Singularly enough, it is broken right across the name from a fall a little time ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... body has a suspeecion o' a trowth, he sud never lat sit till he's gotten eyther hit, or an assurance that there's nothing there. But there's jist ae thing, in the poem 'at I can pit my finger upo', an' say 'at it's no richt clear to me whether it's a' ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... next higher stage in time, and likewise in development, we find these lessened toes at their vanishing point, and two of the remaining digits, lying on either side of what corresponds to the middle finger in our own hands, beginning to shrink in length and volume, while the central toe becomes larger and stronger than before. Last in the series we come to our ordinary equine form, in which nothing is left but the single massive extremity, though the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... character and will, who reached the limits of human bravery and endurance. There is Jackson on the cover, gold upon brown, "gentleman Jackson," Jackson of the balustrade calf and the noble head, who wrote his name with an 88-pound weight dangling from his little finger. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... even more difficult for the hawk to overtake, for it rises easier than the duck; but if the hawk be at pitch it will strike down the quick teal. One of the Arabs reined in his horse, and following the line of the outstretched finger Owen saw far away in a small pool or plash of water three teal swimming. As soon as the hawk swooped the teal dived, but not the least disconcerted, the hawk, as if understanding that the birds were going to be put up, rose to pitch and waited, "quite professional like," Owen said. The beautiful ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... him that he sends it me; For I have heard him say a thousand times His Julia gave it him at his departure. Though his false finger have profan'd the ring, Mine shall not do his Julia so ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... good Housewifry, who died by the prick of a Needle. Upon our Interpreters telling us, that she was a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, the Knight was very inquisitive into her Name and Family; and after having regarded her Finger for some time, I wonder, says he, that Sir Richard Baker has said nothing of her ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... me a skeleton, in the regal robe of the kings of Granada, and on its grisly head was the imperial diadem. With one hand raised, it pointed to the opposite wall, wherein burned, like an orb of gloomy fire, a broad dial-plate, on which were graven these words, BEWARE—FEAR NOT—ARM! The finger of the dial moved rapidly round, and rested at the word beware. From that hour to the one in which I last beheld it, it hath not moved. Muza, the tale is done; wilt thou visit with me this enchanted chamber, and see if the ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pies, just as the newsboy on the train secures a pile of magazines. The caterer marches down the length of the table with the half-inquiring, half-defiant announcement, "Pies, gentlemen! pies, gentlemen!" At every step he reaches for a pie, gives it a dexterous twirl between his thumb and finger, and sends it spinning to the recipient with a skill and accuracy of aim which would have done credit to the disk-thrower of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... enough to hear these questions and replies, few could breathe freely. At last a smile half opened the firmly closed lips of the Emperor; he placed his finger on his mouth, and, approaching the colonel, said to him in a softened and almost friendly tone, "You have reason to complain a little of that, but let us say no more about it," and continued his round. He had gone ten steps from the group formed by the deputies of Bescancon, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... held the thing up in front of 'em, so they tell me, and he just praised it up same as John B. Gough praises up cold water at a temp'rance lecture. He told how the old woman had worked over it, and set up nights over it, and got her nerves all into a titter and her finger ends all rags, as you might say, and how she had done it just to do somethin' for the meetin'-house she thought so much of, the church that her loved and lost husband used to come to so reg'lar. That was all fiddlesticks, 'cause Cap'n Az never went to church except for the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... obedience is greatly needed. It is to be secured just as our heavenly Father secures obedience to some of his laws. If a child thrusts his finger into the candle, he violates a law, and he instantly suffers for it. We are surrounded by many such laws, without the observance of which we could not live a day. To teach us obedience to these laws, the penalty of transgression is immediate and sharp. There are ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... of the arm a sort of forefinger, supported from beneath, by the thumb, pointed out horizontally; the arm, the thumb, and the forefinger drew a square against the sky. At the point of juncture of this peculiar finger and this peculiar thumb there was a line, from which hung something black and shapeless. The line moving in the wind sounded like a chain. This was the noise the child had heard. Seen closely the line was that which the noise indicated, a chain—a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... in them should always be taken off the finger when the hands are washed, or they will ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... earrings consisted of thick silver-wire hoops, some of the women having the ends of their necklaces attached to them, and then looped up into a sort of "chignon" behind. The men wore a great number of ornaments composed of the teeth of small animals, and they had finger rings as well as necklaces and bracelets. Some wore bands round their arms, ornamented with bunches of varied-coloured feathers. Others also had on anklets in the form of hoops made of shell, or ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... am a forger of manuscripts. I have more Greek in my little finger than you have in your long body. I began to tell you my history. I thought it might interest you. I do not propose to burden you with it any further. To-night I ask you for 1000l., to-morrow I shall ask you for 2000l., ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:—"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Every damned one of you! Don't move a finger or bat an eyelash! I've come a-killin'!" he said in a low, tense voice, the words coming with a snap, jerkily, like the separate and ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... This dear girl has told me all about you—forgive me for my mistakes, but they weren't all my fault—(shaking her finger at Andrew) I hope you'll have a very happy ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... his rays a mass of clouds. Slaying then all the steeds of Ghatotkacha, and cutting also his car into a hundred pieces, Karna began to pour upon him his arrows like a cloud pouring torrents of rain. On Ghatotkacha's body there was not even two finger's breadth of space that was not pierced with Karna's shafts. Soon the Rakshasa seemed to be like a porcupine with quills erect on his body. So completely was he shrouded with shafts that we could not in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... required, especially fuel; the world-wide interest that will be centred on the expedition; the international importance attaching to it; and the unspeakable necessity that the plans shall underestimate no difficulty and overlook no factor, point with a long and steady finger at the necessity of attacking this problem promptly and very seriously, and of detailing the officers and constructing the administrative machinery needed to make the calculations and to execute the measures that the calculations ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... condition is one which, according to the course of nature, cannot be fulfilled, as, for instance, if one says: 'Do you promise to give if I. touch the sky with my finger?' But if the stipulation runs: 'Do you promise to give if I do not touch the sky with my finger?' it is considered unconditional, and accordingly can be ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... with speech and body and mind under perfect control, commanded him to depart. And at the command of Yudhishthira, the strong-armed Arjuna, taking up the Gandiva as also his inexhaustible quivers, and accoutred in mail and gauntlets and finger-protectors made of the skin of the guana, and having poured oblations into the fire and made the Brahmanas to utter benedictions after gifts, set out (from Kamyaka) with the objects of beholding Indra. And armed with the bow, the hero, at the time of setting out heaved a ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... had said a thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger. His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was passing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits and its entrances, its villain, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... doctor's desk, on your friend's dressing table, next to the Bible in the minister's home. A chubby baby will gurgle and coo over a piece of this polished rock, and hold it in a little pink fist; old, white haired men will feebly finger a rough specimen streaked with green and amber. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... speaks in the broadest Irish brogue, and is telling his hearers that he knew the fellow was a sesesh at once; that he leveled his musket at him and towld him to halt; that if he hadn't marched straight up to him he would have put a minnie ball through his heart; that he had his gun cocked and his finger on the trigger, and was a mind to shoot him anyway. Then he tells how he propounded this and that question, which confused the prisoner, and finally concludes by saying that De Lagniel might be d—d thankful indade that he escaped with ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. 'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, 'Like it if you can! ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... experience, was good, and Lizzie gradually came to herself and opened her eyes. She immediately clutched at her breast, feeling for her key. She found it unmoved, but before her finger had recognised the touch, her quick mind had told her how wrong the movement had been. It had been lost upon Mrs. Carbuncle, but not on Mr. Bunfit. He did not at once think that she had the diamonds in her desk; but he felt almost sure that ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... were routed and order established in northern Egypt. Kitchener's ability to organize, and his knowledge of the people soon made him indispensable. His name occurred so frequently in the official reports, that Lord Cromer, in the home office, remarked: "This Kitchener seems to have a finger in every pie. I must see him and find out what he is like." Later, after seeing him, Cromer said: "That man's got a lot in him. He should prove one of ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... complately and intirely, by rason of the illigant conversation that I kipt up wid her all about the dear bogs of Connaught. And by and by she gived me such a swate smile, from one ind of her mouth to the ither, that it made me as bould as a pig, and I jist took hould of the ind of her little finger in the most dillikitest manner in natur, looking at her all the while out o' the whites ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... They can't help us on a single point. They can't check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population which exists. They daren't give us a comprehensive emigration scheme. They daren't lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market. They daren't interfere between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They are cowards, and like ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... journey; which questions were shortly disposed of, and then the colonel sat there with his head in his hand, doing nothing that he was wont to do. Esther feared something was troubling him, and could not bear to leave him to himself. She came near softly, and very softly let her finger-tips touch her father's brow and temples, and stroke back the hair from ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... may come on again. He is—I may tell you so much—a Councillor of the Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la Presidente? If Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it if I ask him. I shall know by to-morrow if ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... no longer from the point of view of his own personality. He perceived a young man, of excellent abilities and prospects, sacrificing these things for an idea that fell to pieces the instant it was touched. He touched it now with a critical finger, and it did so fall to pieces; there was, obviously, nothing in it at all. It was an impulse of silly pride, of obstinacy, of the sort of romance that effects nothing. There was Merefield waiting for him—for ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... impotent, Fragile, inviting Attack and discomfiture; Then, with a smile - As He heard in the Thunder That laughed over Eden The voice of the Trumpet, The iron Beneficence, Calling his dooms To the Winds of the world - Stooping, He drew On the sand with His finger A shape for a sign Of his way to the eyes That in wonder should waken, For a proof of His will To the breaking intelligence. That was the birth of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... belongs to the king; they are united according to one of the eight forms of Hindoo marriage known as that of free choice. After remaining with her a short time the king returns to his other wives at court. Before leaving he puts a seal ring on her finger and tells her how she can count the days till a messenger shall arrive to bring her to his palace. But month after month passes and no messenger arrives. "The king has acted abominably toward Sakuntala," says one of her friends; ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... only did all civilized governments undertake to protect citizens from assaults against their lives, but from any and every sort of physical assault and offense, however petty. Not only might not a man so much as lay a finger on another in anger, but if he only wagged his tongue against him maliciously he was laid by the heels in jail. The law undertook to protect men in their dignity as well as in their mere bodily integrity, rightly recognizing that to be insulted or spit upon ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... instant their eyes met with that lustrous and dewy love-gleam that only lovers know, but during that instant it seemed as if their souls had flowed together into a common fount. With a happy look she suffered him to take her hand, and draw off from her finger a sapphire ring; this he put on his own finger, while on hers he replaced it by the gold-set ruby, his mother's ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... there had been the glowering fires of a score of villages. The greater mass of burning Ypres stood up amongst them like the warning finger of God. Occasionally the roaring burst of an ammunition dump flared up into a volcano of fiery sound. The earth under our feet trembled in convulsive shudders from a cannonade so vast that no one sound could be picked ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, "Boatswain ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... pointed at it, but cautious and apologetic. "Twenty thousand dollar. You likee twenty thousand dollar?" He waited a moment. Then, with a glimmer as of returning sight, presented the alternative. "You likee god?—little joss?—come so?" And with his finger he traced in the air a curve of such delicate accuracy that the Englishman with an exclamation made a step toward him. But the Chinaman did not move. "Twenty thousand dollar," he stated. It sounded an impersonal statement, but nevertheless it was quite ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... proof that he was not a spirit, but a true man: he asked for meat; "and they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb; and he took it, and did eat before them." Luke 24:36-43. To the unbelieving Thomas he offered the further proof which he had demanded: "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing." The certainty of this great event the evangelist Luke sets forth in his introduction to the Acts of the Apostles: "To whom also," ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... wander around. He was looking for a bigger fish. The girl, meantime, raised her hand to her brow as though to recall something to her mind; as she did so Oscar observed a gem of rare value glittering on her finger, and mentally ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... the young man had won the affection of the boys and the respect of their grandfather, whose candid lack of logic was overpowered by the reasons which Mr. Bennett carried at every finger tip. He not only believed things, he knew why he believed them; and to the Major, with whom feelings were convictions, this was more remarkable than the courage with which he had handed his tract ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... by beckoning to his host; and, having relieved that gentleman's apprehensions by sibilant noises, waggled a nervous finger at ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... northern portions of the island, the eye is attracted along the edges of the sandy roads by fragments of the dislocated rings of a huge species of millepede[1], lying in short curved tubes, the cavity admitting the tip of the little finger. When perfect the creature is two-thirds of a foot long, of a brilliant jet black, and with above a hundred yellow legs, which, when moving onward, present the appearance of a series of undulations from ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... ruling at Patlam, a ruby bowl as big as the palm of one's hand. Friar Jordanus speaks of two great rubies belonging to the king of SYLEN, each so large that when grasped in the hand it projected a finger's breadth at either side. The fame, at least, of these survived to the 16th century, for Andrea Corsali (1515) says: "They tell that the king of this island possesses two rubies of colour so brilliant and vivid that they look like ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... she stopped at, finger on lip, Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim; Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, Its soft meandering Spanish name. 20 What a name! Was it love or praise? Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? I must learn Spanish, one of these ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... out of window. I suppose it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which he chalks his cue aggravates me. He carries his own chalk in his waistcoat pocket—as if our chalk wasn't good enough for him— and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his finger and thumb and taps the cue against the table. "Oh! go on with the game," I want to say to him; "don't be ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... pounding as though determined to burst from his body, and he could feel the blood tingling at his finger-tips. He wondered what in the world had come over him, who was too old ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... burden forth to drink? You herd your oxen, each one in his stall? You whip and goad until they heed your call? You own, and use? Are these your cattle? Think! Although the while they cringe to you and shrink. And watch their fate in your least finger fall, Mistake not, lest they rise and ravage all, And your vast piled-up ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... back in his chair, absently turning the curious, heavily chiselled ring on his little finger, but every few moments his expressive eyes reverted to her. She was eating her ice with all the frank ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... one spoke falsely in his presence, for he saw the devil, as it were, leaping and exulting upon the tongue of the liar. If he looked on a book faultily or falsely written, or containing a false passage, although wholly illiterate, he would point out the place with his finger. Being questioned how he could gain such knowledge, he said that he was directed by the demon's finger to the place. In the same manner, entering into the dormitory of a monastery, he indicated the bed of any monk not sincerely devoted to religion. He said, that the spirit ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... part of the universe, a void, or space in which there is nothing, he inquires first in how many senses we say that one thing is in another. He enumerates many of these; we say the part is in the whole, as the finger is in the hand; again we say, the species is in the genus, as man is included in animal; again, the government of Greece is in the king; and various other senses are described and exemplified, but of all these the most proper is when we say a thing is in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... his head until his red scarf, which he had knotted about his throat, made the ghastly pallor of his face seem even more chalky than it was, and thrust his chin forward and leveled at us the index finger of his right hand. The slowly rolling boat was so near us now that as we waited to see what he would say next we ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to come between them sometimes—that terrible uncertainty. The grey shadow of distrust which had divided them in the past still followed them from afar—a vague, intangible menace. Would it some day swing forward, like the dark, remorseless finger of an hour-dial, and lie once more ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the reflection of a sea-shell. Her full, dewy lips disclosed milky rows of childlike teeth within. Her eyes were of the clearest azure; but, in spite of their expression of mingled tenderness and gayety, one who could pause to lay the finger upon an imperfection, would note that something was wanting to complete their beauty;—the eyebrows were too faintly traced, and the lashes too light, though long. The low brow, straight, slender nose, the soft curve of the chin, the fine oval of the face, were ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was turned, however, Melu seized the noses, one by one, and turned them as they now are. But he was in such a hurry that he pressed his finger at the root, and it left a mark in the soft clay which you can still see on the faces ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... Praries, and a peponce of high rich & well timbered bottom, in the Glades I saw wild Timothy, Lams quarter Cuckle burs & rich weed, on the edges Plumbs of different kinds Grapes, and Goose berries, Camped on the L. S. Ruben Fields and Gulrich joined the Party two men unwell, one a Felin on his finger, river fall ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... more worthy of being called a miracle, was, when being twice admonished in his sleep, to cut the artery that lies between the fore finger and the thumb, and doing it accordingly, he was freed from a continual daily pain with which he was afflicted in that part where the liver is joined to the midriff; and this he has testified at the end of his book of Venesection. 'Tis certainly ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle encountered, that he did not receive the swift impression of it through all his body, the very friction of the damp soil, sliding incessantly from the shiny surface of the shears, seemed to reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the back of his head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down easily, deeply, into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-chains, the working of the smooth brown flanks in the harness, the clatter of wooden hames, the champing of bits, the click of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of his first published drama is 1601; that of his last published work, a "General History of Women," is 1657. As early as 1633 he represents himself as having had an "entire hand, or at least a main finger," in two hundred and twenty plays, of which only twenty-three were printed. "True it is," he says, "that my plays are not exposed to the world in volumes, to bear the title of Works, as others: one reason is, that many of them, by shifting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... yea, shake to its centre the very earth with a puff of his breath; he is loth to put forth his powers or to call into action the whirlwinds of his wrath. He suffers men to revile him long before he attempts to punish them; he permits them to raise the finger of defiance many times before he strikes it down, and the tongue to utter many a scornful word before he dooms it to the silence of death. It is so with the creatures of this world, as my brother must know. The strongest man—he who feels most ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the hole through which it was now only dropping, and that utter and general ruin would be the consequence of the inundation of the country that must follow. To see, to throw away the flowers, to climb from stone to stone till he reached the hole, and to put his finger into it, was the work of a moment, and, to his delight, he finds that he has succeeded in stopping the flow ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... ORAN. There is a cloud now rising in the west, In shape a hand, and scarcely would its grasp Exceed mine own, it is so small; a spot, A speck; see now again its colour flits! A lurid tint; they call it on our coast 'The hand of God;' I for when its finger rises From out the horizon, there are storms abroad ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... in these parts went in the same manner. Thinking this Indian was one of those called Caribs, and that the bay they were now in divided that race from the other inhabitants of Hispaniola, the admiral asked him where the Caribs dwelt. Pointing with his finger, the Indian expressed by signs that they inhabited another island to the eastwards, in which there were pieces of guanin[8] as large as half the stern of the caravel. He said moreover, that the island of Matinino was entirely inhabited by women, with whom the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr |
