"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whereabouts of little Joe, the "kid" of the patrol, by means of smoke telegraphy and track his abductors to their disgrace; how they assist the passengers of a stranded steamer and foil a plot to harm and perhaps kill an aged sea-captain, one must read the book to learn. A swift-moving narrative of convincing interest and ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... bottles from the dispensary across the road, each using a billiard-bridge. The girl in the orange sweater had a handful of scribbled notes, and was telling them where to push the pills. There were other objects on the map, too—pistol-cartridges, and cigarettes, and foil-wrapped food-concentrate wafers. Paula, seeing ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... Against the foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but let him be in one of his conversational moods, and he will fill a smilax thicket with noise enough for ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... built of squared brick, Which cunningly was without mortar laid, Whose walls were high, but nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed. High lifted up were many lofty towers And goodly galleries far overlaid, Full of fair windows, and delightful bowers, And on the top a dial told the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of nourishment his stomach will retain, he is driven to the conviction that there is something wrong, and that he had better see the doctor. The result of the young athlete's visit to the doctor was that he mournfully laid down the dumb-bells and the foil, eschewed gymnastics, and took ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... not succeed in our first attempt; some little neglect or accident may foil our present efforts, but the present enterprise will result in gathering stores of experience which will make the next effort certain. Not that I do not expect success now, but accidental failure now will not be ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... different productions, Fanfaro was continually assisting the performers; he handed Girdel the weights and took them from him; he accompanied Robeckal's sword exercise with hollow beats on a tambourine; he played the violin while Caillette danced on the rope, and acted as Bobichel's foil in his comic acts. Fanfaro himself was not to appear before the second part; for the conclusion of the first part a climax was to be given in which Girdel would perform a piece in which he had everywhere appeared with thunders of applause; the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the powder works; but the explanation of the formation of the substance is wanting, as potassium nitrate was shown not to give an explosive substance with tin. A thin layer of a mixture of sulphur and potassium nitrate was placed between sheets of tin and copper foil, and allowed to stand, being kept constantly moist. After a time the copper was found to have become coated with sulphide, while the tin was largely converted into the explosive basic nitrate. The conditions are obviously the same as those found in the powder ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... marry," she continued after a pause which none interrupted, "I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage: his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... song or invocation, in which he mentioned the wants of the wretched Indians, and the cunning endeavours of the Evil Spirit to keep them in his service, and ended by begging his master to shew his own superiority, and enable his priest to foil the tricks of his adversary. The tribe assembled, just as they had done on the previous days. But they were more anxious now than they had been before, because the more there is in the cabin of a man, the greater is his thirst to increase his store, and the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... where their feet may go; Rich be the meadows where their hands may toil, The fountains many where the good wines flow; Full be their harvest bins with corn and oil, And quick their hearts all wise delights to know; To sorrow may their humour be a foil, Tardy their footsteps to the gate Farewell. Deep be your cups. Our hearts the gods make light: Drink, that their joy may ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... or his good qualities. She liked him in a sort of way; nay, it might even be said that she was fond of him. But what she liked better than him was to gratify her vanity, by showing her power over the finest young fellow in the village, and to use him as a foil to aggravate George Hawker. My aunt Betsy (spinster), used to say, that if she were a man, sooner than stand that hussy's airs (meaning Mary's), in the way young Stockbridge did, she'd cut, and run to America, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... greatest care to reduce to a minimum the evils necessarily attendant on the mode of payment by results. A certain number of teachers made it their chief effort to secure the largest possible number of grants. Huxley regarded these as poachers of the worst kind, and did all he could to foil them. He did all he could to promote systematic practical instruction in the classes, and to aid teachers who desired to learn their business more thoroughly. He insisted again and again upon the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... for. The delicacy surprised him. But he was too much the master, too confident of his own powers, to trifle. He delivered one of his favorite thrusts; it was a stroke of his own invention; three times out of five, in years past, it had carried home the button of his foil to his opponent's jacket. It was executed with the directness and rapidity ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... malua ula. The malua-ula was a variety of tapa that was stained with hili kukui (the root-bark of the kukui tree). The ripe kukui nut was chewed into a paste and mingled with this stain. Mama ula refers to this chewing. The malua ula is mentioned as a foil to the pa-u, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... pictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, with minds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of the world for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream should have a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions of such people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seeking enough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosen for my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus, with, of course, the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the level part of the forest, which has a rich black soil. Great sarmentous plants climb here up to the tops of the trees: wild Grapes, the climbing, poisonous Sumach, (Rhus toxicodendron,) and the vine-like Cinque-foil, which transforms withered, naked trunks into green columns, Bignonias, with their brilliant scarlet trumpet-flowers, are the most remarkable. The Thuja occidentalis, which may be met with in European gardens, stands in mournful solitude on the margins of pools; here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... unrestrained invective against the Borgias, giving to the usual empty assertions the place which should be assigned to evidence and argument. Like his predecessors along that path, he causes Giuliano della Rovere to shine heroically by contrast—a foil to throw into greater relief the blackness of Alexander. But he carries assertion rather further than do others when he says of Cardinal della Rovere that "He ascended the steps of St. Peter's Chair without simony and amid general applause, and with him ceased, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the fleeting cloud which shadowed it passed on, and the face of the column brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the complexion of a dark foil. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... showed us the other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, is doubtful, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know what I think?" Beth inquired. "I think you should be punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... and listened to the cacophonous sounds of the names: the Encephalartos horridus, a gigantic iron rust-colored artichoke, like those put on portals of chateaux to foil wall climbers; the Cocos Micania, a sort of notched and slender palm surrounded by tall leaves resembling paddles and oars; the Zamia Lehmanni, an immense pineapple, a wondrous Chester leaf, planted in sweet-heather soil, its top ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till one ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... more than fifty of the shape XIII, 22, and many of XIII, 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, and small discs ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... in, that would have been another matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other—the old general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mary-Girl (a silly title) was the engaging personality of Miss MAY BLAYNEY. Always a fascinating figure to watch, she showed an extraordinary sensitiveness of voice and expression. As for that honest and admirable actor, Mr. MCKINNEL, who made the perfect foil to her charms that every good husband should wish to be, he seems never to tire of playing these stern, dour, semi-brutal parts. That more genial characters are open to him his success in Great Catherine showed. Miss MARY BROUGH, as a charwoman, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... could ascribe my inability to rise, till, hearing me complaining of my leg, he examined it, and found that my foot was gangrened. An accident of my early days was the cause of this new trouble. At Soreze I had my right foot wounded by the unbuttoned foil of a schoolfellow with whom I was fencing. It seemed that the muscles of the part had become sensitive, and had suffered much from cold while I was lying unconscious on the field of Eylau; thence had resulted a swelling which explained ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... finally made drawings and took them to a machinist whom he knew, afterwards one of his assistants, who laughed at the idea but made the model. Previously he bet a friend a barrel of apples that he could do it. When the model was finished he arranged a piece of tin foil and talked into it, and when it gave back a distinct sound the machinist was frightened, and Edison won his barrel of apples, "which," he says, "I was very glad ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... fanatics all arrayed For revolution! To foil their villainous crusade Unsheathe again ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... joy is the next study, No. 4! How well Chopin knew the value of contrast in tonality and sentiment! A veritable classic is this piece, which, despite its dark key color, C sharp minor as a foil to the preceding one in E, bubbles with life and spurts flame. It reminds one of the story of the Polish peasants, who are happiest when they sing in the minor mode. Kullak calls this "a bravura study for velocity and lightness in both ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... little harvest of curious fruit—sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before Kaviak's ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Pour some mercury on a tin foil, smoothly laid on a flat table, and rub it gently with a hare's foot. It soon unites itself to the tin, which then becomes very splendid, or is what they call quickened. A plate of glass is then cautiously, passed upon the tin ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the word Flos; for the flower is only a group of {42} singularly happy leaves. From these two roots come foglio, feuille, feuillage, and fleur;—blume, blossom, and bloom; our foliage, and the borrowed foil, and the connected technical groups of words in architecture ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... trust its pledge; but thus Recall'd it; rapt its Ganymede from us. Was there no milder way but the small-pox, The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves on Venus' soil, One jewel set off with so many a foil; Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did sprout Like rose-buds, stuck i' th' lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit: 60 Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of muscle and bone. Jan's knife swept in an upward flash and plunged to the hilt through the flesh of his enemy's forearm. With a cry of pain O'Grady dropped his club, and the two crashed to the stone floor of the trail. This was the attack that Jan had feared and tried to foil, and with a lightning-like squirming movement he swung himself half free, and on his back, with O'Grady's huge hands linking at his throat, he drew back his knife arm for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... extraordinary that such mysterious characters as Fantomas can exist nowadays. Is it really possible that a single man can commit such a number of crimes, and that any human being can escape discovery, as they say Fantomas can, and be able to foil the cleverest devices of the police? ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... with goblins was fruitless. One night a dark and hostile throng emerged from the wood and moved toward the blockhouse, where twenty musketeers were keeping guard. "If you be ghosts or devils I will foil you," cried the captain, and tearing a silver button from his doublet he rammed it into his gun and fired on the advancing host. Even as the smoke of his musket was blown on the wind, so did the beleaguering army vanish, the silver bullet proving that they were ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and from thy birth my friend, Dorset, to thee this fable let me send: With Damon's lightness weigh thy solid worth; The foil is known to set the diamond forth: Let the feign'd tale this real moral give, How many ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... their noses in the cool water, and sent the bright drops in showers about us, I looked down upon her, the dark green of her riding-habit making a rich foil to the soft glow of her cheek, and the drooping plume of her hat falling over her snowy neck and mingling with the dark ringlets, and one little hand from which she had drawn the glove playing with Fatima's tawny mane—and I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... hand, Charles considered that Scotland was never before, under any of his ancestors, so united and so animated in its own defence; yet had often been able to foil or elude the force of England, combined heartily in one cause, and inured by long practice to the use of arms. How much greater difficulty should he find, at present, to subdue by violence a people inflamed with religious prejudices; while he could only oppose to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Corineius was, Since when we passed the Cicillian gulf, And so transfretting the Illirian sea, Arrived on the coasts of Aquitaine, Where with an army of his barbarous Gauls Goffarius and his brother Gathelus Encountering with our host, sustained the foil. And for your sakes my Turnus there I lost, Turnus that slew six hundred men at arms All in an hour, with his sharp battle-axe. From thence upon the strons of Albion To Corus haven happily we came, And quelled the giants, come of Albion's race, With Gogmagog son ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... American imagination, always receptive of the romantic, might readily and forgivably have pictured villas, maids in durance vile, and sword-thrusts under the moonlight. But the waiter, who had served his time in one or another of the foreign armies, knew that no foil or rapier could have made such a scar; more probably the saber. For the Italian officer on horseback is the maddest of all men, and in the spirit of play courts hazards that another man might sensibly ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help of his pupils ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... On the contrary, it will bring you followers. None but Lotzen and his circle will resent it, and they, already, are your enemies. The Governorship will make them no more so. Instead, it will keep them careful; for it will give you immense power to detect and foil ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... the long black velvet robe covered with tin-foil ornaments, with which the necromancer was wont to frighten the ignorant and superstitious peasants who came to consult him ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... wrested from him. His jester had acquainted him with the discovery just made of the secret hoard, and he was therefore compelled to have recourse to this desperate move. But I was apprized of his intentions by Will Sommers, and have come in time to foil him." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hand, he laid down the condition that any money he might win should be given to the poor. He prayed for skill in his dancing lessons, because he wanted to have more time for more serious studies. He was more devout in his daily life than ever, prayed to Christ with the foil in his hand, studied the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, spent whole nights in prayer, fasted the livelong day on Sundays, and was, in a word, so Methodistic in his habits that he could truly describe himself as a "rigid Pietist." He interfered in many a duel, and rebuked ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... acid. Black precipitate of metallic Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... happened to notice Colonel Colquhoun, who had stepped back to judge the effect of some drapery he was putting up. Mr. Price was a little behind him, and two of the younger men, the three making an excellent foil to Colonel Colquhoun. Evadne was struck by the contrast. The outside aspect of the man still pleased her. There was no doubt that he was a fine specimen of his species, a splendid animal to look at; what a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... 178 foil. The accounts of Ctesias and other ancient writers seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets of Babylon, however useful they ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... ordinary reader, in the action, character or fate of the victims; and as for "Hamlet," so far is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubts and disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed the existence of any other world, and dies at last not a bloody death, but by a foil "unbated and envenomed." ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the camp, and train'd in every toil Which taught his sire the haughtiest foes to foil; Destin'd he seem'd by fate to raise his name, And rule the empire with ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... forego the same advantage; but when this compact is broken by any special lady, the treason is thought to be very treacherous. It is as though a fencer should remove the button from the end of his foil. But Mrs Greenow was so good-natured in tendering the services of Jeannette to all the young ladies, and was so willing to share with others those good things of the toilet which her care had provided, that her cap was forgiven her by the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it kindles, none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... no less wilt be my life, And I shall know it better than before, Praying and trusting, hoping, claiming more. From effort vain, sick foil, and bootless strife, I shall, with childness fresh, look up to thee; Thou, seeing thy child with age encumbered sore, Wilt round him bend thine ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... to the essential nature of their so palpable well-being, [74] or the rival standards thereof, of origins and issues. And yet, with all their gaiety, as its last triumphant note in truth, they were ready to trifle with death, welcoming, by way of a foil to the easy character of their days, a certain luxurious sense of danger—the night-alarm, the arquebuse peeping from some quiet farm-building across their way, the rumoured presence in their neighbourhood of this or that great military leader—delightful premonitions of the adventurous ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... hot-air register to the window sash, the window sash to the weight—specially covered with tin foil—and brought forth the table on which was the now completed Sleep Prolonger. Only the face of the clock appeared, the rest was buried under an arrangement of cardboard boxes and perfectly useless spools, that turned with the rope ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... was he clear, and on this he became more settled with every hour: whatever he did he must do with the idea of a fundamental awakening in Maggie. Merely to foil her in this one scheme would be to solve the lesser part of his problem; Maggie would be left unchanged, or if changed at all the change would be toward a greater hardness, and his major problem would be ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... chapels, fountains running wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things without end; and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made between the two Kings with as much solemnity as if they had intended to keep it, the lists—nine ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... shall see express'd Love's better omens, in the green hues dress'd Of this selected foliage.—Nymph, 't is thine The warning story on its leaves to find, Proud Daphne's fate, imprison'd in its rind, And with its umbrage veil'd, great Phoebus' power Scorning, and bent, with feet of wind, to foil His swift pursuit, till on Thessalian shore Shot into boughs, and rooted to the soil.— Thus warn'd, fair Maid, Apollo's ire to shun, Soon may his Spray's ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... vain dissembling—a part of the work of the day, And the words that your voice makes music, but the dull, dead lines of the play. Little you care for the woman you woo, save as a foil designed. To prove your skill as a ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... his contemporaries is a venial offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers. Charisi was particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor, but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may serve as samples of his versatile muse. The first is addressed ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... but serves as a connecting link between the other features, which have before seemed more or less unrelated. The grand staircase, built of Siena marble, the finest example of the intelligent use of colored marble in this country, has until now lacked its foil, which the dull blue walls now give. The added pleasure which is apparent in viewing the stairway emphasizes the importance of the guiding intelligence which has made all this possible. There is in our experience only one other building in the country ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... snug, and continue to sigh on, Till made by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all, — while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own — 'Come, give me five cards.' 'Well done!' cry the ladies; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good! 25 The pool's very rich — ah! the Doctor is loo'd!' Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplex'd, I ask for advice from the lady that's next: 'Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice; Don't you think the best way is to venture for 't twice?' 30 'I advise,' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... less easy to ascertain exactly, in what part of the mouth they were modulated; but recollecting that those parts of the mouth must be more ready to use for the purpose of forming the vowels, which were in the habit of being exerted in forming the other letters; I rolled up some tin foil into cylinders about the size of my finger; and speaking the vowels separately through them, found by the impressions made on them, in what part of the mouth each of the vowels was formed with somewhat greater accuracy, but not so ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pockets of my coat and climbed down. I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to-night. Lupton's Pond may fill to a puddle, the meadows may shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and old Time may even try his wiles on me. But I shall foil him to the end; for I am carrying still in my pocket some of yesterday's persimmons,—persimmons that ripened in the rime of a winter when I was ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Princess unnoticed, slipped the ring from her finger, and escaped unobserved. He hastened to the seaside, and, finding a vessel ready to sail, embarked, and arrived at Biserta, in Africa. Here he found Agramant impatient for the talisman which was to foil the enchantments of Atlantes and to put Rogero into his hands. The dwarf, kneeling before the king, presented him with the ring, and Agramant, delighted at the success of his mission, crowned him in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... my young friend. I cannot say I regret yielding to the impulse that moved me. I feel that I have helped to foil the ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... half-giddy eye, by the ease with which he bore down and dispersed those who fought against our freedom. My father alone offered an opposition which threatened to prove fatal to him; for Wallace, it was said, could foil any two martial champions that ever drew sword. Brushing from him the armed men, as a lady would drive away with her fan a swarm of troublesome flies, he secured me in one arm, used his other for our mutual protection, and I found myself in ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... This word appears to be derived from the same root as Paup-puk-ke-nay, a grasshopper, the inflection iss making it personal. The Indian idea is that of harum scarum. He is regarded as a foil to Manabozho, with whom he is frequently brought in contact in ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... one might pass on them, I imagine, never gave Boccaccio a thought, only the way they were placed being important. The elaborate preparation for the story-telling; the grouping of them as a whole, in contrast with the greater story he put as their contrast and foil; the solemn gloom, the deep chiaroscuro of this framing, painted like a miniature; the artful way in which he prepares for his lieta brigata the way out of the charnel-house: these are the real 'Decameron.' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... spake, and him Beelzebub Thus answered: "Leader of those armies bright, Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foil'd...." MILTON, Paradise ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Government has done a thing To make its guardian-angel droop her wing In sickened indignation: That is, has striven to strengthen its redoubts, Perfidious 'Ins,' to foil the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had, In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer—till at last The long'd for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... to a critic, it being very certain that he was, like this essayer a very indifferent poet; he loved to be well dressed; and I remember a little young gentleman whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company as a double foil to his person and capacity. Inquire between Sunning Hill and Oakingham, for a young, short, equal, gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell me whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections? He may extol the ancients, but he has reason to thank the gods ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her husband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have done for herself! This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as I can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for examples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who surrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by their express order and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a peahen's cry, above all a bird's song, is a great interruption to hypnotism—silent or by voices. A nightingale will foil the worst attack. ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... a moment later his smile died away, and he drew his lips inward with anxiety. He felt a new power in the foil slithering up and down his own. Suddenly a thousand needles stung his wrist: his foil lay rolling about the deck. The vicomte bowed jestingly, stepped forward and picked up the foil, presenting it to its owner. Again they resumed guard. Quick as light ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... and Miriam under a similar pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guilt which has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnatural depravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam the white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her—though perfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam—believe herself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play; yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so burlesquing the OWEN NARES that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... superstitious customs, and ceremonies, and the like; so that there was no parting of them; or those who had long been grappling and conflicting with their strong corruptions and old temptations, and in those conflicts had received many a foil, and got many a fall to the wounding of their consciences, and cutting deep gashes upon their souls; now they stand up with a kind of omnipotence among them, no temptation is able to stand before them; ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... of gems, the orient list, The diamond, topaz, amethyst, The emerald mild, the ruby gay; Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway! She hath a way, with her bright eye, Their various lustre to defy, The jewel she and the foil they, So sweet to look Anne hath a way. She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, To make grief ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... ladies of Brookfield further opportunity for studying one of the levels from which they had risen. Arabella did almost all the fencing with Laura Tinley, contemptuously as a youth of station returned from college will turn and foil an ill-conditioned villager, whom formerly he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... commerce—and that your efforts to suppress it, have affected nothing more than a three-fold increase of its horrors. There is a God who rules this world—all-powerful—far-seeing: He does not permit his creatures to foil his designs. It is he who, for his all-wise, though to us often inscrutable purposes, throws "impossibilities" in the way of our fondest hopes and most strenuous exertions. Can ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... was the half-bottle of Three Star brandy sold by the grocer. This bottle had its neck broken clean off with a stone. The stone employed for the purpose was picked up, as was the neck of the bottle, with its cork, covered with a tin-foil seal. The seal showed marks of attempts that had been made to uncork the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... belittle the man of genius, but set off his greatness as with a foil. They illustrate the thought of Goethe: "It is all the same whether one is great or small, he has to pay the reckoning ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... face were only bits of emphasis that made her prettiness the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of violets, each with the stems wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and the other she carried in ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the time in which they were talking by silently taking a foil from the nearest chest). Back! Do not come any nearer. You see this door ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... with the hunter and Tayoga. He was still glad of the lucky chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Dumaresq. He turned, and laid the foil back upon the mantelpiece behind him; then calmly crossed the intervening space, and stood before her. "I am grateful to you for granting me an interview, mademoiselle," he said. "I am aware that you have done so ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... she had said with a smile to Hester, was much delighted with the arrangement of everything. Mrs. Willis was in grey silk, with her favourite Honiton lace. She was a very striking and beautiful woman, and in her grand simplicity, made a perfect foil to the fantastic appearance of the younger members of ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... and Vautrin's schemes unexpectedly work out for good. As in the story of Pere Goriot again, Vautrin, after furthering matrimonial deals and other quasi-benevolent projects, ends in the clutches of the law. Of Raoul little need be said. He is the foil for his dread protector and he is saved from dishonor by a narrow margin. The scene is laid at Paris, just after the second accession of the House of Bourbon, in 1816. Titles and families are in some confusion on account of the change of dynasties. It is therefore an opportune time ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... Thebes was his home town and he was as well known in the all-night restaurants as Oscar Hammerstein is on Forty-second Street. He was a great poker player, and wore an amalgamated copper mask when engaged in a stiff game; it was a helpful foil when trying to work his passage on a pair of trays. This, mind you, was in the stone age of poker, when a man couldn't hide his feelings when he held a full hand. To-day the player sits disconsolate and looks woebegone when glancing at ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular disks of the prettiest color and luster. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeler, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together with the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Hideous (which is also evil) should never be used except as a foil. There is no immorality in exhibiting the prevailing vices of the epoch, but this is the physician's duty. The evil lies in presenting these evils under such forms as may lead many to enjoy or tolerate them, giving them the additional power of a charming ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... side, and Jane began to mount the stairs. He did not look at her, but it seemed to Jane that his eyes were on the hem of her gown as it trailed past him. She paused beside Miss Lister. She knew exactly how effectual a foil she made to the American girl's white loveliness. She turned and faced him. She wished him to look up and see them standing there together. She wanted the artist eyes to take in the cruel contrast. She wanted the artist soul of him to realise ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... The King's ministers were treacherously negotiating with false Burgundy, some say with the Regent Bedford himself. They cared not to save France. They cared only to keep out of harm's way—to avoid all peril and danger, and to thwart the Maid, whose patriotism and lofty courage was such a foil to ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the dun, Foil, son of Nectan, was the first to awake. It was his custom to wander forth by himself early in the morning, devising snares and stratagems by which he might take and destroy men at his leisure. He was ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... window panes and keeps up a solemn buzzing, anxious to be off in the sun and ripen a fresh emission of germs. How does she lay her eggs, the origin of the loathsome maggot that battens poisonously on our provisions, whether of game or butcher's meat? What are her stratagems and how can we foil them? This is what ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... his coat a bottle of champagne, and set it on the table, where the lamp's ray fell full on its gold foil. Her eyes opened wide; for he had always visited this house in his oldest clothes and passed for ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not deep, but only dark, must run dry if they cannot run clear. Sparkling and pellucid rills, wherein we can all see our own-selves and trace our own dreams, irradiated with light like the flickering of gems, and set off with rich foil, are those to attract the popular eye. Genuine humor, pathos, elevation and delicacy of fancy seek no disguise, but aim at the utmost simplicity of expression. Inversions, like affectation in every shape, are foreign to them. True songsters, like the birds, warble to be heard, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer the ship, by ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... miraculous. Hissing and seething at the opposition she offered, the larger waves burst over her bows, and swept the deck from stem to stern; but her ample scuppers discharged it quickly, and up she rose again, dripping from the flood, to face and fight and foil each ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... gave place to a mingled feeling of impatience and anger. She drew her foot back with a sudden movement, but unfortunately the foot went one way and the slipper another. A fencing-master, who sees his foil carried ten steps away from him by a back stroke, could not feel more astonishment than that felt by Madame de Bergenheim. Her first movement was to place her foot, so singularly undressed, upon the ground; an instinctive horror ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of Ralegh's birth the family had lost its pristine splendour. But there has been a tendency to exaggeration of the extent of the decadence, by way of foil to the merit which retrieved the ruin. John Hooker, a contemporary Devonshire antiquary, uncle to the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, described the family as 'consopited,' and as having 'become ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... there is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Calydon; (What great offense had either people done?) But I, the consort of the Thunderer, Have wag'd a long and unsuccessful war, With various arts and arms in vain have toil'd, And by a mortal man at length am foil'd. If native pow'r prevail not, shall I doubt To seek for needful succor from without? If Jove and Heav'n my just desires deny, Hell shall the pow'r of Heav'n and Jove supply. Grant that the Fates ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the N.E. and W. sides. Each window is divided into two openings by a single central shaft, having a carved cap and broad square abacus, on which rest the two plain pointed arches of the inner openings. The shield above is pierced with a bold quatre-foil. The two western piers of the crossing are still standing, and within the arch there has been erected in modern times a large traceried window. The spaces below the window and across the side aisles have been built up with fragments of the demolished ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... man of the best Dutch blood imported at the revolution: for the rest, one of those commodious persons in society who are nothing particular themselves, but are understood to be acquainted with the best in every department; close-clipped, pale-eyed, nonchalant, as good a foil as could well be found to the intense coloring and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in which you see her. This short struggle is indicated by the posture of the body; for, squatting down and being struck in the back, it is naturally on her back that she ought to have fallen. The murderer used a sharp narrow weapon, which was, unless I am deceived, the end of a foil, sharpened, and with the button broken off. By wiping the weapon upon his victim's skirt, the assassin leaves us this indication. He was not, however, hurt in the struggle. The victim must have clung with a death-grip to his hands; but, as he had not taken off his lavender ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Lords, our wars are brought to end, Our foes to the foil, and we in safety rest: It us behooves to use such clemency In peace as valour in the war It is as great honor to be bountiful At home as to be conquerors in the field. Therefore, my Lords, the more to my content, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... and crowns of those play-actor emperors," said Sancho, "were never yet pure gold, but only brass foil or tin." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cars were fairly natural. This was a masterly stroke in caricature, since it furnished the necessary foil to all that followed. They were not, to my eye, of any known species, but, with the exception of being evidently used to hard lines, they looked enough like trams to pass as such. Inside sat, in all seriousness, a wonderful cageful ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chili,—so he said,—for the express purpose of giving them to old ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the good ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to seek him, but was almost slain, Perhaps is dead now; everywhere The knights come foil'd from the great quest, in vain; In vain they struggle for ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... it has the texture of horn, but the tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the absolute. The glance of an observer ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... of it is, that she manages to make me appear so unamiable and unattractive in my husband's eyes," she sighed to herself. "But I'll foil her efforts," she added, between her shut teeth, springing up, and beginning her toilet as she spoke: "he likes to have me bright and cheery, and well and becomingly dressed, and so I ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... Selingman recited, waving his cigar. "Well, well, we certainly have made a stir with our little meetings here. An inspired English Cabinet Minister, travel-stained and dusty, arrives with his valet and a black dispatch-box, to foil our schemes. Send him along, my friend. We are not at all afraid of Mr. Simpson. Perhaps we may even ask him to join ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indices, the above proportions are sufficiently accurate for all. The object in view is the securing of total reflection of as much light as possible from the flat polished back of the stone. Cabochon stones are sometimes set over foil or on polished gold to ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... furious, for he had felt on his breast the point of his adversary's sword, but so lightly that he might have taken it for the button of a foil. His anger redoubled at the conviction that he owed his life to the captain, and his attacks became more numerous and more furious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... use a great deal of diligence before I can spring anything to my mind, whereas in town, whilst I am following one character, it is ten to one but I am crossed in my way by another, and put up such a variety of odd creatures in both sexes, that they foil the scent of one another, and puzzle the chace. My greatest difficulty in the country is to find sport, and in town to chuse it. In the mean time, as I have given a whole month's rest to the cities of London and Westminster, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... not kept to this way of declaiming when Sophocles and Euripides influenc'd the age. Nor yet had any blind alley-professor foil'd their inclinations, when Pindar and the Nine Lyricks durst not attempt Homer's Numbers: And that I may not bring my authority from poets, 'tis certain, neither Plato nor Demosthenes ever made it ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... impertinent slave provides the foil. When the lovers succeed in meeting, they are interlocked in embrace from 172 to 192, probably invested with no small amount of suggestive "business." This would doubtless hardly be tolerated by the "censor" today. Another ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... shrilled the boy, and, setting down his burden, charged out again, returning instantly with another cry of 'Beef, no vedge.' He was out and in again with a cry of 'Pork and vedge,' and out and in again with a cry of 'Pork, no vedge.' Then a shock-headed youth appeared with a basket foil of tin measures and a big can of black beer. He was met with an instant storm of chaff, and allusions of a Rabelaisian sort were made to one Mary for whom he would seem to have had a kindness. He departing, the men set themselves to the serious business of dinner, and, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the sunshine loves to coil. And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's glow, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... up and down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to that ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... and after a little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow the pellet. The letter appealed to Miss Wright's ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... Herbeck was an excellent foil. He was as silent and secretive as sand. He moved, as it were, in circles, thus always eluding dangerous corners. He was tall, angular, with a thin, immobile countenance, well guarded by his gray eyes and straight lips. He was a born financier, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... All the snow was gone from the hills; the stream that gathered its three forks at this point roared over its rocks; the stunted willows were in full leaf; the thick, soft moss of every dark shade of green and yellow and red made a foil for innumerable brilliant flowers. The fat, gray conies chirped at us from the rocks; the ground-squirrels, greatly multiplied since the wholesale destruction of foxes, kept the dogs unavailingly chasing hither and thither whenever they were loose. We never grew tired of walking up and down ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... miserable anticipations of those miseries, in appropriating the exemplar miseries of others to ourselves, and usurping upon their miseries as our own, to our prejudice? Is the glory of heaven no perfecter in itself, but that it needs a foil of depression and ingloriousness in this world, to set it off? Is the joy of heaven no perfecter in itself, but that it needs the sourness of this life to give it a taste? Is that joy and that glory but a comparative ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne |
