"Millstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again. "Don't you know it is valuable? I must keep it; he can't go back on it if he wants to." He took it from her, and began to piece it together. "I can look the world in the face again," he said, admiring the fragments. "I am free, free and cleared; that debt would have hung like a millstone around my neck, but I am free of it; ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... He is the same yesterday and to-day and forever. And He said that whoever took away from the meaning of the words of His book would have some terrible punishment, so that it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... CAPSTAN. A broad cylindrical piece of elm, resembling a millstone, and fixed immediately above the barrel and whelps. On its circumference a number of square holes are cut parallel to the deck, to receive ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... their square-towered churches of Norman foundation. Round about his steading, which was screened by sycamores from the westerly gales, lay the mountain pastures, broken by terraces of limestone rock. Above, where the limestone yields place to the millstone, were the high moors and fells, where grouse, curlews and merlins nested among the heather, and hardy, blue-faced sheep ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... of humanity than statesmen and statisticians are apt to do. It has been pointed out lately how fierce he is about the man who puts a stumbling-block in the way of even "a little one"—"better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea"; no mere phrase—for when he draws a picture, he sees it; he sees this scene, and "better so—for him too!" is his comment (Mark 9:42). There was, we may remember, a view current in antiquity that when a ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... You Yankees may be clever at your tricks, but you can't trick me. Don't I know about the money you stole from 'er father? Don't I, eh? You can tell 'er your lies about it being stolen by someone else, but I can see a 'ole through a millstone. You can't trick me, I tell you. They're giving that girl a good 'ome and care and all that, but we're goin' to see she 'as 'er rights. You've filled 'er silly 'ead with your stories. You've made 'er think you're all ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... relentless temper. French policy, too, showed no pity. The Governor of Canada and the colonial minister in France were alike insistent that the English should be given no peace and cared nothing for the sufferings of the unhappy Acadians between the upper and the nether millstone. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... was made prisoner, and he himself assures us was saved by the Indian maiden Pocahontas. After a captivity of seven weeks he returned to Jamestown, with increased knowledge of savage life and manners. He treated his Indian guides with great kindness and gave them two heavy guns and a millstone for the monarch. But the present was too heavy for his strength, and when one of the cannons was discharged among the boughs of a tree, and crashing of wood and ice was heard, the timid natives declined any further interference ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... them up by steam saws into blocks about two feet in length. Any bark that may still cling to the log is removed by a rapidly revolving corrugated wheel of steel, while the larger blocks are split by a steam splitter. The next stage of their journey takes these blocks to a great millstone set perpendicularly instead of horizontally. Here a very strong and ingenious machine receives one block at a time, and with an automatically elastic pressure holds it sidewise against the millstone, which, like the mills of the gods, "grinds exceeding fine," and with the aid ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... said Mr. Bumble, 'you don't know anybody who wants a boy, do you? A porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-weight; a millstone, as I may say, round the porochial throat? Liberal terms, Mr. Sowerberry, liberal terms?' As Mr. Bumble spoke, he raised his cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps upon the words 'five pounds': which were printed thereon in Roman ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling of the people. It hung like a millstone on the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... long before the blazing pile, when a fellow, mounted on a fine spirited horse, dashed from the stables through the passage into the kitchen, where he commenced displaying his horsemanship, by causing the animal to wheel about with the velocity of a millstone, to the great danger of everybody in the apartment. He then galloped out upon the plain, and after half an hour's absence returned, and having placed his horse once more in the stable, came and seated ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on—and grinds itself ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... wiped off the dust, and opening it hastily, my eyes fell upon the following words: —"And he said unto his disciples, it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto him by whom they come; for better had it been for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... who is not one of those (to speak in his own phrase) who can penetrate a millstone, sees the deceit, and thinks it unworthy of her; though my cousins Montague vindicate her. And no wonder this cursed partial sex [I hate 'em all—by my soul, I hate 'em all!] will never allow any thing against an individual ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... also see God arising to fall upon the Germans. Berlin, with Babylon the Great, is fallen. It has become a nest of unclean things. There serpents dwell. Woe unto them that offend against my little ones. For, lo, a millstone is hanged about their necks and they shall be drowned ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 29: I read not long since, in that authentic record called the Percy Anecdotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school, where I had been distinguished as an absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into the millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr. Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had the good fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was never ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... part of a small flat-roofed house, situated in a very secluded spot amongst the hills, not a mile from Jerusalem. They sat opposite to each other, engaged—after the manner of the East—in grinding corn, by moving round, by means of handles, the upper millstone upon the nether one. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... I heard that there were some who had become peasant proprietors by purchasing out and out their holdings, and that they had bitterly repented of so doing; for they had tied a millstone about their necks. I was advised to go to Limavady and see the Rev. Mr. Brown, who had made the purchase for these people, and knew how the bargain was ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... "has your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Catechism, could hardly be brought to read the book of Leviticus with decency, and hated to make bricks without straw; and yet, forgetting it all, loved the man beneath whose lashes they had writhed in torture. In his heart the master vowed, with a new love which loosed the millstone of many offences against the little ones, that had for years been hanging about his neck—vowed that, be the shame what it might, he would never leave them, but spend his days in making up for the hardness of his heart and hand; vowed that he would himself be ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Madison, the Blairs, Lees, and other old families of Washington, many of whom, in later years, gladly welcomed her return to Washington. She was thus early introduced into Washington social life, and the people who imagined that Andrew Johnson's family were to prove a millstone about his neck forgot that Martha Patterson was his daughter. When some of the leaders of Washington society undertook to call at the White House and tender their patronage, Mrs. Patterson quietly remarked to them: "We are a plain ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... can to beat him; 'tis not easy to soften me if you do not talk on my side, and if you have nothing but nonsense to spout, 'tis time to buy a good millstone, freshly cut ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... stage of one lost in a foreign land, where the language is unknown and every sight and sound unfamiliar and bewildering. This weak fashionable woman, the costly product of an artificial luxurious life, seemed capable of being little better than a millstone around the necks of her children in this hour of their need. If there had been some innate strength and nobility in Mrs. Allen's character it might have developed now into something worthy of respect under this sharp attrition ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... from beneath them on the shore of the Firth of Clyde south of Wemyss Bay. The Carboniferous strata of the central low ground form a great basin traversed by faults, all the subdivisions of the system being represented save the Millstone Grit. Round the north and north-east margin there is a great development of volcanic rocks—lavas, tuffs and agglomerates—belonging to the Calciferous Sandstone series, and passing upwards into the Carboniferous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... prepared the bread destined for the alters, or the time when, after the customs of Cluny, three priests or deacons, fasting and garbed in alb and amice, washed their faces and hands and then picked out the wheat, grain by grain, grinding it under millstone, kneading the paste in a cold and pure water and themselves baking it under a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a book from the library and tried to read, but without much success. His thoughts continually recurred to his pecuniary embarrassments, and the debt which he owed to Duval seemed to hang like a millstone around his neck. How should he approach his father on the subject? In his present humor he feared ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... a millstone," he said. "Why don't you old turtlebacks come out of your shells and play square? You've got some shady game on here that you're working underhand. Spin your yarn and I'll tell you what ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... him outside the church steeple, to try if it was perpendicular. He almost always gives judgment for plaintiff, and if the poor defendant has an offset, he makes him sue it, so that it grinds a grist both ways for him, like the upper and lower millstone." ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... mansion," interposed Ming Yen from outside the window. "What a determined and self-confident fellow he must be to even come and bully us; Mrs. Huang is his paternal aunt! That mother of yours is only good for tossing about like a millstone, for kneeling before our lady Lien, and begging for something to pawn. I've no eye for such a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... turkey for dinner, a "cadeau" from Koorshid Aga, and, as a great wonder, the kisras (a sort of brown pancake in lieu of bread) were free from sand. I must have swallowed a good-sized millstone since I have been in Africa, in the shape of grit rubbed from the moorhaka, or grinding-stone. The moorhaka, when new, is a large flat stone, weighing about forty pounds; upon this the corn is ground ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the Republicans in Washington and throughout the North was of exultant and confident courage. The strength of the Nation had been tried and not found wanting. It had overthrown a mighty rebellion. The burden of slavery, which had hung like a millstone about the neck of the Republic, had been thrown off. Congress had been triumphant in its contest with the President. The loyal people of the country looked to Grant with an almost superstitious hope. They ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... than the reign of reason would do good. Imagine this trustful woman for instance—she would suffer anguish at the thoughts of such a sin, though another were the sinner. "If anyone offend one of these little ones it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he be cast into the sea." Yet truth is truth, and should be spoken—should it not, malignant monitor, who remindest me how often I fail to speak it? Surely among all his army of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Madam, if you must needs provoke me, I'll tell you a piece of my mind; you must know, I can see as far into a millstone as another man; and so, if you thought for to fob me off with another one of your smirking French puppies for a son-in-law, why you'll find yourself in a hobble, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... about somewhere and slowly waxing strong. Up and up I climbed across the sandstone steps, across the limestone, the conglomerate, the slate, up into Carboniferous times. The upper and nether millstones of the "millstone grit" did not crush me, neither did the floods and the convulsions of Carboniferous times that buried the vast vegetable growths that resulted in our coal measures engulf or destroy me. About that time probably, I emerged from the water and became an amphibian, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... am going away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and good and true, though that can never be while I am with you. I have been far ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... see whatsoever is to be seen, and not green things only. For that is proper to sore eyes. So must a good ear, and a good smell be ready for whatsoever is either to be heard, or smelt: and a good stomach as indifferent to all kinds of food, as a millstone is, to whatsoever she was made for to grind. As ready therefore must a sound understanding be for whatsoever shall happen. But he that saith, O that my children might live! and, O that all men might commend me for whatsoever I ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... a millstone, an egg, a duck, and a pin; and Chanticleer gave them all leave to get into the carriage and go ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... terribly indignant at slights to the poor; Who, standing with His imperial brow bared in oriental sun, His right hand resting in benediction upon curly-headed babe, the other thrilling with prophetic instinct of the leftward gesture of 'Depart,' uttered this sentiment, Better a millstone necklace and deep-sea grave than offense ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... advised; and finally, she told him that unless she went with him she would not allow him to go at all. The cadi had great satisfaction in complying with her desire, for he thought he would soon get rid of a burden that hung like a millstone round ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... good bread, and fills the boast** of a man's body; but now that I've made a good supper, I'll throw myself on the straw, for I feel as if my eyelids had a millstone apiece upon them. I never shtrip at night, but just throws my blanket over me, an' sleeps like a top. Glory be to God! Oh, then, there's nothing like the health ma'am: may God spare it ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... moments of consciousness, he had intended to go directly he was well and demand his love openly and chance the rest, this news made that course now quite out of the question. He could not condemn her to wretched poverty and tie a millstone round both their necks. The doctors had absolutely forbidden him to read or even know of any more letters—the official ones the secretary could deal with—but he became so restless with anxiety that Arabella Clinker was persuaded to bring ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... spot in the whole village. The shop itself had a cheery look, with its weather-stained shingles, its small square windows, and its hospitable door, half as big as the front side of the building. The step was an old millstone too worn for active service, and the piles of chips and shavings on each side of it had been there for so many years that sweet-williams, clove pinks, and purple phlox were growing in among them in the most irresponsible fashion; while a morning-glory vine ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... artificial, for the use of land. And when that necessity is absolute, when starvation is the alternative to the use of land, then does the ownership of men involved in the ownership of land become absolute. Private ownership of land is the nether millstone. Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically, as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has everywhere had its birth ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... relief in this respect, it has power, as their local legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of the thirty-six have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O no, not a modicum, to help the slaveholders of the District, however loudly they may clamor for it. The southern doctrine, that Congress is to the District ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... every fibre. He almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo. It seemed a burden just then—a millstone round his neck. He hated the scene he had left—and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Polly, for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much—much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul—if he could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better have a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!" Here he kissed her. "Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other little children, like the Angels ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... the shield against the cowardly bully which the laws have raised against the bloody one. "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my sober eye for a minute—'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a millstone round the neck of their common-sense." Credit me, Richie, the proposition kindled. We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us, and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young nobleman. And let me add, one that I, that we, must impose it upon an old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... limbs all excelling, Unite to amaze. The queen, I would name thee, Of maidenly muster; Thy stem is so seemly, So rich is its cluster Of members complete, Adroit at each feat, And thy temper so sweet, Without banning or bluster. My grief has press'd on Since the vision of Morag, As the heavy millstone On the cross-tree that bore it. In vain the world over, Seek her match may the rover; A shaft, thy poor lover, First ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... higher; who if they can but bring themselves to weep for their sins, they are then full of an ill-grounded confidence and security; never considering that all this may prove to be no more than the very garb and outward dress of a contrite heart, which another heart, as hard as the nether millstone, may as well put on. For tears and sighs, however in some persons they may be decent and commendable expressions of a godly sorrow, are neither necessary, nor infallible signs of a true and unfeigned repentance. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... such vile details, fathomed such immense hypocrisy, assisting in thought at a double vision so atrocious in irony, that she would have liked to die, mechanical and implacable, pounded her brain with the weight and ceaseless action of a millstone. She repeated ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the departed virtues; hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... once—but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument had not the least effect on him. He was going to marry Miss Castries, and the business was his ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... absorbed by it; he was rooted in it with a rigour of dumb attention. Captain MacWhirr persisted in his cries, but the wind got between them like a solid wedge. He hung round Jukes' neck as heavy as a millstone, and suddenly the sides of ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... them. But now the land becomes an easy prey to the spoiler. It is henceforth the pathway of the conquering armies of the Nile and the Euphrates. Between the powerful monarchies of these regions, as between an upper and nether millstone, the little kingdoms are destined, one after the other, to be ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... tried over and over again to elicit sensible replies to my questions as to where he came from; but he simply gibbered and babbled like a happy baby. I coaxed; I threatened; I persuaded; but it was all in vain. I soon found he was a regular millstone round my neck—particularly when we were on the "walk-about." He would suddenly take it into his head to sit down for hours at a stretch, and nothing would induce him to move until he did so ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... to take post at Vanvighton's bridge on the Raritan, just above its confluence with the Millstone river, to watch the left flank of the British army and seize every ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... meagre supper, for they never could become accustomed to the terrible skeleton in their household. When Mr. Jocelyn confined himself solely to opium he was not so revolting, but common, beastly intoxication was unendurable. They felt that it was brutalizing his very soul, and becoming a millstone around their necks which must drag them down to some unknown abyss of infamy. Mechanically they went through the motions of eating, the mother and daughters forcing down the little food they could afford, and the children ravenously devouring all that was given to them. As Mildred ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... and exhibit to the world. Then his delight changed to a vague terror—the fear of an animal that dreads a trap, and finds itself caught. He blew out the candle and fell asleep, to dream of enemies that fled and mocked at him, embarrassed with an infant that hung like a millstone round his neck. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... interest of his employer. A five-hundred-dollar clerkship is worth just that amount and nothing more to an employer. But a five-thousand-dollar man is generally worth five times that sum to a business. A young man makes of a position exactly what he chooses: a millstone around his neck, or a stepping-stone to larger success. The possibilities lie in every position; seeing and embracing them rest with its occupant. The lowest position can be so filled as to lead up to the ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain's whistle again, if you 'ar'n't, some how or other, in the wrong box. That ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... millstone of Winterfeld being off his neck, has become a more responsible, though he feels himself a much-delivered man. Had not liked Winterfeld, they say; or had even hated him, since those bad Zittau times. Can now, at any rate, make for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... look of concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying heavily, for all the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... in the plain. With it he struck the mighty seven-hided shield of Ajax, in the midst of the boss, and the brass rang around. Ajax next taking up a much larger stone, whirling, discharged it, and applied immense strength. And he broke through the shield, having struck with a rock like unto a millstone, and he wounded him in the knee; and he was stretched supine, having come into violent contact with his shield; but Apollo quickly raised him. And now in close combat hand to hand, they would have wounded each other with their swords, had not the heralds, the messengers of gods and ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... reaching for the tongs and laying a log of white birch across the coals; "and that is Gerald's fondness for pretty girls. . . . Not that it isn't all right, too, but I hope he isn't going to involve himself—hang a millstone around his neck before he can see his way clear to some promise of a ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... again, sweet bird," asked the watchmaker. "If you will give me first that gold watch and chain in your hand." The jeweller gave the watch and chain. The bird took it in one foot, the shoes in the other, and, after having repeated the song, flew away to where three millers were picking a millstone. The bird perched on a ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... let him that takes it return it before the going down of the sun, especially if the pledge be a garment, that the debtor may have it for a covering in his sleep, God himself naturally showing mercy to the poor. It is also not lawful to take a millstone, nor any utensil thereto belonging, for a pledge, that the debtor, may not be deprived of instruments to get their food withal, and lest they be undone ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the words of the Lord Jesus, for he said, Woe to that man by whom offences come; it were better for him that he had not been born, than that he should offend one of my elect; it were better for him that a millstone should be tied about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the sea, than that he should offend one ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... before her, with a courage born of desperation and a wit sharpened with intense fear, boldly stepped to the window ledge, and in the glare of bursting flames and the sound of dying groans "cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... all dead men;—Luff, I say!' shouted I. I might as well have called to a millstone. Tom was in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... as he spoke, and looked utterly crushed. It was an awful memory. Le Neve hardly knew what to say, the man's remorse was so poignant. After all those years the boy's thoughtless act seemed to weigh like a millstone round the grown man's neck. Eustace held his peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel went on again, rocking himself to and fro on his rough seat as he spoke. "For fifteen years," he said, piteously, "I've borne this burden in my heart, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... was the debonair hero. I do most solemnly entreat him to consider the example of some of the elders in his profession who have adopted a laugh as their principal bit of business. It may turn into a millstone. Was he not laughing the same laugh on this very stage in a very different part three days ago? He was. If he got a month, laugh-barred, he would profit by the sentence. For he has jolly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... cannon. He is as much the warrior to-day as when he entered the lists against Strauss nearly thirty years ago. His opinion of his great antagonist may be summed up in his own language. He says of him that, "He has the heart of a leviathan, which is as hard as a stone and as firm as the nether millstone; he assails the Lord's Anointed with composure and cold-bloodedness; and not a tear of pity flows from ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... has witnessed and acutely felt all this, and has no feelings of piety, or deference to religion, must be endued with a heart hardened beyond the flintiness, as the Scriptures beautifully express it, "of the nether millstone." ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the one thing, my boy," sighed Jack. "Without it, Venus herself, ever young and ever fair, would be a millstone around any man's neck, in these later days. Great God! How you missed it! If I had only stumbled on this discovery sooner. You could have antedated ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... candidly that "such airy talk as there is upon the matter is utterly unworthy of acceptance as being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Bible says it would be better for a man, sometimes, if a millstone were about his neck, and he were in the bottom of the sea. I'd look out for that, if I were you. Hurry up with your meat; I ought to be at ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... destruction is, however, to be entire. She is totally to disappear, like the sinking of a millstone in the sea. She is to be utterly burned with fire; but the lamentation of the kings over her burning, indicates that her destruction is to be completed by other instrumentality than theirs. Probably the multitude are to be incensed against her, and will ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Weet, wet. Weir, war. Wha, who. Wham, whom. Whang, large piece, slice. Whare, where. Whase, whose. Whestling, whistling. Whig-mig-morum, talking politics. Whinging, whining. Whunstane, hard rock, millstone. Whyles, sometimes. Winna, will not. Winnock-bunker, window-seat. Woddie, woody. Wonner, wonder. Woo, wool. Wood, mad Wordy, worthy. Wrack, wreck. Wraith, spectre. Wrang, wrong. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... reconstruction. The "Scalawag," the "Carpet-bagger," and the Negro. Who were this trio? The scalawag was the native white man who made up the middle class of the South; the planter above, the Negro below. And between this upper and nether millstone he was destined to be ground to powder, under the old regime. A "nigger-driver," without schools, social position, or money, he was "the poor white trash" of the South. He was loyal during the war, because in the triumph of the Confederacy, with slavery as ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... thoughtless word, or harsh manner, or forgetfulness of little and delicate attentions will have no effect, and will be duly passed by as unmeaning. No such thing! Every word or look which is incompatible with genuine love and respect weighs like a millstone. Gentle attentions will be remembered, not only through the day, but through all the days. Recently, while on a visit in Irvington-on-the-Hudson, the widow of a celebrated publisher led me to the portrait of her lamented husband, and ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst
... things about these tombs is the rolling stone by which they were closed. It is a round rock, resembling a millstone. The height is a little over three feet and a half, and the thickness sixteen inches. It stands in a channel cut for the purpose, but was rolled forward before the entrance when it was desirable to have the tombs closed. When Jesus was buried, a "great stone" was rolled ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... As if there were not several millions in the United Kingdom! Ah, Frank, Frank, the one who loses his throw, be it you or me, he has my pity! It were better for him—how does the Bible say?—that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depth of the sea. Let us take a drink," he concluded suddenly, but without ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... there upon the millstone with her gun across her knees, she told me all the story, very quietly:—How at the last she had been found in the house in Brussels by Marc'antonio and Stephanu and fetched home to the island; how she had found there her ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... year of rent, poor soul!—Peter Hacker have told me that the cottage ban't to be mine at all, and that 'tis all rubbish, and not a contract. I tell him that the ghost of my poor Thomas will turn his hair grey for such wickedness; but you know Peter Hacker. Hard as the nether millstone, and cruel as winter—with women. Very different, though, if a brave man beards him. Now he's dunning me for two years' rent, and even when I told him all that hangs on my keeping the cottage, he won't change or hold to the solemn promise his father made my husband. In ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... could make me his without losing the benefit of an alliance with Miss Dudleigh. And I thought I saw also, and entered into his plans, though they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of dissimulation and crime which had been marked out for me, till we came to this inn. Then, owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the dreadful box, I began to feel qualms ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... conjunction, the flint becoming the birthplace of a spring! And yet this is happening every day. Men who are as "hard as flint," whose hearts are "like the nether millstone," become springs of gentleness and fountains of exquisite compassion. Beautiful graces, like lovely ferns, grow in the home of severities, and transform the grim, stern soul into a garden of fragrant friendships. This is what Zacchaeus was like when his flint became a fountain. It is what ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him, that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, the stubborn work of thought, incessant and invincible, began afresh in the depths of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... at once an objection to his dropping the society of the set to which Bruce and Brogten had introduced him. He owed them money, which at present he could not pay; his undischarged "debts of honour" hung like a millstone round his neck. To pay these seemed a necessary preliminary even to the possibility of commencing ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Beresford,' he said, in great excitement, 'you have taken a millstone from my neck. I have been sitting wondering whether I shouldn't cut my throat at once, or make ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... his disciples, It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... consolation in such a heartbreaking record, terrible from the light it throws upon the constitution of human nature and the conditions of that supreme sympathy which is the noblest kind of fame. Had Sir Walter been able to throw his burdens from him, had he loosed the millstone from his neck and retired in full credit and comfort to his Abbotsford to pass the conclusion of peaceful and glorious days on the banks of the Tweed—had we known him only as the greatest romancist of the world, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... with her," repeated Steel, this time in dry statement of fact, "at least on one occasion, in the presence of a lady who had a prior claim upon your conversation. That lady was Mrs. Vinson, and it is she who ought to have a millstone hanged about her neck, and be cast into the sea. Don't look as though you deserved the same fate, Langholm! It would have been better, perhaps, if you had paid more attention to Vinson's wife and less to mine; but she is the last woman in the world to blame you—naturally! And now, if you are ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... man!" She stretched her arms to the wild, hurrying clouds that looked in upon her through the yawning rifts in the roof, and called upon her Maker for vengeance. "How long wilt Thou delay, O Lord, righteous in judgment? Fulfil Thy promise! Bind Thou Thy millstone about the neck of this wretch, hated and accursed of Thee, and let it drag him down to the uttermost depths of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... mercy Jim was not trapped by Dolly, for I suppose it was she. Jim is not the first she has tried to get. You are quite right. She might have broken your heart, and I am sure she would have broken Jim's, for she is as hard as a millstone.—Your ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... country, two hundred miles from Charleston, where we would live for months without seeing a white face outside of the home circle. It was often lonely, but we had many out-door enjoyments, and were very happy. I, however, always had one terrible drawback. Slavery was a millstone about my neck, and marred my comfort from the time I can remember myself. My chief pleasure was riding on horseback daily. 'Hiram' was a gentle, spirited, beautiful creature. He was neither slave nor slave owner, and I loved and ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "I am a millstone around your neck!" she sobbed. "It is breaking my heart—I shall die, if I see you ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... providence) had mollified the hearts of those sterne Barbarians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, where Smith having vsed the Salvages with what kindnesse he could, he shewed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demi-Culverings and a millstone to carry Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavie: but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with Isickles, the yce and branches came so tumbling downe, that the poore Salvages ran away halfe dead with ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... exacting usury, or by accepting necessities of life in security; and by prescribing that when this had been done they should be restored at once. For it is written (Deut. 23:19): "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury": and (Deut. 24:6): "Thou shalt not take the nether nor the upper millstone to pledge; for he hath pledged his life to thee": and (Ex. 22:26): "If thou take of thy neighbor a garment in pledge, thou shalt give it him again before sunset." Thirdly, by forbidding them to be importunate in exacting payment. Hence it is written (Ex. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... gentle a jailer for the Council. They have given her Sir Amias Paulett, a mere Puritan and Leicestrian, who is as hard as the nether millstone, and well-nigh as dull," said Babington, with a little significant chuckle, which perhaps alarmed one of his companions, a small slight man with a slight halt, clad in black like a lawyer. "Mr. Babington," he said, "pardon ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cuthbert was a bit shrewd and already suspected something of the truth, for he could see through a millstone that had a hole in the center, and it had flashed upon him suddenly that there was more than an accidental resemblance between the young Canadian lad and this stern master ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne |
