"Pick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Allingham himself, told me, in the early days of our acquaintance, how in remote Ballyshannon, where he was a clerk in the Customs, in evening walks he would hear the Irish girls at their cottage doors singing old ballads, which he would pick up. If they were broken or incomplete, he would add to them or finish them; if they were improper he would refine them. He could not get them sung till he got the Dublin Catnach of that day to print them, on long strips of blue paper, like old songs, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... such a term could be applied to Mr. Lincoln) one who did not know him might have called him indolent. He would pick up a book and run rapidly over the pages, pausing here and there. At the end of an hour—never, as I remember, more than two or three hours—he would close the book, stretch himself out on the office lounge, and with hands under his head and eyes shut he would digest the mental ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of objects of considerable value, the discussions which arose were keen and stormy: it was necessary to be agreed not only as to the amount, but as to the nature of the payment to be made, and to draw up a sort of invoice, or in fact an inventory, in which beds, sticks, honey, oil, pick-axes, and garments, all figure as equivalents for a bull or a she-ass. Smaller retail bargains did not demand so many or such complicated calculations. Two townsfolk stop for a moment in front of a fellah who offers onions and corn in a basket for sale. The first appears to possess no other ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Galbraith was absent. They hurried into the room whence the noise had come. A board was wrenched from the wall there, disclosing a hollow that had been used for a hiding-place, and on the floor lay young Galbraith with a sack of Spanish coins in his hand. His father stooped to pick him up, but staggered back in horror, for the young man's life had gone. A post-mortem examination revealed no cause of death, and a rustic jury again laid it to a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... very good of you to offer, Jervis, but I think I will go alone. I want to run over these notes and get the facts of the case arranged in my mind. When I have done that, I shall be ready to pick up new matter. Knowledge is of no use unless it is actually in your mind, so that it can be produced at a moment's notice. So you had better get a book and your pipe and spend a quiet hour by the fire while I assimilate the miscellaneous mental feast that we have just enjoyed. And you might ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... went Miss Polly. From that time forth no man saw her nor woman, either, except perhaps her maid, and maids are dark and discreet persons on occasion. If this particular one kept her own counsel when she saw a trim but tremulous figure drop lightly over the starboard rail of the Polly far forward, pick up a small traveling-bag from the pier, step behind the opportune screen of a load of coffee on a flat car, and reappear to view only as a momentary swish of skirt far away at the shore end; if this same maid told ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... moreover gifted with remarkable vigor and agility, got into a series of scrapes which more or less threatened his safety. He plotted with the grandsons of Monsieur Hochon to worry the grocers of the city; he gathered fruit before the owners could pick it, and made nothing of scaling walls. He had no equal at bodily exercises, he played base to perfection, and could have outrun a hare. With a keen eye worthy of Leather-stocking, he loved hunting passionately. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... (by an old record taken from the Tower of London) of turning all live stock on the forest, at proper seasons, "bidentibus exceptis." The reason, I presume, why sheep are excluded, is because, being such close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... of old love to enrich the daily feast; she gilds and glorifies the blest to-day with the light of that love transfigured in the past. And so, in other shapes and experiences, it is with all of us indeed; since into this fairy-land all can fly for refuge, can pick again their roses and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... he vainly awaited an answer. Carmen now rose, and when Ulrich also stood up to permit her to pass, she dropped her prayer-book, as if by accident. He stooped with her to pick it up, and when their heads nearly touched, she whispered hurriedly: "Nine o'clock this evening in the shell grotto; the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... women exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are rapid beyond measure. Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she pronounced distinctly and without a shadow of dubiosity: "My opinion is—married or not married, and wheresomever he pick her up—she's nothin' more nor less than a Bella Donna!" as which poisonous plant she forthwith registered the lady in the botanical note-book of her brain. It would have astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... before child-bearing. A Long Glat woman on each day that she is tatued must kill a black fowl as food for the artist. They believe that after death the completely tatued women will be allowed to bathe in the mythical river Telang Julan, and that consequently they will be able to pick up the pearls that are found in its bed; incompletely tatued women can only stand on the river bank, whilst the untatued will not be allowed to approach its shores at all. This belief appears to be universal amongst ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the better," cried Porthos. "You have no idea, my friend, how my bones ache since I came here. Sometimes on a Sunday, I take a ride in the fields and on the property of my neighbours, in order to pick up a nice little quarrel, which I am really in want of, but nothing happens. Either they respect or they fear me, which is more likely, but they let me trample down the clover with my dogs, insult and obstruct every one, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "To pick strawberries. Got a pail half full down there somewhere. The thunder scared me. Then I saw youse two up here and I thought you was the Carter ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... robin come into the house in winter, and pick up the crumbs, as the dear little redbreasts ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... attack as above at 11 a. m. He was started by Col. Lazelle with a party of 15 men to overtake party of 150 and put them on trail. Major Forbes with 100 men and ambulances has been sent out this evening to place of surprise to pick up stragglers and any wounded, and support Major Nicholson if Mosby's force is reported more than ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... Fearful of losing the right trace, I was looking carefully about me to see in what direction they had recommenced their journey, when I noticed something white amongst the long grass. I got off my horse to pick it up. It was a piece of paper with my own name written upon it; and I recognized it as the back of a letter in which my tobacco had been wrapped, and which I had thrown away at my halting-place of the preceding night. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... very ground. And yet, as far as I can remember, I had not then even spoken to an archdeacon. I have felt the compliment to be very great. The archdeacon came whole from my brain after this fashion;—but in writing about clergymen generally, I had to pick up as I went whatever I might know or pretend to know about them. But my first idea had no reference to clergymen in general. I had been struck by two opposite evils,—or what seemed to me to be evils,—and with an absence of all art-judgment ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... cartridges. Then the Rough Riders had evidently driven them out and occupied the hollow themselves, firing two or three hundred more shots, and covering the yellow cartridge-shells of the Mauser rifles with a silvery layer of empty tubes from the Krag-Jorgensens. It looked as if one might pick up a bushel or two of these shells in an area ten or ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... roofs, at the edge of a large mining village in Staffordshire. The houses are dingy and colourless, and without relief of any kind. So are those in the next row, so in the street beyond, and throughout the whole village. There is a dreary monotony about the place; and if some giant could come and pick up all the rows of houses, and change their places one with another, it is a question whether the men, now away at work, would notice any difference whatever until they entered the houses standing in the place of those which they had left in the morning. There is a church, and a vicarage half ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... seals—Halosydne's chickens as they call them—come up also from the grey sea, and go to sleep in shoals all round him; and a very strong and fish-like smell do they bring with them. {44} Early to-morrow morning I will take you to this place and will lay you in ambush. Pick out, therefore, the three best men you have in your fleet, and I will tell you all the tricks that the old man ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... position here, which seems so important to you and the other people round here, and used to seem so important to me—is—just nothing at all compared to what has been cast at her feet, as it were, over and over again, for her to pick up if she chose. And this house," said Peter, glancing round and shaking his head—"this house, which seems so beautiful to you now it's all done up, if you'd only seen the houses she's accustomed to staying at. Tintern ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... both occasions he was probably obeying an elastic conscience. While he was endeavouring to fix the odium of the Darnley murder on Mary, he must have been quite aware that both Lethington and Morton, his allies, were steeped in the guilt of it. But he could neither stand aside from the turmoil, nor pick and choose his associates. The political support or countenance of Elizabeth seemed absolutely necessary to the cause of the Reformation in Scotland. A man of a more generous spirit would more ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... introduction. I am not much pleased with having to keep a journal, and maybe I shall have Zillah keep it for me. I don't care to fix things in my mind. I don't like things fixed, anyway. I'd rather they would be round loose, as they surely would, if I had not Zillah to pick them up. She is a treasure, and it is almost worth being married to have a waiting maid—and that reminds me that I may as well begin back at the time when I was not married, and did not want to be, if only we had not been so poor, and obliged to make so many ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... instruction. European records afford us plenty of examples. The Chinese, always great sticklers for politeness, used to insist in early times that a warrior should not take advantage of his enemy when the latter had emptied his quiver, but wait for him to pick up his arrows before going on with the fight. And in one tale of old Japan, when one Daimio was besieging another, the besieged party, having run short of ammunition, requested a truce in order to fetch some more—which ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste. Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and it'll go with ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she's fooling thee, Beware! Beware!" and Planchette, the little plank, will make more of her followers "plank down" than pick up gold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... gone to bed Madame Elisabeth mended his. "With much trouble," says Clrry, "I procured some fresh linen for them. But the workwomen having marked it with crowned letters, the Princesses were ordered to pick them out." The room in the great tower to which the King had been removed contained only one bed, and no other article of furniture. A chair was brought on which Clery spent the first night; painters were still at work on the room, and the smell of the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Lady Louvaine, smiling, "thou wert not wont to call thyself a Puritan, in the old days when thou and Bess Wolvercot used to pick a crow betwixt you over Dr ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... commanded the young inventor. "If he keeps bellowing like that the police will pick him up. I guess he will let us ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... with us, Mrs. Berry," asked Dolly, "to help pick them out? We don't know about these things as well as some one who lives in ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... leaf, which was the sole approximation to clothing seen among them. Above the elbow the men usually wore a bandage of net work, in which was stuck a short piece of strong grass, called tomo, and used as a tooth pick; but the most remarkable circumstance in their persons was, that the whole of them appeared to have undergone the Jewish and Mahometan rite of circumcision. The same thing was before noticed in a native of Isle Woodah, and in two at Wellesley's Islands; it would seem, therefore, to be ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... liberty to accept the offer. I took service with Captain Willoughby for life; had he lived, I would have followed wherever he led. But that enlistment has expired; and I am now like a recruit before he takes the bounty. In such cases, a man has always a right to pick his corps. Politics I do not much understand; but when the question comes up of pulling a trigger for or against his country, an unengaged man has a right to choose. Between the two, meaning ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... name of Jack Sheppard. What amazing difficulties has he overcome! what astonishing things has he performed! and all for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass, hardly worth the hanging! How dexterously did he pick the chain of his padlock with a crooked nail! how manfully he burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, wrench out an iron bar, break his way through a stone wall, make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison, then, fixing ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... one or the other be equitably discontinued? As long as there are any such persons left, to stop, without their consent and without adequately compensating them, arrangements, rights in which have been vested in them by bequest, would be as palpable a violation of justice as to pick their pockets of sums equivalent to their several interests, real or supposed, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... all right," Old Tilly said briskly. "Let's go down to that little bunch of white houses there under the hill, and pick out the one we want to ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... should thus take the liberty of seeming to know what she really wanted, tore the letter in pieces, and threw it on the floor, ordering her maid once more out of the room. As Lucetta was retiring, she stooped to pick up the fragments of the torn letter; but Julia, who meant not so to part with them, said, in pretended anger, "Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie; you would be fingering them ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... stretching out her hand to Selwyn—"good-bye, my unfortunate fellow fogy! I go, slumpy, besmudged, but happy; I return, superficially immaculate—but my stockings will still be blue! . . . Nina, dear, if you don't stop dragging me I'll pick you up in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... circumstantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of justice teaches. When accounts of a transaction come from the mouths of different witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. These inconsistencies are studiously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impression upon the minds of the judges. On the contrary, a close and minute agreement induces the suspicion ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... gluttons," laughed the captain. "We ain't likely to get any of those things unless we stop and have a regular hunt, an' I don't like to take the time for it. Maybe we'll pick up somethin' or other on our way. But now hurry up, boys, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Rob Morris that wons in yon glen, [dwells] He's the king o' gude fellows and wale of auld men; [pick] He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine, [gold, oxen] And ae bonnie lassie, his dautie and ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... a smack arrives it is moored directly alongside one of the cars. The lobsters are then dipped out of the well by means of long-handled scoop nets and thrown on the deck of the vessel. The doors of the car are then opened, and men on the vessel pick over the lobsters lying on the deck and toss them two by two into the different compartments, those dead and badly mutilated being thrown to one side for the time being. All vigorous lobsters above a certain ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... called out, but as the mob knew that they did not dare fire without the command of the civil power, they were by no means disturbed by their presence. They still continued their work of destruction, while thieves and pick-pockets looked about for plunder. Nothing was done on the Monday for preventing mischief, except the issuing of a proclamation by a privy-council, offering a reward of L500 for those persons who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in 534, when she received an ambassador in Ravenna from Justinian who demanded of her the surrender of Lilybaeum, a barren rock in Sicily which Theodoric had assigned to Thrasamund on his marriage with his sister Amalafrida, in public she protested vigorously against the attempt of the emperor to pick a quarrel with "an orphaned king" too young to defend himself; but in private she assured the imperial ambassador of her readiness "to transfer to the emperor the whole ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... no system of ethics in Abraham bar Hiyya, and we shall in the sequel select some of his remarks bearing on ethics and pick out the ethical kernel from its homiletical ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... words was unexpected; for several of the crowd, annoyed at the little serious attention they had hitherto received, and worked up to considerable excitement, by the shouting and drumming began to pick up stones and fling them at the house. At first they were merely thrown against the house, then, the spirit of mischief increasing, they were sent with better aim, and one crashed through the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... from the badness of the road that he must stick fast ere long, and so be at their mercy. And this was Jeremy's chiefest fear, for the ground being soft and thoroughly rotten, after so much frost and snow, the poor horse had terrible work of it, with no time to pick the way; and even more good luck than skill was needed to keep him from foundering. How Jeremy prayed for an Exmoor fog (such as he had often sworn at), that he might turn aside and lurk, while his pursuers went past him! But ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Clithering is a bit of a bounder," he said. "Makes stockings, you know, Excellency. And Lady Clithering is a fat vulgarian. It's all she can do to pick up her aitches. I shouldn't think of stopping in their ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... your pint of GUINNESS'S brown stout, he will look at you for minutes with a compassionate smile. Then, suddenly plunging into his favorite horror knee-deep, he will ask you if you know what becomes of all the ends of smoked-out cigars. Of course you submit that little boys pick them up and smoke them to everlasting annihilation. "Pshaw! sir," exclaims the microscopic person; "there is a man in the City of Dublin, sir—I believe he is a baronet now, but will not force that as a fact—and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... moment—especially as she was obliged to bring water for this and all her domestic purposes in pails, the distance of twenty-five or thirty rods, a part of the year, and of ten rods or so, the other part; besides which, she had to pick up much of her wood, for the six summer months, in the woods nearly a quarter of a mile distant, carry it home in her arms, and to cut it for the fire-place. Added to all this, was the labor of brewing once or twice a week; for in those days, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... I rushed for'ard an' drew the pistol out o' his belt and let fly in the bull's ribs jist as it ran the poor man down. Martin came up that moment an' put a ball through its heart, an' then we went to pick up the natter-list. He came to in a little, an' the first thing he said was, 'Where's my revolver?' When I gave it to him he looked at it, an' said with a solemcholy shake o' the head, 'There's a whole barrel-full ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... represented the purity of their cause, and the Lancastrians gloried in their red flower since it told that they were ready to give their heart's blood to obtain the victory. In Shakespeare's Henry VI. there is a scene in the Temple Garden, in which the two parties pick these roses, to show ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... lingered desperately. The yacht was less than a mile away when it broke free and plunged frantically toward the planet it had left a little while before. The other boats were already streaking downward, trails of rocket-fumes expanding behind them. The crew of the landing grid would pick them up for ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... out for a couple of hours with you, and give you your first lesson. I can borrow a horse from one of the staff. If you once get to sit your horse, in a workman-like fashion, and to carry yourself well, you will soon pick up the rest; and if you go out, morning and evening, for three hours each time, you won't be quite abroad, when you start to keep up with a column of men ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... we divide it. You must allow me to have the upper part, where the leaves are." The monkey agreed; but when the stalk was brought to shore, the monkey took the leaves himself, and gave the turtle only the roots. As the humble turtle was unable to fight the monkey, all he could do was to pick up his share and take it to the woods and plant it. It was not strange that the monkey's part died, while that of the turtle brought forth clusters of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... be desired neither to pick nor to rub the pustules. If he be too young to attend to these directions, his hands must be secured in bags (just large enough to hold them), which bags should he fastened round the wrists. The nails ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... the slag to that from the coarse copper fusion, and powder. Mix with 5 grams of tartar, 0.5 gram of powdered charcoal, and 2 grams of soda. Fuse in the same crucible, and, when tranquil, pour; quench, and pick out the prills ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... a hospital litter with its convenient straps for weight-carrying, and would consider this a very convenient means for carrying a pack. This litter is designed to enable two men, hospital attendants or band men, to pick up a wounded soldier weighing some 160 or 180 pounds and carry him from fifty yards to a mile if necessary, to a dressing-station or hospital shack. The medical field-case No. 1 weighs about sixty ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... of not saying such things. But I see I have forgotten many of my Carlisle habits, and I shall have to pick them up again ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of a week. So, in a day or two, hearing of no other vacancies, I returned home the same way I had come. It was the first day of April when I made the return trip. I remember this because at one of the hotels where we changed horses I saw a copper cent lying upon the floor, and, stooping to pick it up, found it nailed fast. The bartender and two or three other spectators had a quiet chuckle at my expense. Before the week was out a letter came from the Tongore trustees saying I could have the school; wages, ten dollars the first ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the old woman." So he mixed them up again, and I said, "I know it's hard to find, but I'll bet you $1,000 I can pick her up the first time." He laid up the money on the table, and I continued, "This gentleman will hold the stakes." "All right," said Bill, and he put the money in the grocery-man's hand, and I turned the card. Bill said, "All right; fairly won. Give him the money;" and I pocketed the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... nature, in the very act of recoiling with horror from a criminal charge the most degrading, and in the very instant of discovering, with a perfect rapture of alarm, the too plausible appearance of probability amongst the circumstances, would be likely to pause, and with attorney- like dexterity, to pick out the particular circumstance that might admit of being proved to be false, when the conscience proclaimed, though in despondence for the result, that all the circumstances were, as to the use made of them, one tissue of falsehoods. Agnes, who had made a powerful effort in speaking ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... words they kissed Mr Pecksniff on either cheek; and bore him into the house. Presently, the youngest Miss Pecksniff ran out again to pick up his hat, his brown paper parcel, his umbrella, his gloves, and other small articles; and that done, and the door closed, both young ladies applied themselves to tending Mr Pecksniff's wounds in the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... standing rigidly, apparently staring fixedly at nothing. The emergency mental health facility in a small city nearby called me up and asked if I would take her. I said I would, and drove into town to pick her up. I found Elizabeth in someone's back yard staring at a bush. It took me three hours to persuade her to get in my car, but that effort turned out to be the easiest part ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... and so forth, and so forth. Yet, so numerous are Russian serf owners that, though careful scrutiny reveals to one's sight a quantity of outre peculiarities, they are, as a class, exceedingly difficult to portray, and one needs to strain one's faculties to the utmost before it becomes possible to pick out their variously subtle, their almost invisible, features. In short, one needs, before doing this, to carry out a prolonged probing with the aid of an insight sharpened in the acute ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... any unexpected injury. Then she placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and while the beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but looked up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... to touch no body but whom it concerns; and it has its end, if it reclaims where it was design'd, and prevents others, by shewing the Danger: And this is the Design of Comedy. But the Question is, Whether our Poets have managed it as they ought? Whether they have not pick'd out a particular Person, and expos'd the Character in general, under the Notion of one Man? I answer to this, That whatever the Design of the Poet has been, it has not had the effect with the People: For who disbelieves ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... in a hole. We started to get off the train and they shot at us from the cut. They can pick us off like rabbits." ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... the hill, was a little field full of cherry-trees. Cherries were now quite ripe. My aunts had given me leave every day to pick up a few cherries if there were any fallen from the trees, but I was not allowed to gather any. Accordingly I went to look if there were any cherries fallen. I found a few, and was eating them, when ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagancies, and a perpetual train of vanities, which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words. This sort of discretion, however, has no place in private conversation between intimate friends. On such occasions the wisest ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... fence were hammers, a pick, a shovel, and a crowbar. The old barley-sack at the foot of one of the posts gave out the jingle of nails as Pete's boot struck against it. And Conniston, dismounting and tying his horse, began his first lesson ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... cookery was execrable. Garlic and oil were its principal ingredients. The olla podrida, and its constant attendant, the tomato sauce, were intolerable, but the wine was very well for a midshipman. Whenever we had a repast in any of these houses, the bravos endeavoured to pick a quarrel with us; and these fellows being always armed with stilettos, we found it necessary to be equally well prepared; and whenever we seated ourselves at a table, we never failed to display the butts of our pistols, which kept them in decent order, for they are as cowardly as they ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cannot have forgotten the commotion made by the newspapers in connection with this case, nor how they jumped at the opportunity once more to accuse the police of carelessness and blundering. Was it conceivable that a pick-pocket could play the part of an inspector like that, in broad daylight and in a public place, and rob a respectable man ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Aletes, born in lowly shed, Of parents base, a rose sprung from a brier, That now his branches over Egypt spread, No plant in Pharaoh's garden prospered higher; With pleasing tales his lord's vain ears he fed, A flatterer, a pick-thank, and a liar: Cursed be estate got with so many a crime, Yet this is oft the stair by which ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... is known, Lowell never earned a dollar by the law. He soon began to pick up a five or a ten dollar bill here and there by writing for current periodicals. His book brought him some reputation, but not much. A few hundred copies were sold, and most of the reviews and criticisms were favorable. He received a slating from the Morning ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... when the vessel has reached a port, if you go out to get water it is an amusement by the way to pick up a shellfish or some bulb, but your thoughts ought to be directed to the ship, and you ought to be constantly watching if the captain should call, and then you must throw away all those things, that you may not be bound and pitched into the ship like sheep. So in ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... said: There is a woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman, and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena, as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered away with the stroller's happy liberty, but I had never cared. Now, all at once, the whole world seemed dead—dead heaven and earth—and only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... placed upon the candle-box; a keg of blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, but he had never helped in it. His conjecture was right—blasting-time had come. In the morning the pair carried ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The Aruntas among them are said to have no idea of paternity, but believe that local spirits of tree, rock or stream enter women as they pass by their haunts. In doing so they drop a wooden soul-token called a Churinga. This the elders of the tribe pick up or pretend to find, and carefully store up in a cleft of the hills or in a cave which no woman may approach. The souls of members of the tribe who have died survive in these slips of wood, which are treasured up for long generations and repaired if they decay. They ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... rudeness to pick your teeth at the table, and it should always be avoided. To hold your hand or napkin over your mouth does not avoid the rudeness of the act, but if it becomes a matter of necessity to remove some obstacle from between the teeth, then your open mouth should be concealed ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... cross each other in so many ways, that the whole forms one of the most flexible organs that can be conceived. It can be contracted, raised, depressed, curved, turned, or twisted round any object at the will of its possessor; and can lay hold of, and pick up the most minute and the thinnest substance, aided in such instances by the prolongation of its upper edge into what is called a finger, which protects the nostrils, and acts as a feeler. This trunk serves as a reservoir ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... but he was keen on the work for the work's own sake, and he revelled in the creative sense of the true artist. The mine was his. He had first suggested it, he had surveyed it, and plotted it, and measured and planned and worked it out on paper; and now, when it came to the actual pick-and-shovel work, he supervised and directed and watched each hour of work, and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... matter forward, for they are foolish men. It may also well be that it may be said that my sons are slow to take up a quarrel, but ye shall bear that for the sake of gaining time, for there are two sides to everything that is done, and ye can always pick a quarrel; but still ye shall let so much of your purpose out, as to say that if any wrong be put upon you that ye do mean something. But if ye had taken counsel from me at first, then these things should never have been spoken about at all, and then ye would have gotten no disgrace from them; ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... enough to suit the Blackfeet. An old fellow commenced to shout at him, and motion for him to go faster. But he didn't wish to go faster; the ground was thickly grown to prickly-pear cactus, and he had to pick his ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... he hope to bring back anything so useful as the fork, which honest Tom Coryate made prize of two centuries and a half ago, and put into the greasy fingers of Northern barbarians? Is not the "Descrittione" of Leandro Alberti still a competent itinerary? And can one hope to pick up a fresh Latin quotation, when Addison and Eustace have been before him with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... deep—to become as little children. A little child proves that all I say is true, and that it knows that all I say is true. Though it cannot put its feelings into words, it acts on them by a mere instinct, which is the gift of God. Why does a little child pick flowers? Why does a little child dance when it hears a strain of music? And deeper still, why does a little child know when it has done wrong? Why does it love to hear of things beautiful and noble, and shrink from things foul and mean, if what I say is not true? The child does ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... after the grand explosion in which the Madame herself had taken part, saw to it more particularly that the Montgomery crowd did not "pick on" Nancy. If Jennie was about, however, that was sufficient. Jennie Bruce would fight for her friend ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "Oh, ye'll pick up arter a while, Peter," observed Zeke toward night, as Long Ghost was turning a great rib over the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... still more frequently amended during passage, at the suggestion of the very parties against whom they are afterwards enforced. Our great clusters of corporations, huge trusts and fabulously wealthy multi-millionaires, employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these statutes after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret agents who seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile legislation innocuous by making it unconstitutional, often ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... good deal of employment in choosing patterns for my new clothes. He thought nothing too good; but I thought every thing I saw was; and he was so kind to pick out six of the richest for me to choose three suits out of, saying, We would furnish ourselves with more in town, when we went thither. One was white, flowered with silver most richly; and he was pleased to say, that, as I was a bride, I should make my ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... our girl all summer. But we know we ought to spare her and that it will be a splendid chance for her. So we say she shall go and we thank you more than we can say. She will need clothes and fixings to take with her and Shadrach and I wish to ask if you will be kind enough to help her pick out what she needs. Maybe Mrs. Wyeth will help too. It will be a great favor if you two will do this, Shadrach and I not being much good at such things. We will send the money and ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... shaken and thrown on the floor. His landlady followed him, and stooping painfully began to pick them up into her apron. His papers and notes which were kept always neatly sorted (they all related to his studies) had been shuffled up and heaped together into a ragged pile in the middle of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... you select something to sing?" If no brother is present, who can read, a sister or the missionary, or perhaps one of her school boys, may "line out" a hymn and may even "raise it" but the tune must be one "the old folks can sing." If the one who "raises the tune" breaks down with it, any one may pick it up and go on with it to the end of the two lines that have been ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the sublime chapter in the GREAT BOOK, the Seventy-first on LOVE, wherein nothing is written, but the Reader receives a Lanthorn, a Powder-cask and a Pick-axe, and therewith pursues his yellow-dusking path across the rubble of preceding excavators in the solitary quarry: a yet more instructive passage than the overscrawled Seventieth, or French Section, whence the chapter opens, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... says her Grace, "that, by my economy in the nine years I served her Majesty, I saved her near ninety thousand pounds[51] in clothes alone. Notwithstanding this," continues the Duchess, "my Lord-Treasurer (Harley) has thought fit to order the Examiner (Swift) to represent me in print as a pick-pocket all over England; and for that honest service, and some others, her Majesty has lately made ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... sneezing spirit with any farther fumigations, we should go in a body, and having fair day-light and our good consciences to befriend us, using no other conjuring implements than good substantial pick-axes and shovels, fairly trench the area of the chancel in the ruins of St. Ruth, from one end to the other, and so ascertain the existence of this supposed treasure, without putting ourselves to any farther expensethe ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... went my wife, to pick up the little creatures, one by one, press their downy bodies to her cheek, and call them tootsy-wootsies, and away went I to the barn, followed by Pomona, and ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... she said, resisting the little one's effort to stoop and pick a wild-pea blossom, and the mother and child started slowly back the way they had come. The spy turned his horse, and moved still more slowly in the opposite direction. But before he had gone many ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... be praised for a lee!" exclaimed Mrs Constable. "Haena I tell't ye afore noo, sae that it's no upmak to pick the lock o' the occasion, Anerew, that Rob Bruce has a spite at that faimily for takin' sic a heap o' notice o' Annie Annerson. And I wadna wonner gin he had set's hert upo' merryin' her upo' 's ain Rob, and sae keepin' her bit siller i' the faimily. Gin that be ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... reversed. The last player in each line runs forward, picks up a bean bag and returns with it to his seat. Upon being seated he touches the player in front of him on the shoulder, this being the signal for that player to run forward, pick up a bag and return. No player is permitted to run before the signal is given. The row finishing ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... Sea-birds, of course, soon found out our rocks; but as they live off fish only, they contributed little more than rich beds of guano to the permanent colonising of the islands. As well as I can remember, the land-snails were the earliest truly terrestrial casuals that managed to pick up a stray livelihood in these first colonial days of the archipelago. They came oftenest in the egg, sometimes clinging to water-logged leaves cast up by storms, sometimes hidden in the bark of floating driftwood, and sometimes ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... poor fellow up for lost, but his pluck and wits were equal to the emergency. He sprang to his feet, and without looking behind him or stopping to pick up his musket, he struck out for the fort. On he sped, running in a zigzag course, while the now halted Indians blazed away at him, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... model figure. I'll pick you out a white dress—and a black and white hat. I know 'em all, and I know one that'll ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... evening in town, to a party or anything like that. I hear that Jane and Ruby and Josie have got 'evening dresses,' as they call them, and I don't mean you shall be behind them. I got Mrs. Allan to help me pick it in town last week, and we'll get Emily Gillis to make it for you. Emily has got taste, and her fits ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bandage, already loose, slipped off her face and fell to the floor. Still she did not seem other than a stranger to me, though I had a half-formed notion that I had seen that face somewhere before. She did not stop to pick the bandage up. She had gained the door and was down the front step on the sidewalk before we ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Percival, quickly. It was wonderful to see how naturally he fell into a position of command amongst them. "That isn't the way to get home again. Never fear but a ship will pass the island and pick us up. We can't be far out of the ordinary course of the steamers. We shall be here a day or two only, or a week, perhaps. What do ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the porter in his wrath. "You took and clutched the keys from me, and throwed 'em on the ground! Pick 'em up." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... for ink? Elizabeth Eliza said she had heard that nutgalls and vinegar made very good ink. So they decided to make some. The little boys said they could find some nutgalls up in the woods. So they all agreed to set out and pick some. Mrs. Peterkins put on her cape-bonnet, and the little boys got into their india-rubber boots, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... plums, and plums bigger than anything you ever saw, bananas, cocoanuts, dates, figs, breadfruits, and grape vines bearing heavy clusters of black, red, and white grapes, grew in abundance, and although Daimur felt very much tempted to pick some of the lovely things he saw, he did not, as his spectacles showed plainly that they were ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... Mother. There in my arm-chair I sit, with the old cloak wrapped round me that sheltered me many a night on the mountains. And there the little children come, not a bit shy or afraid of old "Daddy Dan." They pick their way across the new carpet with a certain feeling of awkwardness, as if there were pins and needles hidden somewhere; but when they arrive at safe anchorage, they put their dirty clasped fingers on my old cassock, toss the hair from ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... proceeded for a time in his usually happy, characteristic manner, when all at once in the middle of a sentence he came to a full stop! We all looked up, and he looked down embarrassed and confused. He apparently had lost the thread of the discourse he had so carefully woven; he could not pick up the dropped stiches; and, if I remember rightly, he sat down, his speech not ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... else that was picturesque, in this age of results, and will never be seen in our streets again. The old horse-plough that used to come with rattle and bang and clangor of bells, drawn by five spans of big horses, the pick of the stables, wrapped in a cloud of steam, and that never failed to draw a crowd where it went, is no more. The rush and the swing of the long line, the crack of the driver's mighty whip and his warning shouts to ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis |
