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Pick   Listen
noun
Pick  n.  
1.
A sharp-pointed tool for picking; often used in composition; as, a toothpick; a picklock.
2.
(Mining & Mech.) A heavy iron tool, curved and sometimes pointed at both ends, wielded by means of a wooden handle inserted in the middle, used for digging ino the ground by quarrymen, roadmakers, etc.; also, a pointed hammer used for dressing millstones.
3.
A pike or spike; the sharp point fixed in the center of a buckler. (Obs.) "Take down my buckler... and grind the pick on 't."
4.
Choice; right of selection; as, to have one's pick; in cat breeding, the owner of a stud gets the pick of the litter. "France and Russia have the pick of our stables."
5.
Hence: That which would be picked or chosen first; the best; as, the pick of the flock.
6.
(Print.) A particle of ink or paper imbedded in the hollow of a letter, filling up its face, and occasioning a spot on a printed sheet.
7.
(Painting) That which is picked in, as with a pointed pencil, to correct an unevenness in a picture.
8.
(Weaving) The blow which drives the shuttle, the rate of speed of a loom being reckoned as so many picks per minute; hence, in describing the fineness of a fabric, A weft thread; as, so many picks to an inch.
Pick dressing (Arch.), in cut stonework, a facing made by a pointed tool, leaving the surface in little pits or depressions.
Pick hammer, a pick with one end sharp and the other blunt, used by miners.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pick" Quotes from Famous Books



... enthusiasm of which he had been conscious on previous occasions. The solid cleverness of Joe Bevan, and the quickness and cunning of the bantam-weight, were as much in evidence as before, but somehow the glamour and romance which had surrounded them were gone. He no longer watched eagerly to pick up the slightest hint from these experts. He felt no more interest than he would have felt in watching a game of lawn tennis. He had been keen. Since his disappointment with regard to the House Boxing ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... have sought to define art, to form a concrete idea of the experience of art, and to place it in its relations to other facts. We shall now pass from synthetic definition to psychological analysis. We want to pick out the elements of mind entering into the experience of art and exhibit their characteristic relations. In the present chapter we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the elements, leaving the study of most of the problems of structure ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... 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 ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... the days when every instant held not an eternity of ennui, but of sensibility. "Red life boils in my veins.... Every woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils...." But the poet was still reading—she forced herself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... rising of the country. We are seeing a whole people stand up and decline any longer to be imposed upon. The day has come when men are saying to each other: "It doesn't make a peppercorn's difference to me what party I have voted with. I am going to pick out the men I want and the policies I want, and let the label take care of itself. I do not find any great difference between my table of contents and the table of contents of those who have voted with the other party, and who, like me, are very much dissatisfied ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... but where did they come from? He has covered his tracks so well, that he wouldn't pick these things ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... our progress was very slow, for here there seemed to be no path, and we were obliged to pick our way across the fields, and to search for bridges that spanned such of the water-ditches as were too wide for us to jump. More than an hour was spent in this work, till we came to a village wherein ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who've paid a perruquier for mending our thatch, Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our fate pick a quarrel, If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... forced to halt and, in the dark, loosen and pick out stones embedded in the mud bottom narrowing the passage. On the other side of that danger point, he was free to wriggle on. Could the box trace him now? He had no idea of the principle on which it operated; he ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... close up, made a clever pick-up and threw it straight as a die for home. Fred had passed third and was legging it for the plate with all his might. But this time the ball had a shade the better of it, and Fred was nabbed just as he slid ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... granted to Mr. Chamberlain; but when I come to speak of him intellectually, I cannot see anything in him but a very perky, smart, glib-tongued "drummer," who is able to pick up the crumbs of knowledge with extraordinary rapidity, and give them forth again with considerable dexterity. He speech on Uganda, so far as its thought and its phraseology were concerned, was on the level of the profound utterances with which Sir ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... pick off your man," the major said, as, aided by the boys, he jammed a beam of wood between the door and the wall, at such an angle that, except by breaking it to pieces, the door could not ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... India, Holland, and so forth will sell somewhere else if they can't sell to Kazmah and Company. Therefore we want to watch the ships from likely ports, or, better still, get among the men who do the smuggling. There must be resorts along the riverside used by people of that class. We might pick up information there." ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... belongs to Hung Li, but you don't. I will come again to-morrow or the next day when you are alone. Look here,' he continued, thrusting his right hand up his left sleeve and producing some red paper, which he threw down; 'pick this up quickly ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper

... "Then I helped pick up Jack tar, and he was taken to the hospital, where his wounds were found to be of a dangerous nature. His assailants were so badly hurt that they went to the hospital, and when they came out they were shifted to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... neighborhood, and along the banks of the deep-down river that threads the ravine above the village, I had often met, meantime, a lady accompanied by a well-bred and scholar-like looking man; and though she invariably dropped her veil at my approach, her admirable movement, as she walked, or stooped to pick a flower, betrayed that conscious possession of beauty and habitual confidence in her own grace and elegance, which assured me of attractions worth taking trouble to know. By one of those "unavoidable accidents" which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... "although he fears my lord of Winchester has already moved men after his own desires". He also spoke with Lord St. John about knights of the shire for Hampshire, and St. John "promised to do his best". Finally he enclosed a "schedule of the best men of the country picked out by them, that Cromwell may pick ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... walking through it, she comes but as a village maid. On Sunday, when it is not etiquette for our fashionables to drive, but only to walk along the cliffs, they seem to wear a more innocent and wholesome aspect in that novel position; I have seen a fine lady pause under such circumstances and pick a wild-flower; she knew how to do it. A footpath has its own character, while that of the high-road is imposed upon it by those who dwell beside it or pass over it; indeed, roads become picturesque only when they are called lanes and make believe ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... how practically he deals with "lyin' an' tiefin', an' onbehavin' 'mongst de nyoung 'omans," and how he holds up "de obeshay," as Saint Paul did the magistrate, in terror to those who "play 'possum w'en de grass too t'ick," or "stick t'orn in he finger so he can't pick 'nuff cotton w'en de sun too hot." With our withdrawal is removed a restraint which has chilled the active devotion of the assembly, and soon the singing begins again, accompanied now, however, by the heavy tramp of feet and the clapping of hands keeping time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... playful and venturesome 'coon that prowled around in the vicinity of the camp, hoping to pick up some titbits from the supper of the strange bipeds who periodically occupied this favorite site; then again it might be a mink come up from the river to investigate what all this illumination meant; but as the minutes passed Eli remained only ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... have your pick of Fifth Avenue and until then, if you need a tooth-brush, I'll get one for you around ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... of the Western mining-towns, the liverymen keep "return horses,"—horses that will return to the barn when set at liberty, whether near the barn or twenty miles away. These horses are the pick of their kind. They have brains enough to take training readily, and also to make plans of their own and get on despite the unexpected hindrances that sometimes occur. When a return horse is ridden to a neighboring town, he ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... outpost of our own nation, and a guardian of our eastern road. When things are organized here on the military side, and are going strong, I shall, if you can spare me, run back to London for a few weeks. Whilst I am there I shall pick up a lot of the sort of officers we want. I know that there are loads of them to be had. I shall go slowly, however, and carefully, too, and every man I bring back will be recommended to me by some old soldier whom I know, and who knows the man he recommends, and has seen him work. We shall ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... and everything, that it is in turkeys and chickens. Why, take your poets, now, say Browning and Tennyson. Don't you think you can say which is the dark-meat and which is the white-meat poet? And so of the people you know; can't you pick out the full-flavored, coarse-fibred characters from the delicate, fine-fibred ones? And in the same person, don't you know the same two shades in different parts of the character that you find in the wing and thigh of a partridge? I suppose you poets may like white meat best, very ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... creatures. We have always had the reputation of being pious, so we will allow them to pick up the corn with us; they don't interrupt our talk, and they scrape so prettily when ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... out to see if he could pick the man off and as he did so his cap leaped from his head. The lad heard something whiz by. He withdrew his ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes

... at the Cross Roads to pick up several of the men, including Philpot, Harlow, Easton, Ned Dawson, Sawkins, Bill Bates and the Semi-drunk. The two last-named were now working for Smeariton and Leavit, but as they had been paying in from the first, they ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... too," said Uncle Dick. "It has been rather hard work, and now I propose to give you a little rest, so the horses can pick up as well as ourselves. There's good grass in the valley on ahead, and we'll go into ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... to the door and flung it open, upsetting the table again, and this time leaving Elizabeth to pick ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... should come to a satisfactory understanding with the woodland spirits who live there before he lays low their leafy dwellings. For this purpose he goes to the middle of the plot of ground, stoops down, and pretends to pick up a letter. Then unfolding a bit of paper he reads aloud an imaginary letter from the Dutch Government, in which he is strictly enjoined to set about clearing the land without delay. Having done so, he says: ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... broadcasting station is therefore no reason why it should not have its share of the radio battery business, because the broadcasting stations are scattered all over the United States, and receiving sets may be made powerful enough to "pick up" the waves from at least ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... about. Some of them carry huge backloads of grass, or papyrus, or cat-tail rushes, as the case may be; others lug in poles of various lengths from where their comrades are cutting them by means of their panga. A panga, parenthetically, is the safari man's substitute for axe, shovel, pick, knife, sickle, lawn-mower, hammer, gatling gun, world's library of classics, higher mathematics, grand opera, and toothpicks. It looks rather like a machete with a very broad end and a slight curved back. A good man can do extraordinary things ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Deeds used to be in Latin; but Latin could not be made obscure enough. So now Dark Deeds are written in an unknown tongue called 'Lawyerish,' where the sense is 'as one grain of wheat in two bushels of chaff,' pick it out if ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... about nothin'. I can't go t' town t' pick out a new dress that is bought with money I get from th' eggs, even. He'll manage most any way t' get off t' town so's t' keep me from knowin' he's goin', an' then make me send th' eggs an' butter by some ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... were gone, Mr. Lovel, who still appeared extremely sulky, said, "I protest, I never saw such a vulgar, abusive fellow in my life, as that Captain: 'pon honour, I believe he came here for no purpose in the world but to pick a quarrel; however, for my part, I vow ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... leisure to the moralist, to say so much, but that he, laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick truth out of partiality, better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth, curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... and generally to look after his moral and physical well-being. Now eleven out of every dozen of these are continually making themselves ridiculous by an utter ignorance of all nautical matters. They pick up a few worn-out phrases of sea-life, which have long since left the forecastle, and which have been bandied about from one set of landsmen to another, have been dropped by sham-sailors begging on fictitious wooden-legs, then by small sea-novelists, handed to smaller ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... wise man rejects, and he rejected it accordingly. If he contemned anything, it was contempt itself. He saw that every one bore some sign or mark (God's gift) for which he ought to be valued by his fellows, and esteemed a man. He could pick out a merit from each author in his turn. He liked Heywood for his simplicity and pathos; Webster for his deep insight into the heart; Ben Jonson for his humor; Marlow for his "mighty line;" Fletcher for his wit and flowing sweetness; ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... which attains a height of about twenty-five feet, the trunks shaggy with a fringe of dead spines left by each year's growth. Cooler suggested that at a given signal the trunks of two of these trees should be set on fire to light up the camp, and enable the soldiers to pick off the Apaches as they left their shelter when our attack should begin. He also proposed that we yell, saying: "If you out-yell 'em, lieutenant, you ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... friend of yours," she said, smiling. "Please pick up my kitten. Thank you.... And some day, when you've been very, very good, I'll ask Colonel Kay to let you take ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... well that none of you will, in reality, become anything, whatever may be your expectations. But do all of you what you please; I shall not follow your examples. I shall keep myself disengaged, and shall reason upon what you perform. There is something wrong in everything. I will pick that out, and reason upon it. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... the helm of affairs. During Beurnonville's absence, however, Herman had formed an intrigue with a Neapolitan girl, in the suite of Asturias, who, influenced by love or bribes, introduced him into the Cabinet where her mistress kept her correspondence with her royal parents. With a pick-lock key he opened all the drawers, and even the writing-desk, in which he is said to have discovered written evidence that, though the Princess was not prejudiced against France, she had but an indifferent ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... "You can pick daisies, and goldenrod, and all sorts of flowers in the country, if you'll just get ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb

... were pulled down. The military were 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 had been concerned in destroying the Sardinian and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... poverty in any tolerably well-ordered city or government. Wherefore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to such cases in the following terms: Let there be no beggars in our state; and if anybody begs, seeking to pick up a livelihood by unavailing prayers, let the wardens of the agora turn him out of the agora, and the wardens of the city out of the city, and the wardens of the country send him out of any other parts of the land across the border, in order that the land may be cleared of ...
— Laws • Plato

... in bed, which you can't," he observed. "Only, I can't help thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen a fellow with two dressing gowns ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... went to the place where the baby was screaming. Its tears were a great torrent which cut gorges in the earth before it. The water was rising all over the earth. He bent over the child to pick it up, and immediately both became birds and flew above the flood. Only five birds were saved from the flood. One was a flicker and one a vulture. They clung by their beaks to the sky to keep themselves above the waters, but the tail of the flicker was washed ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... there's one right here," said the captain, looking through his glasses. "I can't understand why I can't pick it up. Send one of the boys up the ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... the Archbishop said to those three Clerks that stood before him, "Lo, Sirs, this is the manner and business of this losell and such others, to pick out such sharp sentences of Holy Scripture and of Doctors to maintain their sect and lore [teaching] against the ordinance of Holy Church. And therefore, losell! is it, that thou covetest to have again the Psalter that I made to be taken from thee at Canterbury, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... edged still nearer to the door, as Steptoe continued, "Ever since he made that big strike on Heavy Tree five years ago, the country hasn't been big enough to hold him. But mark my words, gentlemen, the time ain't far off when he'll find a two-foot ditch again and a pick and grub wages room enough and to spare for him and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... occultations of stars; no blotting out of any of the hundreds and thousands of millions of bright specks which filled all the firmament. There would be no drive-radiation which even the most sensitive of instruments could pick up. The fleet might be at one place to an observer's right—where it was imperceptible—and then it might be at a place to the observer's left—where it was undetectable—and nobody could ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... indeed, was so high in him, and at the same time so blinded him to his own demerits, that he hated every man who did not either flatter him or give him money. In short, he claimed a strange kind of right, either to cheat all his acquaintance of their praise or to pick their pockets of their pence, in which latter case he himself repaid very ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... sport most noble, when two cocks engage With equal blindness and with equal rage! When each, intent to pick the other's eye, Sees not the feathers from himself that fly, And, fired to scorch his rival's every bone, Ignores the inward heat that grills his own; Until self-plucked, self-spitted and self-roast, Each to the other ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... I shot a female spotted crocuta hyena (here called Durwa) in the act of robbing. These tiresome brutes prowl about at night, and pick up anything they can find. Their approach is always indicated by a whining sound, which had prepared me on this occasion. She was caught in the act of stealing away some leather thongs. The specimen was a fine one, but until dissected I could not, from ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... the shore, Nicuesa with the rest struggled westward in search of the two brigantines and the other three ships. They toiled through interminable forests and morasses for several days, living on what they could pick up in the way of roots and grasses, without discovering any signs of the missing vessels. Coming to an arm of the sea, supposed to be Chiriqui Lagoon off Costa Rica, in the course of their journeyings, they decided to cross it in a small boat rather than make the long ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... or a path decidedly," replied Aunt Judy: "a road is the next best thing to a river for a boundary-line. But now, all of you, pick up the tools and come with me, and you shall do some regular work, and be paid for it at the rate of half-a-farthing for every half hour. Think what a ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... that in their youth I spared not the time from my worldly ambition to watch over the hearts of my sons; and thou wert too proud of the surface without, to look well to the workings within, and what was once soft to the touch is now hard to the hammer. In the battle of life the arrows we neglect to pick up, Fate, our foe, will store in her quiver; we have armed her ourselves with the shafts—the more need to beware with the shield. Wherefore, if thou survivest me, and if, as I forebode, dissension break out between Harold and Tostig, I charge thee by memory of our love, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... read it receives one or two marks with a red-lead pencil, after which it is deposited in pigeon-hole No. 1. Now no document ever lodges for a shorter time than a month in pigeon-hole No. 1; and if at the end of that period it should happen to be removed, the clerk lays by his novel or tooth-pick, as the case may be, and puts one or two blue marks upon the back of it. When we consider that there are all the way from six to twenty pigeon-holes, by a simple process of arithmetic we can get approximately near the period which it takes the ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... valuable hand, too; I've known him pick seven hundred and fifty pounds of cotton in a day—of course, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to guess how long it would take them to pick up the unfortunate occupants of that ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair

... for a couple of hours will do you good. After that you will see Allan. You are looking very weary, dear, and no wonder, no wonder," said Mandy, "with all that journey and—and all you have gone through." She gathered the girl into her strong arms. "My, I could just pick you up like a babe!" She held ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... not mind," he said, "I will pick the place. I want to buy a good dinner. I want a place with clean linen on the table and a ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... election were both pretty stormy. All the new patriots were off to blow up the Government buildings one after another, even more enthusiastic than the original members. It was only natural; my instructions to the recruiters had been to pick the most violent, frothing anti-Government men they could find to send out, and that was what we got. But Hollerith gave them a talk, and the vote, when it came, was overwhelmingly ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer

... European guarantee for the Pragmatic Sanction, the court of Vienna resolved to sacrifice the Company and suspended its charter. It became bankrupt in 1784 and ceased to exist in 1793. But in the meantime in 1733 the English and Dutch stirred up the Mahommedan general at Hugli to pick a quarrel. He attacked Bankipur and the garrison of only fourteen persons set sail for Europe. Thus German interests ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... cotton-wool greased with a little cocoanut oil. The back of the hand is greased in the same way, and a pad of clean cotton-wool is held in the right hand, and having been made as flat as possible by being pressed on the table, is drawn over the back of the hand. This should make it just greasy enough to pick up the gold, but not too greasy to part with it readily when pressed on the book. As little grease as possible should be used on the book, as an excess is apt to stain the leather and to make the ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... set up as marks, had sent his little boat away for that purpose during the continuance of the calm weather. When the breeze suddenly came on she was still absent, and, being obliged to wait for some time to pick her up, the Hecla was about dusk separated several ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... just beyond the dyke, having evidently approached by an unobserved track, and were now gazing suspiciously at me. There being no more prostrate sheaves, I could not very well throw some down and then pick them up again, for the action would not have been at all convincing. I therefore had to content myself with smoothing the side of the stook in a business-like way, trusting that the uncertain light would not disclose the insanity of my actions. In a few seconds I moved ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... the first words she uttered soothed him at once. 'Welcome back, runaway!' she said in her even, caressing voice, and came to meet him, smiling and frowning to keep the sun and wind out of her eyes. 'Where did you pick him up, Katya?' ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... that," remarked Fallowfield. "That man ought to be in a glass case, and ticketed; he's a natural curiosity. His bag to-day consists of one hare, one hen, and one—sex unknown, for no one saw it rise or tried to pick it up; it was blown into a cloud of feathers within six feet of his muzzle. Here he comes; don't ask him ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... "I've been right in the thick of it for quite some years. If you could pick up in a week or so what ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... I credited that man with the worst of motives, but now I feel afraid that he is in love—in fact I feel sure that he is madly in love with you. Do you know that he never takes his eyes off you in the Club? Often he forgets to pick up ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Page, Farley, White, Bryant," called the captain of the Navy team. "Each of you pick up a ball. Line up at this goal-line, Joyce, will you take a stop-watch and go over to the other goal-line? Adams, go along and assist Joyce. I want a record of the time it takes each man to cover the distance, running as fast as he can ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... the "night of sense," in which the things of earth become dark to her. This must needs be traversed, for "the creatures are only the crumbs that fall from God's table, and none but dogs will turn to pick them up." "One desire only doth God allow—that of obeying Him, and carrying the Cross." All other desires weaken, torment, blind, and pollute the soul. Until we are completely detached from all such, we cannot love God. "When thou dwellest upon anything, thou hast ceased to cast thyself ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... apprentices, he had managed to make himself of some importance, a leader, in fact, among his fellows, and few are very ignorant in a country which does all it can to remove ignorance. Though, during the first years of his youth, the pick was never out of Harry's hand, nevertheless the young miner was not long in acquiring sufficient knowledge to raise him into the upper class of the miners, and he would certainly have succeeded his father as overman of the Dochart ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... bread and wine,—purposely placed in our sight in the act of kneeling as signs standing in Christ's stead, before which we, the receivers, are to exhibit outwardly religious adoration,—be formally idolatry or not? No man can pick a quarrel at the stating of the question thus; for, 1. We dispute only about kneeling at the instant of receiving the sacramental elements, as all know. 2. No man denies inward adoration in the act of receiving, for ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... "I didn't pick this quarrel with you, but if you will get off your horse so that you have no advantage over me; I'll give you all the ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... think is all that is worth speaking of. Important because the rank and file is utterly ignored and positively unnoticed by the American white press (except as an example of the demonstrative inability to be an intelligent and thrifty citizen), and from which they pick from day to day the lowest as ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... tell him so from time to time, eh? Hector's social position in England, Miss Robinson, is just what I choose to buy for him. I have made him a fair offer. Let him pick out the most historic house, castle or abbey that England contains. The day that he tells me he wants it for a wife worthy of its traditions, I buy it for him, and give him the means of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... dawn by some one moving about in the room, and I see a man pick up a gun and pass quickly out. The dogs are barking savagely throughout the village. Then I look about me. Imagine my surprise when I discover that I have had five bed-fellows, or rather FLOOR-FELLOWS! There we lay ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... agreed, "but we're ready for them now. Our ship left the Belgium factories several hours ago. The Comet towed it out in space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours the Comet will be here to pick us up." ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... did she expect? She didn't think to have it all sunshine, did she? When she married the man, she knew she didn't care for him; and now she determines to leave him because he won't pick up her pocket-handkerchief! If she wanted that kind of thing, why did not she ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... find his way down through the darkness and the waters to the cottage, but as he was neither in fear nor in haste, he was in little danger, and his hands and feet could pick out the path where his eyes were useless. When at length he reached his bed, it was not for a long time to sleep, but to lie awake and listen to the raging of the wind all about and above and below the cottage, and the rushing of the streams down past ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... however, did not seem to disturb his good humour, or to make him unhappy, and his answer was to call 'Bill,' who was acting as porter, and to tell him to give the gentleman the key of the 'book room,' and to bring down any of the books he might pick out, and he 'would sell 'em.' I followed 'Bill,' and soon found myself in a charming nook of a library, full of books, mostly old divinity, but with a large number of the best miscellaneous literature of the sixteenth century, English and foreign. A very short look over ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... never sought or found grace. She laughed when a black wag said of the two that "they might bofe be 'peas,' but dey wasn't out o' de same pod." But on its being repeated to Sister Pease, she resented it with Christian indignation, sniffed and remarked that "Ef Wi'yum choosed to pick out one o' de onregenerate an' hang huh ez a millstone erroun' his neck, it wasn't none o' huh bus'ness what happened to him w'en dey pulled up de tares ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... continued, reassuringly; "I'll pick them all up in a moment. You will go with us ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... after you the day I made it. But there's no use crying over spilt milk, nor fussin' with the grease spot it makes; salt it down safely now, and when you get it done, beings as this setting is fairly comfortable, take time to run into Harding's and pick up some Sunday-school clothes for the children that will tally up with the rest of their relations'; an' get yourself a cheap frock or two that will spruce you up a bit till you have time to decide what ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... arrived from England with a bad character. He had been tried for murder. He had been ordered to pay five hundred pounds as damages to his mate, whom he had imprisoned at sea in a hencoop, and left to pick up his food with the fowls. He had been out-lawed, and forbidden to sail as officer in any British ship. These were facts made known to, and discussed by, all the whalers who entered the Tamar, when the whaling season was over in the year 1835. And yet the notorious ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... talk business, and tell spicy yarns, and every now and then discuss their neighbors' illnesses, going into endless detail.... And the little boy, sitting in his corner, would make no more noise than a little mouse, pick at his food, eat hardly anything, and listen with all his ears. Nothing escaped him: and when he did not understand, his imagination supplied the deficiency. He had that singular gift, which is often to be remarked in the children of old families and an old stock, on which the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... coast of Australia. If found in sufficient quantity, a party was to be left to cut it, while the vessel returned to Moreton Bay with the news, and communicated with the owner, who was to send a larger vessel to pick it up and convey it at once to the China market.* An inferior kind of sandalwood, the produce of Exocarpus latifolia (but which afterwards turned out to be useless) was met with in several localities—as the Percy Isles, Repulse Bay, Cape Upstart, Palm Islands, etc. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... "Pick him up! I've known Charley Stafford since we were both that high. We were at Harrow and at Oxford together. Rickmansworth knows him, Bob. You didn't come ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... replied, smiling very, pleasantly. "I wouldn't have you pick your words. This is a frank, free talk, and I like you the better for saying what you think. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... home yet," he said presently. "Fortunes of War. I got to pick the proper time with Susan—else she'll get depressed. Not that she isn't a first-rate ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... up on the slope, with rock drill and pick. The group to which he had been assigned was composed entirely of new prisoners, mostly white men, but with a few blacks and one coppery-skinned drylander of Mars. Whimpering, hopeless creatures, all of them; not worth his notice. All day he labored without speaking ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent

... left from the dinner, and is broken, pick free from skin and bones, heap it lightly in the centre of the dish, sprinkle the sauce over it, and set away in a cool place until tea time. Then add the garnish, and serve as before. Many people prefer the latter ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... elected by a distinct minority in the popular vote and his practical political experience had been less than that of any chief executive since Grant. His party had been in power so little since the Civil War that it had no body of experienced administrators from which to pick cabinet officers, and no corps of parliamentary leaders practiced in the task of framing and passing a constructive program. The party as a whole was lacking in cohesion and had perforce played the role of destructive critic most of the time for more than half a century; its principles ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... to abandon but to steadily improve our code; and whereas any one can pick flaws, only the man of trained mind and controlled desire can discover feasible lines of advance. "When all is said, there is nothing as yet to be changed in our old Aryan ideal of justice, conscientiousness, courage, kindness, and honor. We have only to draw nearer ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... despite her feminine approval of success, couldn't imagine herself being as much interested in him—dangerously interested—as she knew her friend Mary Rochefort to be. How odd! From all the world to pick out a tall, blond, willowy man like Pollen! On the verge of middle age, too! Perhaps it was this very willowiness, this apparent placidity that made him attractive. This child, Mary Rochefort, quite alone in the world, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the neighborhood looked straight before them, and did not see him in their path, he burned with an indignation he would have liked well to express. But no one took the trouble to offend him by word or deed, and a man cannot pick a quarrel with people for ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... in despair. "You see what it is?" he said to the Mole, addressing him across Toad's head: "He's quite hopeless. I give it up—when we get to the town we'll go to the railway station, and with luck we may pick up a train there that'll get us back to river bank to-night. And if ever you catch me going a-pleasuring with this provoking animal again!"—He snorted, and during the rest of that weary trudge addressed his remarks exclusively ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... know—Security has to rely on spot checks and the testing of key personnel. Only when organizations get as big as they are today, there's apt to be no real key man, and a few spies strategically placed in the lower echelons can pick-up a hell of a lot of information. Then there are the colonists out on the planets—our hold on them has always necessarily been loose, because of transportation and communication difficulties if nothing else. And, as I say, foreign powers. A little country ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... the era of a physical and intellectual equality which will permit them to mate as they choose and people this republic with perfect progeny. Every girl there is pledged to mate only with the very pick of physical masculine perfection. Their pledge is to build up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate, crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has become degenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect is permitted inside ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... mislaid," said the Frenchman; "if that will not suffice, it has been stolen; if that is not enough, pick out some servant you can spare and accuse him of the theft. The sufferings of one man must not count beside the safety of a ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... that Her Majesty's Government have no desire to pick a quarrel with France, but that nothing could be gained by my concealing from him the gravity of the situation as I regarded it, or the fixed determination of Her Majesty's Government to vindicate claims of the absolute justice of which they hold that there can be no question. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... will ask them. The ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more artists. Why! we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a bachelor, and he's building ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... wife Vassiliki and daughter Haydee into slavery. Haydee herself denounced De Morcerf's infamy in the Chamber of Deputies. De Morcerf, forever dishonored, and knowing the blow came from Monte-Cristo, sought to pick a quarrel with the latter. But the count, glancing him full in the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... like Rousseau by polemics, is to condemn himself to perpetual exaggeration and conflict. Such a man expiates his celebrity by a double bitterness; he is never altogether true, and he is never able to recover the free disposal of himself. To pick a quarrel with the world ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "are not inert on their mother's back; if they fall from the maternal chine they quickly pick themselves up and climb up one of her legs, and once back in place they have to preserve the equilibrium of the mass. In reality they know no such thing as complete repose. What then is the energetic aliment which ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... seven. Train robber babies, fo'ty dollars in de sack. I reads six-five! Rally roun', boys. Shoots fo'ty dollars. Fade me, boy. Bugle dice, blow de cash call. Harvest babies, pick yo' cotton! Bam! An' I reads ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... right down here on the steps. After all, perhaps it's pleasanter. What a garden! It's like my mother's. I could pick out every leaf in the dark, by the smell. But you're alone, aren't you? I'm not keeping you ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... feeling about them of there being something unnatural and improper, and a disgrace to Friarswood, in any one going up to the Bishop in such a condition as Paul. Especially, as Charles Hayward said, when he was the pick of the whole lot. Perhaps Charles was right, for surely Paul was single-hearted in his hope of walking straight to his one home, Heaven, and he had been doing no other than bearing his cross, when he so patiently ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... through Tito as he rose from the chair, but it was not outwardly perceptible, for he immediately stooped to pick up the fallen book, and busied his fingers with flattening the ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... pick out a husband here—and her children can play in China if they want to? Are you crazy? Pshaw," turning away in disgust, "I just waste words in opening my heart's dear secrets ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... said, after a minute's thought, "you are not in the least bound to go to hear Mr. Masterman again unless you like. But remember this, Eric, we are only a struggling minority, and let me quote to you one of our Scottish proverbs: 'Hawks shouldna pick out hawks' een.' You are still a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. Although looting, insurgent attacks, and sabotage have undermined economy rebuilding efforts, economic activity is beginning to pick up in areas recently secured by the US military surge. Oil exports are around levels seen before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and total government revenues have benefited from high oil prices. Despite political uncertainty, Iraq is making some progress in building ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... surprising that it has created an objection to him. I forget who it was, among the critics of the beginning of this century, who was accustomed to buy copies of the Lives of the English Poets wherever he could pick them up, and burn them, in piety to the angry spirit of Milton. This was certainly more sensible conduct than that of the Italian nobleman, who used to build MSS. of Martial into little pyres, and consume them ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... who never design to fight; and this useless way of aiming at the Heart, without design to wound it on either side, is the Play with which I am resolved to divert my self: The Man who pretends to win, I shall use like him who comes into a Fencing-School to pick a Quarrel. I hope, upon this Foundation, you will give me the free use of the natural and artificial Force of my Eyes, Looks, and Gestures. As for verbal Promises, I will make none, but shall have no mercy on the conceited Interpreters of Glances and Motions. I am particularly skill'd in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the celebrated physician must be a second 'Rip-van-Winkle,' and that he had just awakened from a supernatural sleep of twenty years. It was all very well to say that he was devoted to his profession, and that he had neither time nor inclination to pick up fragments of gossip at dinner-parties and balls. A man who did not know that the Countess Narona had borrowed money at Homburg of no less a person than Lord Montbarry, and had then deluded him ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... sen noh wehs heard a story as she trudged along a furrow, beside a ragged Indian who was plowing with a more ragged-looking team. Or she would listen as she helped an Indian woman prepare the evening meal, pick berries, or ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers

... boys, and you have to watch your chance to get out of his way, and there is a place with a knot-hole in the fence where you can see all kinds of rusty springs and bed-rails and birdcages and barrel hoops piled up inside the yard, and a tin-can factory where you can pick up little round pieces of tin just as good as dollars, and a church (where the clock is) with a fat old man sitting on the pavement in a chair tilted back against the church wall smoking a long pipe, who doesn't mind being stared at ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... as being clever," he said, "and finding a lost dog with all Long Island to pick and choose from isn't a particularly easy thing to pull off ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... particular problem, but over such questions as the number of beads to wear round one's neck when visiting the medicine-man, whether the national custom of saluting the rising sun need be observed on cloudy mornings, and whether the medicine-man is entitled to the pick of the yams on any day but Sunday. People of different opinions on these points decline to eat together or to enter into social intercourse with one another; and their children are forbidden to mingle ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... parrot, under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every opportunity of education from the best source—man. In a native state his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that art would stir ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... revenge or in belief that it would aid in getting out of trouble, no further attention has been paid to it from the standpoint of pathological lying. Our acquaintance with some professional criminals, particularly of the sneak-thief or pick-pocket class, has taught us that living conditions for the individual may be founded on whole careers of misrepresentation and lies—for very understandable reasons. Self-accusations may sometimes ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... only one stuffed. I will tell you a story of how I heard one once. It was about five-and-twenty years ago. I wanted some primroses for a nosegay. I used to pick the long feathery moss that grows in these woods and put the primroses among it. I ran across the road outside of our gates—for I could run in those days—and soon filled my basket with as many primroses as I wanted. As I was standing under a ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley

... they should go into camp below Sea River Falls, on the Nelson, and pick berries at their leisure in the great section of country lying north-west from that point, as there they were to be ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... as we thought, there was young Master Carey dying as fast as he could, and us just waiting to go to the bottom. Now here's that there dear lad asleep comf'table and getting better, and you and me with the pick o' the berths and the saloon all to ourselves, getting ready to have a reg'lar good, square meal. Aren't got so werry much to grumble at, ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... should first escape; though, except by jumping overboard, there was no escape. Had they waited, and (as Philip would have pointed out to them) have one by one thrown themselves into the sea, the men in the boats were fully prepared to pick them up; or had they climbed out to the end of the lateen mizen-yard which was lowered down, they might have descended safely by a rope, but the scorching of the flames which surrounded them and the suffocation from the smoke was overpowering, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... any harm, Mrs Pendle,' cried the little old lady. 'You are too pale, and champagne, in your case, would pick you up. Iron and slight stimulants are what you need. I am afraid you are not careful what ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... with me that it was about time to pick the melon. I decided to pick it immediately after meeting on Sunday, so that I could give it to my aunt and uncle at dinner-time. When we got home I ran for the garden. My feet and those of our friends and neighbors had literally worn a path to the melon. In eager haste I got my little wheelbarrow ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... as I have said, very particular about my food, and I don't like thorns or thistles, so when I come across a plant with prickly thorns on it, I carefully pick off the leaves with my tongue and leave the thorns behind. I don't believe you could do that with your tongue, but mine is a very useful tongue, and I shouldn't like to change it with anybody. I sometimes find it rather awkward ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... round town that he is waiting to pick me up on the road some day and make my five hundred dollars ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... Governments' wishes in this respect, conscious that there is a sycophancy in slander contrasted with which the ordinary sycophancy of flattery is as water to wine; they diligently send home every scrap of indecent or scandalous rumour they can pick up in the Roman ante-chambers, however unlikely, uncorroborated, or unconcerning the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... tightly closed windows with lights blazing on them, wondering whether the finger of death would reach in from the swamp to touch them. The fog had not yet made an appearance on the main post and Dr. Bird had no fear of it when he entered his car and drove down to pick up his assistant. ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... But he'd slap the devil himself in the face. Cleve won't last long out here. Yet you can never tell. Men like him, who laugh at death, sometimes avert it for long. I was that way once.... Cleve heard me talking to Pearce about Gulden. And he said, 'Kells, I'll pick a fight with this Gulden and drive him out of the camp ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey



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