"Bit by bit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... common quality of redness. It seems only natural to make this assumption because we are so used to making it, but if we stop to examine the facts which we know directly we discover that they do not bear it out, and we are gradually driven to the conclusion that it is quite unwarranted. It is only bit by bit, as we gradually accustom ourselves to doubting what we have been accustomed to take for granted, that we realize how ill ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... but her still roving eyes took in each detail, bit by bit, as she warned and schooled herself to note and remember each ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Smith goes on through life, and feels no pang at the remembrance of the ambrosial curls of his youth. Most young people, I dare say, think it will be a dreadful thing to grow old: a girl of eighteen thinks it must be an awful sensation to be thirty. Believe me, not at all. You are brought to it bit by bit; and when you reach the spot, you rather like the view. And it is so with graver things. We grow able to do and to bear that which it is needful that we should do and bear. As is the day, so the strength ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... somewhat too young to be tied down to the regular routine of school discipline; and if older when boarded away, the other obstruction to salutary progress began to operate grievously against me. I acquired bit by bit the common education—reading, writing, and arithmetic. So far as I remember, grammar was not much taught at any of these schools, and the spelling of words was very nearly as little attended to as the meaning which they are appointed to convey was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... all this talk about lynching. It had been coming to him, bit by bit, in the jail, probably passed on by the other prisoners, and it got him all worked up. It seems that the jailer's kid, a boy about sixteen years old, had been in the habit of bringing Jim's meals. Also the kid had a habit of carrying Dad's keys around, just ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... startled to realise the passage of time. But he said nothing. Partly he wanted to read in peace, and partly he did not want to admit his mistake. Bit by bit he was assuming the historic privileges of the English master of the house. He had the illusion that if only he could maintain a silence sufficiently august his error of fact and of manner would cease ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Bit by bit the man with cramps gained a little strength, and with the boys' help he was towed in ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... see this house—I made everything smooth in it for her feet. You see what we have round us—I set that before her eyes. By means of nights of work, by exerting myself to the uttermost, I got it all together, bit by bit—in order that she should never feel anything strange or inhospitable in her home, but only what she was accustomed to and fond of. She understood; and soon the birds of spring began to flutter about our home. And, though she always ran away when I came, I was conscious of her presence ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... coat looks red. The skin, like every other part of the body, is made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat they become quite flat like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by the newer cells that are growing from beneath. The skin grows from beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer coat. This is how it keeps itself nice and new on the outside and "grows away" the marks of ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... then we sit And talk it over, bit by bit; Just how the pirates looked, and why They flung a black flag to the sky. We pass no paragraph without First knowing what it's all about, And when the author starts a fight We join the ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... great deal; and it was an especial pleasure when he would sit down by her and read and talk about them. Still a greater was to watch the sea, in its changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get from Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge concerning it that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda feared it she was fascinated; and while the fear went off the fascination grew deeper. Daintily nestling among her cushions she watched ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Jean Servien spent his days in translating Myrrha bit by bit, with an infinity of pains. The task having taught him something of verse-making, he composed an ode, which he sent by post to his mistress. The poem was writ in tears of blood, yet it was as cold and insipid as a schoolboy's exercise. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... once rich, wasn't she? In fairly easy circumstances, and she lost her fortune. It all went away from her bit by bit. It is all coming back to me, how Fate in the story as you told it seemed like a black shadow stretching out a paw, grabbing some part of her income again and again till the last farthing was taken. Even then Fate was not satisfied, and your friend must catch the smallpox and lose her ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... smile won. Bit by bit Patsy's rigid attitude of condemnation relaxed; the comradeship crept back in her eyes, the smile to her lips. "Heigho! 'Tis a bad bargain ye can't make the best of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... buried lay, A hideous spectre to appal, Dropped bit by bit its flesh away, As one ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... principal ideas, or early recognition of the outline of thought, is perhaps the most important of these. One can proceed sentence by sentence, or "bit by bit," in memorizing as in thinking, adding one such fragment after another until the whole is learned. But the early recognition of the main ideas in their proper sequence is far superior. These essentials give peculiar ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... that is!" exclaimed the hair-dresser, in Pindaric accents, "to die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... tongues, whenever their master was away, by talking to them on trivial subjects in her pleasant homely way. She taught Molly to read and write, but tried honestly to keep her back in every other branch of education. It was only by fighting and struggling hard, that bit by bit Molly persuaded her father to let her have French and drawing lessons. He was always afraid of her becoming too much educated, though he need not have been alarmed; the masters who visited such small country towns as Hollingford forty years ago, were no such ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... beyond that mist and find himself, would not be soothed. Nothing would satisfy him but to strike camp and return along the road they had come by. Some instinct told him that the sight of the things he had seen would wake up memory, and that bit by bit, as he went, the mist would retreat before him, and perhaps vanish at last. Some instinct told him this, but reason, who is ever a doubter, tortured ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... degrees these even could be tenderly approached; and, now that they were approached in a different spirit, the honest beliefs of the father and son no longer looked so monstrous to one another, the hard and sharp outlines began to wear off, and the views of each of them to be modified. Thus, bit by bit, by a slow but sure process, a better understanding than ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... certain small briberies on the train and in Paris Carmichael gathered, bit by bit, that the destination of the woman he loved was America. But never once did he set eyes upon her till she and her father mounted the gang-plank to the vessel which was to carry them across the wide Atlantic. The change in Herbeck was pitiable. His ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... need to detail all that was said during the next hour. Bit by bit we added to the girl's knowledge of the world into which she had emerged, and bit by bit there unfolded in her mind a corresponding image of the world from which she had come. And when, for an experiment, we took her out on the front porch and ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... well. Was there water there? But certainly so; water obviously of the worst quality—yet water. Besides, were there not always refrigerators and condensing machinery? Upon which Swakopmund was forced into existence—planked down there bit by bit in the face of circumstance. Walk a trifle over a thousand yards from the edge of the changeful Atlantic through Swakopmund's deep sandy streets and you get the key to the town. For it ceases utterly, abruptly; from the ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... frequently with weak ACETIC ACID (see) or even good buttermilk. The skin being in such cases very sensitive, it is well to treat it bit by bit, a small part at a time. Take one limb, then another, then part of the back, and then another part. Besides this sponging with acid, and before it is done, the skin should be gently covered with lather (see Lather; Soap). If this treatment is not successful, a little olive oil, with cayenne ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... traverse into the "green" of the German regiment, and started hacking and stabbing with the pointed end of the cross. The Huns did not like the look of such a wild apparition and refused to face him. Bit by bit they retired and O'Hagan took advantage of a moment to take a green silk Irish flag, with a crownless harp, from his pocket, and attach it to the spike of the cross. Then, roaring like a lion and brandishing his strange weapon, he fell on them once more—and as they broke he saw the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... hands clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with a kind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past, bit by bit, with the words she ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a book or two, some flowers, with furniture of the simplest—amid these surroundings on the outskirts of the ruined village, with one of its capable, kindly faced women to run the menage, Miss Polk lives and works, realising bit by bit the plans of the new Vitrimont, which have been drawn for her by the architect of the department, and following loyally old Lorraine traditions. The church has been already restored and reopened. The first mass within its thronged walls was—so the spectators ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen. He had eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp for fear of attracting ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... a notable blood cleanser. With his spoon he separated a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water, remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the disagreeable dose. Gandhi, however, bit by bit was eating the NEEM paste with as much relish as if it had been ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... to send a sucking pig to the gaoler. Against such pricks, my boy, there is no kicking. This is like a cold bath: if a man enters slowly, bit by bit, his teeth chatter: if he springs in at once, it is even pleasant. Let us talk of more ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... arrangements were on a par: his crockery was of a most heterogeneous and scanty description; his furniture of the most common kind, put in bit by bit, as it was found indispensable. In two things only did Father John show his extravagance; in the first, too, his expenditure was only so to be called, in comparison with that of others round him, of the same profession. It was ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... groups my comrades talked together, Their disappointment faded bit by bit, So soothing can it be to tell the weather Just what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... proverb, "rings Truth to light." But the process is gradual and slow. The debt is paid, as it were, by instalments. It is only bit by bit, and at considerable intervals, that Truth comes forth as the morning twilight to dispel ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... I've had out of it so far," he declared, "is free quarters here. The rent's paid up to the end of the year. I've had to sell the furniture bit by bit to keep alive. It was a cheap lot, cheap and showy, and it fetched jolly little. Morry always did like to have things that looked worth more than he gave for them. Even his jewellery was sham—every bally bit of it. There wasn't a real pearl or a real diamond amongst ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... learning to live with change and even to welcome it because the time of troubles through which their society is passing is warning them of the dangers they face. At the same time they are learning, bit by bit, of the spectacular achievements of the billion ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... the desire, the need. Bread the populace had. Trank was available to all. But the need was for the circus, the vicious, sadistic circus, and bit by bit, over the years and decades, the way was found to circumvent the country's laws and traditions to supply ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... prince of Mito was opposed to it, and contended that the admission of foreigners into Japan would ruin it. 'At first,' said he, 'they will give us philosophical instruments, machinery and other curiosities; will take ignorant people in, and, trade being their chief object, they will manage bit by bit to impoverish the country, after which they will treat us just as they like—perhaps behave with the greatest rudeness and insult us, and end by swallowing up Japan. If we do not drive them away now we shall never have another opportunity. If we ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... had failed! Ulric Dahlgren had lost his life in a daring attempt to which he was evidently urged by Betty Van Lew and the so-called Quaker. Bit by bit the reasons for its failure filtered through to the Spy, chief of which was the treachery of Dahlgren's guide, by which the forces of the raiders, after separating in two parts for the attack, lost each other and were never able to unite. The brave, crippled young commander ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... set himself to comfort her—in vain; to question her—in vain at first; but by degrees she allowed him to learn that it was for him she mourned; and so they proceeded on the old, old plan, the man extorting from the woman bit by bit just so much as she wanted all along to say, and would have poured in a stream ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a tight hug that relieved her from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get food for her. She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through the window of the cab. Bit by bit he handed her the morsels. It was impossible to procure broth. When they drove on, she did not complain of suffering, but her chest rose and fell many times heavily. She threw him out in the reading of her character, after a space, by excusing herself for having eaten ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... other often," the old fairy woman had said. "You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. You do love the wood, don't you? It's a fairy place too—same ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of "wild men" or "wild boys" in the Chinese Empire is shown by recent reports. Macgowan says the traders kidnap a boy and skin him alive bit by bit, transplanting on the denuded surfaces the hide of a bear or dog. This process is most tedious and is by no means complete when the hide is completely transplanted, as the subject must be rendered mute by destruction of the vocal cords, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... indeed, it turned out to be. So we got to speak of her as the Queen of the Pool; and it was because I had been challenged to catch her by the score of fellows who had been trying for her that I went out on this particular day. I took boat an hour before I intended to fish, and dropped quietly down, bit by bit, at intervals, to the spot I had marked in my eye. It was not far from the head of the sluice, and, therefore, a most critical position. I had worn the B. Pond stuck in my hat for days, so that it should be quite dry. I only allowed myself line 2 ft. longer than my rod. After ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... his wife dropped upon their knees in the mud. They dug with their knives. Carefully, bit by bit, they lifted the dirt. All at once there was a glint ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... full of happy family men off for a summer Sunday in the country—am I to tear it out of my memory like so much cumbersome waste paper? Am I to forget how I felt when it grew quieter at each station, as though life were crumbling away, bit by bit, until at midnight only one or two sleepy soldiers remained in my coach and an ashen young face drawn with sorrow hovered about the flickering lamplight? Must one actually be sick if it is like an incurable wound always to feel that leave-taking ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... watched one observed a distinct line of demarcation between the sunshine and the shade, and this line gradually approached nearer and nearer, lighting up the hummocky relief of the ice-field bit by bit, until at last it reached us, and threw the whole camp into a blaze of glorious sunshine ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... says Lamuse, "has no substance; it gets no grip on your guts. You think you're full, but at the bottom of your tank you're empty. So, bit by bit, you turn your eyes up, poisoned for want ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of France, was selected for this purpose, which led to Mr. Hope-Scott's purchasing a property there, the Villa Madona, on a beautiful spot near the Boulevard d'Orient. Here he spent several winters with his family, in the years 1863-70. He added to the property very gradually, bit by bit; first a vineyard, and then an oliveyard, as opportunities offered, and indulged over it the same passion for improvement which he had displayed at Abbotsford and Dorlin. He took the most practical interest in all the culture that makes up a Provencal farm, the wine, the oil, the almonds, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... slow to read character. Her impulse was always to believe in people, and to like them; and she had to acquire a knowledge of their faults painfully, bit by bit. But Colonel Colquhoun helped her here. He was an inveterate gossip, very much in the manner of Mrs. Guthrie Brimston herself, only that he was more refined when he talked to Evadne; and at breakfast, their one tete-a-tete meal ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the heater, the mass of the metal was brought to room temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools. Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavy goggles he watched the incandescent mass in a refractory crucible, in the heart ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the men, especially the high castes, often have a beautifully designed sicca leaf running from the chest towards one shoulder, which probably has some religious significance. The women often have their whole body, arms and legs, covered with tattooing, as if with fine lace. The operation is done bit by bit, some one part being treated every few days. The colour used is the rosin of a nut-tree precipitated on a cool stone and mixed with the juice of a plant; the pattern is drawn on the skin with a stick, and then traced with the tattooing-needle. This consists of three orange ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... somewhere to the rear of the building. She struggled and tried to pull away from him, but he jerked her along with the chain, and I could see that she was afraid of him, and did not dare to fight him in earnest, and bit by bit he dragged her along. I followed and saw him go to a sort of pen, or a small enclosure of high walls without any roof, in which he left her, and then went in to his own building. And soon I saw the last lights go out ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... obstacle he had to overcome was in getting a phonograph that could "hear" far enough. At the beginning of the experiments the actor had to talk directly into the horn, which made the right kind of pictures impossible to get. Bit by bit, however, a machine was perfected which could "hear" so well that the actor could move at his pleasure within a radius of twenty feet. That is the machine that is being used now. This new combination of the moving picture machine and the phonograph Edison has named the kinetophone. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... on his cordiality, represents more nearly the truth. She looks such a good sort. Some day, when the War is over, I must acquire a shiny tall hat and a glossy shirt front and a youthful manner and get someone to introduce me, and then, bit by bit, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I quick secured, a green and gaudy bench, And paid my humble penny to a very buxom wench. The tide was running out amain, and slowly, bit by bit, She moved her back seats forward till she left me in the pit. Stout Mr. BIGGS, the hair-dresser, the Bond-Street mould of form, Sat next me with his family, and seemed to find it warm; And, while admiring Mrs. B. hung on her BIGGS's lips. He favoured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... very little occasion for a doctor's services, and we, with this great family, have had to have groceries, shoes, and every other thing, and Potter's bill has kept rolling up like a great snowball, bit by bit. We pay something now and then. I sold my old sideboard that came to me from my grandparents, and paid a hundred dollars on it six months ago. Old Mr. Potter died. Rufus reigns in his stead, as the Bible says, and he wants to collect his money. I do not blame ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... his tenant. "You have had a good holding," said the agent, "with plenty of water and good land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. That was the one consideration held out to us. And we ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... frank with me, and tell me what you owe? I will give you a cheque for it. I don't want to drag it out of you bit by bit. Tell me a sum that will make you free, and I will give it to you. I want you to have a perfect six months, and how can you if ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Bit by bit they went over the letters. It was at the third mention of "mother" that Tom raised his head with a jerk. He looked ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... several days later that bit by bit he came to a realization of that which he had so lightly taken. The old man who brought his food whispered the news through ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of Heaven engraved on tables of stone. Learned English judges have decided that virtually the term "marital rights" has no longer a legal signification. As one writer puts it, "The law has relaxed the husband's control over his wife's person and fortune, bit by bit, until legally it has left him nothing but the power to prevent her, if he is so disposed, and arrives in time, from jumping out of the window." He will find it greatly to his interest to arrive in time when he conveniently can, and to be so disposed, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... "It may come bit by bit or by a sudden bound or never," was Doctor Holiday's opinion. "There is nothing that I know of that she or you or any one can do except let nature take her course. It is a case of time and patience. I am glad ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... before Mrs. Drabdump was sufficiently calm to explain that though she had overslept herself, and though it would have been all the same anyhow, she had come up to time. Bit by bit the tragic story was forced from her lips—a tragedy that even her telling could not make tawdry. She told with superfluous detail how—when Mr. Grodman broke in the door—she saw her unhappy gentleman lodger lying ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... shone so bright that Tom could see every feature; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was his ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... a long chalk! The rain had made the boughs mighty slippery, and it was all I could do to keep a foothold, but bit by bit I managed it, until at last there I ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... overtake him to mete out his just punishment. As for the bacon, Rodriguez scorned it and marched on down the road. Now one side of the frying-pan was very hot, for it was tilted a little and the lard had run sideways. By tilting it back again slowly Morano could make the fat run back bit by bit over the heated metal, and whenever it did so it sizzled. He now picked up the frying-pan and one log that was burning well and walked parallel with Rodriguez. He was up-wind of him, and whenever the bacon-fat sizzled ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... unpleasant and an invidious task, to pick to pieces, bit by bit, the work of an author of high reputation. But Mr. Mill has chosen to put the question on this issue, and he has left those who dissent from him no alternative but to follow his example. He has tasked all the resources of minute criticism to destroy piece-meal the reputation ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created, bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw herself into it, body ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... she is, Mademoiselle," Dowson said. "Any sensible woman would know, when she heard her talk about her child. I found it all out bit by bit when first I came here. I'm going to talk plain and have done with it. Her first six years she spent in a sort of dog kennel on the top floor of this house. No sun, no real fresh air. Two little holes that were dingy and gloomy ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at, and sit down at a table without a table-cloth, and drink tea out of tin pannikins. The notion of getting such wages in a place with such surroundings quite dumb-founded me; and he had the things too; for by-and-by I found napery and china in a big chest that I used for a table out of doors; and bit by bit I made great improvements at Barragong. He gave me one of the huts for myself, and I was a thought frightened to sleep there my leafu' lane at first, but I put my trust in my Maker, and He watched over me. I cooked ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,— One ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... witness, but he-was saddled, bridled, and ridden to the winning-post. His lips opened literally, making his mouth like the slit of a pillar-box. Getting evidence from him was like extracting a rotten cork from the neck of a bottle but it all came out bit by bit, and the poor man must have left the witness-box feeling that he had delivered himself into the hands of that uncircumcised Philistine. His cross-examination lasted three hours. It was like flaying alive. Once ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... was a case of—send for the manager, send for the storekeeper, call up all the servants, get hold of extra men, fetch water, put up ladders, unfasten ropes, pull down planks, take away bedding, pick up broken glass bit by bit, wrench nails from the wall one by one.—The chandelier falls and its pieces strew the floor; pick them up again piece by piece.—I myself whisk the dirty mat off the floor and out of the window, dislodging a horde of cockroaches, messmates, ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... with me walking down a crowded street, surrounded by honking cars and yelling newsboys and talking people. The noise bothers me and I'm tempted to cover my ears to shut it out, but I try to ignore it, instead, and walk faster and faster. Bit by bit, the buildings I pass are smaller, the people fewer, the noise less. All at once, I discover there's nothing around at all but a spreading carpet of gray-green moss, years deep, and a silence that feels as old as time itself. There's nothing to frighten me, but I am ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... have to tell, there remains a portrait statue in the British Museum. Sometimes I go to look at that statue and try to recall exactly under what circumstances I caused it to be shaped, puzzling out the story bit by bit. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... he began the four saints there, in 1510, had not some misunderstanding between the rulers of the order prevented their continuation. [Footnote: Vasari's Lives, vol. iii. p. 224.] Even now he worked in a desultory manner, doing it bit by bit, but in the end producing ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... were trout in these streams above falls which would be absolutely impassable to any fish. How could they get there? It was a riddle. The only possible answer was that the fish must be older than the falls, that the stream had worn away its bed, bit by bit, until an impassable barrier from below had been created, but that the trout had gone on in the upper creeks, developing in their own way, for hundreds ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... on Errington to produce the will and assert his right, he would provide for those poor innocent boys, and never ask her for any of the money she had spent. Maybe he would share with George himself. She must see Errington at once, and with the strictest secrecy. Her thoughts cleared as, bit by bit, her plan unfolded itself in her busy brain. Then she made up her mind. Touching the check-string, she desired the driver to stop at a small fancyware and stationer's shop near Miss Payne's house. Arrived there, she dismissed ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... This was taken, and bit by bit Peter doled out another portion of the white cake, venturing at the same time to stroke the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... nothing could be done for Evans until it took off sufficiently for the dog-teams to travel. But in the meantime Crean urgently wanted food and rest and warmth. As these were supplied to him Atkinson learned bit by bit the story of the saving of Evans' life, told so graphically in Lashly's diary which is given in the preceding chapter, and pieced together the details of Crean's solitary walk of thirty-five statute miles. This effort was made, it should be remembered, at the end of a journey of three ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon in the Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a buffoon, a veritable clown, a vagrant, a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... rid of her. He'll wake up in the morning and find she's gone; and the door'll be open. He'll think she's run away. He'll go looking for her, and he'll keep on hoping to find her. So that'll ease the shock, you see, by letting him down bit by bit, instead of snatching his pet away from him violent-like. And he won't hold it up against US, either, as he would the other way. I can offer a reward ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... began to sniff ominously, and Gladys spoke longingly of the fathers possessed by other girls. It was not until Mrs. Jobson sat eyeing her supper, instead of eating it, that he began to temporize. He gave way bit by bit, garment by garment. When he gave way at last on the great hat question, his wife took up her knife ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... she was amused. Papa gave Elsie "something" before she went to bed,— a very mild dose I fancy; for doctors' little girls, as a general rule, do not take medicine, and next day she was much better. As the adventures of the Conic Section visit leaked out bit by bit, the family laughed till it seemed as if they would never stop. Phil was forever enacting the pig, standing on his triumphant hind legs, and patting Elsie's head with his nose; and many and many a time, "It will end like your visit to Mrs. Worrett," proved a useful check when Elsie ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... mark, stage &c (term) 71; intensity, strength &c (greatness) 31. Adj. comparative; gradual, shading off; within the bounds &c (limit) 233. Adv. by degrees, gradually, inasmuch, pro tanto [It]; however, howsoever; step by step, bit by bit, little by little, inch by inch, drop by drop; a little at a time, by inches, by slow degrees, by degrees, by little and little; in some degree, in some measure; to some extent; di grado in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Strange folk! Salem had a type of itself in its very harbor. The ship America, at Downer's wharf, grew old and went to pieces in that one spot, through years. Bit by bit it fell to atoms, but never ceded itself to the new era. So with Salem, precisely. It is the most delightful place to visit for this reason, because it so carefully retains the spirit of the past; and 'The House of the Seven ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Bit by bit she reveals herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere, we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Bit by bit he told the story— How he'd wandered all around Since he left his Kansas homestead And the folks near North Pole mound; How he'd traveled all through Texas With the roving fever on, Camping oft in strange new places, Where ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... Bit by bit into Cal Maggard's gropings after a plan crept the beginnings of an idea, though sometimes under the stupefying waves of drowsiness he lost his thread ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... mother's and Bubru Singh's delight. Long before an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm—scandalizing, then amazing, then educating bit by bit—Yasmini had developed her own ideas and brought them by arduous practise to something near perfection. To that her strength, agility and sinuous grace were largely due; and she practised no deceptions on herself, but valued all three ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... And, bit by bit, the tongue withdrew, and only the gaping mouth was left, and above it a pair of frightened green eyes, transmitting to the perverse little soul within new impressions ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... monsters retreat; not scared-like, but with a show of defiance, as if disposed to contest possession of the place. They give back, however, bit by bit, till at length, ceasing to dispute, they shuffle off over the quarter, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Slowly, bit by bit, with many meditative pauses, many sinkings of her thought into the depths, as if she sounded at each point her own ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... it out of her, bit by bit. And maybe, even if she isn't Frieda Hammer, Pansy troop could help her ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... Bit by bit he accumulated many necessary articles, including some tooth-brushes which he found sealed in glass bottles, and a variety of gold toilet articles. Use was his first consideration now. Beauty ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... quiet way, and was of the opinion that John should go by all means, for, after all, who could say that the vision might not have been reality? When one considered the stories one had read! and had not the dog just heard the whole of "Robinson Crusoe" read aloud, bit by bit, in stealthy whispers, by early daylight, by moonlight, by stray bits of candle begged from a neighbor,—had he not heard and appreciated every word of the immortal story? He was no ignorant dog, indeed! His advice was ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... mechanical problem and calls for grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. All this means time and development. It comes not complete by instant revolution of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years—it comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and grow and as children are trained ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... first faint flush of dawn as Cromwell, knocking the ashes from his pipe, advised me to go to bed. "You get the old factor to tell you the story of his friend the cure, and of the cure's Christmas gift," Cromwell called back, and I made a point of getting the story, bit by bit, from the florid factor himself, and you shall read it as it has ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... And bit by bit the story was told her. It was a very simple story. Ten years ago was the time, a garrison town in Cyprus the place. Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she answered, "I have already forgiven you, Henry." She chose her words ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... age? If you are good, strong, and handsome, you have a fine fortune indeed at twenty, but how much of it will be left at sixty? For you must live on your capital; there is no investing your powers so that you may get a small annuity of life for ever: you must eat up your principal bit by bit and be tortured by seeing it grow continually smaller and smaller, even though you happen to escape being rudely robbed of it by crime or casualty. Remember, too, that there never yet was a man of forty who would not come back into the world of the unborn if he could do ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... he made a slight incision down the breast-bone, and then proceeded to tear off the skin, bit by bit, feathers and all. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... or second act that she has attempted to poison herself; then, after that hint, the poisoning in the third act will not seem so startling and will be more in place. Telerev talks too much: such characters ought to be shown bit by bit between others, for in any case such people are everywhere merely incidental—both in life and on the stage. Make Elena dine with all the rest in the first act, let her sit and make jokes, or else there is very little of her, and she is not clear. Her avowal to Pyotr is too abrupt, on ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... she stormed, prancing from one side of the table to the other, shaking the flimsy sheets in an angry hand, and scattering pins and needles broadcast on the carpet, while Eunice, like the tortoise, toiled slowly away, until bit by bit the puzzle became clear to her mind. She discovered that one piece of the pattern stood for half only of a particular seam, while others, such as collar and cuffs, represented a whole; mastered the mystery of holes and notches, and ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... such undesirable acquaintanceships. Alick was much interested in the little wanderer; and even after the rest had set off towards the farmhouse, which they were to visit before returning, he remained beside her, drawing from her, bit by bit, her touching history, until she began to remember how late it was, and started homeward, much astonished and cheered by the kindness and ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... those hotels that are going up in London! They'd give you a start, and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in a comically naive tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by bit! Now, if it hadn't been ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... truth in the domain of nature therefore is through analysis and the gradual methods of science, but our apprehension of truth in our soul is immediate and through direct intuition. We cannot attain the supreme soul by successive additions of knowledge acquired bit by bit even through all eternity, because he is one, he is not made up of parts; we can only know him as heart of our hearts and soul of our soul; we can only know him in the love and joy we feel when we give up our self and stand before ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... out into vehement denunciation of the two boys, but my father silenced her. Quietly he began to question me: he would take no denial, and drew out of me bit by bit the whole story of the bullying I had suffered from those two ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... for a moment; then agreed that the man, also, might notice that the bees failed to sting him as long as he continued to destroy their other enemies. If so, it was quite conceivable that, bit by bit, the bees had found other and more positive ways of securing the aid of men through threatening to sting. "Even to cultivating flowers for their benefit," she ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... 'done' the priests, and the sequel proves my suspicions to be correct. That day before she left, she discovered that she was suspected, and very prudently threw off her mask very soon after. Her correct history we are only getting bit by bit; but all we have learned convinces us that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very little of English, by persuading him that she is the daughter of an English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... papillae before mentioned, which are situated at the roots of the branchiae. The pericardium and these receptacles of the glands, when first laid open, were found filled with a coagulated substance so closely compacted as to require a careful removal, bit by bit, before the contained follicles and vessels ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... question, "Where is Rollitt?" continued to exercise Fellsgarth, from the head-master down to the junior fag. Bit by bit all that could be found out about his movements came to light. His study was visited by the masters. It disclosed the usual state of grime and confusion. His fishing-rod and tackle were there. There had been no attempt to pack his few belongings, which lay scattered about in dismal ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... unlike the quilting of fifty years ago cannot be imagined. The finest materials were used, the padding being placed bit by bit in its place—not in the wholesale fashion of later years, when a sheet or two of wadding was placed between the sheets of cotton or linen, and a coarse back-stitching outlined in great scrawling patterns held the whole together. The old "quilting" work ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes |
