"In a nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reported by Xenophon, put my case in a nutshell. When a friend complained to Socrates that a man whom he had saluted had not saluted him in return, the father of philosophy replied: "It is an odd thing that if you had met a man ill-conditioned in body you would ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... my lady. Well, here it is in a nutshell: I have not spoken of it before, but you and Mr. Browne can very easily comply with the provisions of the will. You can be married at any ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... justice, of mercy, and of policy. The scheme they pursued has found an assiduous apologist in their new historian. "To accuse the good fathers of Constance of conscious bad faith" is impossible. To observe the safe-conduct would have seemed absurd "to the most conscientious jurists of the council." In a nutshell, "if the result was inevitable, it was the fault of the system and not of the judges, and their conscience might well ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... baby through. It's a good deal like swallowing, only the other way around. Your food slips down a passage into your stomach, out of sight. The baby slips down a passage into sight!" There is your story of birth in a nutshell. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... the story of a nation like ours in a nutshell, requires a peculiar faculty for selecting, condensing, and philosophizing. The brevity with which he relates the principal events in American history, does not detract from the charming interest ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Here, in a nutshell, are not only the natural variations of the rock garden, but the inspiration. No rock garden worthy of the name has ever been created by man that did not depend upon a study of those that nature has given the world in prodigal abundance. There were the why ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... himself, I wanted materials for writing his life. He referred me to the year of his birth, the year of his marriage, the year of this, that, and the other. Who cares about dates? The public likes to be tickled by personal statements. Very well—I tickled the public. There you have it in a nutshell." ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... to-night? You are to stand guard in the corridor. Once in awhile you will go out upon the balcony and take a look. You see, I am afraid of someone. Oh, Baldos, what's the use of my trifling like this? You are to escape from Edelweiss to-night. That is the whole plan—the whole idea in a nutshell. Don't look like that. Don't you want to go?" Now ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... knowledge against your father's ignorance has given me the victory. Last night I gained my point: the news to that effect is no doubt contained in that document. It was a question of price—it always is. I knew your father's bid, and—I went a few thousands higher and got the prize. That's the story in a nutshell. Of course there are a number of complications and details, but I spare you them; in fact, I don't suppose you understand them. It is a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... that took in all the points of the compass impartially. "One of us must take a few days off and go and hunt up a nice, inexpensive little Eldorado for us. There!—there, my friends, you have the solution of your knotty little problem in a nutshell. I gladly ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... friendly, and finally became "lovers of Zion" (Hobebe Zion). Among the Russo-Jewish students in Vienna, Smolenskin, the militant Zionist, organized an academic society, Kadimah, a name which, meaning Eastward and Forward, contains the philosophy of Zionism in a nutshell. Seeing that the Alliance Israelite Universelle encouraged emigration to America, both he and Ben Yehudah published violent attacks on the French society, and endeavored to thwart its plans as far as possible.[9] The Hebrew weekly Ha-Meliz, published in St. Petersburg, was a ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... whole problem in a nutshell—men must live. As for the aged and the incompetent and the sick and the unattached women, these are left behind for the community to support, while young and active men of energy move off to endow new lands with their capacities and strength. The results ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... smiled the ghost of a grim little smile. "I suppose I wasn't exactly in a position to insist on a husband's fidelity, but when he began to be a filthy nuisance I got rid of him. Just before I went abroad this last time I divorced him, and gave him enough to keep him running for a while. My story in a nutshell is this," and she touched her fingers lightly as she epitomized her personal history: "married at eighteen, to a gentleman; a mother at twenty; at twenty-three, ran off with a blackguard; married him in due course to satisfy the convenances. Not forty ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... satisfaction in feeling that she had drawn upon herself at least one-half as much attention as the more legitimate object of the gathering; however, she was sternly resolved never to repeat the experience, and she accordingly became a walking arsenal of restoratives, whenever a clinic was on hand. In a nutshell, Phebe found theory far more attractive than practice. Surgery was a grand and helpful profession; but, under some circumstances, it was not neat, and Phebe must have ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... should have made that his first word an' give me my paper for nothin',—seein' as the whole of the thing is got to rest right on me, for I don't know what is the bottom of a newspaper if it ain't the woman as boards the editor. Yes, Mrs. Lathrop, that's my view in a nutshell, the more so as Mr. Kimball openly says as Elijah Doxey says he's a genius an' can't live in any house where there's other folks or any noise but his own. Mr. Kimball said it seemed as if a good angel had made me for the ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... find the piece of muslin, but instead there was only a hazel-nut. He cracked it, and there lay a cherry-stone. Everybody was looking on, and the King was chuckling to himself at the idea of finding the piece of muslin in a nutshell. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... simply not felt the need of drink. Further, her sleep continues to be splendid. She is getting more and more calm, in spite of the fact that on several occasions her sang-froid has been severely tested. To put the matter in a nutshell, she is a changed woman. But what impresses me most is the fact that when she took to your method she thought herself at the end of her tether, and in the event of its doing her no good had decided to kill herself (she had ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... voice or dream comes to you, the way to know, whether it's an angel or devil is to shake hands, and if it is an angel you'll feel a good, firm, solid grip sort of coming out of nowhere, but if it isn't an angel you'll feel nothing. It's kind of Joe to put it in a nutshell, necessary nowadays that we're all hard at it having revelations of our own. He thought that nobody would feel the grip but himself. Quite mistaken. I shook hands with my angel, tho' I couldn't see a ghost of him, and when he said, 'You come along now to Missouri, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me! During the months that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt. He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... attendant's throat. Thus was formed a chain with a weak, if not a missing, link in the middle. Picture, if you will, an insane man being choked by a supposedly sane one, and he in turn being choked by a temporarily sane insane friend of the assaulted one, and you will have Nemesis as nearly in a nutshell as any mere rhetorician has yet ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... of odd, as if you were keeping something back. I don't see why, either. I've kept my promise. I've explained—put the whole story in a nutshell, not to bore you too much with my love affairs gone bad. And what I've told you is the Gospel's own truth, old man, whether you believe ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... his case in a nutshell. "Our client," he contended, "was NOT the man against whom the warrant in this case had been duly issued; he was NOT the man named Guy Waring; he was NOT the man whom the witnesses deposed to having seen at Mambury; he was NOT the man who had loitered with evil ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... important passage to get hold of in studying Browning. It may be said to gather up Browning's philosophy of life in a nutshell. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... hour, and we see even the king himself, lounging idly among his favourite companions, working at a tiny loom, his latest pretty toy. Compare this trifling with the attitude of Henri IV and Louis XIV toward tapestry weaving, and we have the situation in a nutshell. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... her work and never ungrudgingly. His censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in this ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... word, it took Germany 100 years to learn by suffering that if she is ever to regain her fallen prestige as a nation, she must fight her enemies at home and abroad; she must restore the military ideal of ancient times. And here, in a nutshell, is the very root of all this cry about militarism: The man who will not fight for what he regards as his political rights, remains a slave his whole life long; for it is the essential nature of man to exercise tyrannous power over human lives, whenever ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... very shortly and very clearly by the gentleman who was employed for the prosecution. It would all, he said, have laid in a nutshell, had it not been complicated by a previous robbery at Carlisle. Were it necessary, he said, there would be no difficulty in convicting the prisoners for that offence also, but it had been thought advisable to confine the prosecution to the act ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... an estimate as preposterous in its superfluity as the misconception just mentioned is preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and Bosola—Bonapartes in the bud, Napoleons in a nutshell, Caesars who have missed their Rubicon and collapse into the likeness of a Catiline—is a sign rather of his noble English loathing for the traditions associated with such names as Caesar and Medici and Borgia, Catiline and Iscariot ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ignominious truth in a nutshell. It is well that it should be stated. Let us hope, now that it stands revealed, that it will influence ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Cathedral town naturally attracts me and recalls sweet memories of the past. On the other hand the life of a well-managed hotel, such as this is not without its agrements. Frivolous it may be (though not light); comfortable and restful it undoubtedly is. The against and the for in a nutshell as it were! Your last letter, in which you dwell on the dampness inevitable in old houses, and quote the Bishop's opinion, would, I think, have left me undisturbed in mind—I have recently taken up the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... and after that advisable, he despatched Mr. Dolby to America for the purpose of surveying the proposed scene of operations. Immediately on his emissary's return, Dickens drew up a few pithy sentences, headed by him, "The Case in a Nutshell." His decision was what those more immediately about him had for some time anticipated. He made up his mind to go, and to go quite independently. The Messrs. Chappell, it should be remarked at once, had no ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... ever have to go upon. 'I have my own theory about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey,' said Lewis Carroll (of 'Alice in Wonderland') once in Christ Church common room: 'it is that they weren't really written by Homer, but by another person of the same name.' There you have the Iliad in a nutshell as regards the authenticity of great works. All we know about the supposed Homer (if anything) is that he was the reputed author of the two unapproachable Greek epics; and all we know directly about my old master, viewed ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Socialism in the Press has no doubt served to distort the idea of our movement in the minds of a large proportion of busy men, and filled them with an unfounded dread of social insecurity. If it were possible to allay that by an epigrammatic programme, "Socialism in a Nutshell," so to speak, I would do my best. But the economic and trading system of a modern State is not only a vast and complex tangle of organizations, but at present an uncharted tangle, and necessarily the methods of transition from the limited individualism of our present condition ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Jared laughed comfortably from the secure position he had gained for himself from this misery. "Trying to shield him, eh? It won't do, Joyce. Your daddy's too much a man of the world for that. Now here it is in a nutshell: The boys at the tavern are back of me. How do I know? You leave that to me. Now I calculate that Gaston don't want any of the dust of his past stirred up by us. If he's been playing with you, it's for you ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... thing is in a nutshell. Numbers, as such, are abstractions and hard to be remembered. To make them hard to forget, we translate them into words or phrases. These are easily remembered and they always instantly give back the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... week from my school-girls. From no source in the world could sympathy be more genial to me. The money I shall appropriate to a long-cherished scheme of mine, a special work in the Museum which must be exclusively my own,—the arrangement of a special collection illustrating in a nutshell, as it were, all the relations existing among animals,—which I have deferred because other things were more pressing, and our means have been insufficient. The feeling that you are all working with me will be even more cheering than the material help, much needed as that is. I wish I ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... intellect. Still we recommend you, whenever you hear an alleged fact substantiated by it, to set your ear as sharply as possible; for, after all, it is more than probable that every book by which he has sworn might be contained in a nutshell. The secret may be briefly explained:—Paddy is in the habit of substituting the word never for ever. "By all the books that never wor opened or shut," the reader perceives, is only a nourish of trumpets—a ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... protector; also, an ideal lover. But, my dearest, kindest, best of fathers; you know very well, that to trust you implicitly, is a law of my life! I have always trusted you! Therefore, I am not disappointed; neither am I very much surprised. I am just perfectly happy. That is the whole story in a nutshell!" ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... picked on me to ask what I thought of working under the Partnership Plan. After he moved on the girls got the giggles. "Say, these folks that come around here forever asking what we think about the Partnership Plan! Say, what any of us knows about that could be put in a nutshell." ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... "That's the whole trouble in a nutshell," said the doctor; "but you know there isn't a scarcity of children in the world. Never a day passes but I see half a dozen who need me, sorely. But with Nancy Ellen, NO CHILD will do unless she mothers it, and unfortunately, none ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Alps. In medicine, what progress has been made since ague was compared to the flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton, who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient's neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! In chemistry, what strides! In astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy, what thanks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the Christian scheme in a nutshell? God made man perfect—though some people, after reading the life of Adam, say that God made him a perfect fool. This perfect man was tackled by the Devil, a sort of spiritual Pasteur, who inoculated him with sin, which was transmitted to his posterity as original sin. God desires man's ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... in a nutshell," said Lavendar, filling his pipe. "Mrs. de Tracy is entirely within her legal rights when she asks Mrs. Prettyman to leave the cottage; legally right also when she declines to give compensation for the plum tree that ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... enough dust to build a new world. Every street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat—"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full this'll do ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... to gain and nothing to lose. Precisely; old man, you've put it in a nutshell. The only other thing is, do you ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... like a whiff of fresh sea air. Yes, it would be delightful to be on board Flying Fish now. However, no doubt Algie Thynne—(how eloquently, by the way, you describe him! putting all the complications of his character and the dazzling charm of his personality in a nutshell by the simple sentence 'He's rather a nut!')—amply compensates for my absence. You ask if I know him. I do, though perhaps more by reputation than anything else. We have met once or twice. Where? I can't quite recall. Perhaps at the Oratory, or at the Supper Club or some place of that sort. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... 'Why don't you complain to the agent?' I said. 'Complain! Lor' bless you, miss, you may complain till you're black in the face. I've allus found—an' I've been here, man and boy, thirty-two year—as how Winterbournes generally best it.' There you have the whole thing in a nutshell. It's a tyranny—a tyranny of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that every farmer and farmer's family in the land could read "The Story of the Soil," for it gives in a nutshell the results of years of patient study and investigation upon the most vital question that now confronts the farmer: How shall he conserve his soil? I have read it with great pleasure and profit.—FRED L. HATCH, Farmer, ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... with curiosity. This, in a nutshell, summed up Ruth's character. She could never bear ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... Turke should license Diurnals, because he prohibits learning and books." He characterises the Diurnal as "a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time; it is a history in sippets; the English Iliads in a nutshell; the Apocryphal Parliament's Book of Maccabees in ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... guardian of public interests are good enough to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. Now, how are you going to make money with ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... matter? It is a mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back—which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I don't wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... accelerated pace to receive fresh honors. That gave me a lesson which I have never forgotten; no honor that has come to me have I ever fully earned; and no disgrace that I have earned has ever been visited upon me for the public to know. There in a nutshell you have the moral training of the heir to a modern throne. What chance, then, have I ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... dejection. Roderick and Roderick's concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural course to talk of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Miss Garland's fine smile. Madame Grandoni was an intelligent listener, and she lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell. "At one moment you tell me the girl is plain," she said; "the next you tell me she 's pretty. I will invite them, and I shall see for myself. But one thing is very clear: you are in ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... admirable, Dr. Hahn's 'Tsuni Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi Khoi.' {202b} This book is sometimes appealed to as a crushing argument against the mythologists who adopt the method we have just explained. Let us see if the blow be so very crushing. To put the case in a nutshell, the Hottentots have commonly been described as a race which worshipped a dead chief, or conjurer—Tsui Goab his name is, meaning Wounded Knee, a not unlikely name for a savage. Dr. Hahn, on the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... yet are secretly looked upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-ling, discussing the Chengchiatun affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their childish intrigues.' ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... among the simple islanders—singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress—is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In Guy Mannering,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied Riveros; "that is the matter in a nutshell. Now listen to me for a few moments, please. As you are aware, we have practically destroyed the naval power of Peru; and we have also made short work of her armies wherever we have come into contact with them. In a word, Peru is almost at the end ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... send you the proper food; and it will not be gum, or cold-cream or candels ether, I can tell you. Why even Mr. le Cure wood no enuf not to give you enny of those things. That Teddy is not fit to have a godchild, and that is the hole story in a nutshell. I dunno just what I shall do if he rites to me. Mebbe I will anser and mebbe I wont. I guess I shall tell miss Betty about it. Have I ever tole you about her? She lives in the big house on the hill next to Sid Perkins and she has hare like, well like what ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... thought. The actual formal units of speech, the words, may on occasion identify themselves with either of the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more subsidiary ones. We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell, with no bad dreams. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Mr Nicholls; very much obliged indeed we are; and that's puttin' the matter in a nutshell," supplemented the second man, with another ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the women's clubs, or to Madam ——'s Current Topics Society. The latter is an extraordinary affair, where society women who have no time to read the news of the day listen to short lectures on the news of the preceding week, discussed pro and con, giving these women in a nutshell material for intelligent conversation when they meet senators and other men at the various receptions before which they wish ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... were brought back, and a manful attempt was made to get the new constitution to work, in the winter of 1791-92. It was soon found out that Mirabeau had been right when he said that for a monarchy it was too democratic, and for a republic there was a king too much. This was Burke's Reflections in a nutshell. But it was foreign intervention that finally ruined the king, and destroyed the hope of an orderly issue. Frederick the Great had set the first example of what some call iniquity and violence in Europe, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... in a nutshell," my father assented; "and, as I said before: What are we going to do ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... govern his spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority so to do both together and severally." In this bold and masterful speech we have the whole political philosophy of Puritanism, as in a nutshell. Under the guise of theocratic fanaticism, and in words as arrogant as ever fell from priestly lips, there was couched the assertion of the popular will against despotic privilege. Melville could say such things to the king's face and walk ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... information furnished—to suggest, in your examination of her today. And so, sir, I wish to tell you this. I acted as legal adviser to the late Mr. Kitely. I made his will. I have that will in this bag. And—to put matters in a nutshell, Mr. Brereton—there is not a living soul in this world who knows the contents of that ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... Johnson, but as her business is not so good at times she has me whenever she can feel as if she can spare the money. So this little life of mine has been almost locked up in a nutshell, and Jesus has come to me in the spirit's power that I should tell the world of His wonderful love to me a poor sinner of the dust. And what can not the Lord do for those who put their trust in Him? We feel like saying ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... at the message beside him. "'The G.O.C. wishes to meet the Engineer Officer in charge of Left Section, at Centre Battalion Headquarters, at 10 a.m., A.A.A. Message ends.' There in a nutshell ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... There was the matter in a nutshell. He had done nothing carelessly; he was touching off our conflict with flashes of genius. He was the man who had roused in me last night the fiercest passions of my life, and yet this morning he had saved me from death, and, though he was still my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coming to that, my friend," was the answer. "It lies in a nutshell: in a northern region there exists a child, of whose person, for certain reasons, unnecessary now to state, I wish to obtain possession. He lives in a mansion capable of defence; you may possibly, therefore, have to use ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... "The matter then lies in a nutshell and depends entirely upon whether Lance continues true to his love or not. If he remains true, your scheme for parting them will have but little effect; if he prove false, why then all will be well, according to your way ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... thin out. Reduced to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy", (Urbanite, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with the French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it, imposes on the public. Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the purpose of composing maxims, definitions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... confess that I felt somewhat chagrined in having what I considered my unanswerable arguments so summarily disposed of, and the serious impression I had made on the audience so speedily dissipated. The good man intended no disrespect, as he told me afterward. He simply put the whole argument in a nutshell: "Let a woman ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the Litchfield County Choral Union at Norfolk, Conn., of Percy Grainger's suite for orchestra "In a Nutshell" conducted by the composer; C. M. Loeffler's symphony "Hora Mystica" conducted by ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... the image of the smiling lawyer haunted Carthew's memory. "That three minutes' talk was all the education I ever had worth talking of," says he. "It was all life in a nutshell. Confound it," I thought, "have I got to the point ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... becoming strongly attached to them on account of the importance which every man naturally bestows on matters of that sort; what among other nations forms a complicated code of morality more or less pure, more or less corrupt, for the nations of which we speak becomes compressed, so to speak, in a nutshell, and, the essence remaining always at the bottom, the idea of duty grows paramount in their minds and hearts, and every thing they do is illumined by that light of the human conscience, which, after all, is for each one of us the voice of God. False issues ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... said Steve. "That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was this way. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play around with, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found that there was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here who ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Ernest; "and if any mischief arises out of this imprudence, I shall never forgive myself. But who could have dreamt of any one being foolhardy enough to attempt the rescue of a ship in a nutshell that scarcely holds ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... story, the script is half sold. This being true, it follows that your synopsis must be clear, interesting, and as brief as you can possibly make it, while still giving all the important points of the story. He must grasp your plot, if not in a nutshell, at least in just as few words as it can be compressed into in order to make its development perfectly clear. You must therefore outline it, so that he may be able to see plainly the possibilities of the story as it would work itself out ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... just right, we should begin to send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along about the first of May we should sit down about a hundred strong, the most distinguished people in the country, and solemnize our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might expand and I might expound, but that's the sum and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I have often thought that the passage "I often wonder... given to the world to-day," contains the whole duty of the conscientious biographer in a nutshell.] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the influence of the Spirit, God's holiness reveals to man his sin, and God's love leads him to the feet of Jesus. This is the first step in Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutshell, deduction from the existence of God normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted Christ, his Lord is more than a historical Redeemer, he is a present Saviour ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... in a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out love ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... yourself had set me to thinking the better of myself. Your confession of fault, putting me in a good humor with myself, puts me also in a good humor with you. My merits, then, and your demerits are on the best of terms. In short, Sprigg, to sum it all up in a nutshell, I am not only one of the best fellows in the world, but one of the best friends you ever had, or ever shall have; which assurance, though you may doubt it now, I will prove to your entire satisfaction, even while yet the month of June is ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O'Connett, and had brought down ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... "but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold only a certain number of men, so couldn't master estimate ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... One who knew Mr. Bynner only by the terrific white slave drama Tiger, would be quite unprepared for the sylvan sweetness of the Grenstone poems. Their environment, mainly rural, does not localize the sentiment overmuch; for the poet's mind is a kingdom, even though he is bounded in a nutshell. The environment, however, may be partly responsible for the spirit of healthy cheerfulness that animates these verses; whatever they lack, they certainly do not lack purity and charm. Far from the madding crowd the singer finds ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... dark ages! The idea of supposing that horrid old woman could give you love philtres! Why, girl, I've always loved Bruce—always. But I thought he'd forgotten me. And tonight when he came I found he hadn't. There's the whole thing in a nutshell. I'm going to marry him and go home with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... FOLLIOTT. My principles, sir, in these things are, to take as much as I can get, and pay no more than I can help. These are every man's principles, whether they be the right principles or no. There, sir, is political economy in a nutshell. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... "A whole history in a nutshell. But we must be getting near the place, according to what you said at the start. There are the three oaks growing in a clump. Now ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... and testament some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of. I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which I am assured you received. I make no ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... all I've got to say!" pursued Olive vindictively, and a torrent of words poured out from her: "It was a pretty scheme your Miss Verney had planned! She was to egg me on to divorce you, so that she could get a clutch on your feelings and marry you and your money! Your money—that puts it in a nutshell! That's the kind of woman a man like you falls in love with! A woman who's too shrewd and too cunning to commit herself. Who provokes and tantalizes and lures on a man, and then stops him short at the very last moment. The musical-comedy type. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... short of twenty years old, Salemina short of forty, I short of thirty. Francesca is in love, Salemina never has been in love, I never shall be in love. Francesca is rich, Salemina is well-to-do, I am poor. There we are in a nutshell. ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... In a nutshell, the explanation of the timid policy displayed is that the Brothers are fully assured that the disclosure of that actual truth (which constitutes the secret doctrine) about the origin of the World and of Humanity—of the laws which govern their existence, and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... than the bent oar, what can be greater than the sun? Still he seems to us a foot broad, and Epicurus thinks he may be a little broader or narrower than he seems. With all his enormous speed, too, he appears to us to stand still (82). The whole question lies in a nutshell; of four propositions which prove my point only one is disputed viz. that every true sensation has side by side with it a false one indistinguishable from it (83). A man who has mistaken P. for Q. Geminus ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... speak as one Frenchman to another, as one soldier to another. If the emperor does not die, he will declare war against Germany. There is the situation in a nutshell, is it not? And do you think the army can afford to lose one man at the present time, especially a man who has made good use of such small opportunities of distinction as the fates have offered him? And, so far as I have been able to follow the intricacies of the parochial politics, your ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... plan had one great merit to the mind of a foreigner denied the lucidity of our Italian intelligence—it was adorably simple. I can give it to you now in a nutshell as I learned it later, not as I knew it then, for I did not know it then. Nobody knew it then except Messer Simone of the one part, and Messer Griffo of the other part, and one other who was not meant to know it or supposed to know it, but who, in defence of special interests, first guessed at ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... trifling sum of money which he was called on to pay for him. It may be that the first blame lay not with the Prime Minister himself, but with the Prime Minister's wife. With that we have nothing to do. The whole thing lies in a nutshell. The bare mention of the name of her Grace the Duchess in Parliament would have saved the Duke, at any rate as effectually as he has been saved by the services of his man-of-all-work, Phineas Finn, and would have saved him without driving poor Ferdinand ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... and pitiful phrase—"Night's candles are burnt out"—reappears in all its paltry vulgarity as follows;—"Night's candles burn obscure." Ample as was the proof here supplied, he would prefer to rely exclusively upon such further evidence as might be said to lie at once on the surface and in a nutshell. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Here is the situation in a nutshell," went on the Prime Minister. "We are doomed unless succor reaches us from the outside. We have discussed a hundred projects. While we are inactive, Count Marlanx is gaining more power and a greater hold over the people of the city. We have no means of communication ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Black Forest. Germany has shown England the greater advantage of a German-English coalition, and France is frozen out. England, with her shrewd alertness to make the most profitable deal, entertained if did not close the German proposition. In a nutshell, it is this: ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the remarkable systems of worlds that revolve around Sirius. It is a veritable medley of planets, large and small, inhabited and barren, sinless, sinful and millennial. A little universe packed in a nutshell, figuratively speaking. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... is every man knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice is—this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness. Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on the other hand, has ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... she wants, ma'am. Take my word for it, this matter rests entirely with you. It's all in a nutshell. Encourage her to confide ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... what a splendid Peggy it is, until I lose her. Look here, dear, here's the whole thing in a nutshell. While I've been morbidly occupied with myself and my grievances and my disgrace and my efforts to pull through, and have gradually developed into a sort of half-breed between a Tommy and a gentleman with every mortal thing in me warped and changed, you've stuck to the original rotten ass ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Boreman were undoubtedly among its earliest members. His first pastor there was Rev. Richard Denton, whom Cotton Mather describes, as "a little man with a great soul, an accomplished mind in a lesser body, an Iliad in a nutshell; blind of an eye, but a great seer; seeing much of what eye hath not seen." In the deep forests, amid the cabins of settlers, and the wigwams of savages, he composed a system of Divinity entitled "Soliloquia Sacra." Rev. John Sherman, ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... a thin, straight old man with a white beard arose from a chair and approached them in greeting. The ancient, conventional, patriarchal order, Cameron thought. He could see the whole setup in a nutshell right now. Squalid communities like this where the too-old and the too-young were nurtured on the calcified traditions to which nothing was ever added. The able serving in the homes of the Markovians, providing sustenance for themselves and those who depended on them. The Markovians were generous ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... whole case in a nutshell when he remarked, 'My novels have always been written with a higher aim than merely to amuse. I have so high an opinion of the novel as a means of expression that I have chosen it as the form in which to present to ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... be quite fair to the Brethren; he wished to give them a chance of clearing themselves; and, therefore, he now published his pamphlet entitled "Queries to Count Zinzendorf." It contained the whole case in a nutshell. For the sum of sixpence the ordinary reader had now the case against the Brethren in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... THOMAS, and another. Auction Bridge in a Nutshell. By Butler and Brevitas—the Butler being Henry Thomas Butler, nephew of ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... wonderful fairy tales and strange stories of the forest. He told them of the goblins that came at night to water the horses, of how the oxen talked in their stalls on Christmas Eve, of how a spider shut up in a nutshell could cure the fever, and of the marvellous powers possessed by horse shoes and four-leaved clover. He knew more strange things than twenty ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... cried out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams—which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream—and I hold ambition of so airy ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... In 1892 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young petitioned the Legislature for her personal enfranchisement, adopting this method of presenting the arguments in a nutshell, and as "news" they were widely published and commented on. At this session Gen. Robert R. Hemphill, a stanch advocate, presented a bill in the Senate to give women the franchise and the right of holding office, and brought it ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... In a nutshell, then, what the advertising department needs is that great body of non-subscribing suffragists to enroll as readers. Think of that 68,000 whose names and addresses we have! If we only had them on our lists, if they stood back of ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... can help you; I believe you can assist me. There is the position in a nutshell. I am honest. I make no pretence of liking unprofitable friends myself. But we will talk afterward, monsieur," he added, as a servant announced supper, and De Froilette led the way into an adjoining room. The meal was faultlessly served at a round ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... in, heard a sensational newspaper report of anti-ally criminal intent, and on the spot accused the highly respectable Granados rancho of indulging in that same variety of hellishness! Now there is your case in a nutshell, Bub, and you wouldn't get the authorities to believe ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... when that interest which comes from continued agreement between the work in hand and the child's inner wants is absolutely essential to the gaining of knowledge. Mr. W. N. Hailmann puts the whole matter in a nutshell when he says: "If the kindergartner has the penetration to discover these inner wants, and the skill to adapt the circumstances and her own purposes to these, she will find it easy to secure and hold ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Isabel. "They will learn by-and-by. I don't suppose Mr. and Mrs. Cardew mean to keep them always shut up in a nutshell." ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... (to the Eldest of the Wise Men) There you have it! That, as some one has admirably phrased it, is the situation in a nutshell. What shall ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... the true path is Jesus Christ, on the other hand the means by which we walk upon that path is our faith. The Apostle puts it all in a nutshell when he says that his prayer for the Ephesian Church is that 'Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,' and then, by a linked chain which we have not now to consider, leads up to the final issues of that faith in that indwelling Christ—'that ye may be filled with all the fulness of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... benefits seems so to exceed the sum of its perceptible evils as to constitute a balance of advantage. Yet the magnificent innocence of the statesman or philosopher to whose understanding "the whole matter lies in a nutshell"—who thinks he can formulate a practical political or social policy within the four corners of an epigram—who fears nothing because he knows nothing—is constantly to the fore with a simple specific for ills whose causes are complex, constant and inscrutable. To the understanding of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... that of bringing up flesh and blood in harness. No colt will bear it, or he's a tame beast. And look you: take it on medical grounds. Early excesses the frame will recover from: late ones break the constitution. There's the case in a nutshell. How's your son?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rarely profitable. Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of "kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of "tales" in both senses, is immensely ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... but for Hamlet it is a discovery hardly won. And throughout this kingdom of the mind, where he felt that man, who in action is only like an angel, is in apprehension like a god, he moved (we must imagine) more than content, so that even in his dark days he declares he could be bounded in a nutshell and yet count himself a king of infinite space, were it not that ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... be sure!' said the Jew, who had entered unseen by Oliver. 'It all lies in a nutshell my dear; in a nutshell, take the Dodger's word for it. Ha! ha! ha! He understands the catechism ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... suggesting, doctor," answered the detective, good-humouredly. "I'll put the thing in a nutshell—my profound belief is that if we want to get at the bottom of these two murders we've got to go back a long way, to the Elizabeth Robinson time, and that Chuh Fen is the only person I've heard of, up to now, who can throw a light on that ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... away from it. But the important information gained is that, though you may be 25 miles away, you know on what line you are, and when this line is later crossed with another line of position that fix will be accurate. "Two sights make a fix" is the whole matter in a nutshell. ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... subject lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious pomological speculations; and from that time till now—Longfellow, thou reasonest well!—"things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... fight him; that's all. Of course steps will be taken at once to get together in the proper legal form all evidence of every description which may bear on the subject, so that should the question ever be raised again, the whole matter may be in a nutshell." ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Finibus, i. viii. to end (translation by J. S. Reid, Camb. Univ. Press). The following sentence in ch. 18, sec. 57, puts the Epicurean ethics in a nutshell: "Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse iucunde vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, iusteque vivatur, nec sapienter, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... "I see the whole thing in a nutshell. You married an adventurer; he told you who he was, but you've never been able to prove it; and suddenly you are deserted by him, and on going over his wardrobe you find he has left nothing but these articles: and now you wish to sue him for a separation on the ground of desertion, ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... first. She was much more humble and considerate, I remarked; instead of bullying me into things she now cajoled me; instead of making demands upon my patience and generosity, she rather hesitated about putting me to the least trouble. She wasn't so arrogant, nor so hard to manage. In a nutshell, I may say with some satisfaction, she was beginning to show a surprising amount of respect for me and my opinions. Where once she had done as she pleased, she now did so only after asking my advice and permission, both of which I gave freely as a gentleman should. Fundamentally ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon |
