"Pitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or packing stuff, intervening in any form, in pit, on floors, or lofts, the use of packing stuff appears to be highly prejudicial. In the words of an extensive contractor the heap becomes 'a mass of mortar.'" The report adds: "This description includes the plan of pitting recommended by her Majesty's Commissioners, which ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... between these races by adding to the old stock of animosities a fresh supply of military jealousies. It has let loose over the entire Peninsula a flood of vanity which has upset the balance of a good many heads. A year ago, no sane Servian would have dreamed of pitting his country against Bulgaria, and this recognition of inferiority stood for peace. Now, every Servian officer is convinced that the result of such a trial of forces would be favourable to Servia, just as he is persuaded that the issues of the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... used to say that there were devils in the high berg, and this place was assuredly given over to the powers of the air who had no thought of human life. I seemed to be in the world which had endured from the eternity before man was dreamed of. There was no mercy in it, and the elements were pitting their immortal strength against two pigmies who had profaned their sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow of a fire, for a tree or blade of grass or anything which meant the sheltered homeliness of mortality. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... dust from his silken riding jacket. "We shall then have freedom from the constant war of opposing factions. If General Castro and Governor Pico are not calling Juntas in which to denounce each other, a Carillo is pitting his ambition against an Alvarado. The Gringos will rule us lightly and bring us peace. They will not disturb our grants, and will give us rich prices ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... haven't a bean. And, what is more, things have come to such a pass that I scan the horizon without seeing a single soul I can touch. I suppose I could get into Reggie van Tuyl's ribs for a bit, but—I don't know—touching poor old Reggie always seems to me rather like potting a pitting bird." ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... diver in the belly of a shark. A cold wind blew from the riven mass. Then came the hiss of descending waters. There was neither thunder nor lightning, only the steady rush of the rain that glazed the slippery trail, hid the opposing cliff from sight, sheeting it with dull silver, pounding, pitting, beating at them as they plodded doggedly on, almost blinded, trusting to ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... an Islamic government have mostly run the country since independence from the UK in 1956. Over the past two decades, a civil war pitting black Christians and animists in the south against the Arab-Muslims of the north has cost at least 1.5 million lives in war- and famine-related deaths, as well as the displacement of millions ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... makes his appearance; and nobody at last remains but Alcmene, who keeps up a bitter altercation with Eurystheus. Euripides seems to have taken a particular pleasure in drawing such implacable and rancorous old women: twice has he exhibited Hecuba in this light, pitting her against Helen and Polymestor. In general, we may observe the constant recurrence of the same artifice and motives is a sure symptom of mannerism. We have in the works of this poet three instances of women offered in sacrifice, which are moving from their perfect resignation: Iphigenia, Polyxena, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "only that I have caused so little trouble among the gods; I regret only that the days for pitting my cleverness against your stupidity are at an end—for I ask for no mercy. As for Balder's death, it has been my chief cause for rejoicing as I have dwelt here in this ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... blows. When preachers nowadays lament that we have lost the sense of sin, what they really mean is that we have lost our combativeness: we no longer believe that we must treat our foes with open and brutal violence, and we perceive that such conduct is only pitting one sin against another. There is no warrant in the Gospel for the combative idea of the Christian life; all such metaphors and suggestions come from St. Paul and the Apocalypse. The fact is that the world was not ready for the utter peaceableness of the ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... value is a thing that doesn't cost?" returned Noyes. "All the big things cost big. Half the joy in them is pitting yourself against that and paying the price. The ache you speak of—that's credited to the joy in the end. Those men in the grand-stand don't know that. If you fight hard, you can't lose, no matter what the score ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and backward movements of its body steadied, and it arched through the air, brought down the ape. A pitting, snarling tangle rolled across the slope—and ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... solution has so many presumptions in its favour. I have not reached this firm conviction on account of the great and prolonged success of our drama, but because of the ease with which all the opinions adverse to those of the abbe may be annihilated by pitting them one ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... excretions. Sooner or later, these automatic reactions, and the associated reflexes formed around the mother, father and other associates, come into conflict. Inhibitions or prohibitions of the automatic act at certain times or moments are imposed by somebody. And so there occurs a pitting of the automatic mechanism against the associated reflex. Conflict with adjustment by suppression must occur. Thus a sense of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasant experience), and punishable ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... land of the cactus three methods are utilized, viz., burning, pitting, and poisoning. Where wood is near at hand, the first method is the preferable one. A platform is made by rolling logs together, and after the plants have been uprooted and hacked to pieces they are hauled in drays to the platforms. There they are stacked up ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abu Kir. The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-scene. Gharib and Ajib (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Turkish six inchers. Where the redoubt had been a huge column of smoke arose as from the crater of a volcano. Then fast and furious the enemy guns opened on us. For the first time they showed their full force of fire. Again, the big howitzers led the infernal orchestra pitting the face of no man's land with jet black blotches. The puppet figures we watched began to waver; the Senegalese were torn and scattered. Once more these huge explosions unloading their cargoes of midnight on to the evening gloom. All along the Zouaves and Senegalese gave ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of lying in bed till eleven, and was never ready for practise before twelve. In those early hours she got through her orders and her shopping—that pursuit which to so many women is the only real "sport"—a chase of the ideal; a pitting of one's taste and knowledge against that of the world at large; a secret passion, even in the beautiful, for making oneself and one's house more beautiful. Gyp never went shopping without that faint thrill running up and down her nerves. She hated ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the chief labour of his week and every Tuesday, as he marched from home to the school, he read his fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to outstrip it before a certain goal was reached or planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the pathway and telling himself ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... of Christian belief. But it is often held in a dangerously narrow way and leads to most unwise pitting of the Gospel against other modes of bettering and elevating men, instead of recognising them as allies. Earnest Christian workers are tempted to forget Jesus' own word: 'He that is not against us is for us.' There is no need to disparage other ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... "Arm-pitting in Ancient Greece," in the American Journal of Philology, October, 1885, where a discussion of the familiar texts in Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius will ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 1804] 1st of December Satturday 1804 wind from the N W. all hands ingaged in pitting pickets &. at 10 oClock the half brother of the man who was killed Came and informd. us that after my departure last night Six Chiens So Called by the french Shar ha Indians had arrived with a pipe and Said that The ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... industrial problem. He also enjoyed giving people a piece of his mind; but a piece of his mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around him; Shaw supported them—and supplanted them. Many were pitting the realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, in Arms and the Man, did manage to make war funny as well as frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the management of life. You will hear many persons say that strategy is the chief element of success; that the best way to press through the crowd is to set some men against other men and so take their places. That was a good system for the Middle Ages, when princes had to destroy their rivals by pitting one against the other; but in these days, all things being done in open day, I am afraid it would do you ill-service. No, you must meet your competitors face to face, be they loyal and true men, or traitorous enemies whose weapons are calumny, evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... tenth century; the passage is interesting—"Against pockes: very much shall one let blood and drink a bowl full of melted butter; if they [pustules] strike out, one should dig each with a thorn and then drop one-year alder drink in, then they will not be seen," this was evidently to prevent the pitting dreaded even at so early a date. Smallpox was first described in Germany in 1493, and appeared ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... comfort of the patient as well as for the avoidance of permanent injury to the eyes. Carbolic acid solutions or ointments are to be used continually on the surface of the body, relieving the irritation and to some extent preventing pitting, which is a lasting ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... have interested the chief of Shere Subz in our favour by presents and fair words, might not the same means have been employed for the rescue of poor Stoddart? The only way to deal with a ruffian like him of Bokhara would have been by pitting against him some ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... more test instruments both borrowed and devised; and the formerly unoccupied corner of the section of panels took on more and more the look of a complete installation, in the center of which the Confusor still churkled quietly, pitting its strength against the mighty monster to which it ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... history of art, Sebastian del Piombo is like a shining point in which three schools meet, each bringing its pre-eminent qualities. A Venetian painter, he came to Rome to learn the manner of Raphael under the direction of Michael Angelo, who would fain oppose Raphael on his own ground by pitting one of his own lieutenants against the reigning king of art. And so it came to pass that in Del Piombo's indolent genius Venetian color was blended with Florentine composition and a something of Raphael's manner in the few pictures which he deigned to paint, and the sketches were made for ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... not always been judicious or dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the boiler is at the temperature of the steam contained, a condition to be secured only by proper circulation, danger from internal pitting is minimized, or at least limited only to effects of the water fed the boiler. Where the water in any portion of the boiler is lower than the temperature of the steam corresponding to the pressure carried, whether the fact that such lower temperatures exist as a result of lack ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... talk about his ward, though always with that chivalrous delicacy which was his gift among men. Of late he had been much less ready to talk; a good sign! And now, since Gertrude Marvell's blessed departure, he was more at Maumsey than he had ever been before. He seemed indeed to be pitting his own influence against Miss Marvell's, and in his modest way, yet consciously, to be taking Delia in hand, and endeavouring to alter her outlook on life; clearing away, so far as he could, the atmosphere of angry, hearsay ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Gibraltar. And here, O captious critic, is a Wonderwork which not only disarms but staggers, paralyses and annihilates all possibilities of animadversion, unless you wish to share the fate of Marsyas, by pitting your puny strength against the overwhelming panoply ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... district. Here and there, we encountered bits of limestone, which always, in this southern country, makes the worst roads for travel. The rain erodes it into the oddest of forms, leaving projecting ridges almost as sharp as knife-edges, with irregular hollows pitting the surface, so that it forms a most insecure and unpleasant foot-hold for the animals. Not only so, but the surface, rough as it is, is frequently as polished as glass, and, whether wet or dry, is slippery to the tread. Walking over these jagged surfaces of limestone is destructive to any shoes. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... lionesses, full grown, and four young lions as large and quite as formidable as their parents. Tarzan halted, growling, and the lions paused, the great male in the lead baring his fangs and rumbling forth a warning roar. In his hand the ape-man held his heavy spear; but he had no intention of pitting his puny weapon against seven lions; yet he stood there growling and roaring and the lions did likewise. It was purely an exhibition of jungle bluff. Each was trying to frighten off the other. Neither wished to turn back and give ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loves to spend wealth on relics and priests, and is slow when the mancuses are wanted for fighting men. The King too, poor man! is not so ill-pleased at my outbursts as he would fain have it thought; he thinks, by pitting earl against earl, that he himself is the stronger [148]. While Edward lives, therefore, Harold's arm is half crippled; wherefore, Meredydd, ride thou, with good speed, back to King Gryffyth, and tell him all I have told thee. Tell him that our time ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brilliantly lit up. They seemed to be dancing there and the music of violins floated out into the darkness. Even as he stood there, he felt the bands of self-control weaken about him. A vision of the cold, grey days ahead terrified him. He was pitting his brain against his heart. Lives had been wrecked in that fashion. Philosophy, as the years creep on, is but a dour consolation. He saw himself with the jewel of life in his hand, prepared to cast it away. He turned around and ran up the stone ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out nothing yet," was the only answer Craig gave, from which I readily deduced that he was well satisfied to play the game by pitting each against all, in the hope of gathering here and there a bit of the truth. "As soon as I find out anything I shall let you and your mother know. And you must ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... it, it is the result of pitting myself against that girl; but pray, Sir John, what are you? Was it not you who ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... which will die away at once, and the remainder will by the fifth day be filled with the opaque yellowish fluid, then dry up, becoming hard and horny, and falling off will leave a mottled red appearance of the skin, and now and then slight pitting. ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... seems to use them and direct them to new ends,—an entity which seems to have invaded the kingdom of inert matter at some definite time in the earth's history, and to have set up an insurgent movement there; cutting across the circuits of the mechanical and chemical forces; turning them about, pitting one against the other; availing itself of gravity, of chemical affinity, of fluids and gases, of osmosis and exosmosis, of colloids, of oxidation and hydration, and yet explicable by none of these things; ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... parleyed with herself, one half of her minded to stand upon her dignity, the other part of her urging acquiescence in his wish that was almost a command. She was tempted to refuse just to see what he would do, but she reconsidered that. Without any logical foundation for the feeling, she was shy of pitting her will against Jack Fyfe's. Hitherto quite sure of herself, schooled in self-possession, it was a new and disturbing experience to come in contact with that subtle, analysis-defying quality which carries ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... So pitting him without choice against any of several men was their idea of civic aid. No wonder he'd met so many protected girls in the past. This time, they'd harnessed Nedda's restless passion to the task of dissuading him from ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson's. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of 'something different,' as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... remove the stems. The pits may or may not be removed. The best product for later cooking or eating has the pit removed, though large quantities of juices are lost in the pitting unless you provide some way of saving ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... There has been more loss of energy, more real harm done, through this futile engagement of two personal wills than can ever be computed, and the freedom consequent upon refusing such contact is great in proportion. Obedience to this law of not pitting our wills against the wills of other people leads to new freedom in all sorts of ways,—in connection with little, everyday questions, as to whether a thing is one color or another, as well as in the great and serious problems of life. If, ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... the "morale" of an income tax, having the immediate effect of pitting each man against his neighbour, and suggesting to their already excited spirits all the ardour of gambling, without, however, a prospect of gain. The plate was first handed to me in honour of my "rank," and having deposited upon it a handful of small silver, the priest ran his finger ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever |
