"Pottage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... change its opposition from the tyrannical to the insidious; it can know no other change. Yet do I meet persons who call themselves Americans,—miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright,—who think that a mess of pottage can satisfy the wants of man, and that the Viennese listening to Strauss's waltzes, the Lombard peasant supping full of his polenta, is happy enough. Alas: I have the more reason to be ashamed of my countrymen that it is not among the poor, who have so much, toil that there ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which in Dutch is called 'Melden'. Some of those that I describe it vnto, take it to be a kinde of Orage; it groweth about foure or fiue foote high: of the seede thereof they make a thicke broth, and pottage of a very good taste: of the stalke by burning into ashes they make a kinde of salt earth, wherewithall many vse sometimes to season their brothes; other salte they knowe not. Wee our selues, vsed the ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... lady of fashion, and ultimately find their way into the rubbish heap. The people of all the New England States are poorer when the ignorant whites, foreigners, or negroes of our southern states destroy the robins and other song birds of the North for a mess of pottage. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Dogs. Take Sheeps-heads, Wooll and all, hack, hew, and bruise them into pieces, make Pottage of it, with Oatmeal, and Penny-Royal, ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... my platter of this pottage, and though it tasted of nothing in my experience—a kind of sweet, cloying meat—I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... all true, Becky, the part they have played in making us a nation. And it is all going to be true again. We Americans aren't going to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage!" ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Berry. "We know they had birthrights. And I'd sooner be a birthright than a wine-cooler any day. Besides, Jonah could go as a mess of pottage. There's an idea for you. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... have not a single farthing of money; and I was obliged to get food at the public expense, there being none to be had in the market. You will imagine, that there must have been a service of plate, and great attendance, to wait on the illustrious stranger; but my fare was a mess of sorry pottage, brought me by a naked slave, who left me to deal with it as I thought proper: and even this I was in continual danger of having stolen from me by the children; who are as vigilant to seize opportunities, and as dexterous in snatching ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... practical force. Those wise ones who designed the government intended the House of Representatives to be a republic. Through its own groveling abjections, however, it long ago sunk to an autocracy with the Speaker in the role of autocrat. It sold its birthright for no one knows what mess of pottage to pass its slavish days beneath a tyranny of the gavel. The Speaker settles all things. No measure is proposed, no bill passes, no member speaks except by the Speaker's will. He constructs the committees and selects their chairmen ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the Hotel de Milan close by the bridge; but though dignified with the name of hotel, it is only a common roadside inn. Still, it is tolerably clean, and in summer the want of carpets is not missed. The people were civil and attentive, their bread wholesome, their pottage and bouilli good—being such fare as the people of the locality contrive to live and thrive upon. The accommodation of the place is, indeed, quite equal to the demand; for very few travellers accustomed to a better style of living ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... have a coat made out of them." "But what shall we do with the body?" said she, for as yet men had not begun to eat animal food, but lived on vegetables alone. "Cut it in two," he answered, "and season our pottage with one half of it at a time." She did so. The boy, who was of a very small stature, continued his efforts, and succeeded in killing ten birds, out of the skins of which his sister made him a ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... same fire to boil their pottage, Two poor old dames, as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage, But she, poor woman, dwelt alone. 'Twas well enough when summer came, The long, warm, lightsome summer-day, Then at her door the canty dame Would sit, as any ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... a practice in Germany for those who fatten bullocks for the butcher, or feed milch-cows, to give them frequently what is called a drank or drink; which is a kind of pottage, prepared differently in different parts of the country, and in the different seasons, according to the greater facility with which one or other of the articles occasionally employed in the composition of it may be procured; and according to the particular ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... fell, and he cried: "No trifling! I can't wait, beside! I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: 180 With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... enumeration of plants, herbs, and shrubs which his reverend conductor pointed out to him, of which this was choice, because of prime use in medicine, and that more choice for yielding a rare flavour to pottage, and a third, choicest of all, because possessed of no merit but its extreme scarcity. Still it was necessary to preserve some semblance at least of attention, which the youth found so difficult, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait! beside, I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the head cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor,— With him I proved no bargain-driver; With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not your own! Lessons learned by heart! They've already put their uniform on you too. You, too, are rejoicing; you, too, are basking in the sunshine. Chere, chere, for what a mess of pottage you ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... "For pottage and puddings and custards and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies! We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon, If it was not for pumpkin ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... was very different from what it was at home. The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally by a gentleman, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sorcery in order to protect themselves and others from diabolical influence. They were both considered as highly, if not equally, criminal. Fuller, in his "Profane State," thus speaks of them: "Better is it to lap one's pottage like a dog, than to eat it mannerly, with a spoon of the Devil's giving. Black witches hurt and do mischief; but, in deeds of darkness, there is no difference of colors. The white and the black are both guilty alike in compounding with the Devil." White witches pretended to extract ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... is generally boiled maize, or Indian corn, mixed with kidney beans or Sometimes without.... Also they mix with the said pottage several sorts of roots, as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts, and other roots, and pompions, and squashes, and also several sorts of nuts or masts, as oak-acorns, chesnuts, walnuts: These husked and dried, and powdered, they thicken their pottage ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... bread, water and olives. After refreshing ourselves with these, we lay down and rested three or four hours in the field; and, having given him thanks for his charity, prepared to crawl away. Pleased with our gratitude, he called us into his house, and gave us good warm bean pottage, which to me seemed the best food I had ever ate. Again taking leave, we advanced towards Majorca, which was about ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... at which bears excel. At night it slept by Juon's side and made itself cosey by burying its snout in his bosom. When meal-time came, the bear sat down beside Juon, for he knew that every second slice of cheese would be his. He also fetched fire-wood to put under the pot in which the maize-pottage was boiling. Then, too, he explored the woods in search of wild honey and brought back his booty to share it with Juon. When it was very hot he carried his pelisse after him, a pelt more or less made very little difference to him. Juon ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the tone absorbed from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning Jacob's refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all natural children do condemn, says: "No, Esau shouldn't have got it, 'cause ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... bread, wine, and broiled meat. It is noticeable, too, that Homer does not speak of boiled meat anywhere in his poems. Later, however, the Jews, coming out of their captivity in Egypt, had made much greater progress. They undoubtedly possessed kettles; and in one of these, Esau's mess of pottage, for which he sold his ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... her breath, and huddling her words so thick upon each other that Catharine could hardly catch the sense. "I was seeking for flowers to dress your pottage, because you said you loved them yesterday; my poor little dog, thrusting himself into a thicket of yew and holly bushes that grow out of some old ruins close to the castle wall, came back whining and howling. I crept forward to see what ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a Papist! ye talk o' praying to saints an' martyrs, that died in torments because they wad na do what they should na do? What ha' ye to do wi' martyrs?—a meeserable wretch that sells his soul for a mess o' pottage—four slices per diem o' thin bread-and-butter? Et propter veetam veevendi perdere causas! Dinna tell me o' your hardships—ye've had your deserts—your rights were just equivalent to your mights, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great length of liking you,—because ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Tattlesnivel, sir, remembering that our forefathers contended with the Norman at Hastings, and bled at a variety of other places that will readily occur to you, demands that its birthright shall not be bartered away for a mess of pottage. Have a care, sir, have a care! Or Tattlesnivel (its idle Rifles piled in its scouted streets) may be seen ere long, advancing with its Bleater to the foot of the Throne, and demanding redress for this conspiracy, from the orbed and sceptred ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... secretaries, all dine at four tables, on the quarters of a single pullet: The victuals of the under servants were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in the other scale: A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and then he would have whipped it up, as his own fees, at a morsel; but that his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair; and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth the dealers offered him a set of false teeth ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and terrible dreames, offendeth the eyes, dulleth the sight, &c." Nor does Parkinson give a much more favourable account. "Our dainty eye now refuseth them wholly, in all sorts except the poorest; they are used with us sometimes in Lent to make pottage, and is a great and generall feeding in Wales with the vulgar gentlemen." It was even used as the proverbial expression of worthlessness, as in the "Roumaunt of the Rose," where the author says, speaking of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
