"Small beer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Each morning with gems of this kind, Such matters must strike as momentous The news-editorial mind; 'Tis time this delusion was done with, High time that some voice made it clear We don't want those fountains to run with Such very small beer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... desir'd that he and his Companion might refresh themselves there for a few Hours. An old, shabby Domestick let them in indeed, but with visible Reluctance, and carried them into the Stable, where all their Fare was a few musty Olives, and a Draught or two of sower small Beer. The Hermit seem'd as content with his Repast, as he was the Night before. At last, rising off from his Seat, he paid his Compliments to the old Valet (who had as watchful an Eye over them all the Time, as if they had been a Brace of Thieves, and intimated every now and then ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... times more airs, and when, at first, my father (who as coxswain was constantly up at the house) offered to speak to her, she turned away from him in most ineffable disdain. Now my father was at that time about thirty years of age, and thought no small beer of himself, as the saying goes. He was a tall, handsome man, indeed, so good-looking that they used to call him "Handsome Jack" on board of the "Druid," and he had, moreover, a pigtail of most extraordinary size and length, of which he was not ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... French knights ride behind his banner, and with them ten squires and I know not how many men-at-arms. There is feasting yonder at the manor, I can tell you. Ere his train leaves us our winter provender will be done, and we'll have to drink small beer till the wine ships come ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... PARLIAMENT. A military term for small beer, five pints of which, by an act of parliament, a landlord was formerly obliged to give to each ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Mr. Gordon thirty years ago by an aged labourer. This was the day:—"Out in morning at four o'clock. Mouthful of bread and cheese and pint of ale. Then off to the harvest field. Rippin and moen [reaping and mowing] till eight. Then morning brakfast and small beer. Brakfast—a piece of fat pork as thick as your hat [a broad-brimmed wideawake] is wide. Then work till ten o'clock: then a mouthful of bread and cheese and a pint of strong beer ['farnooner,' i.e., forenooner; 'farnooner's-lunch,' we called it]. Work ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the Temple, and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latch-key, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition—but Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... people would suffer very much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set it a running for twelve days to every one that calls for it. I have always a piece of cold beef and a mince-pie upon the table, and am wonderfully pleased to see my tenants pass away a whole evening in playing their innocent tricks, and smutting one another[158]. ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... so lasting to the owner thereof as what is duly got by industry. The substance of the diligent, saith Solomon, Prov. xii. 27, is precious. He cannot be counted poor that hath so many pearls, precious brown bread, precious small beer, precious plain clothes, etc. A comfortable consideration in this our age, wherein many hands have learned their lesson of labour, who were neither born nor bred ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... small beer, strong beer, ale, and porter. Small beer is best calculated for common use, being less heating and stimulating than other malt liquors. When used soft and mild, after having been thoroughly fermented and purified, it forms an excellent diluent with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... as suckling fools and chronicling small beer. There was not much sympathy between the two. Characters such as Johnson's harmonise best with the enthusiastic and easily influenced. Mrs. Barbauld did not belong to this class; she trusted to her own judgment, rarely tried to influence others, and took a matter-of-fact rather than a passionate ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Wafer, pp. 153-154, who lived four months among these Indians, describes their method of making "corn drink." "It tastes like sour small Beer, yet ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... same goodwill, though she has nothing to boast of but her charms. Ay verily, as the song says, love can make black white! The brace of beggars have not even a bed, and must pass their wedding-night on the straw: they have just been round to every cottage, begging a pint of small beer, with which they mean to get royally drunk: a brave treat for a ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... went off to the kitchen. Presently the servant came in again, bringing me a noble dish of breakfast, a pigeon pie, a ham, a jar of preserved quince, a honeycomb, a great household loaf, newly baked, a big quart jug full of small beer. I made a very honest meal. After eating, I examined the room. There was tapestry over one part of the wall. It concealed a little low door which led to what had once been the abbot's fishpond, now a roofed-in bath-house, where one could plunge into eight feet or so of (bitterly ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... occurrences recorded. Some people work, in this manner, with even a strong touch. Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the mind in this connection. But even Mr. Trollope does not confine himself to chronicling small beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, VANITY FAIR would ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if they had not good cheer, warm fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set it running for twelve days to every one that calls for it. I have always a piece of cold beef and a mince-pie upon the table, and am wonderfully pleased to see my tenants pass away a whole evening in playing their innocent tricks, and smutting one another. Our friend Will Wimble is ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of rather small beer in the Commons. There were, however, one or two dicta of note. Thus Sir BERTRAM FALK, who was concerned because Naval officers received no special marriage allowance, was specifically assured by Sir JAMES CRAIG ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... I have," says Tom - Tom was one of those who can persuade themselves to anything they like - "I've often thought I wasn't the small beer I ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... and their probable results. He lived upon next to nothing; a slice or two of bread abducted from Ehrenthal's kitchen would serve for his supper. Only once during the first year of his town life did he allow himself a glass of thin small beer, and that after a very ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of stopping his client's mouth effectually, my father ordered some cold meat; to which James Wilkinson, for the honour of the house, was about to add the brandy bottle, which remained on the sideboard, but, at a wink from my father, supplied its place with small beer. Peter charged the provisions with the rapacity of a famished lion; and so well did the diversion engage him, that though, while my father stated the case, he looked at him repeatedly, as if he meant to interrupt ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... showing his workmanship to his mother, took her attention from his sister, and thus peace was restored. Mrs. Davis and I spent the evening, till nine o'clock, in mending stockings. Then her husband came in, and we sat down to our supper of bread and cheese and small beer. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... thence you drew The taste which stamped you guide of the inept. - A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, A sturdy and a briny, once men knew. He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, To roll ingurgitation till he slept, Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. At last this dancer to the Polar star Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, To drink the sea and pilot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered. 'I am obliged to you.' And when they had jointly loosened his lordship's cravat, and removed his wig and set the cool jug of small beer within his reach, Mr. Pomeroy bade the other a curt ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... back to their dug-outs, and shortly afterwards to their billets—there to spend the few odd francs which their separation allotments had left them, upon extremely hard-earned glasses of extremely small beer. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to state very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my parentage. July 17, 1810, was my birthday, and No. 20 Devonshire Place, Marylebone, my birthplace, at that time the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... o'clock. He ate heartily, but was no epicure, nor critical about his food. His beverage was small beer or cider, and two glasses of old Madeira. He took tea, of which he was very fond, early in the evening, and retired for the night about ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... evidently thought small beer of me for the admission. "Most ladies are. In this case we can ask an extra five pounds a year because of the Kensington address, and the class of tenants is much better than in the adjoining blocks a few hundred yards off, where the postal ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... got down to the river again, and he hesitated in front of a small beer-shop whose half open door and sanded floor offered a ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... was quartered at the "Swan with Two Necks," a very respectable hostelry, where my first care was to have a cloth thrown over Sultan, and to order for him a bucket of warm small beer with three or four handfuls of oatmeal stirred into it. While this was adoing, and I was awaiting a summons to his lordship's presence, I took a nip of brandy in the public room of the inn, and over it amused myself ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... learn from me that, though the sorrows of the world are great, its wickedness—that is, its ugliness—is small. Much cause to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known adversity, and know it still. But for that, do I turn cynic? No, no: it is small beer that sours. To my fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in my kind. Now, then" (winningly), "this book—will you let me ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... wrathful Charles Lamb in one of his letters, "I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret." I fancy this loathing of the transitionary state came in great part from the rude and elemental nature of the means of moving in Lamb's day. In our own time, in Charlesbridge at ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The History of Civilisation, were momentous events in my life. But I loved life better ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... establishments are so enormous, and so utterly disproportioned to our population, that every second or third man you meet in society gains something from the public; my brother the commissioner,—my nephew the police justice,—purveyor of small beer to the army in Ireland,—clerk of the mouth,—yeoman to the left hand,—these are the obstacles which common sense and justice have now to overcome. Add to this that the King, old and infirm, excites ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... accordingly, sent her great quantities of sack whey and thin mutton broth, than which no physician could have prescribed better, and thus drenched the poor woman for ten days together, till she grew tired of her medicines, and sent her daughter again to Miss Blandy to beg a little small beer. "No, no small beer," the prisoner said, "that was not proper for her." Most plainly, then, she knew what it was the woman had taken in her father's tea. She knew its effect. She knew the proper antidotes. Having now experienced the strength of the poison, she grew more open and undaunted, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... lost her voice. Not a sound could be forced from her throat. Sophie was in despair, for this was, indeed, annihilation to her hopes, and there seemed nothing in fate for her but to settle down to the average life of the German housewife, "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer," when, on the eve of departure for Bielefeld, Signor Lamperti, the famous teacher, announced himself. The experienced maestro advised them to wait, reasoning that the loss of voice was rather the result of fatigue and nervousness than ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... your leader is brave, and vows reformation; there shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; and the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops. I will make it felony to drink small beer: all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,that they may agree like brothers; and they shall all worship me as their lord. SHAKSPEARE, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... tall, and like David—"ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and his face, though clouded then, bore the expression of general amiability. He was the eldest son in a large young family, and was being educated at one of the best public schools. He did not, it must be confessed, think either small beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and beans that his family thought of him, I think it was pale ale and kidney-beans ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... all, it was a ticklish bit, and I should have guessed that your experience was not up to it quite. I've seen many a man in my day who wouldn't ha' done it half so slick, an' yet ha' thought no small beer of himself; so you needn't be ashamed, Mr. Charles. But Wabisca beats you for all that," continued the hunter, glancing hastily over his shoulder at Redfeather, who followed closely in their wake, he and his modest-looking wife ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... years hence, the date when our dinners began to be carved and handed round by servants, instead of smoking before our eyes and noses on the table? To record such little matters would indeed be 'to chronicle small beer.' But, in a slight memoir like this, I may be allowed to note some of those changes in social habits which give a colour to history, but which the historian has the greatest difficulty ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... for scorn, and even the witty will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a defect still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is sour, or dull when it is bottled and has a froth ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... much as I could, and desired the leg of a pullet. "Indeed, Mr. Bickerstaff," says the lady, "you must eat a wing to oblige me," and so put a couple upon my plate. I was persecuted at this rate during the whole meal. As often as I called for small beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant brought me a brimmer of October. Some time after dinner, I ordered my cousin's man who came with me to get ready the horses; but it was resolved I should ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift |
