"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Walter Mason are just as thick as leaves on a mulberry tree, Nan Sherwood! I saw you whispering together the other day when Walter came with his cutter to take Grace for a ride. Is he going to take you for a spin behind that ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... mare stop, prick her ears under the hammering of unspurred heels, spin round, bucking as she spun, and toss her rider like a bull. There in the moonlight he lay like lead, with leaden face upturned to the shuddering ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... you would find that the triumph of the right is always applauded by the audience, while the tricks and momentary successes of evil-doers are invariably condemned. This proves more correctly the tendency of the theatre than all the homilies of those who spin fine-threaded arguments from the pulpit and the press. Why, my dear sir, the church itself is unconsciously passing to the theatre, and the theatre equally unconsciously passing to the church. Witness the fairs, the school exhibitions, the tableaux, and the private dramatic entertainments ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... young ladies would be brides-elect before reaching the landing ghat. The increased facilities which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for running home on short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian "spin" rather a drug in the market; and operating in the same untoward direction is the growing predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian bachelor for other men's wives, in preference to hampering himself with ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... been in times past a very large monastery with many houses for teachers and scholars within its walls. Nothing of all that is to be seen now except the ruins of a splendid gate and a dry cistern in which the Jews spin, throw, and prepare silk. In front of the church there is a large court surrounded by a covered passage (porticus), which is adorned with beautiful figures from the Old and New Testaments painted on gilded ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... woman's clutches so tight before, Bigot," continued Cadet. "If you let La Pompadour suspect one hair of your head in this matter, she will spin a cart-rope out of it that will drag you to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the great wheel spin. I saw the screaming rock melting beneath it, dropping like lava. Then, as though it had received some message, abruptly its ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... he's keepin' company with her, by the looks. I got as nigh to 'em as I could, but I didn't hear much they said. Only, just as they was goin' out, he said somethin' about goin' for a little spin in the car. She said no, her father would want his letters. Carver, he said, why not send Oscar home—that's the chauffeur, you know—with the letters, and he'd run the car himself. She kind of laughed, and said she guessed not, she'd taken one trip with him already that day ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water. It is a long, light canoe (caique,) large at one end and tapering to a knife blade at the other. They make that long sharp end the bow, and you can imagine how these boiling currents spin it about. It has two oars, and sometimes four, and no rudder. You start to go to a given point and you run in fifty different directions before you get there. First one oar is backing water, and then the other; it is seldom that both are going ahead at once. This ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mice sat down to spin, Pussy passed by and she peeped in. What are you at, my fine little men? Making coats for gentlemen. Shall I come in and cut off your threads? Oh, no, Miss Pussy, ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... clean. I mean clean now. It wasn't during blastoff. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as the gyroscopic spin they put on the ship so we have a sort of artificial gravity to hold us against the curved floor. It's that constant whirly feeling that gets me. I get sick on ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... down in the straightest chair, and although she had never in her life touched a spinning wheel before, she began to spin. Whirr, whirr, the wheel turned and sang, as fine white thread grew from the bunch of linen floss. The fire danced, and the tea kettle sang, and the spinning wheel whirred merrily. It was so pleasant to have had such a nice tea and to be working in her own little house that the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... pouring a huge jar of water over one's head. Tents in India have always a small side tent with a ditch dug to drain off the water from the copious ablutions of the inmate. I emerged into the room feeling better. It was now quite light, and I proceeded to dress leisurely to spin out the time. As I was drawing on my boots, Isaacs sauntered in quietly and laid his gun on the table. He was pale, and his Karkee clothes were covered with mud and leaves and bits of creeper, but his movements showed he was not hurt in any ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Burns was so beautiful; the idea I had was more desolate: his 'Rigs of Barley' seemed always to me but a few strips of green on a cold hill—Oh, prejudice!—It was as rich as Devon. I endeavoured to drink in the prospect, that I might spin it out to you, as the silkworm makes silk from mulberry leaves. I cannot recollect it. Besides all the beauty, there were the mountains of Arran Isle, black and huge over the sea. We came down upon everything suddenly; there were in our way the 'bonny Doon', with the brig that Tam o' ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... was half a silence on the mob without the door. It is inconceivable that it could become altogether silent, but it was as near to a rational stillness of tongues as it was able. Then there was a loud knocking by a single fist and a new voice began to spin Greek, a voice that was somewhat like the rattle of pebbles in a tin box. Then a startling voice called out in English. " Are you in ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... They expected, further, that their families would not be separated, and that they could be allowed to acquire property for themselves. I know there were many negroes in the South who expected they would neither toil nor spin after being set free, but the belief was by no means universal. The story of the negro at Vicksburg, who expected his race to assemble in New York after the war, "and have white men for niggers," is doubtless true, but it would find ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Regardless of circumstances, he treads his daily round, avoided by the little child sporting upon the sward. He has work, earnest work, to perform, from which he will not be turned, even at the forfeit of his life. Reaching his appointed place, he ceases even to eat, and begins to spin those delicate fibres which, woven into fabrics of beauty and utility, contribute to the comfort and adornment of a superior race. His work done, he lies down to the sleep from which he never wakes in the old form. But that silent, motionless ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... night by the poor devils who hoped to get something easy. And some of them squandered not merely one day's work but a month's or six months' hard, sweaty toil flipped away with one throw of the dice or one spin of ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... common enemies; and it is never necessary to tell them the truth. Expediency is the golden rule in all relations with the common room. And after a very few weeks even Congreve would have had to own that the timid new boy could spin quite as broad a yarn as he. The parents do not realise this. It is just as well. It is a stage in the development of youth. Everyone must pass through it. Yet sometimes it leads to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... that I intended to have said in far inferior prose. I intended filling three or four sides with exclamations against a University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be expressed in three or four lines. I can't build without straw; nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt: a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce into a letter ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... ladylike and pretty. A good face, though; straight and clean, with honest eyes and a likable smile. Lack of will, perhaps, or a persistent run of ill luck. Letty had always kept him stiffened up in the old days. Dick recalled one of his father's phrases to the effect that Dave Gilman would spin on a very small biscuit, and wondered ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slapping that gentleman on the shoulder. "Are you in for a bit of sport? It's a nice moonlight night, and I'm going to take a spin down to Hamilton to meet some chaps, and we can come back on the iceboat, or if you think it too late, you can stay over, and come back ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... in prime of summer, giving me of her best. My heart warmed to her loveliness, and I sniffed the perfume of her breath, mysteriously characteristic as the chosen perfume of some loved woman's laces. It was glorious to spin on, on, between the rows of sentinel poplars, bound for the horizon, yet never reaching it, and regarding crowded haunts of men more as interruptions than as ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... deteriorated, except when they are old. There are among these tribes powerful women of extraordinary height These have almost the entire care of the house and work; namely, they till the land, plant the Indian corn, lay up a store of wood for the winter, beat the hemp and spin it, making from the thread fishing-nets and other useful things. The women harvest the corn, house it, prepare it for eating, and attend to household matters. Moreover they are expected to attend their husbands from place to place in the fields, filling the office of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... were to spin yarns while steering, Miss Dabstreak," I said, "your fate would probably resemble Sindbad's. You would be wrecked six or seven times ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... one. He gets at the substance of a book directly. He tears out the heart of it." At dinner Johnson told Dilly that, if he wrote a book on cookery, it should be based on philosophical principles. "Women," he said, contemptuously, "can spin, but they cannot make ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a trunk to the sea, or the sea to the cloud, and two funnel-shaped masses were joined together by a long, twisting, whirling column of water that neither sea nor sky seemed able to break away from. It was a weird sight to see this dark shape writhe and spin before the storm, and at last the base of it struck a coral reef, and it disappeared, leaving nothing but a blinding squall of rain and a tumult of white waves breaking on the reef. And then the water whirled and tossed, and flung its white ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wore wuz made on de plantation. De women had to card, spin an' weave de thread an' den when de cloth wuz made it wuz dyed wid berries. My step-father wuz de shoemaker on de plantation an' we always had good shoes. He beat ol' marster out o' 'bout fifteen years work. When ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... occupied males. Unhappy Mr Meggs, accordingly, got it, so to speak, with both barrels. He was fifty-six, and he was perhaps the most unoccupied adult to be found in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. He toiled not, neither did he spin. Twenty years before, an unexpected legacy had placed him in a position to indulge a natural taste for idleness to the utmost. He was at that time, as regards his professional life, a clerk in ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... began to spin in the air, swinging his body lightly and adroitly. Through the holes of his shirt and pants we caught glimpses of the greyish skin of his slim body, of his sharply bulging and angular shoulder-blades, knees and elbows. It seemed to us as if with one ...
— The Shield • Various
... Then wed thee Unto some son of clay, and toil and spin! There's Japhet loves thee well, hath loved thee long: Marry, and bring ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... during our absence; but she said, with a sudden expression of alarm, 'O, no; she would not part with Hannah on any account!' So I said no more, but fancied her preference was dictated more by fear than love. But I spin out a long record for this last evening at home. O, budding vines and flowers! who will train your rich luxuriance into fairy, fantastic clusterings, or watch your opening petals in the summer which is to come? Who listen to the babbling ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... places, entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so that he should not work them through more than the forty lines; as to which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master and his form, the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... crime. Before her eyes filed, in a statelier pageant than they knew, the long procession of "simple great ones gone for ever and ever by," and the countless lesser ones whose names are quenched in the darkness of a night that shall know no dawn. She saw the "great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change"; but amid all the change, the confusion, the chaos, she saw the finger of God ever pointing, and heard the sublime monotone of the Divine voice ever saying to the children of men, "This is the way, walk ye in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... right. Mme. Sechard will offer to renew your lease; tell her that you are thinking of setting up for yourself. Offer her half the value of the plant and license, and, if she takes the bid, come to me. In any case, spin the matter out. . . ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... be paid. Enid had found her waking thoughts unpleasant, if not almost intolerable, and, being too perfectly healthy to indulge in anything of the nature of moping or sulks, she came to the conclusion that a good sharp spin on her bicycle would be the best mental tonic she could have; so she got a cup of coffee and a biscuit, took out her machine, and started away to work off, as she hoped, the presentiment of coming trouble which seemed to have fastened ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... make bricks by the million, spin and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest needle up to a ship's armor, and so add considerably ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the future. No; I must spin in a hansom—it is the one thing I specially love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin—and let us see ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... standing at bay. Then it began to move slowly towards a patch of ash and wild plums in the head of a coulie, some distance off. Its pursuer rode after it, and when close enough would push by it and fire, while the bear would spin quickly round and charge as fiercely as ever, though evidently beginning to grow weak. At last, when still a couple of hundred yards from cover the man found he had used up all his cartridges, and then merely followed at a safe distance. The bear no longer paid heed to him, but ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There were the Bearsarks, who would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and the green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns he heard of the bitter country in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and the frost split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires the dwarves ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... dear!" said Mattie. "And what would become of poor me supposing thou wert any bigger? As it is, I can bake the little loaves thou lovest to eat, and I can spin and knit enough for us both. But, oh, dear! wert thou the size of Farmer Fairweather or Miller Mealy, my ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Racey told him, "you can look out of the window and see two chairs in front of the Kearney House. On the right we have Bill Riley, a Wells Fargo detective from Omaha, on the left Tom Seemly from the Pinkerton Agency in San Francisco. They know something but not everything. Suppose I should spin 'em all my li'l tale of grief—what ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... not mean to wilfully deceive them. Very probably he had his excuse ready. Malcolm could almost hear his words. "I said nothing about the Jacobis because I knew your prejudice, and I did not want to fluster you. I thought Mrs. Godfrey would spin her yarn, and I left it to her. It was not my fault if the Wallaces took to them, and that they were often up at Fettercairn." Some such words Cedric would say when he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... vain complaining, cease, my friend, Since thou art yet not numbered with the dead But turn thy thoughts unto thy destined end, Behold thy Fates spin out the vital thread, And often as thy mind to Hell be led, To contemplate the doleful gloom aglow, There will forthwith possess thee such a dread, Which Christ's unbounded mercy doth bestow, Lest thou be doomed to that eternal realm ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... saw black, the room began to spin, he passed his hand across his eyes. "Wait! Let's ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... which emerged the works of Thucydides and Tacitus seem not to be a natural incident of our time. To change slightly the meaning of Lowell, "the bustle of our lives keeps breaking the thread of that attention which is the material of memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada's engagement in the war. Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... extraordinary!" exclaimed Jasper, who had not yet acquired that material part of his trade, the ability to spin a yarn. "I have always heard that it was certain death to venture in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... chap," Frank said, at the conclusion of one of French's stories of the grandeur of the coming empire, "and I'd like to hear you spin yarns all night, but, if you don't mind, I'll ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... wild exuberance almost every where, without culture, and the women collect such quantities as they consider requisite for their families, which they prepare and spin upon a distaff; the thread is woven, by an apparatus of great simplicity, into fillets, or pieces from six to nine inches broad, which are sewed together to any width, required for use. The indigo, in its indigenous state, and a variety of other ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... one who wants to go back, really wants that forty million Germans should die, while he survives. It is ignorant, it is insincere, to put on a frown of offended virtue and to say: For shame, what are you thronging into the towns for? Go back to the land; plough, spin, weave, ply the blacksmith's hammer, as did our forefathers, who were the proper sort of people. And leave the people like us, who think and write poetry and brood and dream for you, a house embowered ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... and make incision in their Hides, That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And doubt them with superfluous ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and allow himself to be spun backward around to the place where Rosa was waiting. He pondered this idea for some time, until its absurdity became apparent. Undoubtedly he must be going out of his head; he saw that it was necessary to keep walking until the back-spin of that treadmill ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the Old Settlers' Cabin, where they have the relics, the spinning-wheel, the flax-hackle, and the bunch of dusty tow that nobody knows how to spin in these degenerate days; the old flint-lock rifle, and the powder-horn; the tinder-box, and the blue plate, "more'n a hundred years old;" the dog-irons, tongs, poker, and turkey-wing of an ancient fireplace—around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin all the early part of the day ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... and foam flecked. Again as Jim approached him, the minister's boy planted a blow on his ribs that made Jim spin. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... was fully prepared to give her a home. My father just then was ashore, and took to the young man amazingly; he must have him spend many an evening at our cottage, and you may be sure that the grog didn't remain in the cupboard. My father had a great many yarns to spin, and liked a good listener; and as listening and talking are both dry work, one glass followed another till the young man's eyes began to sparkle, and my poor sister's to fill with tears; still, he always maintained, when she talked gently to him about it next day, that he knew well what he ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... we have nothing else to do, you or one of your crew would be good enough to spin us a ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... I will not spin this note any further, but shall be glad of a line to tell me you are well. I have not seen Mr. Lort since he roosted under the metropolitan Wings of his ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... it, that's all!" said Harry, with a laugh. "If you'd ever played baseball, you'd understand that easily enough. See? You hold the ball like this—so that your fingers give it a spin ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... big mainsail, and she was painted black, too! Well, their trick succeeded. Just this minute we'd have no more chance of finding 'em than a needle in a haystack. But it may clear again before night, and then we'll see! Go ahead now and spin your yarn, my lad!" ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the engine room. With the help of the boys he set in motion an auxiliary gravity machine, designed to exert a most powerful influence against the downward pull of the earth. As they watched the great wheels spin around, and heard the hum and whirr of the dynamos, the boys watched the pointer which indicated ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... FORD—If I did think there were a reprieve to come for you I would be contented to spin out the time thus; but in good earnest I expect none; unless you had an apprehension you were not to die you would not spin out the time thus, not ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... while the season lasts; I catch 'em as far as the Braisne. In harvest time, I glean; in winter, I spin." ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... gear of those Who neither toil nor spin; I merely want some standard clo's To drape my standard skin, Wrought of material ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... the offender, dear Lola," said Kilfane, dreamily waving his cigarette towards her. "I have managed to make the last hundred spin out. You have brought me a ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... this,—too many to be told just now,—trust me, and be sure you get everything as good as can be: and if, in the villainous state of modern trade, you cannot get it good at any price, buy its raw material, and set some of the poor women about you to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be trusted: and then, every day, make some little piece of useful clothing, sewn with your own fingers as strongly as it can be stitched; and embroider it or otherwise beautify it moderately ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... "No," says he; "you shall be pilot then; you shall con the ship." "Ay," says I, "as long as you please; but you can take the helm out of my hand when you please, and bid me go spin. It is not you," says I, "that I suspect, but the laws of matrimony puts the power into your hands, bids you do it, commands you to command, and binds me, forsooth, to obey. You, that are now upon even terms with me, and I with you," says I, "are the next hour set up upon the throne, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... after the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated be in motion, it appears at rest at the place where the flash falls upon it. When a colour-top with differently-coloured sectors is caused to spin rapidly the colours blend together. Such a top, rotating in a dark room and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless, each distinct colour being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that a flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunderstorm he put a colour-top in exceedingly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was measuring his way carefully around a birch tree. Since Toadie Todson's death, he spent a large part of every day looking at trees and measuring distances, so that Stingy could spin his webs in the best ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... of her own rude childhood, she learned to spin the wools, white and grey, to clothe and cover him pleasantly. The spectacle of his unsuspicious happiness, though at present a matter of purely physical conditions, awoke a strange sense of poetry, a kind of artistic sense in her, watching, as her own long-deferred recreation ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... got out of it some easier than I. I had picked out a rangey lank bronco; he would quit the earth and climb the sky like a flying machine; and drop down and strike the rocks with his legs stiff as a post. He would then spin like a top several hundred times play razor back and sun-fish, His head and tail would touch one instant between his legs; and the next instant over his back. I held my breath while he exercised all his tricks then he plunged off while ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... views. According to Maimonides, "Man is the end of the whole creation, and we have only to look to him for the reason for its existence. Every object shows the end for which it was created. The palm-trees are there to provide dates; the spider to spin her webs. All the properties of an animal or a plant are directed so as to enable it to reach its purpose in life. What is the purpose of man? It cannot lie alone in eating and drinking or yielding to passion, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... it. Indeed, the sentence seemed actually visible between them, like a squat and ugly small beast on the shining white cloth. "Sorry, Aunt Lyddy," said Jane, penitently. "I'm a crosspatch to-night, and I ought to sit by the fire and spin, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America. On the other hand we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen imprisoned; and men, women, and children in promiscuous and unmerited misery—when we found all faith at an end, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... where, with tree o'ergrown, Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin, On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone, The knife was straight at work or ready pin. And there, without, in thousand places lone, And in as many places graved, within, MEDORO and ANGELICA were traced, In divers cyphers ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... about to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems set upon the passionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature. PARAMORE has been trying to emulate GLORIA, and as the commotion reaches its height he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily—he staggers, recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall ... almost into the arms of old ADAM PATCH, whose approach has been rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... straw hats for the family. The journeyman shoemaker dropped in and fitted out the family with boots. The great city industries were then unknown. The farmer's wife in those days was perhaps the most expert master of trades ever known. She could spin and weave, make a carpet or a rug, dye yarns and clothes, and make a straw hat or a birch broom. Butter, cheese, and maple sugar were products of her skill, as well as bread, soap, canned fruits, and home-made wine. In those days the farm was a miniature factory or combination of factories. Many, ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... of all people in the world, fishermen loved to spin the most exaggerated yarns, and be the heroes of the ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... believe Fortune's wheel turned round for him at length, and that now he enjoys the rest that his years and toils entitle him to. I have many kindly recollections of our camping days together, and of the numerous yarns my mate used to spin of his palmy ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... this conversation to his chivalrous sense of what was due to a woman, the count ceased to talk politics, and as we bored him in our turn by commonplace matters, he presently left us to continue our walk, declaring that it made his head spin to go round and round on the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... into the place; one by one the congregation sank into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... from a book by Andrew Yarenton an account of the spinning-schools in Germany, as follows: "In all towns there are schools for little girls, from six years old and upwards, to teach them to spin, and to bring their tender fingers by degrees to spin very fine; their wheels go all by the foot, made to go with much ease, whereby the action or motion is very easie and delightful. The way, method, rule, and order how they are governed is, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... uncle and the squirrel boy went on and on through the woods to the top store kept by Mrs. Spin Spider, who had a little toy shop in which she worked when she was not spinning silk ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... furtive and unnatural; the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The under-note of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard to spin out a mood; she simply sat, half-dreaming in the peace of the morning, half-watching the wood. Time slipped by her, and presently there came Mother, smiling and seeking through the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betray'd by what is ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... in his temperament to seek rapport with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait a l'animer." He writes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... later in the night when he felt himself being dragged into a sitting posture. He remonstrated in a mumbling voice. "'S too early," he said. "Altogether too early. Early. Whew! Watch 'er spin. Jus' his job. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... eldest daughter got up very early to spin—in the twilight of the dawn it was—and she looked out, and there was the old woman coming from her house on the hill, with a shawl over her head and a tub in her arms. Oh, but she was a really wicked one! for I'll tell you what she did. Well, the girl watched and wondered, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the shadow, hearing nothing but his own munching; though there was not much of that: for as he came near the end, he took only a little crumb at a time, to spin out the treat; for never was anything so good! Then he had nothing to do but listen: but the waterfall was frozen up; and the mill stood as still as if it was not made to move. If the wheel should creak, it would be a sign that Nipen ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... any neighebour of mine Will not in church unto my wife incline, Or be so hardy to her to trespace,* *offend When she comes home she rampeth* in my face, *springs And crieth, 'False coward, wreak* thy wife *avenge By corpus Domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff, and go spin.' From day till night right thus she will begin. 'Alas!' she saith, 'that ever I was shape* *destined To wed a milksop, or a coward ape, That will be overlad* with every wight! *imposed on Thou darest not stand by thy ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... not again undergo the vexation Of such a soiree, for the wealth of a nation." "With you I agree," the sage Emperor replied, Who deemed it a lesson to cure them of pride; "And I trust that the thread of our lives will spin out, Ere we ever again attempt such a rout. Alas! we must own we were never designed To flit in the sunshine, or soar on the wind; Nature's changeless decree has allotted its share To each beast of the field, to each bird of the air, To each ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as to spin.—SWIFT. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... said Drake, showing the butt. "I got them out of your cabin aboard the Su-chen—she got back safely to Tien-tsin, I may tell you; but how I came to be aboard her, or to get up here, is too long a yarn to spin now. Let it wait until we are in less danger than we ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... wavered, and turned. Seeing which, his antagonist dealt him a thwack that made his head spin, and ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... they multiplied fourteen sticks of firewood by two bits of ginger and a larding needle, or divided pretty well everything else there was on the table by the heater of the Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, and got a lemon over, would make my head spin round and round and round as it did at the time. So I says "if you'll excuse my addressing the chair Professor Jackman I think the period of the lecture has now arrived when it becomes necessary that I should take a good hug of this young scholar." Upon which ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... glass window of St. Joseph. The girl with the black eyes holds you tight, and you run... and run past the wild, wild towers... and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet and little frightened dolls shut up in the shops crying... and crying... because no one stops... you spin like a penny thrown out in the street. Then the man clutches her by the hair.... He always clutches her by the hair.... His eyes stick out like spears. You see her pulled-back face and her black, black eyes lit up by the glare.... Then everything goes out. Please God, don't let me ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... in his direction, but anyway, he owned several other villages, so although he toiled not neither did he spin, yet he was well clothed and always fed. But my lord Napier was not immortal, for he died, and was buried; and over his grave they erected a monument, and on it are these words: "He was the friend of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard |
