"Staff of life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were the victuals selected. Had not Rollitt made these classical as the staff of life during voluntary ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... To discover the truth, it is necessary to refer to the Memorandum of the Dominions Royal Commission, and it may be noted that publications of that sort are not usually read by the general public to whom the Neo-Malthusians appeal. The public are aware that the staff of life is made from wheat, but they are not aware of the following facts, which prove that in this matter, at any rate, Neo-Malthusian statements are absolutely false. In foreign countries the increase of the wheat area is ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... of rich dews in the morning, together with abundance of moisture underneath, had made things look as they scarcely ever looked—clean, and straight, and elegant. But none of them had found time to form the dry and solid substance, without which neither man nor his staff of life ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Berengaria. "We have had our share of bad luck, and now we may throw in. Cheap bread is a fine cry. Indeed it is too shocking that there should be laws which add to the price of what everybody agrees is the staff of life. But you do nothing but stare, Endymion; I thought you would be in a state ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world; that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent playthings; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Tibetans call tsamba, and the buttered tea was prepared exactly as we had seen the Tibetans make it. The tsamba, however, was only to enable them to "carry on" until we killed some game; for meat is the Mongols' "staff of life," and they care little for ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... inquiring for the first time into the meaning of the word triangle. But a real violation of the fourth rule may arise, not only from obscurity, but from the employment of ambiguous language or metaphor. To say that 'temperance is a harmony of the soul' or that 'bread is the staff of life,' throws no real light upon ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... don't know about the staff of life now would never get you through Yale. I might go farther than that and come right out with the fact that I have become a abandoned bread fiend and got to have it or I foam at the mouth, since I seen how it was made ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... folk moved to their present situation. Now I have seen superb potatoes grown literally in the sand at Scheveningen, and was not surprised to hear that Omey Island was once so famous for the national staff of life that few cared to grow anything else. But there are difficulties everywhere, and it is parlous work to break up ground at Omey. There is too much fresh air; for it blows so hard that people are afraid to disturb the thin covering of herbage which overspreads the best part ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... pheasant, and plum-pudding, and custard." When Peter came home, he would needs take the fancy of cooking up this doctrine into use, and apply the precept in default of a sirloin to his brown loaf. "Bread," says he, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread is contained inclusive the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and to render all complete, there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Nature has kindly provided for country gentlemen. Farming kept him alive for a while; but, at length, his was the prize ox; and, having gained a cup, he got wearied of kine too prime for eating, wheat too fine for the composition of the staff of life, and ploughs so ingeniously contrived that the very ingenuity prevented them from being useful. Cleveland was now seen wandering over the moors and mountains, with a gun over his shoulder and a couple of dogs at his heels; but ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... fields were ready for the reapers. This was the great crop of the year. Other grain was grown, such as rye, oats, peas, barley and corn, but principally for feeding. Wheat was the farmer's main dependence, his staff of life and his current coin. A good cradler would cut about five acres a day, and an expert with a rake would follow and bind up what he cut. There were men who would literally walk through the grain with a cradle, and then ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the other—their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to prove some printed hand-book quite wrong in the number of steps up a round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... day: though it was meant to be a day of jubilee, yet it was far from being productive of that mirth or gaiety which I expected. The excessive dearness of a few articles of the first necessity may, probably, be one cause of this gloom among the people. Bread, the staff of life, (as it may be justly termed in France, where a much greater proportion is, in general, consumed than in any other country,) is now at the enormous price of eighteen sous (nine-pence sterling) for the loaf of four pounds. Besides, the Parisians ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in a bad temper and vicious. She was cursing the snow which covered the doings of the field-mice, which ordinarily were her "staff of life"; and she had not killed since dawn. Hence she was a public danger, even to wild-folk she usually left alone, and just now she was looking for our thrush, who she ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Our sea-biscuit was getting low, and our egress from the wilderness was therefore becoming, in some sort, a necessity. There was no lack of venison, or fish, but these are rather luxuries than actual necessaries, and they were becoming somewhat stale to as. The staff of life is bread, and of this we had but two days' supply. It is entirely true that our jerked venison, now dry and hard as chips, could, if necessary, be made to furnish, to some extent, a substitute; still, while "it is written that man shall ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... we said and thought did not come as a quoted sermon, but as suggestions and inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about a dairy and farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them believe that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread of so hard and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square wooden board and iron chopper to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... fat, juicy wild turkey. He had an especially tender tooth for wild turkey, particularly when it was young and fat. It, more than anything else, was his staff of life, and now he set covetous eyes upon the one that was broiling over the coals. He did not like to rob women, but it must be done, and he bethought himself of his painted coat. Pulling it high over his head, concealing his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... getting proper provisions at many places. Numbers of people were either thoughtless, or they looked on Boyton as an uncanny sort of creature, whom they did not care to have about. When he did get food, it consisted of pie, which seemed to be the staff of life with most of the country people. He inquired of a voluble fellow where he could be ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... certain that dates formed the main food of the inhabitants, The dried fruit, being to them the staff of life, was regarded by the Greeks as their "bread." It was perhaps pressed into cakes, as is the common practice in the country at the present day. On this and goat's milk, which we know to have been in use, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... constant facts of experience which make the realization of the divine presence not only a satisfaction, but the indispensable "staff of life" for certain human beings. In their unfaltering faith in God's enduring and proximate actuality lies their sole source of security and trust. For such persons a lapse or a lack of faith is the prelude to utter collapse. A vague general assurance of the dependability of the future ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... sofera, or cloth on which the dinner is spread, is, from a superstitious notion that changing is unlucky, so intolerably dirty and offensive in odour, that the stranger can scarcely endure to sit beside it. With the Chinese, rice is the "staff of life," but all kinds of animal food are eagerly devoured; and pedlars offering for sale rats, cats, and dogs, may be seen in the streets of Chinese towns. It is uncertain whether a depraved taste or lack of superior animal food, induces a really civilized people to devour such flesh. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... I was an affianced, and have refused to sit at any banquet at which she was fobbed off with a cold shoulder. This again was absurd, since the moiety of a loaf is preferable to total deprivation of the staff of life, and moreover, in my country, it is customary for the husband-elect to take his meals apart from his bride that is to be; nor does she ever touch food until he has previously assuaged his pangs of hunger. Notwithstanding, she would not be pacified until I had bestowed ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... "Staff of Life," on account of its nutritive value, should head the list of foods for human consumption. Bread making should stand first in the "Science of Cooking," as there is no one food upon which the comfort, health and well-being of the average family so largely depends ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas |
