"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... models. Shall we reverse the poet's line to read "Better fifty years of China than a cycle of the West?" Society proceeds toward betterment, and not catastrophe, as individuals may proceed on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things. The troubles of the child, the broken toy, the slight from a friend, the failure of an expected holiday, are mole-hills to be sure, but in his circumscribed horizon they take an Alpine magnitude. His strength for climbing is in the gristle, nor has he philosophy to console him when blocked by the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the idea of having ill-used her, and thinks she might have liked him better if he had done so, instead of threatening her into good behaviour like a naughty child, with hair powder for poison, and a wooden toy for a sword; has no doubt that, if she had cared to warm his heart, some smouldering embers within it might still have burst into flame; but admits once for all that there was no question of feeling in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of Mr. Hudson the toy dropped from Nina's fingers and the blue eyes flashed up into Edith's face with a more rational expression than she ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the significant sayings altogether. However inconsistent they may be with the doctrine he is consciously driving at, they appeal to some sub-intellectual instinct in him that makes him stick them in, like a child sticking tinsel stars on the robe of a toy angel. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... o'clock when Bart got through with his supper, did his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother, made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the other, and helped his sisters ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... city-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds from depredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care the slenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned and watered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toy would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray cat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on the gravel walk, were punishable offences. No room for ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... child who is very much pleased with a new toy, and holding Marishka's hand, looked at her curiously from head to foot. There was something very genuine in her interest and kindliness, and Marishka ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Marcus visited his white-haired neighbor opposite, and never forgot to take along a toy, or some candy, for his grandniece Helen. He brought these offerings in lieu of baby talk, which he could never master. This fact pointed him out, beyond all question, as ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Andersen was only a poor shoe-maker, but he loved reading and poetry, and seems to have taught his little boy a similar love. The shoe-maker amused himself by making a toy theatre for his little Hans, and showed him how to work the puppets, and make them act little plays. This was a winter amusement. In the long summer days he would often take the child to the woods—and here, in the great birch forests, the two would spend ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Shih Hsiang-yn, "it's only a sort of a toy! Still, are you so careless?" While speaking, she flung open her hand. "Just see," she laughed, "is it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... monument of futility was that building; I longed to be in it and of it once again. And when I realised that I yearned for the impossible, my heart was like a stone. For, indeed, I, Simon de Gex, with London once a toy to my hand, was coming into it now a penniless adventurer to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... here and there. There was no undergrowth, and few bird songs, only the dim wood aisles stretching away, quiet and green. Suddenly it seemed to Julia that the world's horizon had been stretched, the little neatness, the clean, trim brightness, the bustling, industrious toy world was gone; in its place was the twilight of the trees, the silence, the repose, the haunting, indefinable sense of home which is only to be found in these cathedrals ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... remarkable ease with which we handled things, and the strange tendency we had to bump into one another because we seemed to be all the time employing more strength than was necessary and almost to be able to walk on air. Jack declared that he felt as if his head had become a toy balloon. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... clouds topping the higher peaks. Gayly painted boats began to come near the Diana, and naked diving boys, slender shapes of brown mahogany, plunged into the sea to catch our pennies. Then we saw the red roofs of Charlotte Amalia, the little park near the landing, and the pink, toy-like fortress with the Stars ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... true,' replied Santa Claus; 'and yet you are so soft and pretty it is a pity the babies can't have you. Still, as they would abuse a live rabbit I think I shall make them some toy rabbits, which they cannot hurt; so if you will jump into my sleigh with me and ride home to my castle for a few days, I 'll see if I can't make some toy rabbits just ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... spoiled all the knives, or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet and left the dirt, labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands, infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer, and every kind of tinware, from a toy savings bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam with every prospect of exploding in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... magnificque Fleur de noblesse exquise et redolente Dame dhonneur princesse pacifique Salut a ta maieste precellente Tes seruiteurs par voye raisonnable Tant iusticiers que le peuple amyable. De amyens cite dicte de amenite Recomandant sont par humilite Leur bien publicque en ta grace et puissance Toy confessant estre en realite Mere humble et franche au grant ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a sort of Nuremburg toy planted on a hill top. This toy with its polychrome architecture resembled the House of Parliament in London much as the Montreal cathedral resembles St. Peter's at Rome. But that was of no consequence; there could be ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the lamp, slouched down in his chair, in the position I remembered so well. It was as if I had left him but yesterday. He was whittling, and he had made some little toy for his son Tad, who ran ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... field, a tendency to the breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become the charms of the historian. His student-life in Germany, his after-plot in the stirring Revolutionary times, strongly as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... shrilly replied a fair-haired girl on his other side—a pretty girl in eyeglasses who, Miss Hampshire had announced, was "translating secretary" for a firm of toy importers. Somehow the tone suggested to Win an incipient engagement of marriage ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the humiliation of being handed over like a toy, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... York the children have a common saying when making a swop or change of one toy for another, and no bargain is supposed to be concluded between boys and girls unless they interlock fingers—the little finger on the right hand—and repeat ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... king of the chapel at Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state wig and his orders. As for the newly married Duchess, who sat at the other end of the cabinet caressing a toy spaniel, she was scant fourteen and looked a mere child in her great hoop and jewelled stomacher. Her wonderful fair hair, drawn over a cushion and lightly powdered, was twisted with pearls and roses, and her cheeks excessively rouged, in the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still, as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... main street in his racer. She's a trim little thing and could go like the wind if his Pa hadn't forbidden letting out the engine. I reckon Mr. Crowninshield is afraid he'll either kill himself or somebody else, and I will own the thing ain't no proper toy for a lad his age. Still, city folks ain't content with what would please you or me. They must have the biggest, the fastest, the most expensive article there is or 'tain't good for nothin'. The mere knowin' it's the biggest, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... a toy, but a perfect little Sewing Machine, and Warranted to do Good Sewing on any material that can be used on the regular ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... "We went to Denmark Hill yesterday, by agreement," wrote Mrs Browning in September, "to see the Turners—which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest—refined and truthful." At Lord Stanhope's they were introduced to the latest toy of fashionable occultism, the crystal ball, in which the seer beheld Oremus, the spirit of the sun; the supernatural was qualified for the faithful with luncheon and lobster salad; "I love the marvellous," Mrs Browning frankly ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... on the beach to the tide-mark. It was daubed on to the sills of the ruin; it roosted in the crannies of the rock like white sea-birds; even on outlying reefs there would be a little cock of snow, like a toy lighthouse. Everything was grey and white in a cold and dolorous sort of shepherd's plaid. In the profound silence, broken only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was sounded twice; and I saw the postman, girt with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when lustre too intense.'—I am much mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth is not deeply wrong here. Wrong he is beyond a doubt as to the fact; for there could have been no virtual intensity of lustre (unless merely as a tinsel toy) when it was contradicted by everything in the manners, habits, and situations of the Pagan Gods—they who were content to play in the coarsest manner the part of gay young bloods, sowing their wild oats, and with a recklessness of consequences to their female ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... paradoxical humour of his friend had been a puzzling novelty demanding comprehension; the first, therefore, who put him on the track of the observation of the twists of human character and the knowledge of men. That was the way of Bakkus. An idea was but a toy which he tired of like a child and impatiently broke to bits. Only a week before he had ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... perpetual striking of matches, he had shown no sign of activity for the past hour. Collarless and wearing an old tweed jacket, he had spent the evening, as he had spent the day, in the cane chair, only quitting it for some ten minutes, or less, to toy with dinner. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... things: an inventor of some other system trying out his latest toy, or an expedition sent out by a planetary government for exploration. I favor the latter for two reasons: that ship was big. No inventor would build a thing that size, requiring a crew of several hundred men to try out his invention. A government ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... he had tired of it. It had become to him as valueless as a flimsy toy; and yet he clung to it rather than leave himself with empty hands. Without it, he had absolutely nothing to interest him,—a past on which it hurt him to dwell by reason of its contrast with the present; a present as lonely almost as that of a prisoner in solitary confinement; ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... refused to believe in, the downfall of his long-cherished scheme; and even when the light was at last dawning upon him, he was like a child, crying for a fresh toy, when the one which had long amused him had been broken. If the Armada were really very much damaged, it was easy enough, he thought, for the Duke of Parma to make him a new one, while the old, one was repairing. "In case the Armada is ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the candles in the sconces, and opened Lucy's drawers, and took out linen, and put on the dress with Lucy's aid, and showed Lucy how it fitted, and was charmed, like a child with a new toy. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... queer old presentment of a pump-room king, crowned with a white hat, waiting all day long in his best at the bow-window of the Smyrna Coffee-House to get a bow from that other, and alas! better accredited royalty, the Prince of Wales; this picture, of an old beau, with his toy-shop of gold snuff-boxes, his agate-rings, his senseless obelisk, his rattle of faded jokes and blunted stories—all this had something very attractive to Goldsmith both in its humour and its pathos; and he has left us, in his Life of Nash, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... lay, for she was too young, and perhaps too simple. She did not instinctively like them, but she had never really felt any affection for her mother either, and her own brother and sister had always repelled her. Her mother had sometimes treated her like a toy, but more often as a nuisance and a hindrance in life, to be kept out of the way as much, as possible, and married off on the first opportunity. Yet Sabina knew that far down in her nature there was a mysterious tie ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... compassion for the mischiefs they have occasioned; but till the time comes, they feel nothing, they care for nothing. They live in the present moment, are the creatures of the present impulse (whatever it may be)—and beyond that, the universe is nothing to them. The slightest toy countervails the empire of the world; they will not forego the smallest inclination they feel, for any object that can be proposed to them, or any reasons that can be urged for it. You might as well ask of the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... observed, and thus left to herself she scampered back to the dormitory after the chamber-work was done, and, going straight to a small bureau that stood between Jane's bed and her own, she cautiously pulled out the lower drawer, and took from it a little toy house. This pretty toy house was nothing more nor less than a child's bank that had been given to Polly one Christmas, and into which she had dropped the pennies that had been bestowed upon her from time to time. Polly had long yearned for a paint-box; ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... watching for my answer from the corner of her eyes. "The Empress," I said, "is my mistress, and I will be an honest minister to her. With Phorenice, the woman, it is likely that I shall have little enough to do. Besides, I am not the sort that sports with this toy they call love." ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... as I watched his thoughts was that the outer doors are manipulated by telepathic means. The locks are so finely adjusted that the doors are released by the action of a certain combination of thought waves. To experiment with my new-found toy I thought to surprise him into revealing this combination and so I asked him in a casual manner how he had managed to unlock the massive doors for me from the inner chambers of the building. As quick as a flash there leaped to his ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manufacture of puppets, however influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare it to have fallen ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a pretty toy to be a poet. Well, well, Meander, thou art deeply read; And having thee, I have a jewel sure. Go on, my lord, and give your charge, I say; Thy wit will ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... some other life: the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt rest from the beating of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this way and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the intellect, from thy toilsome ministry ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... people that day. He sold them papers when they did not want them. He bettered that and sold them papers when they had them. He snatched up lost papers, smoothed and sold them over. Every gay picture or broken toy dropped from an automobile he caught up and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... more alacrity than I would have expected, darted forward with outstretched claws, as a hawk on his prey, and seizing the glittering thing returned it to his lips with a look of evident relief. It was habit, of course, for we were not exactly the men to plunder him of his toy, but there was a fierceness about the whole action that spoke of the real miser. Then there was silence for a moment. The old man was evidently greatly impressed by the perils of his ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... nevertheless, rode indifferent-eyed, As if pomp were a toy to his manly pride, Whilst the ladies lov'd him the more for his scorn, And thought him the noblest man ever was born, And tears came into the bravest eyes, And hearts swell'd after him double their ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... away, the fighting unit suddenly ran down like a clockwork toy. It toppled over, skidded past him under its own momentum, and lay there kicking spasmodically. Ed glared at it uncomprehendingly. It arched its neck back to almost touch its haunches, ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... eternity. But to dwell on these high mysteries would take us into depths beyond the present needs of mother or of infant, and it is better that the greater part of the baby-life should be that of an animated toy. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... roared. Yellow flames and smoke spurted. The bulldog barked. Dave's parlor toy had ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... entrance she wears a Pierrette costume, white pumps, hose, white tulle dress with very full skirts, ankle length. White clown cap. The dress may be trimmed with black satin discs, or pompons, or toy balloons in festoons, ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... Larsen increases—if by intimacy may be denoted those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet, between king and jester. I am to him no more than a toy, and he values me no more than a child values a toy. My function is to amuse, and so long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from cabin table to galley, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... taken much pains, and we remain indifferent to the most beautiful and precious gifts which come by themselves without our making any effort to obtain them. In the same way, the child becomes attached to some toy which he has made himself, and disdains the costly presents given by his parents. As a poet has said: "Man only enjoys for long and without remorse the goods dearly paid for by ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... No use. She was after him at once; so were the cubs, as eager as she. They did not mean that their supper should escape. The whole family commenced to maul him. The mother seized him by the shoulder and straddled him; she bit, the two cubs bit and raked. He was only a toy to them, and being rapidly gashed to ribbons he would have died then and there had not his shouts and the growling of the bears ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... out upon the piazza, perhaps with some purpose in her mind; for it is not unpleasant to toy with a temptation, even when one means to resist it. At any rate, she was a little excited when she heard Mr. Harrison coming out to ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... season and out of season, and most of the time rendering help not bargained for fully equal to that which I could have required. The helpers also passed before me. Jee Gam with his wife and five children; our brave, unselfish Low Quong; our faithful, almost saintly Chin Toy, our earnest and eloquent Yong Jin—all of whom have sacrificed their pecuniary interests for service in the mission, and all of whom, if their income from missionary work ceases, will be compelled at once to seek an income elsewhere because of those dependent upon them. Then the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... first is in man, but not in boy. My second is in trifle, not in toy. My third is in eight, but not in four. My fourth is in wisdom, not in lore. My fifth is in ten, but not in one. My sixth is in moon, but not in sun. My seventh is in cottage, not in hive. My eighth is in eleven, not in five. My ninth is in prosper, not ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the cap and blouse of a Union soldier, bearing down with his left hand upon a cane, and dragging his left foot heavily behind him, while with his right hand he holds by a string a cluster of soaring toy balloons, and also drags, by its long wooden tongue, a rude child's cart, in ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... house, and takes one, two, three, or four additional wives, and defends his action by appealing to Moses. They have taken out of Moses such things as please them and pander to their lust. In Turkey they are very cruel to women; any woman that will not submit is cast aside. They toy with their women like a dog with a rag. When they are weary of one woman, they quickly put her beneath the turf and take another. Moses has said nothing to justify this practise. My opinion is that there is no real married life among the Turks; theirs is a whorish life. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... said the countess, amused at her new toy. With a quick, graceful movement, the young girl resumed her seat on the wooden chair, and the needle, firmly held between her agile fingers, went in and out of the stuff with that short, sharp noise that stimulates the action ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... and what a love she poured out at his feet!—different in calibre, in nature, different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find again—a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly, unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown away ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... see every day of physic and physicians does not much heighten my opinion of them. To come into the world in imbecility, in the midst of anguish and cries; to be the toy of ignorance, of error, of necessity, of sickness, of malice, of all passions; to return step by step to that imbecility whence one sprang; from the moment when we lisp our first words, down to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... better than any one else, and I know that he tires of everything in a short time. He would have wearied of you by Christmas, and would have loathed the chains he had forged for himself. When he was a child he tired of a new toy in half an ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... it was found to get wrecked among the trees. A lad of ten would have known better, he declared. And certainly the kite did get wrecked, for I saw it hanging over the road myself. But that a sane man should spend his time 'playing with a toy' ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... wife; but any nineteenth-century reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of the Boston virgin, the wife, the widow, "Madam Brick the flower of Boston," and the half widow "Parte per Pale, Madam Toy," whose husband was at sea; and his long rides with one or the other of them a-pillion-back behind him, and his tedious conversations with them on platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show plainly that he ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... palaces of the Marais, where the shops have such lofty ceilings and stately double doors, people work all night, handling gauze, flowers and straw, fastening labels on satin-covered boxes, sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood, of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets, on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud through which they have tramped, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... begun to fire their cannon on the crest of the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably. A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... troubled at the thought that he would have "only girls" to play with at Zaandam, especially as Greta was a year younger than himself. But when the two girls, instead of bringing forward their dolls and tea-sets with which to entertain their visitors, produced from their treasures two good-sized toy canal-boats, fully equipped with everything a canal-boat needed, he admitted to himself that girls who liked to sail boats might be ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids. From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy, To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy. Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear Told him they called his Jan Toy 'Pretty dear.' (She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.) For reasons of his own to him the wren Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men 'Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back. That Mother Dunch's Buttocks ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... of our little toy woods at home, just at that moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to—to all this," and he swept his arm round to indicate ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... was apprehended. He said he was very sorry, but that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone off: quite accidentally. He wished to be taken to the hospital ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... young kid lost his dam, Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook? How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook? SPIR. O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, I came not here on such a trivial toy As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought To this my errand, and the care it brought. But, oh! my virgin Lady, where is she? How ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... it and throwing a shadow like a great, black bird with outstretched wings on the sand. He had to lie where he could look at it, else he could not have lain there at all. He was like a child that falls asleep with a new, long-coveted toy clasped tight in its two hands. He worried himself into a headache over the difficulties of transporting it unharmed over the miles of untracked desert country to Sinkhole. He was afraid the mules would run away with it, or upset it somehow. It looked so fragile, so ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... themselves to thwart and mitigate the tyranny practised by the Assembly over these illustrious victims. I can speak from my own experience on these matters. From the time I last accompanied the Princesse de Lamballe to Paris till I left it in 1792, what between milliners, dressmakers, flower girls, fancy toy sellers, perfumers, hawkers of jewellery, purse and gaiter makers, etc., I had myself assumed twenty different characters, besides that of a drummer boy, sometimes blackening my face to enter the palace unnoticed, and often holding conversations analogous to the sentiments ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when, hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest soul becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do battle. Strength indicates a boundless nature—like the Maker. Strength is a God to you—Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of playing with it," he added, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making to keep from shipping too much water himself. Had he been alone his ten or eleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toy balloon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around his neck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one. Half a dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caught Miki and dragged him down—head, tail, legs, and ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... enough to know that if he had to toy with his glasses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first. Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and said—"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... is a man difficult to describe, stiff in the back, and long and loose in the neck, reminding me of those toy-birds that bob head and tail up and down alternately. When he agrees with any thing you say, down comes his head with a rectangular nod; when he does not agree with you, he is so silent and motionless that he leaves you in doubt whether he has heard a word of what you have been saying. His face ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... branch snapped under Kerry's foot with the report of a toy pistol. He swore perfunctorily, and gazed greedily at the cave-opening just ahead. He was a bungling woodsman at best; and now, stalking that greatest of all big game, man, the blood drummed in his ears and his heart seemed to slip a cog or two with every beat. He stood tense, ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... but a broken toy, Its pleasure hollow — false its joy, Unreal its loveliest hue, Alas! Its pains alone are true, Alas! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of Zoza; who seeing this little balm for the sickness of her hopes taken away from her, knew not, at first, what to do. But, recollecting the fairies' gifts, she opened the walnut, and out of it hopped a little dwarf like a doll, the most graceful toy that was ever seen in the world. Then, seating himself upon the window, the dwarf began to sing with such a trill and gurgling, that he seemed a veritable ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the bush," said Donovan, smiling. "Would you at all care to have this small animal? I knew you were fond of dogs, and Gladys and I saw this little toy Esquimanx the other day and fell in love with him. I find though that another dog rather hurts Waif's feelings, so you will be doing a kindness to him as well if you ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... which spring from the kindness of the kind, and fearing nothing so much as public notoriety. Hogg loved fame, yet took no pains to secure it. Fame, nevertheless, reached him; but when found, it was with him a possession much resembling the child's toy. His heart to the last appeared too deeply imbued with the unsuspicious simplicity and carelessness of the boy to have much concern about it. On this point Tannahill was morbidly sensitive; his was an unfortunate cast of temperament, which, deepening ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... doubt hereof, but that it was the deuil which did guide and leade them, whom al superstition, false religion, and erronious doctrine pleaseth, aboue all thinges, speciallye when such a toy and trifle is accompanied with al wantonnesse and villanie. Now that such manner of doing, that is to say, custome of Pagans and heathen men, hath bene followed and practiced, by the children of Israel, after that hauing sacrificed to the ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. The social triumphs on which he most piqued himself were of a congenial order. He sits down to write elaborate letters to Sir Horace Mann, at Florence, brimming over with irrepressible triumph when he has persuaded some titled ladies to visit his pet toy, the printing-press, at Strawberry Hill, and there, of course to their unspeakable surprise, his printer draws off a copy of verses composed in their honour in the most faded style of old-fashioned gallantry. He is intoxicated by his appointment to act as poet-laureate on the occasion of a visit ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... gone four miles when a little, low-pitched town of small square houses, strewn about like toy-blocks between pairs of red outside chimneys, sat, in the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the Nanticoke River a few miles, by its course, above Twiford's wharf. Two streets, formed by two roads, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the wooden image of the Virgin. He caught it up in his arms, and heedless of a wail that issued from its worshipper like a child robbed of its toy, ran aft with it. "Come, wife," he cried. "I'll lash thee and the child to this. 'Tis sore worm eaten, but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... too, which they built—little toy houses with toy bricks. But Eline showed them how to shape the bricks and how to make each brick fit in its proper place so that never a one should lose its worth. And Eline showed the children how that behind the building ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.
... Beauty, since the Day I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn'd With all Perfections, so enflame my Sense With ardor to enjoy thee, fairer now Than ever, Bounty of this virtuous Tree. So said he, and forbore not Glance or Toy Of amorous Intent, well understood Of Eve, whose Eye darted contagious Fire. Her hand he seiz'd, and to a shady Bank Thick over-head with verdant Roof embower'd, He led her nothing loth: Flowrs were the Couch, Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel, And ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... nothing flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. Thin, scratchy, inaudible more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the shape in the hollow the ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... and Plenty—a veritable small farm from some softer little country far to the east. It looked strangely lost amid these bleaker holdings. There was a white little house and it sported nothing less than green blinds. There was a red barn, with toy outbuildings. There was a vegetable garden, an orchard of blossoming fruit trees, and, in front of the glistening little house, a gay garden of flowers. Even now I could detect the yellow of daffodils ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... his watch—the prettiest little toy in gold and enamel, with elaborate monogram and coat of arms—a watch that looked like a woman's gift. They had been nearly ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... reasonable that some such governing factor should exist as an explanation of the apparent failure of all full-sized machines that have been constructed. Among models there is nothing more strikingly successful than the toy helicopter, in which the essential weight is so small compared with the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... order, and yet we scarcely discovered the means she employed. We trusted her implicitly; we knew that she entered into all our sorrows as well as into our joys and amusements. How carefully she bound up a cut finger or bathed a bruised knee; or if we were trying to manufacture any toy, how ready she was to show us the best way to do the work; how warmly she admired it when finished, and how proudly she showed it to father when he came in. I was accustomed from my earliest days to the sight of ships coming into or going out of the Downs, or brought ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... and up, went Mary and Tom, in this the girl's first big sky ride. The earth below seemed farther and farther away. The wide, green fields became little emerald squares, and the houses like those in a toy Noah's ark. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... bookstalls and stopped short and stared with unseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering now whether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced something of the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. His golden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational sense of loss was flooding every other feeling about V.V. If she had loved him truly and altogether could she have left him like this? Neither of them surely had intended ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... exclaimed Flossie. "He's just as gentle, and he's soft, like the little toy lamb ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... invent ways of pleasing themselves. Monkey dinner parties, diamonds, automobiles and boxes on the grand tier have no more attraction; private yachts and other women's husbands have grown passe. They want a new toy, and faith, nothing will please them but the destinies of the nation. Their reasoning is simple and direct. If a man who wheels scrap iron at a blast furnace is competent ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Pfeiffer's statement that he was engaged to Lucille. The affair had been so sudden that for some time he could progress no farther in an attempt to think than a gasp, pawing mentally at an intangible substance which eluded him like a child's small hand trying to grasp a toy balloon. Sense of reality appeared to have been dissolved. He had followed the sergeant across the square meekly without realising what was happening, and when he had been placed in a whitewashed room at the back of the native guard house ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... essentially different from other days The law cannot fit all cases The weak always sink The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours Thinking isn't—believing Vagueness generally attributed to her sex Vividly unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop We must believe, if we believe at all, without authority We are always trying to get away from ourselves We never can foresee how we may change We have no control over our affections ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their burrows near each other and frequently occupy in this manner several hundred acres of land. when at rest above ground their position is generally erect on their hinder feet and rump; thus they will generally set and bark at you as you approach them, their note being much that of the little toy dogs, their yelps are in quick succession and at each they a motion to their tails upwards. they feed on the grass and weeds within the limits of their village which they never appear to exceed on any occasion. as they ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... pure. It was my chance once, in my wanton days, To court a wench; hark, and I'll tell thee how: I came unto my love, and she look'd coy, I spake unto my love, she turn'd aside, I touch'd my love, and 'gan with her to toy, But she sat mute, for anger or for pride; I striv'd and kiss'd my love, she cry'd Away! Thou wouldst have left her thus—I made her stay. I catch'd my love, and wrung her by the hand: I took my love, and set her on my knee, And pull'd her to me; O, you spoil my band, You hurt me, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... was engaged by a relative wonder. She was posing before the mirror, critically, miserably, defensively, and perhaps bewilderedly. What was the matter with the dress? She could not see. For the past four weeks mirrors had been her delight, a new toy. Here was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... what I played until I got to be about 10 years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. I shaped two pieces ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... cities of the world to set out their bad-cited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens, to set out our own sterile plots. We weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or, if it be a new invention, 'tis but some bauble or toy, which idle fellows write, for as ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... suddenly into a creature of hope and comfort, and so won Elizabeth's gratitude for life. They were conducted into a vast room presided over by several nurses and with hundreds of two-year-old girls grouped about the toy-covered floor. This was the Two-year-old Room. Two nurses came forward, and Elizabeth watched their bearing towards Dings with jealous eyes. They were kind—it was clear they ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells |
