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Nutshell   Listen
noun
Nutshell  n.  
1.
The shell or hard external covering in which the kernel of a nut is inclosed.
2.
Hence, a thing of little compass, or of little value.
3.
(Zool.) A shell of the genus Nucula.
in a nutshell in a summarized and very abbreviated form; of statments, descriptions, reports, and other communications; as, to describe the convention in a nutshell.
To be in a nutshell or To lie in a nutshell, to be within a small compass; to admit of very brief or simple determination or statement. "The remedy lay in a nutshell."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books



... moved to survey the remarkable systems of worlds that revolve around Sirius. It is a veritable medley of planets, large and small, inhabited and barren, sinless, sinful and millennial. A little universe packed in a nutshell, figuratively speaking. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you cannot tell what century it is from the face of the sea. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... to grow up and pay taxes; and it makes me wonder if they can be the children of that old-fangled race. Sometimes I think it's high time for me to go. There was a newspaper fellow down here when the General Walker came ashore, and, after asking a lot of questions, he put the case in a nutshell. "You're a link with the past," he said; "that's what you are." I don't know if he invented the expression, or if he picked it up somewhere and used it on me, but ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... low and thin, and the walls are near and thin, and the children are omnipresent and not thin, and their wants and their joys and their quarrels are as numerous as the fishes in the sea, and there you have the problem in a nutshell. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... here it is in a nutshell: I have not spoken of it before, but you and Mr. Browne can very easily comply with the provisions of the will. You can be married at any time. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... a wolfish grin. "All right. So we're desperate, and we haven't much time. In a nutshell, since you're going to be a house guest at the Bullones'—we suspect Ipscott Bullone of being the head of a conspiracy ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... their widest and noblest meanings these hopes which had been handed down from one generation of Jews to another. The story of the life of Jesus will be given in detail in other courses in this series. Here, in a nutshell, is what Jesus did: he helped men to believe in a God who loved all men as his children, whether rich or poor, learned or ignorant, Jews or Gentiles or Samaritans, even the bad as well as the good; for if they were bad, they needed his love to help them to be good. Jesus not only ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... Third Method of Analysis, described above, is an attempt very briefly to epitomize the chief elements of a great scheme,—to give, in a nutshell, the substance of what our grammarians have borrowed from the logicians, then mixed with something of their own, next amplified with small details, and, in some instances, branched out and extended to enormous bulk and length. Of course, they have not failed ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... friction that must be perpetually going on in the human organism owing to the retention of effete matter! And since not even the most cunning product of man's handiwork can compare with the intricate mechanism of the body, the importance of eliminating the waste becomes manifest. Here, in a nutshell, lies the secret ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... fleecy clouds upon the azure only say that the sea will be smooth and peaceful. D'Artagnan found the sky blue, the breeze embalmed with saline perfumes, and he said: "I will embark with the first tide, if it be but in a nutshell." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Books say—and my blessing, with yours, to back it I hope, on the Story Books, for saying anything in this work-a-day world!—Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or two, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... internal secretory function of the pancreas is diabetes. An enormous amount of work has been spent upon the various aspects of it as a mystery. Hundreds of papers in a dozen languages upon the subject are in existence. In a nutshell, they have established pretty well that diabetes is a disease in which there is an excess of sugar in the blood and urine because of an insufficient amount of the secretion of the islands of Langerhans in the pancreas. Removal of the pancreas makes the body, essentially ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... for himself matters of faith. The position which Luther occupies in his final answer before the Emperor at Worms is generally believed to state Luther's position on the question of religious liberty in a nutshell. "Unless convinced by the Word of God or by cogent reason" that he was wrong, he declared at the Diet of Worms, he could not and would not retract what he had written. The individual conscience, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... Somebody certainly might come even to-night. Fred himself perhaps, if he could escape from the rigid guardianship he was under; or was that miraculous Australian Nettie a little witch, who had spirited the whole party in a nutshell over the seas? Never was man delivered from a burden with a worse grace than was Dr Rider; and the matter had not mended ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... for Mrs. Johnson, but as her business is not so good at times she has me whenever she can feel as if she can spare the money. So this little life of mine has been almost locked up in a nutshell, and Jesus has come to me in the spirit's power that I should tell the world of His wonderful love to me a poor sinner of the dust. And what can not the Lord do for those who put their trust in ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold

... purport of our national struggle. "South chooses to hire its servants for life, rather than by the day, month, or year; North bludgeons the Southern brain to prevent the same": that, you say, is the American Iliad in a Nutshell. In a certain sense, more's the pity, it must be supposed that you speak correctly; but be assured that this is the American Iliad in no other nutshell than your private one,—in those too contracted cerebral quarters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... chair is nailed to the floor," he remarked, as he settled himself more comfortably. "It suits me admirably. The fact is—and this is my case in a nutshell—which is all that a doctor of your marvellous development requires—the fact is, Dr. Silence, I am a victim of Higher Space. That's what's the matter ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... little nutshell of a house his heart beat fast at the sight of a woman pinning clothes to the line. Her fingers, stiff and swollen, moved slowly. The same instinct that had guided him down this road made him dismount ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... child; they lived near a wood called Rold Wood. The Trolds came one night and stole the child, leaving one of their own in its place. The man and his wife did not at first notice any change, but the wife gradually became suspicious, and she asked the advice of a wise woman, who told her to brew in a nutshell, with an eggshell as beer barrel, in the changeling's presence, who exclaimed that it had lived so many years as to have seen Rold Wood hewn down and grow up three times, but had never seen any one brew in a nutshell before. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... is, however, all in a nutshell. Let the father properly train his daughter, and she will bring her first love-letter to him, and give him an opportunity to cherish a suitable affection, and to nip an improper one in the germ, before it has time to do ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... before we started up again. It was on this second dash that I understood why those Homeric words had come to my lips a while ago. This was indeed like nothing so much as like being out on rough waters and in a troubled sea, with nothing to brace the storm with but a wind-tossed nutshell of a one-man sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning man may have when fighting ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... situation perfectly well. One of the best-known Hindu gentlemen recently wrote as follows: "The truth is in a nutshell and may be described in a few words. The British cannot be driven out of India by the Indians, nor by any foreign Power. This fact is known to more than 90 per cent of the people. Of all the foreigners, the British are the best. We, as we are now, are the least ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... which will exhaust us and come to nothing. Without the advice of an experienced pilot, with no other compass than a book, which is not always very clear, because of its laconic adherence to set terms, our poor bark is bound to be wrecked on the first reef. One might as well put out to sea in a nutshell and defy the billows of the vasty deep. He does not use these actual words, but his gloomy estimate of the extreme difficulties to be encountered is enough to explain his refusal. I am quite free to go and break my neck in far countries; he is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... great heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox: they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with a large needle, (which gives you no more pain than a common ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... took Germany 100 years to learn by suffering that if she is ever to regain her fallen prestige as a nation, she must fight her enemies at home and abroad; she must restore the military ideal of ancient times. And here, in a nutshell, is the very root of all this cry about militarism: The man who will not fight for what he regards as his political rights, remains a slave his whole life long; for it is the essential nature of man to exercise tyrannous power over ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... answered the Oriental, "I am accustomed to all sorts of conveyances—a dooly, a litter, a cart, a palanquin, or a post-chaise, are all alike to me—I think I could be an inside with Queen Mab in a nutshell, rather than not get forward.—Begging you many pardons, if you have no particular objections, I will light my sheroot," ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. The ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... physical, and spiritual, and historical, with its good and bad, with its manifold inconsistencies, is what he wishes to set forth, in strong, picturesque, and popular lineaments, for the understanding of the average man. One of his favourite endeavours is to get the whole matter into a nutshell; to knock the four corners of the universe, one after another, about his readers' ears; to hurry him, in breathless phrases, hither and thither, back and forward, in time and space; to focus all this about his own momentary personality; and then, drawing the ground from under his feet, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... crowded at that season, now that the English flock abroad in shoals, like the swallows quitting our cold country, to return again some time. France has been pretty well used up, so now we fall upon Germany. Stalkenberg was that year particularly full, for its size—you might have put it in a nutshell; and it derived its importance, name, and most else belonging to it, from its lord of the soil, the Baron von Stalkenberg. A stalwart old man was the baron, with grizzly hair, a grizzled beard, and manners as loutish as those of the boars he hunted. He ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... into the mouth of a witness no friendlier or more candid than Ned Poins the distinction between two as true-bred cowards as ever turned back and one who will fight no longer than he sees reason. In this nutshell lies the whole kernel of the matter; the sweet, sound, ripe, toothsome, wholesome kernel of Falstaff's character and humour. He will fight as well as his princely patron, and, like the prince, as long as he sees reason; but neither Hal nor Jack has ever felt ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... sprouts, Scotch kale, leek and endive rank highest in organic mineral salts. Next to these come tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, radishes, onions, asparagus, cauliflower and horseradish.(See also Group V in "Dietetics in a Nutshell.") ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... Jobling, 'the thing lies in a nutshell. A certain gentleman was found, one morning, in an obscure street, lying in an angle of a doorway—I should rather say, leaning, in an upright position, in the angle of a doorway, and supported consequently by the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... in a nutshell, there is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon

... responsible"—and he waved his spoon around in a wide sweep to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, "He is right!—he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell—it is wonderful!" After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to gather and grow, he went on: "Very good. Let us suppose the case of a pair of tongs that falls upon a man's foot, causing a cruel hurt. Will you claim ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... nutshell, was just what was worrying me, but there seemed to be nothing more to say. I ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... vegetables as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... of the squirrel is acorns, nuts, and seeds and grain of all kinds, and it will sometimes nibble leaf-buds and tender shoots of young trees in the spring. Its teeth are so sharp and strong that it will gnaw the hardest nutshell. Nothing is prettier than to see this graceful creature sitting upright, its beautiful tail curled over its back, gnawing at a nut which it skillfully holds in its fore-paws. As it is not afraid unless one approaches too near, when it whisks out of sight in a twinkling, its habits ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... dash, morceau^, screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet^, flitter, gobbet^, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive^; snip, snippet; snick^, snack, snatch, slip, scrag^; chip, chipping; shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair. nutshell; thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful; fragment; fraction &c (part) 51; drop in the ocean. animalcule &c 193. trifle &c (unimportant thing) 643; mere nothing, next to nothing; hardly anything; just enough to swear by; the shadow of a shade. finiteness, finite ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... used to watch 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made for little arms like yours to ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... In a nutshell, then, what the advertising department needs is that great body of non-subscribing suffragists to enroll as readers. Think of that 68,000 whose names and addresses we have! If we only had them on our lists, if they stood back of us, advertisers would ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan

... "lovers of Zion" (Hobebe Zion). Among the Russo-Jewish students in Vienna, Smolenskin, the militant Zionist, organized an academic society, Kadimah, a name which, meaning Eastward and Forward, contains the philosophy of Zionism in a nutshell. Seeing that the Alliance Israelite Universelle encouraged emigration to America, both he and Ben Yehudah published violent attacks on the French society, and endeavored to thwart its plans as far ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... Menzel Documents? What Fact lying in them was it that Friedrich had to read? Here, smelted down by repeated roastings, is succinct answer;—for the ultimate fragment of incombustible here as elsewhere, will go into a nutshell, once the continents of Diplomatist-Gazetteer logic and disorderly stable-litter, threatening to heap themselves over the very stars, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... it matter? It is a mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back—which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I don't wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the day. The ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... fires, but it was child's play in a serious outburst. The mournful fact that Manitou had never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns. Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... trouble in a nutshell," said the doctor; "but you know there isn't a scarcity of children in the world. Never a day passes but I see half a dozen who need me, sorely. But with Nancy Ellen, NO CHILD will do unless she mothers it, and ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Disaster Charles Stuart Calverley 'Twas Ever Thus Henry Sambrooke Leigh A Grievance James Kenneth Stephen "Not a Sou Had he Got" Richard Harris Barham The Whiting and the Snail Lewis Carroll The Recognition William Sawyer The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell Algernon Charles Swinburne The Willow-tree William Makepeace Thackeray Poets and Linnets Tom Hood, the Younger The Jam-pot Rudyard Kipling Ballad Charles Stuart Calverley The Poster-girl Carolyn Wells After Dilletante Concetti Henry Duff Traill If Mortimer Collins ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... Here, in a nutshell, are not only the natural variations of the rock garden, but the inspiration. No rock garden worthy of the name has ever been created by man that did not depend upon a study of those that nature has given the world in prodigal abundance. There ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams

... sanity; yet "white males" vote without these, and women possessing all are denied the right. While different men have different duties, different functions, different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parnassus to the bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutshell? Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in their specialties because they vote? Because some women are mothers, shall all women concentrate every thought in that direction? and can those who ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Production by the Litchfield County Choral Union at Norfolk, Conn., of Percy Grainger's suite for orchestra "In a Nutshell" conducted by the composer; C. M. Loeffler's symphony "Hora Mystica" conducted by ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... to receive fresh honors. That gave me a lesson which I have never forgotten; no honor that has come to me have I ever fully earned; and no disgrace that I have earned has ever been visited upon me for the public to know. There in a nutshell you have the moral training of the heir to a modern throne. What chance, then, have I to know anything ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... blankly. Then he drew his chair closer. "See here, Sara, you know I'm terribly keen about her. I think about her, I dream about her, I—oh, well, here it is in a nutshell: I'm in love with her. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... whole thing in a nutshell, my lord duke! I received, from Merindol—acting for your lordship—part payment in advance for despatching a certain Baron de Sigognac, commonly called Captain Fracasse. On account of circumstances beyond my control, I have not been able to finish the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... all she wants, ma'am. Take my word for it, this matter rests entirely with you. It's all in a nutshell. Encourage her to confide in you—and she ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... immigrant; drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the real history of the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... curiosity. This, in a nutshell, summed up Ruth's character. She could never bear to "take ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... iron-work; but these delicate arabesques were made in Vienna, and seemed to have been fashioned by the fairies who, the stories tell us, are condemned by a jealous Carabosse to collect the eyes of ants, or weave a fabric so diaphanous that a nutshell can contain it. Madame Rabourdin's graceful figure, made more slender still by the black draperies, was shown to advantage by a carefully cut dress, the two sides of which met at the shoulders in a single strap without sleeves. At every motion she seemed, like a butterfly, to be about to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... nutshell, I had the whole history of the phenomena from which Iceland arose. All take their rise in the fierce action of interior fires, and to believe that the central mass did not remain in a state of liquid fire, white hot, was ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... five thousand inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of them good ones. Now, with a population more than doubled, only these latter two survived, and they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It was in a nutshell. A book which sold at retail for one dollar and a half cost the bookseller ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book, "Thurston's" advertised it at eighty-nine cents—and in any case at a profit ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... ramped and raved under the Palace of Crete. The roar of this modern Minotaur was as the noise of Niagara broken by stormy bursts of thunder. It stunned the intelligence; it shrivelled the organs of speech like a dried kernel rattling impotently in an old nutshell. It filled the world and made human happenings, such as individual lives and deaths, seem of no more importance than the snapping of thumb and finger in front of a cataract. I couldn't have lived in the tumult long and kept my wits; but we heard of an employe ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to both the Grand Vizir and the French General, the impossibility of permitting a vanquished army to be placed by one Ally in a position to attack another Ally." The last phrase put the facts in a nutshell, and illustrates well Nelson's power of going straight to the root of a matter, disregardful of confusing side-issues, of policy or timidity. To Hamilton he wrote passionately concerning the manifold difficulties ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... Winter, 1947-48 numbers of "The Nutshell", news bulletin of the NNGA, have been issued by the Secretary's office. It is intended to have this bulletin distributed to members four times a year. It will carry news of the Association's activities, supplementing the "Nut Growers News" column in the American Fruit Grower magazine, as well as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of the republic; that it would be singularly economical, as the agent who paid might also be authorized to receive, whereby there would be a saving in salary; and, finally, that under this category, the whole affair might be brought within the limits of a nutshell, and the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... under the stern a cheer burst from the crowd of eager faces that gazed over the side of the "Trident." Yet there were many hearts there that grew faint and chill when they beheld the little white speck that seemed to be their only hope of rescue in that dark hour. "What hope was there that such a nutshell should save them all?" they thought, perchance, on seeing it approach. They little knew the wonderful vitality ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... deal; and having curious minds we naturally wish to know all there is to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places we visit. Then, again, our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole matter—history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood, etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is taken home to serve another purpose, to be a help to ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... time. Here was the whole matter in a nutshell: she wanted something to do. And there were thousands of others just like her. Man-like, he forgot that women needed something more than money and attention from an army of servants. He had his offices, ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... when a sudden gust of wind, rushing forth from the narrow gorges of the valley of the Rhone, stirred up the waves of the lake, and produced one of those short seas which so often prove fatal. The sail of the little boat was soon gone, and it seemed like a nutshell dancing on the still-increasing waves. It was impossible to think of returning, and full half an hour of fatigue and danger must elapse before the boat could be moored in safety under the hanging cliffs of ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... "You've put it in a nutshell: the ideal of the American woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of view this world they've invented has more originality than I ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O'Connett, and had brought down ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... beautifully arranged and safe home, in which we were moving on this immense and turbid ocean, carrying within her the great central fire by which the engine was moved, which, in spite of winds and waves, carried us safely along; then the science which enabled the master of this curious nutshell of man's contriving to know just in what part of this waste of trackless waters we were. All these things I knew before, and had often thought of them, but was never so impressed with them; it was almost as if they were ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen

... wash," said Legrand decidedly. "Do you think they'd give up all they had? No, it would only be a pretence—a sham. I agree with the doctor that Holgate's safety is only spelled out by our deaths. There you have it in a nutshell. The man can't afford to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... lurk'd within the thicket, and, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, heard him chant his listless tune— When the howling storm o'ertook us drifting down the island's lee, And our crazy bark was whirling like a nutshell on the sea— When the nights were dark and dreary, and amidst the fern we lay Faint and foodless, sore with travel, longing for the streaks of day; When thou wert an angel to me, watching my exhausted sleep— Never didst thou hear me murmur—couldst thou see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... here in a nutshell the case for traditional communal humour, and once again we are set to wondering why—except possibly to allay some whimsical twinges of self-respect—dramatists ever try to invent new jokes at all. Even more are we set to wondering why this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... smacking his lips, "I do care. I care intensely. Few things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a dear little child—the Beautiful in a nutshell—had suffered hunger. You wrong me." His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood in ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?' asks Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice is—this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness. Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on the other hand, has a substantial and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell. That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that, like the horses, a fair share of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... be gum, or cold-cream or candels ether, I can tell you. Why even Mr. le Cure wood no enuf not to give you enny of those things. That Teddy is not fit to have a godchild, and that is the hole story in a nutshell. I dunno just what I shall do if he rites to me. Mebbe I will anser and mebbe I wont. I guess I shall tell miss Betty about it. Have I ever tole you about her? She lives in the big house on the hill next to Sid Perkins and she has hare like, ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... Ruth. "It puts what we mean in a nutshell. Now, we must write that out, and try to get signatures. We might add a fifth rule, about not doing ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... note to Beaumanoir with a quiet laugh. "There you have the story in a nutshell," he said. "A few minutes ago I became aware that I am not Prince Michael's son. Although I strove to act fairly, my worthy stepfather is not content. He thinks to force my hand, because he fears the republican idea; but I ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... put into practice in Germany is, in a nutshell, the decision on the part of the state or the rulers that the individual is not competent to spend his own money, to choose his own calling, to use his own time as he will, or to provide himself for his own future and for the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... account of the importance which every man naturally bestows on matters of that sort; what among other nations forms a complicated code of morality more or less pure, more or less corrupt, for the nations of which we speak becomes compressed, so to speak, in a nutshell, and, the essence remaining always at the bottom, the idea of duty grows paramount in their minds and hearts, and every thing they do is illumined by that light of the human conscience, which, after all, is for each one of us the voice of God. False issues do not distract their minds, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... said Florrie Willing. "Rush, rush, rush from morning to night. That's little old New York in a nutshell." ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... down there," answered the little old woman, pointing to a tiny shadow, no bigger than a nutshell, floating on ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... right in a nutshell, an' jess so clar as apple jack: we owes a heap; we'se gittin' inter debt deeper an' deeper ebery yar; we lose money workin' de ole trees; we hain't got no new ones; an', dar's no use to talk,—master Robert won't put ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Paris had come back to him and had seemed still wiser than when uttered: "She'll save you disappointments; you'd know the worst that can happen to you, and it wouldn't be bad." Julia had put it into a nutshell—Biddy would probably save him disappointments. And then she was—well, she was Biddy. Peter knew better what that was since the hour he had spent with her in Rosedale Road. But he had brushed away the sense of it, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... Madam ——'s Current Topics Society. The latter is an extraordinary affair, where society women who have no time to read the news of the day listen to short lectures on the news of the preceding week, discussed pro and con, giving these women in a nutshell material for intelligent conversation when they meet senators and other men at the various receptions before which they wish to ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... shout and kick up a bit of a row. That's quite all right, anyhow, for we're not doing anyone any harm. But soon they start bothering you and the policeman walks up and down and stops occasionally, with his ear to the door. To put it in a nutshell, the chief of police and his gang are a lot of joykillers who decide they want to put a stop to your fun, see? But by God! You've got guts, you've got red blood in your veins and you've got a soul, too, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... the whole story in a nutshell. For his experiments in septic poisons, Mr. Arcubus had hired this apartment, with its convenient balcony for the cultivation of his antidotes. Having prepared his decoctions, he had this night caused himself to be bitten by the snake, which, disgusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Grammar in a Nutshell Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage Etiquette of the Visiting-Card Evolution Theory, The Exercise, Physical Eyes, Care of the Eyes, Character Indicated by the Fables, Modern Facts about Sponges Facts about the Liberty ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... my fame, my honours, my position, or whatever the name may be. I am positively certain that all my "successes" are based on BAD, very BAD, performances of my works, that they therefore rest on misunderstandings, and that my public reputation is not worth an empty nutshell. Let us give up all diplomatic contrivances, this dealing with means which we despise for ends which, closely considered, can never be achieved, least of all by those means. Let us leave alone this COTERIE, this connection with idiots who in a body have no notion of what we really aim at. I ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... a man who preached a sermon as though he were teasing schoolboys, or a man who described a death as though he were describing a practical joke, must necessarily be either an ass or a lunatic." Just so. You have put it in a nutshell. You have disposed of the problem of style so far as it can ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... proceeded to say that the case was in a nutshell. The plaintiff had called a car; the driver of the car had pulled up his horses; it was a wet day, the wheels would not stop quickly, and Mrs. Stiles was in a hurry to get on; she tried to board the car while it was in motion, and was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... proverbs, so much despised by the literary epicures, the Chesterfields of the age, are the roast beef of science. They contain the experience, the wisdom, of nations and ages compressed into the compass of a nutshell. To crack the shell and extract the contents to feed those who have appetites is the ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... dash out not only for help but to make it certain that they had nothing to hide. Her words to Poulton, 'The burglars, and I am afraid my brother has shot one of them,' are significant. They tell the whole story in a nutshell. Crosland's statement merely elaborates it, over-elaborates it, in fact. The bolts on the front door, Wigan, were very stiff; I tried them. Helen Crosland would certainly have had difficulty in drawing them back, and it is an absurdity for ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious pomological speculations; and from that time till now—Longfellow, thou reasonest well!—"things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... every effort should be made to increase domestic happiness by inducing them to remain at home. And long, long ago a quaint old book, Markham's English Housewife, published in 1637, contained the idea in a nutshell, as the following quotation will show: "To speak, then, of the knowledges which belong to our English housewife, I hold the most principal to be a perfect skill in Cookery. She that is utterly ignorant therein, may not, by the laws of strict justice, challenge the freedom of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... whole matter in a nutshell. Why do your teeth like crackling crust, and your organs of taste like spongy crumb, and your digestive contrivances take kindly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... number varies from year to year,—three miles off a native village of perhaps one hundred and fifty souls, and dotting those intervening miles cabins chiefly occupied by "bootleggers" and go-betweens—that is the Tanana situation in a nutshell. The men desire the native girls, and the liquor is largely a lure to get them. Tuberculosis and venereal disease are rife, and the two make a terribly ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... bare arms, Jorgenson, who would be watching the entrance of the creek ever since a muffled detonation of a gun to seaward had warned him of the brig's arrival on the Shore of Refuge, would mutter to himself—"Here's Tom coming in his nutshell." And indeed she was in shape somewhat like half a nutshell and also in the colour of her dark varnished planks. The man's shoulders and head rose high above her gunwales; loaded with Lingard's heavy frame she would climb sturdily the steep ridges, slide ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... further the welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he said, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... she had slept deeply and heard no sound during the night. Nothing had been stolen or disarranged, and there is absolutely no explanation of what the horror can be which has frightened a woman to death and two strong men out of their senses. There is the situation, Mr. Holmes, in a nutshell, and if you can help us to clear it up you will have done a ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... denounced by others, was in itself, to begin with, feasable, and after that advisable, he despatched Mr. Dolby to America for the purpose of surveying the proposed scene of operations. Immediately on his emissary's return, Dickens drew up a few pithy sentences, headed by him, "The Case in a Nutshell." His decision was what those more immediately about him had for some time anticipated. He made up his mind to go, and to go quite independently. The Messrs. Chappell, it should be remarked at once, had no part whatever in the enterprise. The Author-Reader accepted ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... rights," said an engaged man to me the other day; "but for my part I don't think there should be anything in the bearing of an engaged couple in public to indicate that they are more than friends." Here, I think, we have the etiquette of the matter in a nutshell. Wherever the lovers are they will be supremely conscious of each other's presence, but it need not be writ {57} large over their actions. It is sometimes debated whether lovers should kiss in public. As the sweetest kisses must ever be those exchanged "under four eyes," as the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... but I was so awkward that I always dropped them. Besides, I wanted to eat a lot of them, a great big lot. I thought I should like to eat a sackful. One day I managed to steal some. Bonne Esther, who was taking us up to bed, slipped on a nutshell and dropped her lantern, which went out. I was close to a big bowl of nuts, and I took a handful and put them in my pocket. As soon as everybody was in bed I took the nuts out of my pocket, put my head under the sheets and crammed them into ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... Duke of Argyll once said of him at a public meeting: "Oh, gentlemen, what a comfort it is to have a leader who says what he means and means you to understand what he says." Here in a nutshell was the quality which the country most admired in the Duke of Devonshire. They always knew exactly what he stood for, and whether he was a Unionist or a Home-ruler, a Free-trader or a Protectionist. He was never seeking for a safe point to rest on, one which, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... ignorance has given me the victory. Last night I gained my point: the news to that effect is no doubt contained in that document. It was a question of price—it always is. I knew your father's bid, and—I went a few thousands higher and got the prize. That's the story in a nutshell. Of course there are a number of complications and details, but I spare you them; in fact, I don't suppose you understand them. It is a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... each other; and this is all.' We may add that the knowledge is the feeling. Reid, Kant, and the Germans have indeed tried to show that there are feelings not derived from the sensations, but this, as Hartley and Condillac have shown, is a mistake. This is his first principle in a nutshell, and must give a clue ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... a nutshell, my dear. Oh, how glad I am that you take it so quietly. Then, perhaps it is all a mistake, arising from your hearty manner to every one. I told him so, and said that he need not scruple visiting you, or be in the least ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... the captain that I desired the maintopsail filled away, in order that we might close up with the Essex Junior. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders; he 'would go his own course, and had no idea of trusting himself with a d—d nutshell'; and then he went below for his pistols. I called my right-hand man of the crew and told him my situation. I also informed him that I wanted the maintopsail filled. He answered with a clear 'Ay, ay, sir!' in a manner which was not to be misunderstood, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... will and testament some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of. I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... say, Will Blanchard," answered Mr. Blee, "an' theer it do lie in a nutshell. A man's gate-post is his awn as a common, natural gate-post; but bein' a sainted cross o' the Lard sticked in the airth upsy-down by some ancient devilry, 't is no gate-post, nor yet every-day moor-stone, but just the common ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... yourself the trouble. Only—this is where you must not misunderstand me, please,—no shadow of blame attaches to Ladybird if she isn't happy. I had no right to bring her up to this part of the world, knowing it as I did; and I've no right to keep her here. That's the position, in a nutshell." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... was opened very shortly and very clearly by the gentleman who was employed for the prosecution. It would all, he said, have laid in a nutshell, had it not been complicated by a previous robbery at Carlisle. Were it necessary, he said, there would be no difficulty in convicting the prisoners for that offence also, but it had been thought advisable to confine ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... last forty years must be compressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at last, but its effects remained. Nearly a million of people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for those remaining was far from satisfactory. The Encumbered Estates Act, which had completed the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... one's own vine and fig tree in full bearing. Consider the profit and amusement you would derive from it. If you could see your way to doing this, we could arrange all the details with your lawyer, and it is possible that the Company might bear some of the cost. I have put the matter, I trust, in a nutshell. If you, my dear sir, will interest yourself in building that wall, and will kindly give us the name of your lawyers, I dare assure you that you will hear no more from ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... Sir Charles notes, 'there lies in a nutshell all that I afterwards wrote at much greater length upon army reform in my book, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... more wonderful to behold Nature's great display from the half submerged conning-tower of a U-boat, and to dive through the mountainous breakers until they close gurgling over our heads and hide us from all curious glances. Our little nutshell, in perpetual motion, is drawn down into the deep valleys of the ocean waves, or tossed upwards on the comb of the following breaker. We are soaked to the skin, and the spray covers us like a silvery veil; our boat as well as ourselves is daubed with a salt crust, ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... brakes my art all from yu for tu part, i rot them lines this marnin. mister tomas sais as i gov im mi prumass befor i cum to ave the apiness of see yu. butt i dant thinc i giv mor promass to him. nor 2 manni uthers. mi deerest deer and troo luv cuppid! i feer our nutshell song is blitid and its ros kwencht in its blum. them was plesent ours when the carnashuns and tullups was all in blo, wasunt them mi deer luv. mister tomas sais ass he can mari me in a munth and father sais i hot tu take im. iff so be as yu caun't ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various

... like a great humble-bee or cockchafer flew past his face; but it could be neither, for there were no insects amongst the ice. It passed him again and again, flying in circles around him, and he concluded that it must be North Wind herself, no bigger than Tom Thumb when his mother put him in the nutshell lined with flannel. But she was no longer vapoury and thin. She was solid, although tiny. A moment more, and she perched ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... tea in a buttercup, cream in a blue-bell, Marigold butter and hollyhock cheese, Slices of strawberry served in a nutshell, And honey just ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... his moves are made without vacillation, the soldiers will not be in two minds about doing their duty." General Baden- Powell says, italicizing the words: "The secret of getting successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell—in the clearness of the instructions they receive." [3] Cf. also Wu Tzu ch. 3: "the most fatal defect in a military leader is difference; the worst calamities that befall ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... men is much higher in proportion, over an average, than the rate in any other occupation. Porters doing shunting, for instance, are always getting killed. Well, women don't shunt trains so they don't get killed while shunting trains, so there you are again, so to speak. The thing in a nutshell, Keggo, is that, by contrast, men ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... a nutshell, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw, it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear impossible. AElian notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the road as a token of their respect to the Rajas of the forest, and, after every couplet, made the bullocks kneel and bow their heads in honor of the great gods. Needless to say, the ekka, as light as a nutshell, threatened each time to fall with its passenger over the horns of the bullocks. We had to endure this agreeable way of traveling for five hours under a very dark sky. We reached the Inn of the Pilgrims in the morning ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... is all here in a nutshell. Nothing is changed. I have tried to believe otherwise, but the truth is stronger than my will. My opinion of you is a naked, uncompromising fact I cannot drape it or adorn it, or even throw around it a mist of charity. It is unalterably ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I want to ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... from the sight of these noisy geese of the Capitol, whose brains put together would not fill a nutshell," retorted Chilo. "O first-born of Apollo, I am writing a Greek hymn in thy honor, and I wish to spend a few days in the temple of the Muses ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... both in a nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... it in a nutshell. The doctrine of the Church is that when God created man, He raised him from a natural to a supernatural state, and assigned to him a supernatural end. Supernatural means what is above the natural, beyond our natural powers of obtaining. Our destiny therefore cannot be fulfilled ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... for Voltaire a pilgrim's cockle dropped in the passes of the Alps. In medicine, what progress has been made since ague was compared to the flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton, who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient's neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! In chemistry, what strides! In astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... then, that it looks bad—very bad. To begin with, your cousin Nettie strongly disapproves of the young woman's appearance, so loud and over-dressed, evidently got up to attract. But it lies in a nutshell. If he's not engaged to her, why is he seen everywhere with her? If he is engaged to her, and she's a respectable woman—I say if she's respectable, why doesn't he introduce her to his family? Why doesn't he ask your aunt ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... The success of that device may be said to constitute the history of womanhood. Take my brigand instance and write it large, and you have the whole case in a nutshell." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... say so," returned Caw, who would have been happier standing at attention than sitting in Miss Handyside's company, "you take a lofty view of the matter, sir, and you put it in a nutshell when you say that his motives are none of our business. I am sorry to have brought you and Miss Handyside into ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... Forrest, a cavalry leader of the Confederate States Army, was asked to what he attributed his success in so many actions. He replied: "Well, I reckon I got there first with the most men," thereby stating in a nutshell the key to the Art of War. "At Nachod, the Austrian commander had numbers on his side, yet he sent into action part only of his forces, and it was by numbers that he was beaten" (Marshal Foch). With regard to the moral of the race Colonel ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... (as in this country we can anywhere) an America in miniature in the April or November town meeting. Therein should you conveniently study and master the whole of our hemispherical politics reduced to a nutshell, and have a new version of Oxenstiern's little wit; and yet be consoled by seeing that here the farmers patient as their bulls of head-boards—provided for them in relation to distant national objects, by kind editors of newspapers—do yet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... difficult for me to explain," said Rochester, "but I think the matter lies in a nutshell. If your father gives a good report of the mine there will be a great deal of money subscribed, as it is ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... frescoes. Next to it was an ustrinum where corpses were cremated, and on the other side a second tomb, also decorated with painted stucco-work. Here was found a piece of agate in the shape of a nut, so beautifully carved that it was mistaken for a real nutshell. There was also a skeleton, the skull of which was found between the legs, and in its place there was a mask or plaster cast of the head, reproducing most vividly the features of the dead man. The cast is now ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... in Track's End I repent of my hasty Action: with what I do at the Headquarters House, and the whole Situation in a Nutshell. 43 ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... enemy must have sunk her. In the impatience of his feelings, the excited young soldier could not refrain from adding his own censure of the imprudence, exclaiming as he played hit foot nervously upon the ground: "Why the devil did he not fire and sink her, instead of following in that nutshell?" ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... a nutshell, to come right down to business," said the former bully of Putnam Hall coolly. "You are our prisoners, and you can't get away, no matter how hard you try. Captain Villaire and his men, as well as myself, are in this affair to make money. The question is, what is your liberty ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... what nails and planks are when they have been soaked in sea-water for ten years. On any ordinary occasion, a man would rather not go in her from Marseilles to the Chateau d'If, but on an occasion like this one would willingly go round the world in a nutshell." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... stiff, formal, severe. He seldom praised her work and never ungrudgingly. His censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from losing confidence. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... inspired playing, inspired teaching, the gift of song, and so on, and we talk of a reality. The playing that is not inspired is worth but little, it has the worth of a nutshell with the kernel gone amissing. It is sound, perhaps it may even be fine sound, yet it signifies nothing: it is as the painted face aping true beauty. Art without inspiration is our electric light bulb disconnected from the main current. There are prophets ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... identify themselves with either of the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more subsidiary ones. We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of experience, and that the word, the existent unit of living ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... Isabel. "They will learn by-and-by. I don't suppose Mr. and Mrs. Cardew mean to keep them always shut up in a nutshell." ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... Black Forest. Germany has shown England the greater advantage of a German-English coalition, and France is frozen out. England, with her shrewd alertness to make the most profitable deal, entertained if did not close the German proposition. In a nutshell, it is this: ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... Lincoln Lang, who was with him when he rode back to camp that afternoon, reported that Roosevelt's comments on the dinner party were "blistering." "He told my mother afterwards," said Lang in later times, "that Mrs. Cummins was out of place in the Bad Lands"; which was Mrs. Cummins's tragedy in a nutshell. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... member—$270.00; secretary's expenses—$37.49; treasurer's expense—$96.37. My expenses rose due to the fact I sent out two notices that dues were due. The two years previously I had depended upon The Nutshell to let the members know and a lot of the members don't read the notice. The editor had it up there in the front lines, but it didn't bring them in too well. That made the postage bill $37 more than it was the year before. Prizes for the Persian walnut contest—$75.00; rent ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... were caught by the gale and drowned, which I believe to be the case, they must have come ashore in this very bay, about five o'clock last night. There is no other place where they could have beached their boat for many miles. Consequently, the thing lies in a nutshell: if we find the boat, prepare yourselves,—if not, make yourselves easy. Let us use our wits a little. They would round the headland as soon as possible, and probably run ashore in that furthest cove to our right, just inside the reef. I have examined the bay through ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... captain that I desired the topsail filled away. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders; he 'would go his own course, and had no idea of trusting himself with a d—d nutshell;' and then he went below for his pistols. I called my right-hand man of the crew, and told him my situation; I also informed him that I wanted the main topsail filled. He answered with a clear 'Ay, ay, sir!' in a manner which was ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... Since the light readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell, with no ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Oriental species might easily have found their way to America on the ice, and have been modified as we find them by "the well-known influence of climate." And the persons who gave expression to this idea never dreamed of its real significance. In truth, here was the doctrine of evolution in a nutshell, and, because its ultimate bearings were not clear, it seemed the most natural of doctrines. But most of the persons who advanced it would have turned from it aghast could they have realized its import. As it was, however, only here ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... fasten them to float in front of her bows like a triangle. Matthews, catch hold of that boat hook and try to fend off any piece of timber that comes along. You get hold of the sweeps, lads, and do the same. They would stave her in like a nutshell if they struck her." ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... o'clock, in a charming moonlight evening, we embarked at Ranelagh for Vauxhall, in a wherry so light and slender that we looked like so many fairies sailing in a nutshell. My uncle, being apprehensive of catching cold upon the water, went round in the coach, and my aunt would have accompanied him, but he would not suffer me to go by water if she went by land; and therefore she favoured us with her company, as she perceived ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... Edward Grey tell the whole story in a nutshell. Austria believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a question of life or death for her, while Russia claimed the right of preventing Austria from becoming the predominate power in the Balkans, and actually threatened war. Russia did not claim to be concerned with the justice ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... we lurked within the thicket, And, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, Heard him chant his listless tune— When the howling storm o'ertook us, Drifting down the island's lee, And our crazy bark was whirling Like a nutshell on the sea— When the nights were dark and dreary, And amidst the fern we lay, Faint and foodless, sore with travel, Waiting for the streaks of day; When thou wert an angel to me, Watching my exhausted sleep— Never didst thou hear me murmur— Couldst thou see how ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... page. Gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. Now, how are you going to make ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... nutshell; it is this:—Shall man submit to the revealed will of God, or to his own will? That is the naked question when the fog of confused ideas and unmeaning words ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... telling you. That the lease isn't the chief factor in Fay's troubles—isn't really a factor at all. Poor old fellow's a dunderhead. That's where it is in a nutshell. Never could make a living. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... sweet memories of the past. On the other hand the life of a well-managed hotel, such as this is not without its agrements. Frivolous it may be (though not light); comfortable and restful it undoubtedly is. The against and the for in a nutshell as it were! Your last letter, in which you dwell on the dampness inevitable in old houses, and quote the Bishop's opinion, would, I think, have left me undisturbed in mind—I have recently taken up the 'new mind' cult, which is, of course, not antagonistic to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... anyway. I'll try and be brief and to the point, so that you'll understand in a nutshell. You know Marvin Clark and Fred Porter and ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... here is the situation in a nutshell:—Nellie doesn't see why she should be keeping up two establishments. It's expensive. The child will be comfortable and happy in the convent and this house will be off her ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... position by a Democrat, I asked my father that night what the Tariff was. But I was too young to understand it, he said. I was to take his word for it that the country would go to the dogs if the Democrats got in and the Tariff were taken away. Here, in a nutshell, though neither he nor I realized it, was the political instruction of the marching hordes. Theirs not to reason why. I was too young, they too ignorant. Such ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... I'm suggesting, doctor," answered the detective, good-humouredly. "I'll put the thing in a nutshell—my profound belief is that if we want to get at the bottom of these two murders we've got to go back a long way, to the Elizabeth Robinson time, and that Chuh Fen is the only person I've heard of, up to now, who can throw a light on ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... of the Alabama was the same as that which gave us so many wonderful naval victories in the War of 1812. Our vessels were manned by Americans, while the Alabama was really an English ship, armed with English guns and manned and fought by an English crew: there's the truth in a nutshell. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis



Words linked to "Nutshell" :   shell, in a nutshell



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