"Plough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought you had laid your hand so firmly on the plough handle to-day that there could be no question of looking back. (Olof waves his hand to the scholars.) ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt with information, but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to a plough and then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been good enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good enough for me. You've conducted me to a shack ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... on the line of the Trail, where the hard hills have not been subjected to the plough, the deep ruts cut by the lumbering Concord coaches may yet be distinctly traced. Particularly are they visible from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe track, as the cars thunder rapidly toward the city of Great Bend, in Kansas, three miles east of that town. Let the tourist ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... beautiful it was! Sometimes he saw oxen ploughing. Sometimes. Oh, so beautiful, teams of eight, or ten, even of twelve pale, great soft oxen in procession, ploughing the dark velvety earth, a driver with a great whip at their head, a man far behind holding the plough-shafts. Beautiful the soft, soft plunging motion of oxen moving forwards. Beautiful the strange, snaky lifting of the muzzles, the swaying of the sharp horns. And the soft, soft crawling motion of a team of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... little and pressed into the ice to prevent this. I tried to climb on one of the many icebergs, but the heavy swell made it dangerous. At every swell it rolled over and back some eight feet, and as I watched it I understood how an iceberg goes to wind. For it acted exactly like a steam plough, crashing down onto one large pan as it rolled, and then, as it rolled back, lifting up another and smashing it from beneath. A regular battle seemed to be going on, with weird sounds of blows and groanings of the large masses of ice. Sometimes as pieces fell off the water would ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... worse than before, and begged the peasant to come with him to the tavern. There was no getting rid of him, no keeping him quiet. The peasant sold his barrow and plough, so that he could no longer work his land. He went to the tavern with ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... spirits lessen the effects of hard labor upon the body. Look at the horse, with every muscle of his body swelled from morning till night, in a plough or a team. Does he make signs for a glass of spirits, to enable him to cleave the ground or climb a hill? No; he requires nothing but cold water and substantial food. There is no nourishment in ardent spirits. The strength they produce in labor is of a transient nature, and is always followed ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... bravely, as became a decent man and a good Christian; yet, somehow, he thought he could distinguish two moons. "Bless my eyes," said Father Cuddy, "everything is changing now-a-days!—the very stars are not in the same places they used to be; I think Camceachta (the plough) is driving on at a rate I never saw it before to-night; but I suppose the driver is drunk, for there are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... seemed to awaken and remind her of her errand in that place. She laughed as loudly and as merrily as she dared, and laid her hand on the speaker's arm. The boy—for he was but a boy, one of those many ill-reared country louts who leave the plough-tail for the musket, and, for a shilling a day, experience all the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war"—reddened to the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... in their attempts at colonisation because they proceed on military lines. With them it is the soldier first and the civilian where he can. England succeeds because she proceeds on industrial lines. With her it is the plough where it may be and the sword ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... cared for the enjoyments which industry procures. The women, although otherwise treated with affection, and even delicacy of respect, discharged all the absolutely necessary domestic labour. The men, excepting some reluctant use of an ill formed plough, or more frequently a spade, grudgingly gone through, as a task infinitely beneath them, took no other employment than the charge of the herds of black cattle, in which their wealth consisted. At all other ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... close. The sermons were called very able, or, more often, "strong discourses." I used to think this was because Mrs. Meeker had stitched their leaves fast together. Betsy said they were just like Deacon Saunders's breaking-up plough, "and went tearing right through sin." The parson, when I knew him, was a little slow of speech and dull of sight. He sometimes lost his place on his page. How afraid I used to be lest, not finding it, he should repeat his heads! ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... expeditiously by imitating their outward habit—an imitation which, furthermore, they have some means of exacting from him. Wherever there is art there is a possibility of training. A father who calls his idle sons from the jungle to help him hold the plough, not only inures them to labour but compels them to observe the earth upturned and refreshed, and to watch the germination there; their wandering thought, their incipient rebellions, will be met by the hope of harvest; and it will not ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... song of the droving days, Of the march of the travelling sheep; By silent stages and lonely ways Thin, white battalions creep. But the man who now by the land would thrive Must his spurs to a plough-share beat. Is there ever a man in the world alive To sing the song ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... next; and then the old doctor, who had been watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying: ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... attained only by constant practice and much success. In comparison with this competent organization, an average "Tammany Gang," a "Chicago Combine," or a "St. Louis Syndicate" would look like a hay-covered snow-plough ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... my plough along, And felt the strength that's in my arm, Ten years, thought I, amidst my song, I've been head-man at ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... his grizzled head bent against the blast as he struggled between the metals, listening. At a sudden shrieking roar he moved deliberately to one side, his back resting against a bank of snow left by the giant circular plough whose progress, on the previous day, had been that of a slow but irresistible avalanche. A crashing whistle tore the air and the wind of the rushing train pulled at his clothes and swirled sharp flakes into his eyes. Yet he dimly saw something white flutter down to his feet ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... beginning, laid the consideration of the cross before you, it is because you should not be surprised and overtaken by it unawares, and because you should know that to draw back from Me after you have laid your hand to My plough, will make you unfit for the kingdom of heaven ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... colonies[1] will not fail to make itself felt also in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the Spaniards. As conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to victory with the assistance of the pioneer's axe and plough, representing an age of peace and commercial prosperity in contrast to that bygone and chivalrous age whose champions were upheld by the cross and protected by ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... to the court of king Janaka. And there, at the court, was a great bow, a bow which had belonged to Mahadeva Himself. To bend and string that bow was the task for the man who would wed Sita, the child of marvellous birth, the maiden who had sprung from the furrow as the plough went through the earth, who had no physical father or physical mother. Who should wed the peerless maiden, the incarnation of Shri, Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu? Who should wed Her save the Avatara of Vishnu Himself? So the mighty ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... valleys, the myriad yellow twigs of the brookside willows turned green, a cheery piping rose from the ponds, the last gleam of snow passed from the farthest hills, the bluebird sang, the harrow followed the plough, Ruth's crocuses shone above the greening sod, and down by the old mill-pool and on the steep hillside beyond it she and Isabel gathered arbutus, anemones, and the yellow violet. ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... Bless everything; and to (my) dress be favorable. 28 Before the oxen as they march in the grain thou liest down. 30 My knees are marching, my feet are not resting: with no wealth of thine own, grain thou begettest for me. 34 A heifer am I; to the cow I am yoked: the plough-handle is strong; lift it up, lift it up! 53 May he perform vengeance: may he return also (to him) who gives. 55 The marsh as though it were not he passes;[2] the slain as though they were not ...[3] he makes good. 57 To the waters their god[4] ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... winked at, when, if it were not for my fortune, I very much doubt whether one of these, my exceeding good friends, would give me a dinner to save me from starvation. Why I had rather be the veriest boor that holds a plough, or a cobbler at his last, than to be, as Shakspeare says, 'the thing I am.' I am heartily sick of it, and could almost turn my back upon the world, and lead a hermit's life. To be always a mark for managing ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... her sails and cordage stiffened by the frosts, and her hull rasped and shattered by the ice of those regions, she was forced on a shore where the green grass has little chance to grow, where winter reigns nearly all the year round, where man never sends his merchandise, and never drives his plough. There the brig was frozen in; there, for two long years, she lay unable to move, and her starving crew forsook her; there, year after year, she lay, unknown, unvisited by civilised man, and unless the wild Eskimos [see note 1] have torn her to pieces, and made spears of ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... the plough arches his neck, and expands his nostrils, while his eyes flash fire, so Joshua's bowed figure, spite of the sack that burdened his shoulders, straightened itself, and his sparkling eyes were turned toward the spot whence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... though recalling an agreeable experience. "As long as there are old stumps in a field that you must plough around I haven't got much use for the land. When the corn comes up you don't see the stumps, just sitting on the fence and looking over the scenery; but when you go to put the plow through again, your same old stumps loom up again, solider than ever. I guess Daniel will ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Tityrus, Tillage, AEnee shall be read, Whilst Rome of all the conquered world is head! Till Cupid's fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses, neat Tibullus, shall be spoken. Our Gallus shall be known from east to west; So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. The suffering plough-share or the flint may wear; But heavenly Poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Christ. Believers and unbelievers are possessed of the same nature and faculties. As the ground which has been trodden into a footpath is in all its essential qualities the same as that which has been broken small by the plough and harrow, so the human constitution and faculties of one who lives without God in the world are substantially the same as those which belong to the redeemed of the Lord. It was the breaking of the ground which caused the difference between the fruitful field and the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... immediate effect, when we suppose that the whole concatenation of events, whether the preservation or destruction of particular parts, tends ultimately to the good of the whole? The same voice commissions the winds to plough up the deep, which at the appointed time rebukes them, saying, 'Peace, be still.' If the adorable Author and Preserver of Nature was such a being as Baal is represented to have been by the prophet, when he derided his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... light—it led straight towards the fire that was running up through the leaves and thickets on the north. I expected that when he met that he would turn again; but he did not: we were just in time to see him plough through it, and hear him growl and snarl at the flames that maddened him, and which he was foolish enough to stop and fight. Then he went on again. We followed. Nobody minded the scorching. We kept ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... exclaimed later in the day, as he stood beside John in the carpenter's shop, watching the curling strips of wood which his plane was tossing off with sweeping strokes. "You put all there is of you into everything you do. You take as much pains over a plough handle as you would over ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... is done, Captain. We've picked up all our money—not worse than the imperial tax collectors. I could not tell which was ours, so I picked up all the money. But if they have buried some of the gold, forgive us, Captain—we are not peasants to plough ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... opium crop had driven the people from their homes. But in general there was little tillable land that was unoccupied. In fact, the painstaking effort to utilize every bit of soil was tragic to American eyes, accustomed to long stretches of countryside awaiting the plough. At the close of the troubles that devastated the province during the third quarter of the nineteenth century it is said that the population of Yunnan had fallen to about a million, but now, owing in part to the great natural increase of the Chinese, and in part to immigration chiefly ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... rend you,—you will try to teach them the inner mysteries of God's working and they will say you are possessed of a devil!" Then he thought of another and grander saying—"Whoso, putting his hand to the plough, looketh back, is not fit for the Kingdom of God!—" and over all rang the enchanting call of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... burden falls in a white cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its stem and a sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven by a young ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... card; they're laid regularly in order, and I turn them over in my pocket, till I get hold of the one I want, and then I take it out, and work it. So you see, Giglamps, I'm safe to get through! - it's impossible for them to plough me, with all these contrivances. That's a consolation for a cove in distress, ain't ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... dead, but you go and tell about the Kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say good-by to my people at home." Jesus said to him, "No one who looks back after having put his hand to the plough is fit for the Kingdom ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... thing for those who would build railways to write in high-flown style about the regions they would penetrate, and, indeed, to speak of "millions of acres waiting for the plough" is not necessarily a misrepresentation; they are waiting. Nor is it altogether unnatural that professional agricultural experimenters at the stations established by the government should make the most of their experiments. When Dean Stanley spoke ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... grandmother. If she had had such an appurtenance all to herself she might have done what she liked with it; but he couldn't forgive such a want of consideration for anything of his. There were moments when Rose would have been ready to take her hand from the plough and insist upon reintegration, if only the fierce voice of the old house had allowed people to look her up. But she read, ever so clearly, that her grandmother had made this a question of loyalty to seventy years of virtue. Mrs. Tramore's ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... According to his own representation, he was no more than eighteen years old, but the depth of his remarks indicated a much greater advance. His name was Arthur Mervyn. He described himself as having passed his life at the plough-tail and the threshing-floor; as being destitute of all scholastic instruction; and as being long since bereft of the affectionate regards of parents ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... countries of the globe to render the first steps of man, an infant still, easy in the career of civilized life. A rich soil, on which overflowing rivers spread every year a fruitful loam, as in Egypt, and one where the plough is almost useless, so movable and so easily tilled is it, a warm climate, finally, secure to the inhabitants of these fortunate regions plentiful harvests in return for light labor. Nevertheless, the conflict with the river itself and with the desert,—which, on the banks of the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the modern iniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings, and muslin handkerchiefs (Mrs. Sally herself always wore check, black worsted, and a sort of yellow compound which she was wont to call 'susy'), together with the invention of drill plough and thrashing-machines, and other agricultural novelties, she failed not to attribute all the mishaps or misdoings of the whole parish. The last-mentioned discovery especially aroused her indignation. Oh to ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... rings through the shuddering woods, cleaves up through the summer sky, and wakens in every heart a thrill of speechless pain. Along these peaceful banks I see a bowed form walking, youth in his years, but deeper furrows in his face than age can plough, stricken down from the heights of his ambition and desire, all the vigor and fire of manhood crushed and quenched beneath the horror of one fearful memory. Sweet summer sky, bending above us soft and saintly, beyond your blue depths is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sciences and philosophies, that it was to be found in the rhymes of Mr. Edward Lear and in the literature of nonsense. 'The Dong with the Luminous Nose,' at least, is original, as the first ship and the first plough ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... smoke of the tired horses at the plough, or, on a stony-hearted spot of ground, a back-broken man trying to raise himself upright for ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... night, when the great rush of the sea came. Then the three men left the water, and retired to higher ground to scan the furrowed Gulf;—their practiced eyes began to search the courses of the sea-currents,—keen as the gaze of birds that watch the wake of the plough. And soon the casks and the drift were forgotten; for it seemed to them that the tide was heavy with human dead—passing out, processionally, to the great open. Very far, where the huge pitching of the swells was diminished by distance into a mere fluttering ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... till it had become corrupt." He objected to banking "because it conferred privileges upon one class that other classes did not enjoy." He believed that the people would find that "a bank of earth is the best bank, and the best share a plough-share." ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... for the monastery and was glad to add thus to its treasures. Zwingli was always grateful for his protection and support, and at a later period, when he had left Einsiedeln, gave utterance to the following expression, "You have never looked back, after you laid your hand to the plough. You are indeed the friend of all scholars, but me you have loved like a father, having not only admitted me to your friendship, but to the most intimate confidence of your heart. Go on, as you have begun; stand ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... do with trade," he continued, "it having been the custom of my ancestors to risk no money except where the plough goes. In the great East India Company however, which with four years of hard work, public and private, I have helped establish, in order to inflict damage on the Spaniards and Portuguese, I have adventured somewhat more than 5000 florins . . . . Now even if my condition ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tribute of that city from those that occupy the land for the country, and for what they export every year to Sidon, twenty thousand six hundred and seventy-five modii every year, the seventh year, which they call the Sabbatic year, excepted, whereon they neither plough, nor receive the product of their trees. It is also the pleasure of the senate, that as to the villages which are in the great plain, which Hyrcanus and his forefathers formerly possessed, Hyrcanus and the Jews have them with the same privileges ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Longman's Fountain of Ceres which commands it. Ceres, or Demeter, the goddess of Agriculture, presided over the Earth's abundance. By her favor, came the good harvest; she it was who first instructed man in the use of the plough. In the loveliest of antique myths she is the mother of Prosperine, the Spring. Miss Longman has expressed her as exultant, regal, young - far less matronly than as conventionally pictured - glorying in her power to bless the cooperative ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... forest gives fluid utterances; They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... right merely because they have been natural. Under this rule every monster that has tormented society from the first day until now can find full justification for itself on the simple ground that it exists! Under such an argument a howitzer is as good as a plough, a sword is as good as a sickle, a pillory is as good as a baby-wagon. By such reasoning a shark is as useful as a horse. By this logic a boa-constrictor is as good as a reindeer, a tiger is as useful ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... America, to get an art education, and having learned his art, how impossible it was to live by it. Men were busy making a new country and pictures do not take part in such pioneer work; they come later. Still, there were bound to be born artistic geniuses then, just as there were men for the plough and men for politics and for war. He who happened to be the artist was the Quaker ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... lookin' out west across his spring lot. Directly I saw a twinkle in his eye, and followin' the line of his glance, there slouchin' in a fence corner I saw Lory's old white work-mare, Molly. Sometimes Molly pulled the buggy and the little Lings, but usually it was a plough or a mower for hers. I'd heard Lory say she was eighteen years old and that once she was gray, but now she's ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... all manner of temptations and dangers, at the very time when the youth should be mastering his trade or his profession, war seems the capitalization of all the possible follies and wastes. The peasants of Europe plough, each carrying a soldier upon his back. The brick-mason builds, but staggers up the ladder with a heavier load than bricks,—the soldier upon his back. The symbols of nations are still the lion, the eagle and ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... prayer which he repeated so often had not come home to him. Alas! how many of us from week to week call ourselves worms and dust and miserable sinners, describe ourselves as chaff for the winds, grass for the burning, stubble for the plough, as dirt and filth fit only to be trodden under foot, and yet in all our doings before the world cannot bring home to ourselves the conviction that we require other guidance than ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... that he had done the wrong thing. I am afraid Max thought so too, but he would not discourage him by saying so; on the contrary, he treated him in a bracing manner, telling him that he had put his hand to the plough, and that there must be no looking backward, and bidding him pluck up heart and do his duty as well as he could; and then he smoothed his way by asking him to be his curate and live with him, so saving him from the loneliness and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a certain short path.' Like Pindar, we may abridge the tale of Jason. He seeks the golden fleece in Colchis: AEetes offers it to him as a prize for success in certain labours. By the aid of Medea, the daughter of AEetes, the wizard-king, Jason tames the fire-breathing oxen, yokes them to the plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea's help he conquers the children of the teeth of the dragon, subdues the snake that guards the fleece of gold, and escapes, but is pursued by AEetes. To detain AEetes, Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own brother, Apsyrtos, and the Colchians pursue ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... laughingly said a lady well disposed to the Jansenists; "God is just; it is the stones of Port-Royal tumbling upon your head." The tombs were destroyed; some coffins were carried to a distance, others left and profaned; the plough passed over the ruins; the hatred of the enemies of Port-Royal was satiated. A few of the faithful, preserving in their hearts the ardent faith of M. de St. Cyran, narrowed, however, and absorbed by obstinate resistance, a few theologians dying in exile, and leaving in Holland a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... met with a good explanation until lately. It is clear, however, from the following legal expression, "Nullus distringatur per averia carucae." Caruca is the French charrue, and therefore averia must mean either cart-horses or oxen which draw the plough. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... tired, which he told himself was absurd, but mentally he was of a joyous alertness. Leaning upon the stile, he drew a deep breath of the salt air and raised his eyes to the night sky curving, so high was he placed, for an immense arc about his tiny form. To the north the Plough trailed its length, but south, high over the dark blot which to the keen sight of love meant Cloom, Spica, brilliant crown of Virgo, pulsed whitely, while the glittering sisterhood of Aquila and Lyra, Corona and Libra swept towards the east, ushering up the sky the slim young moon, as bright ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the meed of one melodious tear? Thy Burns, and nature's own beloved Bard, Who to 'the illustrious of his native land,'[35] So properly did look for patronage. Ghost of Maecenas! hide thy blushing face! They took him from the sickle and the plough— To guage ale firkins! O, for shame return! On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount, There stands a lone and melancholy tree, Whose aged branches to the midnight blast Make solemn music, pluck its darkest bough, Ere yet ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,—or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash, and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... the Nile, on the contrary, by the excellent slime it brings along with it, fattens and enriches them in such a manner, as sufficiently compensates for what the foregoing harvest had impaired.(296) The husbandman, in this country, never tires himself with holding the plough, or breaking the clods of earth. As soon as the Nile retires, he has nothing to do but to turn up the earth, and temper it with a little sand, in order to lessen its rankness; after which he sows it with great ease, and with little or no expense. Two months after, it is covered with all sorts of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... canons, and other religious institutions, until they were all swept away by the greed of a rapacious king. There is not much left to-day of all these religious foundations. The latest authority on the history of Lynn, Mr. H.J. Hillen, well says: "Time's unpitying plough-share has spared few vestiges of their architectural* grandeur." A cemetery cross in the museum, the name "Paradise" that keeps up the remembrance of the cool, verdant cloister-garth, a brick arch upon the east bank of the Nar, and a similar gateway in "Austin" Street ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... experienced no little sorrow since then. He arrived home to find that his father, an old man, and his little four-year-old son had died. Semyon remained alone with his wife. They could not do much. It was difficult to plough with rheumatic arms and legs. They could no longer stay in their village, so they started off to seek their fortune in new places. They stayed for a short time on the line, in Kherson and Donshchina, but nowhere ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... promising preparation for the plough; and French and mathematics are equally valueless accomplishments for the carting of manure. Dairymaids need neither history nor geography; they can even do without grammar. Consequently these unhappy school-children have been rendered useless for all the practical purposes of the life ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... further. There was a sudden soul-shaking shock. The front of the car seemed to plough into the ground. A rending, splitting ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... next tell you a winter-bait for a Roach, a Dace, or Chub; and it is choicely good. About All-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when you see men ploughing up heath ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards, then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two maggots, and it hath a red head: you may observe in what ground most are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough very close: it ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... the strolling player, "I am, sir, an artist, and I have permitted myself to interrupt you on an affair of business. To-night I give a trifling musical entertainment at the Cafe of the Triumphs of the Plough—permit me to offer you this little programme—and I have come to ask you for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... planet, were fast scattering seed which fell upon every side in a stream of gold. The whole field was covered with it; for the endless chaos of house roofs and edifices seemed to be land in tilth, furrowed by some gigantic plough. And Pierre in his uneasiness, stirred, despite everything, by an invincible need of hope, asked himself if this was not a good sowing, the furrows of Paris strewn with light by the divine sun for the great future harvest, that harvest of truth ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the woods, it is seeing my men-folk make a nice bit of land-a nice bit of land that was all trees and stumps and roots, which one beholds in a fortnight as bare as the back of your hand, ready for the plough; surely nothing in the world can be more pleasing or better worth doing." The rest gave assent with nods, and were silent for a while, admiring the picture. Soon however Chapdelaine awoke, refreshed by his sleep and ready for work; then all ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... is in reality unknown, are, in the popular traditions, almost constantly attributed to the Danes. If the spade or the plough brings ancient arms and pieces of armour to light, it is rare that the labourer does not suppose them to have belonged to that people. But particularly if bones or joints of unusual size are found, they are at once concluded to be the remains of the gigantic Danes, whose ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... postman came in, and at the sight of another letter my heart slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much—they really don't plough deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out of the window and saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the tasteless mausoleum of Burns—a circular Grecian temple, the spaces between the pillars glazed, and a low dome, shaped like an inverted washbowl, clapped on top. The interior is occupied by Turnerelli's fine marble group of Burns at the plough, interrupted by the Muse of Poetry. At the foot of this group, and covering the poet's remains, is the freshly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... promulgated, standing and known laws, and authorized independent Judges;" that is independent as far as possible of Prince or People. "There shall be one rule of Justice for rich and poor; for the favorite in Court, and the Countryman at the Plough."10 ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... bruiteth it abroad, The while she guards the yet unripened growth. On the fair richness of a maiden's bloom Each passer looks, o'ercome with strong desire, With eyes that waft the wistful dart of love. Then be not such our hap, whose livelong toil Did make our pinnace plough the mighty main: Nor bring we shame upon ourselves, and joy Unto my foes. Behold, a twofold home— One of the king's and one the people's gift— Unbought, 'tis yours to hold,—a gracious boon. Go—but remember ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... American Desert." As sturdy pioneers pushed their settlements farther and farther westward, the great American desert began to shrink in size until the roseate descriptions of prospectors and land speculators led one to believe that this whole region needed only a touch of the plough and the harrow to produce the most bountiful crops grown anywhere in ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... old farmer at Crowle, near Bantry, England, speaking to a neighbour about the "larning" of his nephew, said:—"Why I shud a made Tom a lawyer, I think, but he was sich a good hand to hold a plough that I thought 'twere a pity to spoil ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... maintained, that with time and patience, one might train a rather stupid plough-boy to understand the differential calculus. This might be done with the help of an inward desire on the part of the boy to learn, but never otherwise. If the boy wants to learn or to improve generally, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury— foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on a game of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran, Passed with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... parted with Mr. M.; and after refreshing with a glass of wine and a sandwich at the Plough, they proceeded to the West India Docks, the entrance to which required no introduction. "Here," said Dashall, "you will find a much longer space occupied than at the East India Docks. These were undertaken according to an Act of Parliament passed in 1799, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... church, and into the tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the deepest-toned bell of all, and constrain it by the force of strong arms to utter its voice of call, "Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath spoken;" and from the streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the plough be left in the furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding people bring faces into the church, all with one question upon them—"What hath the Lord spoken?" But now it would be answer sufficient to ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... I was, I would not have it supposed that I was altogether an unlicked cub. My stay in Norwich, if it had not made me a Londoner, had rubbed off some of the plough-mud from me, and I believe that my new friend was not speaking wholly in idle compliment when he assured me that I should hold my own very well. The first lesson I learnt was not to show any wonder that I might feel, but to receive all that chanced as though it were the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... nothing at all. For, in all things whatever, the mind is the most valuable and the most important; and in this scale the whole of agriculture is in a natural and just order; the beast is as an informing principle to the plough and cart; the labourer is as reason to the beast; and the farmer is as a thinking and presiding principle to the labourer. An attempt to break this chain of subordination in any part is equally absurd; but ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... as the people were now indifferent to my fate, he looked round for an opportunity of ridding himself of a useless charge. He had previously attempted to engage me in the drudgery of husbandry. I drove the plough for one day to gratify him, but I left it with a firm resolution to do so no more, and in despite of his threats and promises, adhered to my determination. In this I was guided no less by necessity than will. During my father's life, in attempting to clamber up a table I had fallen ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... departure of the supreme moment is apt to leave a feeling of emptiness, as if life had been drained of all its interest, and left nothing sufficiently exciting to make it worth doing. Horatius, as he followed his plough on a warm day over the corn land which his gratified country bestowed on him for his masterly handling of the traffic on the bridge, must sometimes have felt it was a little tame. The feeling is far more acute when one has been unexpectedly baulked ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... the size of the elephant's tusks, neither do they hinder the development of the other teeth, of which this animal has a very respectable collection. The upper incisors bend downward; those in the lower jaw stand out horizontally, and terminate in sharp points like plough-shares; and indeed the hippopotamus uses them for tearing up the ground in order to get at the roots which form its nutriment. These are, besides, formidable weapons, with which when enraged the animal can tear even boats in ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... nine tail he have tie round his waist en strike John 75 times. De blood run down off him just like you see a stream run in dat woods. Dat sho been so cause all we chillun stand bout dere en look on it. I suppose I was bout big enough to plough den. When dey let John loose from dere, he go in de woods en never come back no more till freedom come here. I tellin you when he come back, he come ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... had solicited and won her affections, was the son of a respectable farmer residing in the neighbourhood of York. Originally designed for agricultural life, he had forsaken the plough to undertake a flourishing business, which had been commenced by an elder brother lately deceased: and being early converted to God, under the ministry of the venerable Sutcliffe, the proposed union ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... word of this to any alive.—Your Chancellor?(9) Why, madam, I can tell you he has been dead this fortnight. Faith, I could hardly forbear our little language about a nasty dead Chancellor, as you may see by the blot.(10) Ploughing? A pox plough them; they'll plough me to nothing. But have you got your money, both the ten pounds? How durst he pay you the second so soon? Pray be good huswifes. Ay, well, and Joe, why, I had a letter lately from Joe, desiring I would take some care of their ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... or utensil just as much as a hammer or a plough, and a very good instrument too if you know how to make ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Revolution! And who was he? He was the husband and father, who left the plough in the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing his wife and children, marched to die or to be free! He was the old, the middle-aged, the young. He was Captain Miles, of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march! He was ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Angel dear, aren't they bright? Is the Wise Men's Star there still, do you suppose? That's the Plough, isn't it? If one was up in the Plough could one see Oakfield, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... again. This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her guests moving. From the moment when the room began to fill till the moment when it began to empty she did not cease to plough her way to and fro, in a manner equally reminiscent of a hawk swooping on chickens and an earnest collegian bucking the line. Her guests were as a result perpetually forming new ententes and combinations, finding ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... labor, and scanty education, as usually fell to the lot of a New England yeoman's family some eighty or a hundred years ago. On the 19th of April, 1775, being then less than eighteen years of age, the stripling was at the plough, when tidings reached him of the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord. He immediately loosened the ox chain, left the plough in the furrow, took his uncle's gun and equipments, and set forth towards the scene of action. From that day, for more than seven years, he ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attended to anything else they were pricked with a goad, which their lord held in his hand, fully mindful of his grandfather of pious memory, who, being of servile condition in the district of Beauvais, had, for his occupation, to guide the plough and whip up the oxen; and who at length, to gain his liberty, fled to the Norman territory." (Riley's Hoveden, ii. 232, quoted in The Cornhill Magazine, vol. xv. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... "Ludwig der Eiserne," made some sensation, as is peculiar to the very popular productions of this author, who has achieved a public-house notoriety here. The nobles ought to have appeared in it yoked to the plough, but on Dingelstedt's advice Rost toned down that scene!—A translation by Frau Schuselka (who has performed here sometimes) of the "Pere prodigue" of Dumas fils was to have come on the boards; but it appears ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... acquaintance with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or disappointment ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... trench was teeming; though six hundred thousand corpses lay flung over the ramparts, and naked to the sun—pestilence came not. But the abomination of desolation, the pagan standard, was fixed; where it was to remain until the plough passed over the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... all that night by unknown and out of the way shores, they came by day-break to the land where the Cyclops dwell, a sort of giant shepherds that neither sow nor plough, but the earth unfilled produces for them rich wheat and barley and grapes, yet they have neither bread nor wine, nor know the arts of cultivation, nor care to know them: for they live each man to himself, without laws or government, or any ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bodily and mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by Marle (blew and white), Chalk, Lime, Seasand, Compost, Sopeashes, Rags and what not, make the ground both to take and keep a moderate fruitfulness; so that Virgil, if now alive, might make additions to his Georgicks, from the Plough-practice in this county. As for the natives thereof, generally they are dexterous in any employment, and Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of the gentry: They were all born courtiers ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... at this rang a trifle hollow. He was not a soft-hearted man in appearance, but perhaps he had some fellow feeling for poor men dragged from their work at the plough to serve in the army of the Grand Monarque. His next words surprised me, for I had not understood the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... said the squire sternly; "but do you know what it says in the Book about the man who puts his hand to the plough?" ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... two other suggestions with regard to the rearrangement of the pictures, and then, having put her hand to the plough, proceeded to refurnish the room. And for her own private purposes she affected to think that Mr. Truefitt's taste was ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, and peaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about the Mexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got a farmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy place there was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured. They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fort about fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... advancing to the fight. That information would direct its blows.... I knew my brigade was behind that rise in the ground, and that all, officers and troopers alike, were impatient to rush upon my tracks to the attack. I knew that behind them, lying by sections in the plough-land, thousands and thousands of infantrymen had their eyes fixed in the direction I was taking, and that hundreds and hundreds of guns were ready to pour out death. But that disciplined multitude was silent and, ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... but ruled in vain; since wretchedness Of soul and body, for the mass of men, Made them like dead leaves in an idle drift Around the plough of progress as it drove Sharp through the glebe of modern days, to plant A civilized world. ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... are fading, As swift we plough the furrowed main, And clouds with drooping wings are shading The towering Andes, wood and plain. The passing breeze, thus idly singing, A sweeter, dearer voice hath found, And hope within my heart is springing, Our white-winged bark is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the fair is kept in tents and booths. On the other hand, to balance that severity, if the fair-keepers have not done their business of the fair, and removed and cleared the field by another certain day in September, the ploughmen may come in again, with plough and cart, and overthrow all, and trample into the dirt; and as for the filth, dung, straw, etc. necessarily left by the fair- keepers, the quantity of which is very great, it is the farmers' fees, and makes them full amends for the trampling, riding, and carting ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... friends. By his simplicity and frugality, his contempt for worldly distinction, and his uniformity of conduct, he recalled the memory of those great men who, after the best-merited triumphs, peacefully returned to the plough, still loving their country and but little offended by the ingratitude of the Rome they had so well served. Catinat placed his philosophy at the service of his piety. He had intelligence, good sense, ripe reflection; and he never forgot his origin; his dress, his equipages, his furniture, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Day bare is the place where the heath is burnt; The plough is in the furrow, the ox ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the noble knight had lived tolerably sumptuously. On the return nothing astonished me more than the number of animals yoked to the ploughs. The fields lay in the finest plains, the ground was loose and free from stones, and yet each plough was drawn by twelve ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... lunatics who seek to be what they can never be, the beauties of this world, the great Queens of the Sun, whose gaze shall glorify, whose smile shall crown and bless, whose touch shall call hearts to agony and to worship, whose word shall take a man from his plough and send him out to win renown, or snatch a leader from his ambition and set him creeping in the dust, like a white mouse prisoned by a scarlet silken thread; the lunatics who dandle religions like dolls, and play with faiths as a boy plays with ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... heaven is like unto——" on His lips! Moreover, His illustrations were always such as common folk could best appreciate. The birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the lamp on the lamp-stand, the hen with her chickens under her wings, the servant following the plough, the shepherd tending his sheep, the fisherman drawing his net, the sower casting his seed into the furrow, the housewife baking her bread or sweeping her house,—it was through panes of common window-glass like these that Christ ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson |
