"Tool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... money-payments. It began to appear as if England were no longer a free kingdom, using its resources for its own objects: the land and all its riches was at the service of the Pope at Rome; the King was little more than a tool ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... on a hill and watch a laborer striking with his sledge upon the distant railway. I hear the sound of the blow while I see his tool raised above his head. I account for this by saying that it has taken some time for the sound-waves to reach my ear, and I regard my sensation as arising only when ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... own territory. He was at once an object of hatred for the past, being a living monument of national independence, ignominiously surrendered, and an object of jealousy for the future, as one who had already advertised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate purposes (whatsoever those might prove to be) of the Russian Court. Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre under the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate circumstances of his position, it might have been expected that Oubacha would have been pre-eminently ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... craft free, he stood away to the eastward, without firing a shot at my vessel, seeming content with the mischief he had already done me. Believing that he would at once go back to Spain, denounce the marquis, and proclaim me as his tool, I dared not return to Cadiz. I therefore sailed for the West Indies, and employed myself in an occupation which I found tolerably lucrative, seeing that all the transactions were for ready money, though it must be owned that it was somewhat hazardous. Some people might call it piracy. It was not ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... to prune my benzine bushes or to plant a mess of spinach and a profane starling or woodpecker bustles off her nest with shrewish outcry and lingers nearby to rail at me. Abashed, I stealthily scuffle back to get a spade out of the tool bin and again that shrill scream of anger and outraged motherhood. A throstle or a whippoorwill is raising a family in the gutter spout over the back kitchen. I go into the bathroom to shave and Titania whispers sharply, "You mustn't shave in there. There's ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... from me: hence I have informed Your Lordship of this, so that this man, who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may not find a soil fit for sowing the thoughts and deeds of his evil nature; and that when he tries to make Your Lordship the tool of his infamous and malicious nature he may be disappointed of ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... been able to profit by all this progress, to reduce to a formula the violence which drives forward the attack, to prepare the spy system which watches over the unarmed foe, to organize even incendiarism, and to become thus, forged by forty-four years of hatred, the most formidable tool of destruction that has ever ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... understood what you have said," answered Almayer, scornfully, "he must be highly flattered. You want him as a tool for some incomprehensible ambition of yours. Enough, Nina. If you do not go down at once to the creek, where Ali is waiting with my canoe, I shall tell him to return to the settlement and bring the Dutch officers here. You cannot escape from this clearing, for I have ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... a good-humored poke with the end of his stick. "Go back to your yacht," he said. "All the little discretion you have got in that flighty head of yours is left on board in your tool-chest. How that lad will end," pursued the rector, when he was left by himself, "is more than any human being can say. I almost wish I had never taken the responsibility ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by Peter, proud as Punch to tool along the staring streets the great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet—yet—couldst thou lead the field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a little further on in the solemn vista, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... complication. A foul and wicked murder had been attempted, and he had let the murderess escape, and thereby, among other things, allowed her to gain a complete ascendency over himself. In fact, he was in a fair way to become her tool — and no more dreadful fate can befall a man than to become the tool of an unscrupulous woman, or indeed of any woman. There is but one end to it: when he is broken, or has served her purpose, he is thrown away — turned out ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... on the brazen forehead of George Jeffreys. The real and undoubted ability and scholarship of Jeffreys only made his wickedness the more awful, and his whole career the greater curse both to those whose tool he was, and to those whose blood he drank daily. Jeffreys drank brandy and sang lewd songs all night, and he drank blood and cursed and swore on the bench all day. Just imagine the state of our English courts when a judge could thus assail ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... very sympathies and secret convictions on the other side—on the side of People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he, engaged for a Prince that had scarce heard the word liberty; that priests and women, tyrants by nature, both made a tool of. The misanthrope was in no better humor after hearing that story, and his grim face more black ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... two methods working together, more light is continually being thrown upon man's ancient culture. To illustrate this, if a certain kind of tool or implement is found in the culture areas of the extinct Neanderthal race and a similar tool is used by a living Australian tribe, it may be conjectured with considerable accuracy that the use of this tool was for similar purposes, and the thoughts and beliefs that clustered around its use were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... him, from his perseverance in cutting a bark canoe, at which he laboured for more than an hour without success. Mr. Browne walked with me to the tree at which he was working, and I found that his only tool was a stone tomahawk, and that with such an implement he would hardly finish his work before dark. I therefore sent for an iron tomahawk, which I gave to him, and with which he soon had the bark cut and detached. He then prepared it for launching by puddling ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... Chevalier," said the poor frightened mother, "how grateful I am to you! You are right: my son is the tool of a bad set of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... He had merely to take the narrow lane skirting the mansion to reach a spot where he found much food for reflection. Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it been necessary to carry the quay walls—designed to protect the city from floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past—that the old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to which pleasure boats ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Crusoe is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms suggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one morning on the boulevard, at the end of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... made FREE!—Man, by birthright, is free, Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool. Whatever the shout of the rabble may be— Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool— Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain, For the Man made a Freeman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... had thrown down upon the ground. They presently, leaving their outer habits and cowls upon the rails, began to throttle and make an end of those whom he had already crushed. Can you tell with what instruments they did it? With fair gullies, which are little hulchbacked demi-knives, the iron tool whereof is two inches long, and the wooden handle one inch thick, and three inches in length, wherewith the little boys in our country cut ripe walnuts in two while they are yet in the shell, and pick out the kernel, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... shared my disgust at the hateful want of feeling manifested by this family, who, as soon as their son is acquitted, throw you aside as a mere tool that ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... more for you to take care of. What would you say if I was to prove to you that it would build a fine chicken-house, one for the herd boar, a concrete tank down in the pasture that'd save the cows enough trips to the barn to make 'em give a heap sight more milk, a cooling house for it and a good tool room?" Rose's eyes opened wide. "I can prove it ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... positively inform us of the habits of the insect. Of what account are a few slight differences? It is in the physical far more than in the anatomical differences that the inviolable demarcation between two species exists. Instincts dominate forms; the tool does not make the artisan; "and none of these various structures, however well adapted they may appear to us, bears within it ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... conspired to kidnap the President—that would appeal to him; but after that I truly believe he was a tool—certainly he was no leader. Those who led him knew his courage, his belief in Fate, his loyalty to his friends; and, because they knew these things, he drew the lot, as it was meant he should from the first. Then, half mad, he accepted the part Fate cast him for—committed the monstrous crime, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... of the chungke stone was compassed without the aid of a single tool, merely by the attrition of one stone upon another, "from time immemorial rubbed smooth upon the rocks, with prodigious labor," resulting in an object of such symmetrical beauty that even in the museums of the present day, out of which it ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... prevailing modes of marriage, the Chronicle has little more to say than that after two exciting marriages a woman is ready enough to settle peacefully down with the friend of her childhood whom she should have married in the beginning. In A Far Country a lawyer who has let himself be made a tool in the hands of nefarious corporations undergoes a tragic love affair, suffers conversion, reads a few books of modern speculation, and resolutely turns his face toward a new order. In the same precipitate fashion the heroine of The Dwelling-Place of Light, who has given no apparent ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... alluded to. Allusion has been made to the purification of literature. The influence of women has been a part of the cause of this, unquestionably; but I would not ascribe such a result to any one cause. God is a great workman, and has a chest full of tools, and never uses one tool, but always many; and in the purification of literature, the elevation of thought, the advancement of the public sentiment of the world in humanity, God has employed more than that which has been wrought in their departments. And that which the family ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... submission so as to escape penalty or constraint, than to yield to authority from a general confidence which enslaves the mind. Comply but criticise. Obey but beware of reverence. If I surrender my conscience to another man's keeping, I annihilate my individuality as a man, and become the ready tool of him among my neighbours who shall excel in imposture and artifice. I put an end moreover to the happy collision of understandings upon which the hopes of human improvement depend. Governments depend upon the unlimited confidence ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... individual instrument whereby an essential and salutary national purpose was fulfilled; and the instrument was admirably effective, precisely because it had been silently and unconsciously tempered and formed for high achievement. Issue as he was of a society in which the cheap tool, whether mechanical or personal, was the immediately successful tool, he had none the less labored long in the making of a ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... proved to be treacherous autocrats in the past, and whose records show them as an incapable and degenerate family. As a political power Kaiser Karl is the same menace to his subject Slavs as his predecessors. Above all, however, he is of necessity a blind tool in the hands of Germany, and he cannot possibly extricate himself from her firm grip. The Habsburgs have had their chance, but they missed it. By systematic and continuous misgovernment they created a gulf between the Slavs and themselves which nothing on earth can remove. Every Habsburg ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... rather be exasperated at the discovery of their errors than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. If he should be obliged to blame the favourites of the people, he will be considered as the tool of power; if he censures those in power, he will be looked on as an instrument of faction. But in all exertions of duty something is to be hazarded. In cases of tumult and disorder, our law has invested every man, in some sort, with the authority ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... life; it is an obstacle to the realization of the Communist ideal. It detaches souls from the objects of sense and diverts them from the struggle to get the good things of this life. According to the Bolshevist formula, religion is opium for the people: and serves as a tool ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... time, out of that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... then, and since, was not against the women, but against the men who hid behind them—against Apostle Heber J. Grant and Apostle John Henry Smith and their tool, ex-Senator Brown. In my anger I decided to take an action that looked as desperate as it proved successful. I hired the Salt Lake Theatre—for a night (February 9, 1899), and announced that I would speak on "Senatorial Candidates and Pharisees"—intending ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... the floors, and at a hundred other occupations. It is very amusing to watch the practice of the little boys who are going to be dentists. In Japan the dentist of the people fetches out an aching tooth with thumb and finger, and will pluck it out as surely as any tool can do the work, so his pupils learn their trade by trying to pull nails out of a board. They begin with tin-tacks, and go on until they can, with thumb and finger, pluck out a nail ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... to English literature was that he was the founder of modern irrationalism; a movement fully as important as modern rationalism. A great deal is said in these days about the value or valuelessness of logic. In the main, indeed, logic is not a productive tool so much as a weapon of defence. A man building up an intellectual system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword. A wide experience of actual intellectual ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... of varnish colour, and remembered that I'd left it on one of the window-sills—the sill of her bedroom window, as it happened. I knew I'd sleep in next day, Sunday, and guessed it would be hot, and I didn't want the varnish tool to get spoiled; so I reckoned I'd slip in through the side gate, get it, and take it home to camp and put it in oil. The window sash was jammed, I remember, and I hadn't been able to get it up more than a couple of inches to paint the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... the lower Spanish types portrayed in "Noli Me Tangere" was loud for revenge. The clamor grew so great that it seemed possible to take advantage of it to displace General Blanco, who was not a convenient tool for the interests. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... gauges, drills, cutters, punches and dies, trucks, jigs, tap pieces and general tool-room work. The gauges included plug, ring, cylinder and screw gauges to the closest degrees of accuracy, which in practice are verified by the rigid inspection ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... which I observed always had the effect of checking Peterkin's disposition to make fun of everything, "we are really in rather an uncomfortable position. If this is a desert island, we shall have to live very much like the wild beasts, for we have not a tool of any kind, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... This tool of the court of St. Germains came over from France, in company with John Murray, who was sent to watch his proceedings, and also to aid his object in procuring the promises of the most distinguished Highland chieftains to the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... words; unless a man's vocabulary is wide, unless his understanding of the language is exact, his thoughts must inevitably be vague and muddled. Moreover, he will be unable to transmit his thoughts clearly and readily to others. The most important tool for the carrying on of life is- language; the slovenliness and inadequacy of the average man's speech is a sad commentary on ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... developed in his Traite des Proprietes Projectives des Figures." Although this principle is constantly made use of at the present day in all sorts of investigations, careful geometricians are in agreement with Cauchy in this matter, and use it only as a convenient working tool for purposes of exploration. The one-to-one correspondence between geometric forms and algebraic analysis is subject to many and important exceptions. The field of analysis is much more general than the field of geometry, and while there may be a clear notion in analysis ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... hated than Agathocles; he had been the king's ready tool in all his murders. He had been stained, or at least reproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; then of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenice, the widow of Euergetes; of Cleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoe, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... It teaches us the old lesson, which sense is so apt to forget, that the true actor in man's deeds is 'the hidden man of the heart,' and that when it has acted, it matters comparatively little whether the mere tool and instrument of the hands or of the other organs have carried out the behest. The thing is done before it is done when the man has resolved, with a fixed will, to do it. The betrayal was as good as in process, though no step beyond the introductory ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... dug a hole, and it filled right up again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of their hands and ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys its injunctions; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and remains a passive tool in its hands; the public troops consist of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain States even the judges are elected by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... beyond measure, and as he told me to do no more for her, I left my room, went to my garden in the evening, and, in my little tool house, wrestled hard with God in prayer for ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... requests made by library patrons. Finnell, whose consulting firm specializes in data analysis, has substantial experience evaluating Internet access logs generated on networked systems. He spent more than a year developing a reporting tool for N2H2, and, in the course of that work, acquired a familiarity with the design and operation ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... factions that felt uneasy under his sway, gradually coalesced into a rancorous opposition, that knew no bounds in the meanness of their intrigues, and in the barefaced falsehood of their accusations. We have seen how the King stooped to be their instrument, and allowed himself to be the tool of their deceptions. Clarendon became an exile, and, after a brief period of inhuman persecution from a false view of diplomatic expediency, he received the homage of European Powers, as an honoured guest. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the King meanwhile left the government to the Council of State in Brussels? Even furious foes of Spain desired to see a power which could be relied upon at the head of the community, even though it were a tool of the abhorred King. The danger was so terrible that it could not fail to alarm and summon to the common defence every individual, no matter to what party he might belong; for the unpaid Spanish regiments, with unbridled violence, rioting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... both made up to me was disgusting. But I know the girl is just a tool in her mother's hands. Her mother seemed actually passive in comparison. For skilful wheedling I could fall down and worship that woman; I really admire her. As long as the girl was with us she kept herself in the background and put the girl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... well not chiefly because he is interested in writing, or because he possesses any especial knack, but because he is more profoundly, vividly interested in the activities of life and he tells about them—over his shoulder. For writing, like farming, is ever a tool, not ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... and the county funds handled by a white politician of the "reconstructing" element then in power, which was sapping the life- blood of the south, and bonding every state within its selfish grasp by dishonest legislative acts. The poor black man was simply a tool for the white charlatan, living in a miserable log cabin, and receiving a very small share of the peculations of his white clerk. When all the enfranchised are educated, and not until then, will ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... and, with the aid of a tool, he soon discovered that the cylinder was divided into two parts. In the lower part was burning charcoal. In the upper, carefully closed, was paraffin. The division between the two compartments consisted of some sort of soldering ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... the wedge that primitive people obtained slabs of wood, and the great change from primitive to civilized methods in manipulating wood consists in the substitution of cutting for splitting, of edge tools for the wedge. The wedge follows the grain of the wood, but the edge tool can follow a line determined by the worker. The edge is a refinement and improvement upon the wedge and enables the worker to be somewhat independent of the natural grain ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... sizing is applied by a camel's-hair brush, being a sticky substance, usually the white of an egg, mixed with water (termed by binders "glaire") and the gold-leaf is laid smoothly over it. When the sizing is dry, the gold is burnished with a tool, tipped with an agate or blood-stone, drawn forcibly over the edge until ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Kate said, as she looked admiringly at Martha's tastefully arranged room, "you're fixin' up as if you were goin' to be married yerself, and I just hope this English girl of his is all he thinks she is, and not a useless tool like some of them are. I mind well one Englishwoman who lived neighbour to me down in Ontario, nice woman, too, but sakes alive, she was a dirty housekeeper. She was a cousin to the Duke of something, but she'd make a puddin' in the wash-basin just the same. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... which has no noxious elements. Yes, the mass here is decidedly good. All the world lives well, is decently clad, learns something, is awake and interested. Instruction does not, as in some parts of Germany for instance, furnish a man with an intellectual tool and then deny him the free use of it. The strength of America lies in the prodigious number of individuals who think and work at the same time. It is a severe test of pretentious mediocrity, but I fear it may also efface ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... know where the fuses are so I can flag the first train that comes. Or I will just set the tool house afire; that ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... chests, however, proved to be a carpenter's tool-chest; and this, although Gaunt had a small tool-chest of his own among his effects, would be of such priceless value to the little band, that he determined to secure it then and there; and he accordingly dragged it on deck at once, in readiness ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... and motioned them to carry O'Shaughnessy into a low tool-house near, a mere shed, half tumbling down from a shell that had shattered its side. There was a bench there, where they could lay the wounded man, however. He stooped over the big mangled body, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... appeared to be uninhabited, was soon made out. They had nothing, save the clothes which they were wearing at the time of the catastrophe. We must mention, however, a note-book and a watch which Gideon Spilett had kept, doubtless by inadvertence, not a weapon, not a tool, not even a pocket-knife; for while in the car they had thrown out everything to lighten the balloon. The imaginary heroes of Daniel Defoe or of Wyss, as well as Selkirk and Raynal shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez and on the archipelago ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... hardy people they must have been! How successfully for untold generations did they pit themselves against the rigour of this most inhospitable climate! With no tool but the stone-axe and the flint knife, with no weapon but the bow and arrow and spear, with no material for fish nets but root fibres, or for fish-hooks or needles but bone, and with no means of fire making save two dry sticks—one wonders ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... recognized and accepted the inevitable. He had, at least, the satisfaction of having made an intelligent effort to awaken the American woman to her unintelligent submission. But she refused to be awakened. She preferred to be a tool: to be made a ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... sign to be noiseless, got the pistol, and returned, without a sound, to the open door of the car with Juba at my heels. They were yet on their knees, with their heads under the shelf, and I heard the slight grating made by the tool that Ingra's assistant was using. The pistol was in my hand. What should I do? Shoot him down without warning, or trust to the strength of Juba to enable us to overcome them both ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... with his intelligence, and his men themselves with their lack of intelligence. This human factor, this bundle of ideas and volitions and feelings and judgments, must ultimately be the centre of the whole process. There is no machine which can do its best if it is wrongly used, no tool which can be effective if it is not set to work by an industrious will. The human mind has to keep in motion that whole great mechanism of farm life. It is the farmer's foresight and insight which plough and plant and fill the barns. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... true to change and inconstancy, and will abandon him to their own fury for the next that cries Haloo: neither is there one part of fifty (of the fools that cry him up) for his interest, though they use him for a tool to work with, he being the only great man that wants sense enough to find out the cheat which they dare impose upon. Can any body of reason believe, if they had design'd him good, they would let him bare-fac'd have own'd a party so opposite to all laws of nature, religion, humanity, and common ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... impression that had been industriously created, that we were identified in our feelings and purposes with some one political party; 3rd, To furnish an instructive moral to the Christian reader, not to be a passive or active tool, or the blind, thorough-going follower of any political party as such. We considered this called for at the present time on both religious and patriotic grounds. We designed this expression of our sentiments, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... day in a town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries. The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or tea-taster. These Edamers have the trained ear of music-masters and, merely by knuckle-rapping, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Demolished and replaced by tool-rental and restaurant businesses. Was on N. Washington St. to the right of the present State Theatre at 220 N. Washington. It was a small, real drug store, handling mostly drugs and pharmaceuticals, but may ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... Empire; but what could I do? He constantly depreciated my campaigns and my government. From discontent to revolt there is frequently only one step, especially when a man of a weak character becomes the tool of popular clubs; and therefore when I was first informed that Moreau was implicated in the conspiracy of Georges I believed him to be guilty, but hesitated to issue an order for his arrest till I had taken the opinion ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the plans against her; no idea whatever that people might be using her as a tool—that there was any interest contrary to her own, in the conduct or management of others. But yet she turned the key in the door before she commenced the perusal of the letter, which was to the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... wheelbarrow. In some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their day's work, did at any rate pass their day with some sort of tool in their hands. And consequently the surface of the hill began to disappear, and there were chasms in the orad, which caused those who travelled on wheels to sit still, staring across with angry eyes, and sometimes to apostrophize the doer ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... debates in the French chambers, which reflected much moral discredit upon the King of the French, his minister Guizot, his ambassador M. Bresson, the queen and queen-mother of Spain, and Narvaez, the chief abettor and tool of the faction of Christina. The eloquent denunciations of M. Thiers against Guizot and his policy told upon the French mind, and led to modifications in the cabinet; but this clever invective was purely in the spirit of party: the honour of France and the love of truth ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... old chip that goes round the country on all sorts of errands; he comes along once in a while. That'll do, Johnny I believe this here tool is as sharp as I have ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... we furnish a tool which can scarcely be worn out; and when worn, the wearable parts, a prepared wood journal, and movable thimble in the hub (held in place by a key) can be easily and cheaply renewed. WE GUARANTEE OUR "BOSS" to plow more acres than any ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... natives of India. It might be said of the other taxes that, in one form or another, they affected every branch of industry and every necessary of life. They affected even the tools of trade, and were sometimes equal in amount to the sum for which the tool itself could be purchased in ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... transformations of human beings into otter, bear or deer forms, of the pursuit of evil demons, of magic incantations. And the shamans, sure always of an audience in Catanaugh, made much of him, and in many ways without his knowing it, used him as a tool. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... altercations. The place compelled quiet and decency, and disposed one for tranquil, serious thoughts. Absorbed in our work, we stood or sat immovably, like statues; there was a dead silence, very proper to a cemetery, so that if a tool fell down, or the oil in the lamp spluttered, the sound would be loud and startling, and we would turn to see what it was. After a long silence one could hear a humming like that of a swarm of bees; in the porch, in an undertone, the funeral service was being ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Examining it closely as he did so, the boy was astonished to note the fineness of the work, and he realized that it must have taken Bill Wilsh all the spare moments of a long winter to finish it. The work was all the more surprising, Hamilton thought, since it had been done just with a single tool, a common pocketknife, and was yet as fine and delicate as though carved with a set of costly tools. He made up his mind to buy a set and send them to Bill Wilsh with the first pay that he got from his Census ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe and the doors with nothing but the saw. For, as Epaminondas is reported to have said afterwards, of his table, "Treason lurks not under such a dinner," so Lycurgus perceived before him, that ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... whose haughty name he regarded with the same disdain as that which Rome herself lavished upon the barbarian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, for that would render him at once the tool or creature of the emperor. He, the Son of the Great Race of Rameses—he execute the orders of, and receive his power from, another!—the mere notion filled him with rage. But in rejecting an ambition that coveted nominal distinctions, he but indulged ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... preceding; renter of seats in Saint-Francois. Last nurse of Sylvain Pons, and a tool to the interests of Fraisier and Poulain. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... with a piece of stiff thin wire in my hand. He asked me for it so earnestly that I passed it through the bars to him. Promptly, and with no tool but his fingers, he broke it into short lengths and twisted them into half a dozen very creditable safety pins. He sharpened the points on the stone floor. Thereafter I did quite a trade in safety pins. I furnished ...
— The Road • Jack London
... machinery, and her husband, finally, as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could draw to rebuild her fallen fortunes. At the thought Garnett was filled with a deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share in it. He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined that he was serving Hermione, it was for her mother's ends that he had worked. What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on such base connivances, and how could he have imagined ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he shows himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his innocent Master and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant. As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions—of S. John and the little group of women who are faithful to the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... their axes, not a few, And sent their prayers to Jupiter So fast, he knew not which to hear. His winged son, however, sent With gold and silver axes, went. Each would have thought himself a fool Not to have own'd the richest tool. But Mercury promptly gave, instead Of it, a blow upon ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... a surface smartness, and he had proved himself an apt scholar. The Judge had found him a willing tool in many of his deep laid schemes to get money for less than money's worth. But within the last few months there had been a change. A spark of manhood had asserted itself, and in the presence of his minion the Judge found himself upon ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... in the plane and racked his memory for a source of sheet rubber. There was none, but he recalled a repair kit for the plastic floats in their tool supply. He found it and took ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... throw it overboard, knowing how precious a tool it is," declared Mr. Farnum, glancing about him bewildered. "It was hardly possible to mislay such a thing by accident. Where on earth can ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... unfamiliar. On either side of the unscarred roadway still lay scattered the uprooted trees and bowlders that had blocked its progress, and abandoned by the contractors were empty tar-barrels, cement-sacks, tool-sheds, and forges. Nor was the surrounding landscape less raw and unlovely. Toward the Sound stretched vacant lots covered with ash heaps; to the left a few old and broken houses set among the ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... The tool being procured, they hammered upon the upper end of the rod, and drilled as miners do in rock. After some time of this work the ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... educated up to a certain point, able to write a good hand, and express himself grammatically, but thinking more of his dress and his spurious English than of any learning or accomplishment, and the unreasoning tool of his official superiors. He had been checkmated by Coristine, and felt terribly disappointed at the failure of his mission; but the thought that he had been engaged in a most dishonest attempt did not trouble him in the least. Yet, had he been offered a large bribe ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of Dr. West," he said, earnestly, "though I alone had the right to tell you that at the proper time and occasion. Believe me that I have given no one the right—least of all any tool ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... being himself. If a person cuts down, with an axe, a tree in forest, it is the person that incurs the sin and not the axe by any means. Or, if it be said that, the axe being only the material cause, the consequence of the act (of cutting) should attach to the animate agent (and not to the inanimate tool), then the sin may be said to belong to the person that has made the axe. This, however, can scarcely be true. If this be not reasonable, O son of Kunti, that one man should incur the consequence of an act done by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... his hateful inquisition into the homes of the Christians in Jerusalem, he will follow the fugitives to Damascus. The extension of the persectution was his own thought. He was not the tool of the Sanhedrin, but their mover. They would probably have been content to cleanse Jerusalem, but the young zealot would not rest till he had followed the dispersed poison into every corner where it might have trickled. The high ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... externally the same, still bubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very different from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will be expending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation of some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of some superior intelligence." ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... supply picquets for duty in the disturbed area. This action rather raised the resentment of some units and created a certain amount of ill-feeling. So acute did this become that on one occasion the Battalion of its own volition was on the point of "standing to" with entrenching tool handles to repel a threatened raid. However, common sense prevailed and good feeling with the men of the Eastern States was soon re-established, but not before the title "J——'s Own" had been ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... could not be ventilated from the front during the hot summer weather, in consequence of the shut-up condition of all the windows thereabouts. In the fourth place, hard by the coach-house in which Doctor Dulcifer's neat gig was put up, there was a tool-shed, in which the gardener kept his short pruning-ladder. In the fifth and last place, outside the stable in which Doctor Dulcifer's blood mare lived in luxurious solitude, was a dog-kennel with a large ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... fairest prospects of humanity; degrading man below the beast of the forest; sinking his intellectual faculties in the most savage barbarity; rendering him the vile instrument of lawless ambition; the wretched tool by which the fetters of his species were firmly rivetted; obliging him to moisten his harvest with the bitter tears of the most abject slavery. For the purpose of remedying so many crying evils, grown insupportable, recourse was had to new ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... the nest placed in the fork of a small soft-maple, which stands amid a thick growth of wild-cherry trees and young beeches. Carefully concealing myself beneath it, without any fear that the workmen will hit me with a chip or let fall a tool, I await the return of the busy pair. Presently I hear the well-known note, and the female sweeps down and settles unsuspectingly into the half-finished structure. Hardly have her wings rested, before her eye has penetrated my screen, and with a hurried ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... flat-bladed, square-front shovel designed to lift loose, fine-textured materials from hard surfaces. However, even well-sharpened, these tend to stick when they bump into any obstacle. Best is an "irrigator's shovel." This is a lightweight tool looking like an ordinary combination shovel but with a flatter, blunter rounded blade attached to the handle at a much sharper angle, allowing the user to stand straighter when working. Sharp irrigator's shovels are perfect for scooping up loosened soil and tossing it to one side, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and precedes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stroke of genius that made what followed possible. Without Abraham I do not know what he would have done. I can not imagine. Yet I feel sure he would have contrived something. He made use of Abraham as the best tool available, and that is no proof he could not have done as well by other means. I have learned this: that Ranjoor Singh, with that faith of his in God, can do anything. Anything. He is a true man, and God puts thoughts ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the outer shell was so hard that Phil went to the tool-room after one of his father's small key ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a first glimpse of his companion's face. There was nothing in particular about him, save a long, diagonal scar on his face which Pee-wee thought might have been caused by some tool in the ruined manual training room. The young man had also very short hair; it was so short, in fact, that it seemed almost like no hair at all. It ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... stood to see the wreck she had made. Long she did not stand: a rush of thought gave wings to her feet, and she fled to hide in some place where she could not, she thought, be found. She fled to a tool-house in the yard; but she had not been half an hour there when she heard the voice of Mrs. Grey; she heard her step, too, come near and more near, till at length it came close to ...
— The Book of One Syllable • Esther Bakewell
... of dark hair. There have been three girls, in the Stefan family," he explained to Rose-Marie, "and so they are wild with joy at this latest addition. Papa Stefan is strutting about like a proud turkey, with his chest out. And Mamma Stefan is trying to sing a lullaby. I feel something like a tool in the hand of Providence, to-night!" He threw himself ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... that Christian was some time in doubt whether he should keep the carpenter or his mates; at length he determined on the latter and the carpenter was ordered into the boat. He was permitted but not without some opposition to take his tool chest. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... earnest sympathy—a face which had a certain longing, wistful expression, as though she yearned over this stricken heart, and longed to offer some consolation. But Edith, even if she had been willing to receive any expressions of sympathy from one like Mrs. Dunbar, whom she regarded as a miserable tool of her oppressor, or a base ally, was too far down in the depths of her own profound affliction to be capable of consolation. Bad enough it was already, when she had to look back over so long a course ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... either in or out of confession; but the Jesuit code of morality required his denial, if he had heard it in confession only. Poor Bates was the most innocent of the conspirators, and the most truly penitent: he was rather a tool and a victim than a miscreant. He lost his life through neglect of a much-forgotten precept—"If sinners entice thee, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... and the attack on the convoy were window-dressing. They were not attempts to withdraw him from circulation, but to draw attention to him. Which, of course, implied that the Invaders—whoever or whatever they might be—considered Coburn a useful tool ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Vereshagin, with a pyramid of skulls as its centre—a very Golgotha of the horrors of massacre; but Russian monarchs, in their ceaseless career of conquest, out-Tatar the Tatar in the fiendishness of their atrocities. Witness the order given by General Kaufmann, the pampered tool of Alexander II., in these Turkestan campaigns:—"Kill all; spare no age, or sex!" Witness also the death-dance that took place when his Majesty, the crowned head of Holy Russia, the magnanimous Champion of Religion and Humanity, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... and Hobson in the tool-shed and went to see what they were doing. He found them busy about the mowing-machine—oiling it, tightening the screws ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... astonishment did not give way. His full bourgeois face was pale; yet peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution. And oddly—very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a prisoner, he must be in the wrong—I sympathised with him. Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with him, when ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the wit of man is shown not in possession of a well-furnished tool-chest, but in the ability to pick out the proper instrument and ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... eaten all he himself had dressed. He then ordered me to collect materials for a hut, and when I expostulated, as I had only my pocket-knife to work with, he struck me with a stick, and said I must see to finding a better tool. Still, as I had determined to do my utmost to please him, I set to work to collect all the pieces of drift timber I could find. To my satisfaction, I discovered also the boat's sail and some rope cast on shore, and these articles, with a number of thin sticks which I succeeded ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... nerve and courage now. He had just one last chance, one single opportunity of making money, and then he must get out of the country without delay. He almost wished now that he had not been quite so precipitate in the matter of James Merritt. That humble tool might have been of great advantage to him at this moment. But Merritt had threatened to be troublesome and must be got out of the way. But then, the police had not picked Merritt up yet. Was it possible that Merritt ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... to think o' your asking me such a question, just as if I was ever known to take so much as a whiff in working hours—no, not in the tool-house, nor nowhere." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... they reached the wall of Lambert's garden of herbs, where there was a little door that yielded to Ridley's push. The house was still closed, and hoar frost lay on the leaves, but Grisell proposed to hide herself in the little shed which served the purpose of tool-house and summer-house till she could make her entrance. She felt sure of a welcome, and almost constrained Cuthbert to leave her, so as to return to the Tower early enough to avert suspicion—an easier matter as the men-at-arms were given to sleeping ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not dream that this might happen," she said softly. "I meant to use you as a tool, I even thought that you had consented. Oh! I am sorry. I shall be sorry all my life that I asked you to bring him here. Will you listen to me ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this I make so much to-do about? Very little, I confess, but to me more serious than L's and sky-scrapers; yes, than love. Mine is an infinite labor: first to shape the true tool, and then to master the material! I grant you I may die any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... reply. The mystery seemed to thicken, and he was unable to form any supposition, whatever, that would account for the man's proceedings. The latter carried his burden up to the cannon, then he laid it down, and took up some long tool and thrust it into the mouth of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... sorts of tools down in the tool-house," Billie cried eagerly, and Chet looked at her as though she had said she had discovered a gold ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... nails and scraps of scantling, was patching a corner of one of the galleries. Mariequita sat near by, dangling her legs, watching him work, and handing him nails from the tool-box. The sun was beating down upon them. The girl had covered her head with her apron folded into a square pad. They had been talking for an hour or more. She was never tired of hearing Victor describe the dinner at Mrs. Pontellier's. He exaggerated every detail, making it appear a veritable ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Catholic faith and in rejection of all compromise with regard to the doctrine of Chalcedon, they were entirely impotent in Italy itself. Catholic Italy was at the feet of the Arian Goth. The cruel imprisonment of Pope John, used as a political tool in 525 and flung away when he proved ineffective, gave a new martyr to the Roman calendar; and, in spite of {32} the absence of direct evidence, it is difficult to regard the executions of Symmachus and of Boethius as entirely unconnected with religions questions. Both were ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... Sometimes the irresponsible Executive, unwilling that their obedient servants in the Upper House should incur popular odium by opposing the will of the Assembly, permitted Bills to pass both Houses, and then, through their tool the Lieutenant-Governor, had these identical measures disallowed. Advice, the compliance with which could not fail to be prejudicial to the interests of the colony, was also sent across the Atlantic through ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... a source of legitimate pride to me to think that I should have been the tool selected by Providence to sharpen du Maurier's pencil; there must have been something in my "Verfluchte Physiognomie," as a very handsome young German, whom I used to chaff unmercifully, called it, to reveal to du Maurier hidden possibilities and to awaken ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... separate license dissolved their bond. Macklin writes in his Reply to Mr. Garrick's Answer (p. 27) that "it ought to be known that when this Letter was carried to Mrs. Clive, and her Name to it desired, she had the Honour and Spirit to refuse, upon any Consideration, to be made so ridiculous a Tool to so ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... even if it should be in my power; and yet, if he lives till a change of times, what follows? Restitution—perhaps revenge. I know Athole promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here is his son already bandying and making a faction by his own contemptible influence. What a ready tool he would be for the use of those who are watching ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... feeling by no means sure of its safety, and saw the rest of the party gradually receding among the trees, with sensations akin to those of a sailor on a desert island. Sitting upon the tool-chest, like an item of property saved from a wreck, Andy looked from the base to the summit of the huge walls of forest that encompassed him, and along the canal of sky overhead, till his ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... its wisest men, And shall outlive the wisdom of its gods Made after man's own liking. The crippled throne No longer shelters the uneasy king, And outworn sceptres and imperial crowns Now grow fantastic as an idiot's dream. These perish with the kingly pastime, war, And war's blind tool, the monster, Ignorance! Both hateful in themselves, but this the worst. One tyrant will remain—one impious fiend. Whose name is Gold—our earliest, latest foe! Him must the earth destroy, ere man can rise, Rightly self made, to his high destiny, Purged of his grossest faults; ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... Also ways to invest his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions suggested, the Jew without brains could not survive, and the Jew with brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up, or starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him—his brain—have made that tool singularly competent; ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never uses them now. This history has a very, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... breakfast, he found one of the handsomest pocket-knives he had ever seen. It had no less than four blades, besides so many other weapons that, as the man who sold it remarked to Drusie and Jim, "it was a carpenter's tool-chest in miniature." ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... added range was given the keyboard of the piano, the human voice was given tasks that at the time seemed impossible of achievement. He established the precedent, which Wagner acted on later, of employing the human voice as a tool, an instrument, to be used in the exigencies of his art, as if it were a part of ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... good, Paolo. I do not think that matters could have been better for us. The next thing is to buy a tool with which we can wrench open a door or the shutter of a window; but a door will be best, because we could not work at a shutter without running the risk of being seen by a sentinel, while in a doorway we should be screened ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Kark out of the path of his will. "Who is it that is to command me how I shall choose my servants? The Fates made Kark a cook-boy when he was born; let him go back where he belongs. I have endured his boorishness long enough. Am I to despise a tool that Heaven has sent me because a clod at my feet is jealous? What kind ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... I have received a strange letter. What does it mean? Are you playing false to me? Who is this man you have with you? where does he come from? Are you such a fool as not to know he is a tool of the Adams, and that you are acting with him? I cannot be with you. If I had my liberty I would hurry to your side, snatch you from this villain, and plunge my knife so deep into him that he would never know he ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... with a fine steel instrument until it was quite perfect. Over this again he poured melted lead, thus making a hard die with which he could stamp the wax without danger of breaking the instrument. Once more he retouched the lead with a graving tool, using a lens for the work and ultimately turning out an absolutely accurate copy of the seal used in the Chancery office. He made experiments as he proceeded, and when he was at last satisfied ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... and indeed it was too agonizing, but the old woman seemed better able to calm her than we could. Terrible moments indeed! and in the midst there was sent up a folded paper that had been handed out at the small aperture on the point of a tool, when the poor things had first been able to see the lights of their rescuers. It was to Lady Lucy; her brother had written it on the leaf of a pocket-book, before their single lamp went out, and had given it in charge to one of the men when he found his strength ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never be able to do anything with Thiers, although he would make an excellent tool. He is one of those men one cannot make use of unless one is able to satisfy them. Now, he never will be satisfied. It is unfortunate for him, as for you, that in our times, he ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Whose very name inspires an awe, Whose every word is sense and law, For what his greatness hath decreed, Like laws of Persia and of Mede, Sacred through all the realm of wit, Must never of repeal admit; Who, cursing flattery, is the tool Of every fawning, flattering fool; Who wit with jealous eye surveys, And sickens at another's praise; Who, proudly seized of learning's throne, Now damns all learning but his own; Who scorns those common wares to trade in, Reasoning, convincing, and persuading, But makes each ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Workshop Practice in General Tool Grinding, and the Design, Construction, and Application ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Judge be free? And how can a coward or a tool, worn blunt in crooked service, be free or cut ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to be the root of its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis Napoleon has done, a strong middle class already existing, must treat it as he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its basest propensities, seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may make it his. For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and were a despot to govern England tomorrow, we should see that the man who was shrewd enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd enough ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... on leaving the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?" He looked at me and gave a wink of serio-comic despair, and then he ran his blue pencil up through his hair and left a blue streak like a scar on his scalp. Devore was one of the few city editors I have ever seen who used that tool which all of them are popularly supposed to handle so murderously—a blue pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was flustered or annoyed—and that was most of the time—of scratching his head with the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... exercise is good for me, Dabney," answered father with all the dignity and command come back into his voice. "Put both those hoes in the tool house this time, and I'll not tell Mr. Goodloe you left one down ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to offer," continued Ogilvie, "and I refuse to inculpate anyone with myself in this matter. This was my own concern; I thought out the report, I worded it, I signed it. Rycroft was more or less my tool. In the moment of my so-called victory God smote me. You can do with me just as you please, but the Lombard Deeps Company must collapse. I have nothing further ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... pocket-book. This pocket-book contained notes to the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars; and the next day a reward of five-and-twenty was offered to the finder of them. The Scotchman waited on the owner, who was a tool manufacturer, and, declining the reward, asked only for work, for "leave to toil," as Burns has expressed it. This was granted him; and in less than four months he became a clerk in the establishment. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird |
